Geographical Indication

a proposal for measuring centrality

Abstract

The present work discusses Geographical Indications, which have increasingly grown in Brazil, becoming of extreme importance for territorial development. With this in mind, this work is aimed at establishing a centrality indicator for municipalities, capable of contributing for Geographical indication, based on the development on the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of services for promoting local development. The measurement of centrality adopted in this work is based on the arrangement of GDP data on services, according to the Central Place Theory, in which cities are hierarchically organised and some services are only provided by more relevant locations. The database used for assessing the levels of centrality of municipalities were divided into four different groups: participation of the gross value added of services, excluding public administration on the gross value at total current prices; in the state level; in the microregion; in the country. The analysis observed simple structure averages to operationalise the hierarchical ruler, having established that the best route concerned attributing weighting coefficients to the group of indicators through a linear combination algorithm. It is important to point out that the most important tool considered included the Principal Component Analysis (PCA). Accordingly, it was established that a location is an important territory with what concerns the spatial contour, with the service sector (excluding the public service) having an impact on local economy. Therefore, the registration of a Geographical Indication may promote economic development, attributed to the increase in local production, demand and greater added value and, consequently, an upsurge in the generation of jobs and wealth, having a relevant impact in the notoriety of the region.