Abstract

ABSTRACT The agrosilvo-pastoral sector contributes significantly both to the GDP and to regional employment levels in southern Chile. The aim of this study is to analyze the agrosilvo-pastoral sector in terms of its competitiveness and economic results in the regions of O'Higgins, Maule, Araucanía and Los Lagos. Competitiveness is studied by undertaking a multivariate analysis that includes five factors: human capital, people and work, community infrastructure, resource management efficiency and economic performance, in order to create synthetic indicators. Subsequently, the impact of different factors on the economic results is analysed. One of the results obtained indicates that endowment of these factors varies spatially and that the factor with the greatest impact is availability of human capital, explained, mainly, by the variables pre-school coverage and matriculation in pre and postgraduate courses. Furthermore, the effect of the factors human capital and people and work factor on economic results significative in this sector is significant. Key words: agrosilvo-pastoral economy, competitiveness, regional economy.