Global Multi-Regional Input-Output Database Update and Its Social Applications

Abstract

International trade, an important channel and a clear demonstration of globalization, has attracted worldwide attention. The development of international trade has brought tremendous benefit to the entire society in many ways. However, the negative impacts of international trade supply chains cannot be ignored. Compared to the environmental impacts associated with global supply chains that have been substantially researched, the social impacts associated with that trade are an emerging topic in both academic and industrial areas. ‘Social footprint’ is the terminology used to describe the social impacts associated with the entire supply chain activities, and social footprinting is the method to calculate and report social footprints. Social footprinting shares some methodologies with environmental footprinting, and based on cases, includes extra processing steps. This thesis uses Multi-Regional Input-Output analysis (MRIO) to calculate social footprints and analyze social impacts in five case studies. Chapter 1 briefly introduces the background to this research. Chapter 2 describes the process of updating the global Multi-Regional Input-Output Database Eora and incorporating it into the cloud platform Global IELab. Chapter 3 investigates the corruption footprints of 189 countries by weighing the national corruption level with employment data. Chapter 4 further explains the how to combat corruption through international trade. Chapter 5 describes the combination of the MRIO database Eora with a social risk database, the Social Hotspots Database (SHDB), and the application of the combined data to the analysis of a group of Sustainability Development Goal indicators. Chapter 6 looks into occupational airborne disease caused by particulate matters. Chapter 7 provides a case study in the Arab region for employment flow measurement and analysis. Chapter 8 concludes.