Producing a village input–output table (VIOT) from household survey data: a case study of a VIOT for a rural village in northern Lao PDR

In this study, a village input–output table (VIOT) is built from household survey data from a rural village in a developing country to capture the interdependency between households through their transactions in 2016. This VIOT is a simple, but useful tool for understanding the economic transactions among villagers. The main findings of this work are that lower- and middle-income households mainly depend on commodities supplied by non-poor counterparts, especially by four higher-income households, who are not only producers, but also traders of commodities in the village and play key roles in the village economy, and that the IO interdependency among non-poor households is stronger than that among poor households. Additionally, this paper describes a first trial application of the VIOT method to develop economic policies with goals such as poverty reduction and trade expansion in the village.