Metodologia de identificação de arranjos produtivos locais potenciais

There are in the literature on both industrial and regional economics many studies on local productive arrangements. Indeed, this kind of industrial/regional organization has become an important piece in the implementation of industrial, regional and technological policies. Accordingly, a significant part of empirical studies on this subject has been concentrated on the analysis of existing productive arrangements. In contrast, there are few studies that try (or are able to) identify the startup of these arrangements. Indeed, this fact raises huge difficulties for the understanding of both the nature and the pattern of development of these arrangements. From the perspective of the elaboration of development policies, this gap is relevant as it leads to favouring established arrangements in detriment of those that are in the early stages. Taking this into account, it is necessary to develop methodologies that are able to overcome this deficiency. This is the aim of this paper. The authors propose a methodology for the identification of potential local productive arrangements based on secondary data. Through the use of Principal Component Analysis, an index of Concentration is elaborated, which is an indication of the potential of an industrial sector, in a specific region, to become a local productive arrangement. After the construction of this Index of Concentration, spatial econometrics is used to set the boundaries of the selected potential arrangement.