Small and medium-sized towns have traditionally formed an integral part of the agricultural sector and wider rural economy, acting as a source of farm inputs, a first destination of farm outputs and as a source of consumer goods and services to farm households. In recent years, this relationship...

This article goal is to analyse firms and manages behaviour on a Portuguese region on construction and industry businesses. The results are based on 251 questionnaires. Usually managers present a low level of school education (changing recently). On what regards management issues it was realized...

Nowadays, before starting any goods or service production process, one tries to learn something about their quality. This is an issue the customers segment is confronted with when choosing from the supply at one’s disposal. The quality movement’s main idea is that all goods and services must...

This paper begins with a conceptual approach to the third sector, followed by a review of the relationship between investment and growth. The empirical component focuses on Portuguese NUT III Douro and Alto Trás-os-Montes regions, which are said to be less developed, and have been the...

The first step will be to measure the firms sales and purchases economic impact based on small and medium-sized towns and to calculate their degree of integration into the local economy, comparing the local economic integration of small and medium-sized towns within three types of rural area, in...

Small and medium-sized towns in rural areas are of particular interest at this stage in the evolution of the European CAP. Serious consideration is being given to mechanisms that could transfer resources from the agricultural sector into a more diversified rural economy in order to safeguard the...

The well-known rise in the geographical concentration of hog production suggests the presence of agglomeration economies related to spatial spillovers and inter-dependencies among industries. In this paper, we examine whether manure management regulation restricting manure application per acre...

In the European rural development policy special emphasis is placed on support of the agro-food industry which is regarded as an important economic development driver in rural areas. This paper analyses and compares the employment and population changes in Denmark and France in the period 1990 -...