Regional Economic Structure and Carbon Dioxide Emission in Japanese Regions: An Application of Multi-regional Input-Output Model

Under the growing awareness on the global environmental issues, the Japanese Government has been enacting various laws for energy saving and material recycling to promote the formation of environment-friendly society. The input-output analysis is a useful tool to examine the economic structural problems concerning the economic growth, the industrial structure and the environment. Several researches have been conducted to identify the efficiency of energy and resource consumption in Japanese industries and the environmental pollution using input-output analysis. The authors have examined the relationship between the industrial structure and the energy and resource consumption in Japanese regions by employing multiregional input-output tables. However, the former studies have faced the problem of double counting in estimating the energy and resources consumption due to the intermediate transactions among industries. This study aims to cope with the above problem by employing the carbon dioxide emission intensity by industry, which has been estimated by the National Institute for Environmental Studies in Japan. The paper examines the relationship between the economic growth and the carbon dioxide emission in Japanese regions by applying the multi-regional input-output models for 1975, 80, 85, 90 and 95. The study has revealed that Kanto region (including Tokyo metropolitan region) showed a marked growth in carbon dioxide emission with a rapid economic growth during 1980s. Most of the local regions showed low environmental emission as well as a decline in regional economy.