A Revision of the Tolerable Limits Approach: Searching for the Important Coefficients

A wide range of approaches are available for classifying coefficients according to their importance to an economy. The 'tolerable limits' approach is one that has been extensively written about. Nevertheless, it seems unsuitable for assessing the overall importance of a coefficient to an economy, but instead appears to be rather well suited for determining how much a selling sector depends upon its customers. We therefore suggest two alternative approaches for measuring a sector's importance to an economy. The first is an application of the concept of elasticity based on Sherman and Morrison's (1950) formula. The second approach applies linear programming. We compare these various alternatives using the domestic IO tables of eight European countries.