Evaluation of Sustainable Economic Growth in Portuguese Agriculture and Other Sectors - The Agricultural Economics of the 21st Century - page 98

of considering these two models was to analyze the effects, in levels and in growth
rate, of the social, demographic, and educational indicators in economic growth
(represented by the productivity and its influence on the output).
By observing the two tables, it is possible to conclude that the indicators related
to sustainability and represented by the new variables have had little influence upon
the economic growth of the seven Portuguese NUTs II sectors, over the last two
decades, even less when they are considered in levels.
But looking namely at Table 7.2 , where the results are statistically more consis-
tent, it can be observed that the Kaldor second law coefficient (expected to assume
values between 0 and 1, considering that when this coefficient has a value next to
1 this signifies that the respective sector presents great increasing returns to scale
and better economic growth) shows better values in agriculture, industry,
manufacturing, and in sectors related with financial and insurance activities; real
estate activities; professional, scientific, and technical activities; and administrative
and support services. Construction presents the worse levels of economic growth
dynamics and this is confirmed by the R 2 .
Relative to the new variables (Table 7.2 ) the results show that the population
density had a negative effect on the whole economic growth for the Portuguese
economy (all aggregated economic sectors) and in agriculture, which in terms of
sustainability may be an interesting conclusion that needs further investigation in
future studies. This is because the New Economic Geography refers that the same
effects represented in the original equation related to the second law of Kaldor
appear where there is a larger population and concentration of enterprises (known
as the centripetal forces). But, the New Economic Geography also considers the
centrifugal forces which arrive from the agricultural sector and from effects of
congestion on more populated areas. Maybe, this is the phenomena present here in
these findings. In other words, for example, it is in industry and, principally, in
manufacturing, which is considered by Kaldor to be the driving sector for economic
growth, because in the capacity of producing tradable products and having scale
dynamics, the evolution of economic growth is independent from the indicators
used to represent sustainability at different levels. This is an alternative approach to
analyzing the behavior of the demographic, social, and educational indicators in
conciliation with economic growth over the last two decades within the seven
Portuguese NUTs II and for the different economic sectors, namely agriculture,
industry, construction, and several services.
Conclusions
Economic growth in economics literature is well explained by different
ideologies, namely those related with the Classical theory, Keynesian theory,
the Neo-classical theory, the theory of Endogenous Growth, and the recent
New Economic Geography. Each one gives their perspective about the
evolution for economic growth in different countries and regions, about the
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