ABSTRACT
It is natural to consider Leontief input–output tables as representing the origin of environmental input–output analysis (Leontief 1936, 1941, 1953). 1 The reason for this is that the energy inputs of the industrial sectors listed in the input– output tables represent a direct cause of the air pollution emissions from these industrial sectors. The environmental input–output analysis enables us to evaluate pollution emissions from human society. The environmental input–output analysis was further extended into more comprehensive theoretical frameworks considering material balance (Ayres and Kneese 1969; Converse 1971) and including the interdependence between socio-economic system and ecologic system such as a food chain (Isard et al. 1967, 1971, 1972). Cumberland (1966) also proposed the regional input–output model including environmental factors and pointed out the importance of analyzing the relationship between regional development process and environmental externalities. Despite the usefulness of the environmental input–output analysis, a fundamental shortcoming was that the previous frameworks did not consider abatement activities of various pollutants generated by production activities. Leontief (1970) and Leontief and Ford (1972) overcame the shortcoming and proposed a modified environmental input–output analysis in which the pollution generation and abatement activities are systematically included in the framework. The non-negativity of solutions in the Leontief pollution abatement model was also studied (Steenge 1978; Lowe 1979; Luptacik and Böhm 1994). Duchin (1990) further extended the Leontief pollution abatement model by considering the waste recycling and disposal activities as well as the generation of waste residuals.
