Analysis of the Relationship Between Agriculture, Economic Growth, and the Environment Through Keynesian Models - The Agricultural Economics of the 21st Century - page 116

NUTs III and in several groups of the manufacturing sector, considering the
importance of these activities for the Keynesian theorists, namely for Kaldor.
There are many studies, for several countries, related with the analysis of
the relationship across the economic growth and the environment, some
considering the environmental Kuznets curve, others utilizing some models
from the economic growth theory and others with alternative approaches.
These studies namely consider variables related to economic growth (GDP,
GDP per capita, and productivity), the investment, education, the institutions,
human capital, pollution, the quality of life, sustainability, and gaseous
emissions.
From previous data analysis it is possible to conclude that the evolution of
the productivity growth rate among the Portuguese NUTs III is not uniform
and there are some regions where this variable, on average over the period
considered and over the several forms of manufacturing taken into account,
presents negative values such as in the Algarve, A¸ores, and Madeira. This is
an expected value considering the economic characteristics of these regions,
with little importance for the manufacturing sector. The same happens for the
productivity growth rate, on average, across the different groups of
manufacturing considered, the clothing industry being the most concerning
with negative values.
The results obtained via the estimations show that the original Verdoorn
relationship is the most adjusted model and is enough to explain the evolution
of productivity growth rate in Portugal over the period considered, taking into
account the constant coefficient values and the R 2 . On the other hand, the
variables added to the Verdoon equation in this study, namely with the
intention of considering environmental variables, in general, present statisti-
cal significance in very few cases, which means that economic growth in
Portugal, for many cases, is not influenced by environmental conditions.
Agriculture seems, also, to not be a problem for the increasing returns for
the industries based in this sector (e.g., the food industry presents a value of
0.861 for the Verdoorn coefficient).
However, having said that, all the new variables considered showed
statistical significance, although not for all the industries considered and, in
some cases, not simultaneously.
In future research it will be important to analyze the influence of economic
growth in Portugal within the environment and try to further investigate some
results obtained for the new variables added to the Verdoorn relationship
related with environmental aspects, namely in trying to understand why in
some industries the productivity growth rate is influenced by some environ-
mental variables and in other industries it is not.