One of the hard parts about building Leontief input-output models is that the source data are hard to use.
Instead of producing a square industry-by-industry input-output table, the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) produces rectangular “use” and “make” tables. The make table shows products produced by each industry, while the use table shows how products get used by industries, consumers, government and the rest of the world. However, what we need for Leontief models is a square table that shows only the industry-by-industry relationships.
I’ve you’re a researcher who has run into this problem, I have good news. Our economists have produced summary-level (134 industries) and detailed-level (426 industries) input-output tables from BEA data, which are now for sale on our “Data Products” page. We’ve also written up a methodology paper explaining how the tables are derived, allowing you to reproduce them quickly and easily. See here to place an order today.
