The economic impact from agricultural products loss caused by natural disasters in Taiwan- regional input-output analysis

Abstract

Although Taiwan’s agricultural production only accounts for less than 2 % of total GDP, agriculture industry still plays an important role to support the development of other industries. However, during the production process, agriculture industry often suffers loss, in final production result and farming field and facility, caused by uncontrollable natural disasters. And transferred by the industrial linkage effect, this kind of production decrease impact will be seen on overall economy development output and employment in that particular region; moreover, this will also create agricultural product price fluctuation which will influence final consumer consumption. From the other aspect, in Taiwan we observed some obvious gap already exist in each regional agricultural production which resulted from the differences of the natural environment. Once these uncontrollable natural disasters happen, the direct and indirect impact on agricultural activities will also vary from region to region. Therefore, in this paper we try to apply Miller and Blair (1985) Input-Output model in supply side and the approach of Regional Input-Output analysis in order to evaluate all possible economic impact from products loss caused uncontrollable natural disasters for the last twelve years in Taiwan. © 2014, CESER Publications.