摘要：Local productive arrangements have been at the core of recent industrial policies, based on which a new framework has been developed in order to analyse industrial activities in the Brazilian economy. Thus, based on the expectations that industrial agglomeration might increase the level of employment and income, the spatial dimension of economic activity has been looked upon with great emphasis by those involved in the discussion of regional development. A particular and relevant aspect of local arrangements, stressed in this article, is related to the fact they have been converted themselves into public policies, as such loosing their essence as result of a synergy emerging from the relationship between firms. The main subject discussed in this paper is related to the current distribution of incentives given to APLs in Brazil, for which their productive and technological features are taken into account. Moreover, this investigation has shown that the implementation of public policies towards industrial agglomeration has not necessarily been based on local economic vocation and advantages. Therefore, those can be seen as social policies aiming income distribution, rather than industrial ones, which have not been able to promote significant changes in the status quo of inequalities among Brazilian regions.
