ECONOMIC DIVERSITY AS AN EXPRESSION OF THE REGIONAL ECONOMIC STRUCTURE: A PROPOSAL FOR AN ALTERNATIVE MEASURE

Abstract

A territory, as a medium of production and as a capital consumer products, expands itself according its accumulation interests (MINGIONE, 1977) and the intervention on it present a subordinated relationship with other geographic areas (MASSEY, 1995), generating changes into the economic structure expressed in the diversification and in the multiplication of the economic activities. However, the measuring the economic diversity has been performed considering economic activities with few enterprises as important as the big ones, which mischaracterize its purpose. In order to counterbalance this inadequacy, this paper aims to offer an alternative to measure the economic diversity based on the Shannon index, originated in the information theory, referring to regions of Rio de Janeiro State (Brazil). Results from 2010 to 2016 suggest that besides the economic crisis, there was an increase in the economic diversity and in the uniformity of the economic activities.