José Caldas

The Douro wine region: a cluster approach

The globalization of the wine industry needs to be perceived as a challenge and an opportunity to innovate by traditional European producers’ countries, like Portugal, characterized by a terroir model, that is, an economic structure supported by a large number of grape growers, small and medium wine firms and high public regulation, to compete in international markets. Using a cluster approach, this article presents the case of the most important Portuguese wine region, the Demarcated Douro Region (DDR), which is a strong reference of terroir and known for producing Port wine. To increase its competitiveness in the world wine market, the DDR needs to evolve from an organized to an innovative cluster.

Economic role, Property rights, Labour skills and Technology in the Portuguese Wine Co-Operatives

Agricultural markets are characterised by thinner margins, greater price and income volatility. Despite these changes, agricultural raw material markets are increasingly characterised by the vertical co-ordination of farmers and processors. The organisational form of a marketing co-operative is a common means adopted by farmers to achieve this end. In a world increasingly concerned with the importance of the separation of ownership and user, the survival and growth of agricultural co-operatives (in which the primary users of the services are also the main owners) is linked to their economic role, to how members exercise their property rights, and how inputs are used by the co-operative. This paper provides a function that summarises the economic role of agricultural co-operatives and goes on to analyse the contribution to the economic performance of Portuguese wine co-operatives (PWCs) made by the use of property rights, and the skills of the human resources and technology employed. The results of a multinomial logit model show that PWCs would indeed be able to improve their economic performance through the application of integrated management strategies to solve common property and horizon problems, as well as increasing their recruitment of skilled professionals in the areas of management, wine production and marketing, and by the adoption of new technologies of production and packaging.

Returns to Education during the Reform of State‐owned Enterprises in Hunan, People’s Republic of China

The objective of this paper is to analyse the impact of education on personal earnings during the reform of state-owned enterprises, comparing 1995 with 1998 in Hunan, China, using the Mincerian earnings equation method. The results show that the rates of return to education increased, indicating that human capital has been better rewarded as the reforms of the Chinese economic structure have progressed. Moreover, the findings show that primary education receives the highest returns, followed by tertiary education. Middle school education obtains the lowest rewards, reflecting the effects of the reform of state-owned enterprises on middle school graduates on whom the unemployment impact of this change has been the greatest.