Consumers Willingness to Pay to Avoid Transgenic Products

The debate on transgenic, which is embebed in asymmetrical information, has as a focal point, the risks and uncertainties to them associated. Many are the concerns and questions about the risks for the human health and the environment. Considering the interests of the productive sector in the transgenic technology, the matter sets itself in terms of how fast it wants to be settled taking into consideration the incapability of establishing certainties about the damages or benefits within the process. With the recent liberation by the Brazilian government for its production the sector starts showing segmentation. Therefore, this issue reflects in the market itself. The question is: are the consumers willing to buy transgenic? As an attempt to answer this question, this paper used a Contingent Valuation procedure, with an exploratory character, estimating consumer willingness to pay (WTP) to avoid the consumption of transgenic. This variable (WTP) was measured as a monetary estimate benefits.Transgenic, Contingent Valuation, measure of Well-being, Demand and Price Analysis, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety,

Exploratory landscape metrics for agricultural sustainability

Socioeconomic growth and urban change have been an increasing concern for decision makers in recent decades. The monitoring, mapping, and analysis of agricultural land use change, especially in areas where urban change has been high, is crucial. The collision between traditional economic activities related to agriculture in tourist areas such as the Algarve and current demand for tourism infrastructures in urban regions is also leading to loss of economic activity. This article uses a combined geographical information system approach with CORINE land cover datasets to perform a Shannon’s diversity index quantifying changes in agricultural areas. The article then expands on the nature of the agricultural changes observed, and offers a multi-temporal assessment by means of landscape metrics in order to understand the shifting land use patterns for the Algarve in land use planning and regional economic equilibrium: a) forest regions become transformed into agricultural areas and agricultural areas become urban; b) areas that are initially agricultural become scattered residential regions created by economic investors; and c) agricultural land use changes have a cyclical nature in which—in the course of the economic recession—such dynamic effects brought about a decrease in tourism and focus on traditional sectors

Entrepreneurship and business. A regional perspective.

This book provides an almost complete overview of the modern concepts of entrepreneurship and those aspects related to regional economics. It is divided into two parts. Firstly, a historical perspective of the binomial relationship between firms and their regional environments is provided; secondly, an empirical analysis of entrepreneurial behaviours and performances under different conditions is presented. Taken as a whole, the publication is composed of an introduction and fourteen chapters developed into increasingly interesting issues

The impacts of public policies for regional development in Portugal

The major goal of this work is to evaluate the level of effectiveness of those efforts made by the European Commission towards the socio-economic cohesion in Europe by using the single case-study of Portugal. This paper presents the long lasting efforts for regional development in the country by using some data that reports the received aids and their use from 1990 up to 2006. The analysis focuses on the desegregation of such data to regional level. At the same time it is emphasised that, at a time when cohesion is no more the sole goal of European policy, Portugal faces the paradox of trying to raise regional capacities for global competition (without having yet defined what regional strategies are) and, at the same time, wishing to increase its potential scientific and technological capacity, mainly located in the very circumscribed areas of Lisbon and Porto. In order to illustrate such a situation, the exemplar case of the Programme PRIME was presented. This is one of the best examples of the recent support a system, indirectly financed by European founds; PRIME was fully structured as a Portuguese policy instrument to support the modernization of the entrepreneurial tissue at national level. The provided data demonstrates how discussable the level of success of such programme is. Our general conclusions will drive to a dual discussion: the asymmetric use of the financing systems provided by the E.C. and the north/south endemic dichotomy existing in the country generates a path dependency that does not reduce and a trend that should concern Portuguese policy makers deeper then it does

The Importance of Clusters for Sustainable Innovation Processes: The Context of Small and Medium Sized Regions

The purpose of the current paper is to provide a critical state-of-the-art review of current research on clusters and its correlation to innovation dynamics in small and medium-sized regions. In particular, we focus on the systematization of the main concepts and theoretical insights that are tributary to the cluster overview in terms of its relevance for the sustainability of the innovation processes, knowledge production and diffusion, which take place inside small and medium-sized regions. The present working paper takes into account the initial studies on English industrial districts (in the nineteenth century), passing through the Italian industrial districts (in the 70s and 80s of the twentieth century), until the modern theories of business clusters and innovation systems. These frameworks constitute the basis of an approach to endogenous development, which gives a central role to the interaction between economic actors, the society and the institutions and to the identification, mobilization and combination of potential resources within a particular geographical area.Cluster; Innovation; Endogenous development; Territory.

Desenvolvimento regional e inovação empresarial: o impacto do desenvolvimento local nas determinantes de inovação das pequenas empresas

O objetivo deste contributo está bem definido: sob o ponto de vista teórico apresenta-se uma revisão do conceito de proximidade geográfica e da sua influência na dinâmica da inovação. O modelo produtivo pós-fordista serve de base à apresentação e sustenta a análise empírica posterior, feita com base em pequenas empresas. A segunda parte do trabalho traz um modelo que discute as determinantes regionais de inovação com base numa relação biunívoca entre o meio eas empresas. Essas determinantes são observadas para um painel de 323 empresas européias, classificadas e que identificam funções comportamentais dos empresários europeus perante a inovação. O estudo é pioneiro e enquadra-se num trabalho de conjunto desenvolvido pela equipe do Projeto Innovaloc, sendo esta a primeira vez que alguns dos resultados globais do projeto são divulgados em língua portuguesa

Women in 'morte-cor': the objects that make and unmake a body with metastatic cancer

Este texto sintetiza o último capítulo da investigação de doutoramento – Objetos feitos de cancro: a cultura material como pedaço de doença em histórias de mulheres contadas pela arte. Através de uma reflexão em torno dos objetos e materialidades que ganham forma e relevo em projetos artísticos referentes à experiência feminina do cancro, esta tese propõe conceitos alternativos de cultura material e de doença oncológica. Rejeita-se uma separação ou diferenciação entre dimensões materiais e intangíveis na doença, entendendo-se os objetos de cultura material como pedaços de cancro, ou seja, enquanto partes constitutivas das ideias, sensações, emoções e gestos que fazem a experiência do corpo doente. Objetos hospitalares, domésticos e pessoais, de uso coletivo ou individual, onde se incluem materialidades descartáveis, vestuário, mobiliário, equipamento e máquinas, compõem uma lista de realidades que se encastram nas experiências do corpo em diagnóstico, internamento, tratamento, reconstrução, remissão, recorrência, metastização e morte. Dando nome a esta continuidade indivisa, propus os conceitos “objeto nosoencastrável” e “doença modular”, pretendendo, na forma como defino as coisas, os mesmos encaixes que existem na realidade vivida. Para compreender a ação, os usos e os sentidos dos objetos que fazem e são pedaços de cancro(s), o campo de trabalho desta investigação abrangeu as imagens e os textos explicativos de cento e cinquenta projetos artísticos produzidos por ou com mulheres que viveram a experiência desta doença. Expostos na Internet, os exercícios criativos, amadores ou profissionais, de fotografia comercial e artística, pintura, desenho, colagem, modelagem, escultura, costura e tricô serviram de terreno narrativo e visual, permitindo-me encontrar a versão émica dos encaixes entre cultura material e doença. Tocar a continuidade entre objetos e cancros, juntando os saberes do corpo, da arte e da antropologia, assentou numa abordagem teórica e metodológica onde ensaiei o potencial heurístico daquilo a que chamo a “terceira metade das coisas e do conhecimento”.This paper presents a synopsis of the last chapter of my PhD Thesis – Objects Made of Cancer: material culture as a piece of disease on women’s art stories. Bringing together objects and materialities that take form and gain relevance in artistic projects regarding the feminine experience of cancer, this research proposes alternative concepts of material culture and oncological disease. It rejects a separation or differentiation between material and intangible dimensions in disease, understanding objects of material culture as portions of cancer, that is, as constitutive parts of the ideas, sensations, emotions and gestures that make the experience of the diseased body. Medical, domestic and personal objects, of collective or individual use, that include disposable materialities, clothing, furniture, equipment and machines, compose a list of realities that are embedded in the experience of the body during diagnosis, treatment, reconstruction, remission, recurrence, metastization and death. Giving name to this continuity, my thesis proposes the concepts of “modular-disease” and “nosobuilt-in objects”, intending, in the way it defines things, the same connections that exist in lived reality. To understand the actions, uses and meanings given to the objects that are and make portions of cancer(s), the working field of this investigation assembled the images and written explanations of one hundred and fifty artistic projects made by or with women living the experience of this disease. Displayed on the Internet, professional or amateur, creative exercises of commercial and artistic photography, painting, drawing, collage, casting, sculpture, embroidery and knitting make the visual and narrative ground that allows us to find the emic version of the mixture between material culture and disease. Perceiving the continuity that exists between objects and cancer, gathering knowledge given by the body, by art and social science, rests on a theoretic and methodological approach with which I tested the heuristic potential of what I call the “third half of things and of knowledge”