PÓLOS DE DESENVOLVIMENTO INTEGRADO DO NORDESTE BRASILEIRO E CAPITAL SOCIAL

Abstract

Until the end of the fifties of this century, the potential of economic growth was considered function of two aggregated variables: stock of physical capital (K) and labor (L). Although education was present in classic economists’ formulations, its role in the economic development process began to have definitive contours in the beginning of the sixties, when economists started to divide the capital into two basic and complementary forms: physical capital and human capital. The role of this last one became fundamental to promote productivity increases of physical capital and of labor, in order to explain the pattern of development of several countries. In the seventies and following, another capital concept was included as development fator: the social capital. Although it has not still been incorporated definitively in the economic literature, its main role is to complement the two capital forms mentioned. Its potential to impel the development process is still ignored under the empiric point of view, but sufficiently discussed and accepted as one of the main ingredients of this process. In regions with low levels of physical capital and human capital, like integrated development poles of Brazilian Northeast, this potential is even more expressive, in the sense that ...