Regional Development in the Amazonian Border Area from the Installation of Areas of Free Trade

Abstract

The concept of development goes back to the classical theory of economics and has many other aspects over the years. In Brazil, many public policies instituted by the Federal Government sought to promote the country's development, such as the creation of the Manaus Free Zone, which aimed to promote the development of the North region in a sustainable way. Likewise, Free Trade Areas were created - decentralized FTAs, as in the case of Guajará-Mirim, as territorial and developmental strategies. The objective of this article is to analyze the regional development of Guajará-Mirim and verify its relation with the institutionalization of the Free Trade Area, having as research variables the Municipal Human Development Indexes - MHDI, Education Index, Income Index and Work Index. The following question is answered: did the installation of the Free Trade Area in Guajará-Mirim contribute to regional development? To answer the research problem, the main theoretical approaches to regional development and related public policies are used, with emphasis on the studies provided by MYRDAL (1957), BALDWIN (1979), BARQUERO (1995), AMARAL FILHO (1999), SOUZA, (1999, 2005, 2009), CABUGUEIRA (2007), FREY (1997), among others..