Structural path decomposition

We combine Structural Decomposition Analysis (SDA) and Structural Path Analysis (SPA) in order to examine the temporal changes within a full production chain perspective. To our knowledge this work constitutes the first formulation of what we call Structural Path Decomposition (SPD). SPD provides noteworthy insight in two instances: first it extracts and ranks those interactions within an economy that are most important in driving change; second it provides a temporal perspective to standard input-output-based Life-Cycle Assessment. In this paper, we develop the mathematical model of SPD and provide two case studies of the most important changes in structural paths in Australia from 1995 to 2005. (C) 2008 Published by Elsevier B.V.