Multivariate analysis and the diagnosis of dynamics of development of the municipalities of Quarta Colônia - RS (1990-2000)

Abstract

At least since the decade of 1960, economists and social scientists in general have concentrated efforts to find macro-indicadores to inform them, with the greater realism as possible, as a city, region or country has developed. In this sense, dimensions had not been slighted by the indicators traditional macroeconomics — like certain social and environmental variables — became, above all, from the 1980, which were effectively included in the measure of economic development. However, since this concept more qualitatively replaced the purely quantitative notion of economic growth, a series of theoretical and practical controversies took place. Mainly because the weighting of the component variables of any development index it invariably consists of an arbitrary, therefore subjective process. Conversely, the present study applies the techniques of multivariate analysis to, instead, find, from sample objective data, the actual weights of the component variables of the development indices calculated over a decade ( 1990-2000) for the municipalities of the region of the fourth colony of the state of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil.