CO2 emissions and value added change: assessing the trade-off through the macro multiplier approach

Abstract

Recently, political and scientific debate is strongly focused on issues questioning the economic sustainability of environmental policies at regional level. Following European directives and protocols and in accordance with the principles of sustainable development, the interventions designed by policy makers are required to aim at restructuring the final emissions. In this paper an effort is made to assess a new structure for the final demand which would be able to achieve a composite task: the economic sustainability and the environmental improvement. In this respect, the regional Social Accounting Matrix (SAM), referred to a typical region of the Mediterranean area, the Sardinia, will be integrated with the environmental accounting scheme in order to develop the regional multisectoral extended model. The resulting inverse matrix will be used to identify which composition of the final demand (policy control variable) is consistent with the complex emissions together with a positive variation of the aggregate total output (policy target variable). For this purpose the Macro Multipliers approach, through the use of a bidimensional decision-making index, will allow us to identify the convenient structures for both economic and environmental target and assessing the expected negative trade-off.