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Following the industrial crisis of the 1920s and the Great Depression in the 1930s, consecutive provincial governments in Nova Scotia turned their efforts toward state-led economic development. After the election of Robert Stanfield and the Tories in 1956, a wholesale industrial planning model was unveiled. Indeed, Stanfieldian economic policy in Nova Scotia was predicated upon the belief that direct state-led interventionism was necessary to offset regional inequity. State corporate entities, such as Industrial Estates Limited, and renewed interest in a state-driven industrial relations paradigm were central in the province's efforts to revitalize its flagging economy and offset predicted decline in the Cape Breton coal and steel industries. This article examines the fate of the Clairtone Sound Corporation, one of Nova Scotia's "new industries" that emerged out of these state-led development efforts. A case study of this Stellarton-based firm reveals how structural processes of deindustrialization produced crisis even within sectors that were completely distinct from the province's cornerstone industries of coal and steel. This case includes a reflection on the class composition of the modernist state in Nova Scotia and represents a convergence of the historiographical focus on state-led industrial development in the Maritimes and recent literature found within deindustrialization studies. À la suite de la crise industrielle des années 1920 et de la Grande Dépression des années 1930, les gouvernements provinciaux successifs de la Nouvelle-Écosse ont orienté leurs efforts vers un développement économique dirigé par l›État. Après l›élection de Robert Stanfield et des conservateurs en 1956, un modèle de planification industrielle en gros a été dévoilé. En effet, la politique économique « stanfieldienne » en Nouvelle-Écosse reposait sur la conviction que l›interventionnisme direct dirigé par l›État était nécessaire pour compenser les inégalités régionales. Les sociétés d›État, comme Industrial Estates Limited, et le regain d›intérêt pour un paradigme de relations industrielles dirigé par l›État ont joué un rôle central dans les efforts de la province pour revitaliser son économie chancelante et compenser le déclin prévu des industries du charbon et de l›acier du Cap-Breton. Cet article examine le sort de la Clairtone Sound Corporation, l›une des « nouvelles industries » de la Nouvelle-Écosse qui a émergé de ces efforts de développement menés par l›État. Une étude de cas de cette entreprise basée à Stellarton révèle comment les processus structurels de désindustrialisation ont produit une crise même dans des secteurs complètement distincts des industries phares du charbon et de l›acier de la province. Ce cas comprend une réflexion sur la composition de classe de l›État moderniste en Nouvelle-Écosse et représente une convergence de l›accent historiographique sur le développement industriel dirigé par l›État dans les Maritimes et de la documentation récente trouvée dans les études sur la désindustrialisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gabriel Winant's The Next Shift charts the transformation of Pittsburgh's labor market and political economy from the postwar period through the era of unabashed neoliberalism. During that time, relatively well-paid and unionized employment in steel and metalworking plummeted, while low-wage, precarious, nonunion employment in health care and related sectors surged. The composition of the working class also shifted, from being disproportionately white and male to disproportionately nonwhite and female. While Winant is a labor and social historian, his book has many implications for legal scholars, including those focused on the role of law in neoliberalism. In particular, the book situates both Pittsburgh's evolution and neoliberalism itself in the historical process of capitalist development, or the process through which imperatives of accumulation generate constant technological, economic, and social changes. In Pittsburgh, Winant shows, deindustrialization was an inflection point in that process, generating social crises that were mitigated first by the rise of health care, and then by the suppression of wages among health care workers. This Book Review argues that labor law--or the whole complex of laws constituting and governing work--was transformed by those same structural forces over that same period. Postwar labor law understood employment, at least for relatively privileged industrial workers, as a social relationship jointly constituted by the working class and employers. Under neoliberalism, labor law came to understand employment more as an individual contract between putative equals, a development which enabled profitability in low-productivity service sectors like nursing homes and home care. In that sense, labor law helped to birth today's working class, even as it denies that a working class still exists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Among the Latin American countries, the Mexican economy has shown since the late 1990's one of the lowest rates of economic growth. This is perplexing, because of the persistency of the stagnation tendencies, and because of the rapid growth shown by its exports, especially to the US, that reached $370 billion in 2018. The poor economic performance has had adverse consequences in terms of unemployment, emigration, social conflict, and especially in terms of the losses of female and male youth employment. This paper seeks to explain the causes of Mexico's economic stagnation. The methodology consists of the estimation of cointegration equations that express per capita economic growth as a function of the growth of labor productivity, plus the growth of the female and male employment to population ratios. Additional equations were estimated to identify the variables that explain the growth of productivity and of employment ratios and to estimate the role of deindustrialization in economic stagnation. An analysis was made of the role of female employment on the mobilization of domestic savings, on the determination of the deficit in the trade account, and on the constraint exerted by the balance of payments on growth. The source of data was the World Bank's World Development Indicators. The results indicated that female employment is an important determinant of external solvency and contributes to overcoming the balance of payments constrain on economic growth. Another salient result is the negative impact of youth unemployment on labor productivity and the negative impact of the percentage of young women that neither study nor work on economic growth. The policy implications are related to the importance of promoting male and female employment with a view towards accelerating economic growth, and the need to establish measures to facilitate women's entry into the labor market. This would require the establishment of national networks of childcare centers, the expansion of early childhood education, improving the quality of education, and increasing wages. As well, policies must be implemented to promote the reindustrialization and reagriculturalization of the Mexican economy to obtain national self-sufficiency and security and impart dynamism to economic growth. JEL classifications: O11, O14, O16, O17, J48, J71 Keywords: economic growth, productivity, gender, youth unemployment Contact author's email address: luisrenecaceres@gmail.com, INTRODUCTION The Mexican economy has for several decades shown some of the lowest annual rates of economic growth per capita of Latin American countries, of about 1.5%. This is surprising [...]

Market turmoil and geopolitical realignment after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine put livelihoods and the green-energy transition at risk. Here’s how researchers can help overcome the threats. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China is Cambodia's largest bilateral donor, lender, investor, and trading partner. Economic relations between the two countries have been strengthened by Cambodia's active participation in the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). However, participating in the BRI has both costs and benefits. It has addressed Cambodia's infrastructure deficits, reduced trade and transport costs, and supported productivity and economic growth. This has improved living conditions and reduced poverty. On the negative side, there are concerns over environmental decay, land grabbing, and associated losses in livelihoods. On the whole, benefits appear to outweigh costs in Cambodia. Nevertheless, China is trying to improve the environmental, social, and financial sustainability of BRI investments, following international criticisms. Although there are early signs that the implementation of projects is becoming more environmentally friendly, concerns over inadequate environmental impact assessments and resettlement programs remain. Increasing reliance on one country also carries risks; diversifying sources may help achieve Cambodia's aim of diversifying its economic structure. Keywords: Cambodia, China, Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), costs and benefits, infrastructure development, land grabbing, environmental decay., 1. Introduction It is widely recognized that Cambodia and China have a strong and special political and economic relationship. Perhaps what is less well known is how old this relationship [...]

The strive for economic sustainability in world economies, most especially Less-Developed Countries (LDCs) in recent time notably see also an unwelcome comeback of the Import-Substitution (IS) trade strategy whose efficacy established overtime has been mixed. Thus, a systematic/meta-narrative review of literature on the appropriateness of the IS trade strategy in absolute terms to world economies, more particularly LDCs in contemporary time and among policy-alternatives, bearing in mind its tenets as well as its implications was carried out. The PRISMA methodology adapted here alongside an exploration of over 100 relevant literature through salient themes aid to present a synopsis of lessons from emerging market economies, and clear-cut submissions in a bid to inform policy directions. Amidst others, this review findings identify resource deficiencies, some time-lag considerations as such that attest the limited applicability of the IS trade strategy in absolute terms, and also emphasize the notion that Developing Economies or LDCs still need give allowance for certain imports, such as capital-goods imports, into their domestic economy for industrial productivity growth. Consequently from the review presented, efforts by LDCs to accommodate Multinational enterprises (MNEs) and or attract Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) to achieve technology transfer must be continually implemented. JEL Classifications: F00, F01 and F10 Keywords: Import-Substitution, Trade, Strategy, Imports, Industrialization, Less-Developed Countries (LDCs), Economic sustainability, INTRODUCTION The strive for economic sustainability in world economies, most especially Less-Developed Countries (LDCs) in these times, even so as such efforts relate to in part the realization of the [...]

Amid ever-growing global value chains (GVCs), a major controversial topic relates to the extent to which developing economies benefit from participating in such value chains. To measure these gains, this paper examines data pertaining to value-added in exports from three Southeast Asian economies--Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam. The study estimates the sectoral income elasticities of the export demand of each country over the period 19802017, revealing that the highest income elasticities are observed in low value-adding sectors such as primary products, resource-based goods and low-tech industries. This implies that the three countries have been involved in simple and not high-skill tasks within GVCs. The paper also examines the sectoral domestic share of value-added (DVA) and foreign share of value-added (FVA) of exports of the three economies using the OECD Trade in Value-added (TiVA) database over the period 2005-15. We find that DVA in the medium- and high-tech industries that add greater value is smaller than FVA in all three countries. Overall, these results suggest that developing nations need to step up their participation in GVCs through process and/or function upgrading. Keywords: Global value chains, production capability, value-added, income elasticity of export demand, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam., 1. Introduction Over the last two decades, the importance of global value chains (GVCs) in international trade and production has grown significantly. Today, a large number of economies and firms [...]

Natural resources--blessing or curse? Indonesia provides an excellent case study for an examination of this question. It is a major commodity exporter; the fourth most populous country in the world; and the world's largest archipelagic state with huge mineral, forest and maritime resources. Indonesia also has three distinctive features that are particularly relevant for such a study. First, with the exception of the Asian Financial and COVID-19 crises, it has had at least moderately strong economic performance for the past half-century. This distinguishes it from the majority of resource-rich developing countries, and therefore there are lessons to be learnt from its management of these boom and bust episodes, particularly the latter. Second, Indonesia has experienced two rather different resource booms--the first based mainly on oil and gas in the 1970s and the second based primarily on coal, palm oil and gas over the years 2005-11. The economic, social and environmental effects of these two booms have differed significantly. Third, the country experienced major regime change in 1998-99, from the centralized, authoritarian Soeharto regime in 1966-98, which presided over the first boom, to the subsequent democratic, decentralized regime during the second boom. The very different political and institutional arrangements had important implications for the management of the boom and its distributional effects. We examine these issues in a comparative context, employing as reference points two very large natural resource exporters, Brazil and Nigeria, and Malaysia, a smaller, more dynamic Southeast Asian comparator. Keywords: Indonesia, resource curse, natural resources, political economy., 1. Introduction A central puzzle in development economics is what has come to be known as the 'resource curse', the paradox that natural resource abundance appears to be causally associated [...]

The impact of agricultural productivity growth on the process of structural change, an increase in the share of labor employed in manufacturing, is a much debated topic. One perspective argues that agricultural productivity promotes structural change via its contribution of various resources to the manufacturing sector. Another hypothesis proposed is that agricultural productivity growth will draw resources away from agriculture. This paper hypothesizes that agricultural productivity growth plays a key role in the structural change process, but not necessarily through the mechanisms usually proposed. It is hypothesized here that agricultural productivity growth improves the quality of human labor (measured by the human development index, human capital accumulation, and reductions in infant mortality). In turn, improvements in the quality of human labor make it more profitable to employ labor in manufacturing and thus structural change, measured by the share of manufacturing employment in total employment, increases. These hypotheses are tested using dynamic ordinary least squares (DOLS) techniques utilizing data from seventeen countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. The findings indicate that agricultural productivity growth has a significant positive impact human labor quality as measured by the human development index, human capital accumulation, and reductions in infant mortality. In addition, improvements in the quality of human labor in turn have a significant positive impact on the extent of structural change as measured by the share of manufacturing employment as a share of total employment. In addition, trade, as measured by exports plus imports divided by GDP, also has a significant positive impact on the extent of structural change. Finally, inflation appears to slow the structural change process. The policy implications are straightforward. Agricultural productivity does indeed seem to be important in the process of structural change. Thus development programs involving Sub-Saharan Africa should focus on investment in the development of agricultural technologies that will raise agricultural productivity. In a broader sense, governments should focus investment on improving the overall quality of labor. JEL Classifications: O1, O13, O14, O15 Keywords: agricultural productivity, structural change, human development, Africa, INTRODUCTION The primary objective of this paper is to analyze the impact of agricultural productivity on structural change (the shift of resources, in particular labor, out of agriculture and into [...]

Economists have been concerned about the volatility of earnings and income for decades because it creates uncertainty for families and individuals and makes it more difficult for them to plan [...]