T NHE structure of production of an economic system, represented by the matrix of input-output coefficients, has traditionally been held to be determined by technology. Thus the coefficients are sometimes called coefficients. If this is, in fact, the case one should expect to discover a productive structure which is common to all economic systems having a like technology.' For example, one should expect to find certain characteristics of the input-output matrices of all industrialized countries, which have a technological origin. Previous studies have compared the productive structure of different economic systems in purely economic, or even arithmetic terms, so that they may fairly be described as taxonomic. On the other hand, this paper suggests that there are certain fundamental elements which may be found in the productive structure of modern economic systems which are purely technical in character. It is demonstrated that the economic systems of Japan and the United States, although superficially dissimilar, contain almost identical patterns of industries which are strongly interrelated. This pattern, or framework, of productive relations has several interesting properties, which are found to be shared by the pattern of interindustry relations in other economies. The theoretical implications of this discovery are briefly discussed.

Wassily Leontief, Alison Morgan, Karen Polenske, David Simpson, Edward Tower, The Economic Impact--Industrial and Regional--Of An Arms Cut, The Review of Economics and Statistics, Vol. 47, No. 3 (Aug., 1965), pp. 217-241