Between Industrial Specialization and Diversification: In Search of a Durable Regional Development
Abstract
The article operates with the concepts of diversification and industrial specialization in the regional context, analyzing two areas of the state of Rio Grande do Sul: Caxias do Sul and the Sinos River Valley. It characterizes these areas, showing their vulnerabilities and potentialities in terms of a durable regional development. In the theoretical context in which the topic is located regional specialization has been considered as a factor that is highly favorable to the development of areas that aim at a competitive insertion in the global economy. Regional industrial diversification, however, is rarely pointed out by the literature as an advantage to be emphasized. Therefore, the author took two areas with quite different industrial profiles with the purpose of showing that the statement mentioned above is not an absolute truth. In other words, the article shows that the area of the Sinos Valley, which is specialized in the leather-footwear chain, presented great vulnerability to external factors by suffering the consequences of the oscillations of the international market, which jeopardizes its development in the medium and long term. In the diversified area of Caxias do Sul the situation is quite different, once its dynamism didn’t show strong variations. The stable growth of that area enables one to conclude that the industrial diversification had a balancing effect to a certain extent. The methodology adopted is based on data of RAIS on industrial jobs by municipality. Starting from them, location quotients were calculated and a typology (worked out by researchers of IBGE) was adapted in order to characterize the specialization/diversification of the municipalities. The article concentrates on the period 1990-2002, when the process of industrial restructuring caused important changes in the Brazilian economy, which makes it possible to discuss how those areas responded to the new reality.
Key words: Regional economy; industrial diversification; local development.
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