The links between the transport industry and other economic sectors of production or demand are examined for cote d'ivoire, india, mexico, philippines, and the united states, on the basis of recent input-output (i-o) tables of those countries. The extent to which the cost of transport services is affected by the prices of other goods and services that are required as inputs in the production of transport is indicated. The extent of the effects of prices and productivity of the labor and capital employed directly by the industry are also indicated. Effects of different tax systems on the cost of transport services are examined. Dependence of transport on industrial (intermediate) demand and on demand generated by private and governmentconsumption, investment, and exports (final demand) and the extent to which the demand for transport reacts to changes in aggregate output are discussed. Further, realistic examples are used to demonstrate the ways in which i-o tables can be used to predict input requirements of the transport industry and of the demand for its output. The precautions necessary in such exercises and in international coparisons and the meaning of different concepts of the relative total size of a country's transport industry are discussed. In addition, the main features of i-o accounting and its relation to national income accounting are reviewed. Usually, national accounts are constructed with the help of relations discovered in i-o accounts so that the same qualifications apply to inferences drawn from either. Input-output accounts rarely attempt to credit transport with the output of own-account (i.E., Self-operated) transport operations. Therefore, value added in transport and total output of transport are typically understatements of the true value of a country's total transport activity. Further, the transport cost component of a transaction betweentwo industries could be debited to either the buyer or the seller as a purchase from transport. Different conventions are followed in this matter and the differences affect the apparent transport requirements of various industries. This paper appears in transportation research record no. 1274, Transportation and economic development 1990: proceedings of a conference, williamsburg, virginia, november 5-8, 1989.
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