IMPACTOS DA DISPONIBILIDADE DOS SISTEMAS DE TRANSPORTES SOBRE A PRODUTIVIDADE DA ECONOMIA

Abstract

The impacts of the availability of cargo transport systems such as highways, railways, airports, ports, and pipelines on the productivity of economic activity exist, and so far, have not been verified. This effect intrigues politicians and researchers and is constantly debated, due to the importance of economic growth Logistic Productivity Index (WB, 2007), Global Competitiveness Index (WEF, 2009), and studies by Barilla et al. (2020), Nilsen et al., (2017a), Mitra et al. (2016) and Cantos et al. (2005), that do not relate this relationship to cargo transport, taking into account spatial/geographical aspects, leading to biased and/or mistaken understandings. This work contributes to the application of a mathematical model based on spatial econometrics to assess the availability of transport infrastructure and the possible impacts on economic activity. The economic concept of Total Factor Productivity (TFP) was used as a measure of the availability of the infrastructure of the modalities of cargo transport in economic activity. As a complementary methodology, the non-parametric modeling of Data Envelopment Analysis - DEA was used to identify the performance between the units of analysis and the relevance of the modes of transport, pointing out opportunities for improvement in cargo transport in relation to economic activities of interest. It was found that the methodological findings contribute to identifying the impact of the modality of the freight transport system and the effect on the economic activity of interest. It also allowed productivity comparisons between geographic regions, within the scope of infrastructure availability for cargo transport systems for regional economic activities. As a result of the proposed methodology, in the metropolitan region of Belo Horizonte (RMBH) in the state of Minas Gerais, it was statistically found the formation of an economic cluster (variable GDP) between the municipalities Belo Horizonte, Contagem, Nova Lima, and Santa Luzia for the year 2017, in addition to cluster investments in transport infrastructure for Contagem, Ribeirão das Neves, Vespasiano and Santa Luzia and a cluster of transport workers for Belo Horizonte and Contagem. The modes of road, rail, air, and pipeline transport did not show statistical significance for the formation of regional transport clusters. The economic activity of the Extractive Industry showed regional spatial dependence (LAG model) with TFP (9.13%) for RMBH and relevance for the variables of investment in infrastructure and for transport in the road and air modes. The manufacturing industry presented TFP (9.5%), commerce; repair of motor vehicles and motorcycles presented TFP (7.8%), transport, storage, and mail presented TFP (10.15%), and construction presented TFP (10.6%), whose models did not show spatial dependence, and were estimated by the Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) model. When comparing the municipal performance for the availability of infrastructure among the transport systems of the RMBH, the municipalities that present the best indicators for existing infrastructure were, in order, Betim, Nova Lima, Contagem, Belo Horizonte, and Santa Luzia.