ABSTRACT
The world economy, like the economy of a single country, can be visualized as a system of interdependent processes. Direct interdependence between two processes arises whenever the output of one becomes an input of the other: coal, the output of the coal mining industry, is an input of the electric power generating sector. Major efforts are presently underway to construct a data base for a systematic input-output study not of a single national economy but of the world economy viewed as a system composed of many interrelated parts. This global study, as described in the official document, is aimed at helping Member States of the United Nations make their 1975 review of world progress in accelerating development and attacking mass poverty and unemployment. For analytical purposes, the outputs and inputs of the Extraction Industry and Other Production, as well as the amounts of pollutants generated and abated, can be interpreted as quantities measured in the appropriate physical units.
