Indicações Geográficas e o Desenvolvimento Territorial dos Municípios Brasileiros: Uma análise no contexto da pandemia da COVID-19.

Abstract

Geographical Indications are a type of intellectual property applicable to goods and services that aim to protect products and services recognized by their place of origin, but they can also be applied as a tool for territorial development, or even to help mitigate the effects of crises, such as the one caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. The aim of this dissertation was to assess the importance of having one or more Geographical Indications in the territorial development of Brazilian municipalities during the COVID-19 pandemic. To this end, this work used the exploratory research method. It began with bibliographic research, which sought to provide a theoretical basis for the topic studied. Searches were concentrated on the following databases: CAPES Journal Portal, SCIELO, Science Direct, Scopus and Web Of Science. From the point of view of the approach, this study is characterized as quantitative research. The following data sources were used: the National Institute of Industrial Property, the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock, the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics and the Ministry of Labor and Employment. The method used to assess the impact of Geographical Indications on development was the Propensity Score Matching. This technique consists of combining groups based on specific parameters and is used to estimate the difference in effect between a treatment group and a control group. We chose to consider only Geographical Indications related to the agri-food sector, given their predominance in registrations in the country. Four scenarios were constructed: 1. the treated group were those municipalities with at least one Geographical Indication and the control group were those without any Geographical Indications; 2. the treated group were those municipalities with two or more Geographical Indications and the control group were those with one or no Geographical Indications; 3. the treated group were those municipalities with two or more Geographical Indications and the control group were those with no Geographical Indications; 4. The treated municipalities were those with two or more Geographical Indications and the control municipalities were those with only one Geographical Indication. The territorial development indicators analyzed were the variation in GDP per capita, variation in the number of formal establishments, variation in total employment per capita, variation in tourism employment per capita, variation in hotel employment per capita, variation in agricultural employment per capita, analyzed exclusively during the pandemic. Among the main results, positive effects were identified for GDP per capita (in all the scenarios evaluated), employment in agriculture per capita (in scenario 1), total employment per capita and employment in hotels per capita (in scenario 1). No statistically significant results were found for the number of formal establishments and tourism jobs per capita. The results showed that Geographical Indications were essential in mitigating the negative impacts of the pandemic on various territorial development indicators.