REGIONAL INDUSTRIAL HETEROGENEITY: A COMPARISON BETWEEN THE STATES OF THE CENTER-WEST REGION AND SÃO PAULO (1996 – 2016)²

Abstract

The objective of this work is to verify if there is any reduction in the existing gap between the average labor productivity of the industrial sectors by competitiveness factors in the states that form the Center-West Region vis-à-vis the State of São Paulo in the period of 1996 to 2016. In this sense, the industrial sectors by competitiveness factors of the Midwest region that presented greater convergence in terms of productivity of industrial work vis-à-vis the State of São Paulo were those based on natural resources, differentiated, intensive scaled and labor intensive. Except for the Federal District, no state in the Midwest showed a reduction in the gap between the industrial labor productivity differential vis-à-vis the State of São Paulo in terms of the science-based sector. Thus, it is important to underline that the degree of heterogeneity between the industrial sectors that make up the states of the Midwest and São Paulo showed, in the interstice from 1996 to 2016, a decline, since their values were closer to the average of each state, signaling, therefore, that the diffusion of technical progress followed the path of greater inter-regional homogenization.