Luiz Moreira Coelho Junior

Concentração regional do valor bruto de produção da banana do Paraná, Brasil ( 1995 a 2010)

The degree of concentration of banana production gross value in Parana State was studied in the 1995-2010 period. The data base is available at IPARDES - Parana Institute of Economic and Social Development. The degree of concentration was determined by the Concentration Ratio, the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index and the Theil Index. In the period studied, an average annual growth of 12.92% in the value of banana production in Parana was observed; the poles of banana production are the Metropolitan region of Curitiba and the Norte Pioneiro mesoregion. Concentration Ratio was moderately high to very high at municipal level, and even higher at micro-region level; the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index showed similar magnitudes at mesoregional and microregional levels for concentration, while the municipal indicator shows a slight concentration. The Theil index showed stationary concentration levels in the microregional and municipal region and indicated the municipal mesoregion concentration.

USE OF ARTIFICIAL NEURAL NETWORKS FOR PROGNOSIS OF CHARCOAL PRICES IN MINAS GERAIS

Energy is an important factor of economic growth and is critical to the stability of a nation. Charcoal is a renewable energy resource and is a fundamental input to the development of the Brazilian forest-based industry. The objective of this study is to provide a prognosis of the charcoal price series for the year 2007 by using Artificial Neural Networks. A feedforward multilayer perceptron ANN was used, the results of which are close to reality. The main findings are that: real prices of charcoal dropped between 1975 and 2000 and rose from the early 21st century; the ANN with two hidden layers was the architecture making the best prediction; the most effective learning rate was 0.99 and 600 cycles, representing the most satisfactory and accurate ANN training. Prediction using ANN was found to be more accurate when compared by the mean squared error to other studies modeling charcoal price series in Minas Gerais state.

Plant Extractivism Production Disparity Between Northeast Brazil and Brazil

The present study analyzed the disparity in the gross production value of plant extractivism between Northeast Brazil and Brazil from 1994 to 2012. The following location measures were used: location quotient (LQ), location coefficient (LC), redistribution coefficient (REDC) and coefficient of geographic association (Gac). The following regional measures were used: specialization coefficient (SC) and restructuring coefficient (Rc). Based on the location indicators studied, it was concluded that there is no disparity in plant extracted groups between Northeast Brazil and Brazil. Plant extracted groups explored in Northeast Brazil are relevant for Brazil (LQ), not concentrated (LC), and regionally distributed (Gac). REDC showed no structural changes. The regional measures (SC and Rc) showed identical specialization, with no changes in the production structure. However, studies on the disparity in Northeast Brazil at smaller regional scales (state, mesoregion, microregion and municipality) are needed.

CONCENTRAÇÃO REGIONAL DO VALOR BRUTO DE PRODUÇÃO DO PINHÃO NO PARANÁ

This study analyzed the concentration of the Production Gross Value (GDP) of the pinion in the state of Parana, in the period 1995 - 2010. The regional concentration was measured by the concentration ratio, the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index and the Gini index. He noted that GDP of the pinion in Parana grew at an annual rate of 16.52% pa in the period analyzed. The regional concentration of GDP pinion in Parana is in the Centro Sul mesoregion, Guarapuava microregion, of the Turvo and Pinhao cities and mesoregion Sudeste, microregion Uniao da Vitoria, General Carneiro city. According to Bain classifications, the concentration ratio was high to low, at the municipal level. Prevailing low concentration and microregion level concentration prevalence was very high to high. The Herfindahl-Hirschman index showed downward trends in the concentration in mesoregion levels, microregional and municipal. The Gini index showed high levels of inequality at the local (GMunic) level when compared to the Parana mesoregions (GMeso).