Alexandre Alves (p), Aline Pancera

Aiming to understand the consequences of exogenous shocks which changed the common economic and the central cattle beef Brazilian markets from 2006 to 2017, the current study has as main goal to identify the pattern of cattle beef market integration considering transfer costs for each common economic market. Researches about de spatial integration are very important because they show the regions that influence other ones, resulting in reductions in government spending, avoiding the multiplicity of intervention and leading to efficient resource allocation. The models used to test co-integration were the Threshold Autoregressive Models – TAR and the Threshold Error Correction Model – ECM-TAR. A preliminary structural breaks test divided the series into three smaller samples defined by Period I (beginning of 2006 to 2008), Period II (2009 to 2013) and Period III (2014 to beginning of 2017). In Period I, São Paulo region presented the deepest influence on prices comparing to other ones, being characterized as the central market and in this case the common economic market was composed by São Paulo, Minas Gerais, Goiás and Mato Grosso do Sul. In the Periods II and III, Mato Grosso do Sul became the central market where, in the first case, the common market countained Paraná State and the states from North, Midwest and South-East regions. Finally, Mato Grosso, Mato Grosso do Sul, Minas Gerais, São Paulo, Rondônia e Rio Grande do Sul were part of the common market in Period III. Results of the TAR Model indicated that the each common market was spatially co-integrated in all Periods, but for the ECM-TAR model, the regions of the common market from Period I didn’t co-integrate with São Paulo, the markets from Period II were totally co-integrated with Mato Grosso do Sul and the ones from Period III were partially co-integrated with Mato Grosso do Sul. The study identified that the changes on industrial productive structure have interfered in the spatial market integration. This indicated that beef cattle market presented modifications that interfered in integration dynamics. Thus, the results pointed out that the regional changes on beef cattle agribusiness altered the behavior of common economic market.

Hans Westlund (p), Marcela Ramirez-Pasillas , Lucia Naldi

Embeddedness for entrepreneurship in rural contexts contributes to the recognition of a socio-economic texture that is useful for creation of business opportunities and network formation (Pato and Texeira, 2016). Embeddedness is related to economic relations and networks that are influenced due to social attributes like trust, collective action and the relations further developed by those relations and networks (Granovetter, 1985; Johannisson et al., 2002). There is however limited literature that examines meanings of the levels of embeddedness for entrepreneurship in rural contexts. This can help obtain a broader understanding of embeddedness for entrepreneurship in rural context. Thereby, this article aims to examine the meanings of embeddedness for entrepreneurship in rural contexts by giving voice to stakeholders making-do entrepreneurship daily.
When investigating entrepreneurship in rural contexts, embeddedness posits the problem of being multilevel (i.e., individual or company levels, Brailly et al., 2013). At the individual level, entrepreneurship studies focus on the influence of personal relationships and networks such as acquaintances, advice, information exchange, collaboration or resource access (Johannisson et al, 1994). At the business/organizational level, entrepreneurship studies focus on organizations operating in networks of relationships or partnerships that influence collaboration and performance (Powell, 1996; Powell et al., 2005; Uzzi, 1996, 1997). Thus, a combination of levels helps reveal social structures to underline the role of social resources and social capital in economic activities and thus, disclose the multifacetedness of embeddedness.
We investigated the meaning of embeddedness for entrepreneurship by conducting a multiple case study at different levels (Santos and Eisenhardt; 2004) in 21 rural contexts in Sweden. We conducted 54 interviews with entrepreneurs and municipal officers in situ. The interviews were recorded and transcribed in verbatim. A dataset was constructed per case in order to carry out a cross-case analysis. The cross-case analysis allowed us to voice symbiotic and dissonant meanings of embeddedness for entrepreneurship in rural contexts.
Our study contributes to embeddedness literature by showing the interphase of multiple levels for entrepreneurship in rural contexts. We show that rural contexts are more than containers of spatial, social and economic boundaries (Gaddefors and Anderson, 2018), instead rural contexts constitute vessels of embeddedness that pull and push entrepreneurship within and outside the rurality in a multiplicity of directions. Embeddedness combines the use of micro, meso and macro levels. Such combination originates similarities and differences in the perceptions of embeddedness for entrepreneurship in the rural context.

Maria Rego (p), Patrícia Melo (p), José Muñoz-Rojas

This study provides evidence on spatio-temporal patterns of socio-economic performance across rural small areas (freguesias) in Portugal between 1991 and 2011, and investigates the factors underlying the differences in relative performance occurred during that period. The study creates a new unique socio-economic dataset using small-scale geographies (freguesias), while the majority of previous studies focusing on Portugal use large aggregate spatial units at the level of NUTS2 or NUTS3, and to smaller extent LAU1 (i.e. municipalities). The first part of the study provides a spatial analysis of change in key indicators of rural socio-economic outcomes, and shows there is considerable heterogeneity in performance, particularly between accessible and remote rural areas. Accessible rural areas tend to have better performance compared to more remote areas. A number of factors help explain these disparities, including differences in economic structure, demographic composition and human capital, availability of services of general interest and other consumption amenities, and accessibility to the urban hierarchy. The second part of the study tests the relative influence of these potential explanatory factors by developing econometric regression models for rural population and employment growth. In addition, the regression analysis investigates the nature of the spillover effects between urban and rural regions in Portugal. We measure the effect of proximity to main urban centres as a driver of rural population and employment growth, or decline, after controlling for the other explanatory factors. Our empirical approach follows that of Veneri and Ruiz (2013) for a cross section of small regions from 14 OECD countries, and accounts for economic structure and socio-economic factors, besides proximity to urban centres, on rural growth. The results suggest that proximity to urban areas has a positive impact on the growth of nearby rural areas, while the effect for more remote rural areas tends to be mixed. The importance of the spillover effect also differs according to the size of urban areas.

Melek Karahasan (p), Aliye Ahu Akgün

Agriculture is crucial in terms of supplying safe food, contributing to the national income and ensuring the ecological balance. Agricultural innovation and agricultural R & D have gained importance in increasing productivity and efficiency in agriculture due to unproductivity and inadequate agricultural land. Agricultural innovation is expressed as a dynamic system that contributes to the development, dissemination, and exploitation of new technologies related to agriculture, which directly or indirectly affects the technological process, and which includes a wide range of stakeholders. Agricultural research and development aims to produce new information and transmit this information to its users.
As agriculture is the sign for independency of a country, agricultural innovation system and R&D process have been started by public authorities but today, the actors are diverse. The change of actors actually brings up the question of whether they are also benefitting from the agricultural potentials and assets or agricultural innovation and R&D is an independent process. In order to answer this question, we focused on Turkey’s agricultural R&D and Innovation systems. First, we identified the characteristics of the actors of these systems and then, we also visualized their spatial distribution. Turkey, has a significant agricultural potential with its fertile lands, water resources, climate and ecological values. The method of the study is based on the literature review and visualization. In this study, first agricultural R & D and agricultural innovation are explained, then Turkey's agricultural R & D and innovation system has been described and actors within the process were examined in four different time-periods. In this context, unit location choices of actors of the process which are public institutions, private sector and universities, starting dates of R&D and innovation activities, the size of agricultural areas and amount of agricultural production of the regions have been used as a dataset. ArcMap 10.3 program was used to map data compiled in SPSS. The lack of such a study in Turkey and how the country assesses the agricultural potential of the country are the original aspect of the study. The expected results of the study are that the actors involved in the non-public actors during the process and the spatial distribution of the actors take place in line with the country's agricultural potentials.