A Study of the NUTS 2 Administrative Regions using Input-Output Analysis

In 1966 Roy Geary, Director of the ESRI, noted "the absence of any kind of import and export statistics for regions is a grave lacuna" and further noted that if regional analyses were to be developed then regional Input-Output (IO) must be put on the "regular statistical assembly line". Over 40 years later, the lacuna lamented by Geary still exists and remains the most significant challenge to the construction of regional IO tables in Ireland. The continued paucity of sufficient regional data sufficient to compile regional Supply and Use (SUT) and IO tables has retarded the capacity to construct sound regional economic models and provide a robust evidence base with which to formulate and assess regional policy. This paper makes a first step towards addressing this gap by presenting the first set of fully comprehensive symmetric Supply and Use and domestic Input-Output tables compiled for the NUTS 2 regions in Ireland: The Border, Midlands and Western (or BMW) region and the Southern & Eastern (or SE) region. These tables are general purpose in nature and are fully consistent with the official national SUT and IO tables and the regional accounts. The tables are constructed using a survey based or bottom-up approach rather than employing modelling techniques, yielding more robust and credible tables. In particular this approach should better take account of the magnitude and direction of inter-regional trade flows.