Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
of the social public policies, considering the financial problems related with the
Portuguese public budget.
In reality, there are many problems with the national public debt and the national
economic growth, but without adjusted policies more problems may arise, namely
those related to social, environmental, and demographic sustainability. The uneven
development, in Portugal, between the north and south, between inland regions and
on the shoreline, has been occurring over many years, but with unadjusted policies
these asymmetries can increase.
2 Literature Background
Economic growth with sustainability in different areas of society, namely environ-
mental, social, economic, demographic, and educational, is, indeed, the greatest
challenge for world economies both nowadays and for the future. In this way, many
authors such as Munasinghe (
1995
), Smulders (
1995
), Young (
1999
), Santagata
(
2002
), Chukwu (
2005
), Garnaut (
2005
), Desrochers (
2006
), Greyson (
2007
),
Fleisher et al. (
2009
), Kumagai (
2009
), Min et al. (
2009
), and Asheim and Mitra
(
2010
), among others referred to below, have all discussed and demonstrated a
strong concern for the issues related to this problem, which is a good sign,
considering the pertinence of these questions for the future evolution of societies
in several perspectives.
Certainly, the evolution of an economy is a complex process with several aspects
and is a result of many interactions, such as those related to the aims of economic
agents in obtaining great profits, conciliated with improvements in productivity of
the factors and favorable public policies, the government's controls for climate
change, taxes, wage pressures, competition, physical capital, consumers' prefer-
ences and capacity to consume, social conditions, and the availability of a work-
force (Weber et al.
2005
). The productivity of the factors is dependent upon the
qualifications for human factors and on the level of scientific and technological
development. Watanabe et al. (
2005
) also concluded about the importance of
research, innovation, and technological development and diversification in some
patterns of sustainable economic growth. The investment in scientific fields and in
human resources may be determinant for economies to obtain competitive advan-
tages, in the current world with high levels of globalization, in accordance with
social and environmental sustainability, creating more jobs, improving efficiency,
and preserving natural resources. From a similar perspective, Clarke and Islam
(
2005
) analyzed the relationship between economic growth and welfare, consider-
ing social, economic, environmental, and political variables as well as some related
to income, education, health, roads, the levels of urbanization, consumption, and
others. They concluded that in some developing economies, without adjusted public
policies, at some levels of economic growth, the countries achieve diminishing or
negative welfare returns. In these cases the cost of economic growth can sometimes
surpass the benefits. The relationship between welfare (measured by the domestic
product), economic growth, and sustainable development was also a concern of
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