ENERGY CROPS: ASSESSMENTS IN THE EUROPEAN UNION AGRICULTURAL REGIONS THROUGH MACHINE LEARNING APPROACHES

Vítor João Pereira Domingues MARTINHO

Coordinator Professor with Habilitation, Agricultural School (ESAV) and CERNAS-IPV Research Centre, Polytechnic Institute of Viseu (IPV), Portugal

vdmartinho@esav.ipv.pt

Abstract

There is an enormous potential to produce bioenergy from agriculture, forestry and other land use in the European Union (EU) farms. The agricultural sector in the EU member-states has conditions to increase the contributions of renewable energies through better use of the residues and the production of energy crops. Nonetheless, the profitability of these alternative agricultural outputs, in some circumstances, and the need for land for food production, for example, have been obstacles to effective positioning of the EU farms as sources of bioenergy. From this perspective, this study intends to assess the current context of the energy crops in the farms of the EU agricultural regions and identify a model that supports the prediction of these frameworks. For that, data from the Farm Accountancy Data Network (FADN) were considered for the year 2020. This statistical information was analysed through machine learning approaches, namely those associated with multilayer perceptron (MLP) algorithms from the artificial neural networks (ANN) methodologies. The results from these data show that energy crops do have not relevant importance in the European Union farms. On the other hand, when these crops appear, they are produced by larger farms, with greater competitiveness and which receive more subsidies.

Keywords: Agriculture 4.0, Artificial Neural Networks, Multilayer Perceptron

JEL classification: C45, Q12, Q42

pp. 29-42

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WELL-BEING AND QUALITY OF LIFE: DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVES IN RURAL AND PERI-URBAN AREAS IN THE NORTH OF PORTUGAL

Teresa SEQUEIRA

Assistant Professor, University of Trás-os-Montes and Alto Douro (UTAD) & CETRAD

tsequeir@utad.pt

Herminia GONÇALVES

Assistant Professor, University of Trás-os-Montes and Alto Douro (UTAD) & CETRAD

hgoncalves@utad.pt

Bruno SANTOS FRANCISCO

Federal University of São Carlos and Ruralidade Verde, Lda

brunofrancisco@estudante.ufscar.br

António PIRRA

Assistant Professor, University of Trás-os-Montes and Alto Douro (UTAD)

apirra@utad.pt

Veronika JOUKES

Assistant Professor, University of Trás-os-Montes and Alto Douro (UTAD) & CETRAD

veronika@utad.pt

Abstract

Quality of life is a multidimensional concept that has been gaining prominence in works intending to study the level of development of a territory, mainly based on secondary data treated statistically. Other approaches have emerged based on primary data, which is the case of this work.

This study captures the perception of residents in Vila Marim, a small parish in Portugal, about their quality of life by a survey technique based on the WHOQOL-BREF instrument.

The results obtained point to different weightings in the several domains of quality of life. In particular, we would like to point out that peri-urban areas have better indexes in the domains of general quality of life, social relations and the physical domain, while rural areas have better ones in the psychological and environment domains.

Additionally, it was added one open question to the original survey, which made possible to understand that issues related to income and physical security are common to all age groups. Health concerns increase with age as well as governance and basic rights are issues with improved importance. 

These results show different sensitivities about how quality of life is experienced and, therefore, the importance of the methodology and territorial scale used.

This work was done in partnership with local government agents, and its results may serve as a basis for a more direct and immediate action, providing greater effectiveness and efficiency of policies to support the quality of life of residents in Vila Marim, Portugal and in other rural and peri-urban areas.

Keywords: Quality of Life, Low density territories, WHOQOL-BREF methodology, Regional sustainable development, Cohesion policies

JEL classification: I31, O18, R10

 pp. 13-28

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INTERRELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN HUMAN CAPITAL AND INTELLECTUAL CAPITAL: EVIDENCE FROM THE PANEL OF HIGH-INCOME AND LOW AND MIDDLE-INCOME GROUPS OF THE WORLD

Imran HUSSAIN

Department of Economics, Vidyasagar University, Midnapore, India,

imranhussaingrp@gmail.com

Ramesh CHANDRA DAS

Department of Economics, Vidyasagar University, Midnapore, India,

ramesh051073@gmail.com

(corresponding)

Aloka NAYAK

Department of Economics, Vidyasagar University, Midnapore, India

aloka.nayak21@gmail.com

Abstract

The competitiveness in production sector is increasing significantly due to the openness of the economies in the world. Importance of intellectual capital (IC) thus has been mounting continuously and human capital formation (HCF) is considered as the main source of it. IC, an advanced version of human capital, is formed by the efforts upon research and development (RD) activities. It is a natural question whether HCF helps in the formation of intellectual capital in the countries of different status. Under the backdrop, the study examines the long-term relationship between intellectual capital and HCF in case of some countries from the high-income group (HIG) and low and middle-income group (LMIG) during the period of 1998 to 2018. It employs panel unit root, panel cointegration and panel causality techniques for examining the long run associations and short run dynamics between human capital and intellectual capital for the two groups of the economies. The findings of the study show that long-term association exists between these two forms of capital for both the panels of high and low and middle-income nations. But the short-run causal interplay works in high-income group only where human capital formation is making a cause to the intellectual capital formation. A one-unit increase in the change of HCF at period t-1 results in a 0.05 unit rise in the change of current year intellectual capital in the high-income group. The governments of the countries are suggested to make more human capital formation via increasing expenditures on both education and health sector to assure more intellectual capital.

Keywords: Human capital, intellectual capital, growth, panel cointegration, panel causality, high and middle income countries

JEL classification: R10, R11, O30, C33

 pp. 107-122

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