Determinants of Location of Agroindustry: An Analysis for Brazilian Micro-regions

Abstract

Locational factors may contribute to the spatial concentration of economic activities, especially agroindustry, precisely because this segment is sensitive to localization strategies due to the strong interdependence with agricultural production. Therefore, this study aims to verify and identify the locational aspects that contributed to the growth in the number of agroindustry establishments in the period from 2006 to 2016. The econometric techniques employed were the Exploratory Spatial Data Analysis (ESDA) and the spatial models. The ESDA indicated the existence of positive spatial autocorrelation of the growth in the number of agroindustry establishments. The spatial autoregressive model (SAR) showed to be more adequate to explain the relationship between the growth in the number of agroindustry establishments and the explanatory variables. The results show that the value-added variables of agriculture, area, percentage of employees with elementary education and the lagged dependent variable positively influence the growth in the number of agroindustry establishments.