TD NEREUS 12-2020
Jefferson Ricardo Bretas Galetti, Milene Simone Tessarin e Paulo César Morceiro
There is little evidence on the relationship between occupational relatedness and regional specialisation in developing countries with high regional inequality and industrial heterogeneity. We compute local synergy, complementarity and similarity relatedness based on 2 514 occupations to estimate their effects on the occupational structure in 558 Brazilian microregions between 2003 and 2018. We find that the three indexes affect the regional specialisation in distinct magnitudes, and they have different effects in different regional and sectoral contexts. Sectoral complementarities affect structural change and strengthen similarity relatedness. The findings shed light on developing countries’ distinct regional contexts rather than ‘one-size-fits-all’ policies.