A Comparative Study of Traditional, Eigenvector and Hypothetical Extraction Methods to Identify Key Sectors

In 2015 "Ministry of Industry, Mine and Trade" and the "Management and Planning Organization" tried to identify the key sectors of the Iranian economy on the verge of the Sixth Five Year "Development Plan". The first report entitled "industrial development strategy" uses general criteria such as the share of value added, employment, exports and comparative advantage and the second one namely "key sectors prioritization of the Iranian economy" identifies key sectors on the basis of traditional methods in Input Output analysis. The findings of both institutions suggest the development of heavy industries. In order to assess these findings, traditional, eigenvector and hypothetical extraction methods have been used to answer three following questions: First, which of these methods give a more realistic picture of Iran’s economy and what are the key sectors? Second, to what extent the results of the three methods proposed, are in line with the proposed recommendations of the two institutions? And the third, will there be any differs of the results obtained from the three methods with the new sectoral classifications? The findings of this paper reveal that: First, of all the results of the hypothetical extraction method are more realistic due to considering the intermediate transactions, and the size of the sectoral final demand and value added, reveal that the number of industrial sectors are reduced and service sectors especially distributional ones are identified as key sectors. Second, unlike the other two methods, the results of the hypothetical extraction show a different picture: The shares of industry sectors are reduced and agriculture and service sectors appear as key sector. Third, classifying key sectors according to level of technology shows "Chemicals excluding pharmaceuticals" and "Pharmaceuticals" is common in the three methods whereas there is a considerable difference in Medium-low-technology and Low-technology industries.