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An agreement in 1965 between Canada and the United States to permit free trade in automobile products was accompanied by legislation in both countries providing assistance over a three-year period for workers displaced from their jobs by the trade liberalization. A total of slightly less than 2,000 U.S. auto workers received aid in the form of cash benefits and retraining and relocation allowances under the program. Review of experience with the plan suggests that such adjustment assistance may be preferable to the usual escape-clause provisions of trade agreements since it reduces, rather than maintains, structural rigidities and inefficiencies and complements manpower programs which attempt to improve the adaptability and mobility of labor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explains how successful innovation systems interact with trade and global value chains (GVC) participation to foster learning and technological upgrading. It conducts an empirical investigation of 74 developing countries for 3 years, 2000, 2005 and 2010, to show that, while some countries manage to trade and export across a large number of technological export categories, many remain embedded in the export of low technology goods with little movement technologically. The analysis looks at why this is the case and what factors account for how firms are able to leverage trade to learn and upgrade in some instances, but not all. The results show that the ability to technologically diversify across export categories is linked to stronger innovation systems, as measured by national capability indicators, such as public R&D investments, scientific publications, intellectual property payments and patents by residents. The results also confirm the rise of several outperforming countries, the emerging economies. We conclude that, in successful, outperforming countries, firms rely on several attributes of the innovation system to leverage knowledge flows within and outside of GVCs to build export capacity and diversify horizontally into new GVCs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Average job training subsidies in the Trade Adjustment Assistance Program vary by state due to the cost of particular training programs chosen by participants. This study partitions the higher and lower subsidy states from 2010 to 2014 and estimates differences in the effectiveness of their average subsidy levels on reemployment and subsequent earnings. The rationale for partitioning is that higher cost programs tend to be more occupation or skill oriented than lower cost programs and might, therefore, be more effective. There is found to be only a small increase in the rate of reemployment with increases in the subsidy across all states, though it is fractionally higher in the higher subsidy partition. The contemporaneous state-level macroeconomic conditions have virtually no effect on the rate of reemployment. There is also a small increase in subsequent earnings as the subsidy increases, but only in the lower subsidy partition. Increases in earnings across all states are attributed to the state-level macroeconomic conditions, particularly inflation. These findings emerge from a different empirical approach than taken in earlier studies, but corroborate that the program's job training requirement has been only moderately effective overall, though better at promoting reemployment than higher earnings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper empirically examines the impact of fluctuations in international trade competitiveness on employment in the UK manufacturing sector over the period 1999–2010. We find statistically significant but economically small effects of a shock to international trade competitiveness on the level of employment. Our results show that the adjustment process in employment mainly works through job creation. We also find that compared to large firms, small firms contribute more toward job creation than job destruction. Our results that changes in GDP growth rate and average wages are significantly related to employment suggest that the UK labour market significantly responds to market forces. Finally, we find that the effect of changes in the real exchange rate on both job creation and job destruction differs between exporting and non-exporting firms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we study the effect of labour market rigidity on the impact of exchange rate shocks on employment. We use a panel dataset comprising 22 manufacturing sectors across 23 OECD countries. In our econometric model, the impact of exchange rate fluctuations on sectoral employment is mediated by the degree of openness and by a measure of labour market rigidity: the OECD's employment protection legislation (EPL) index. Our results suggest that greater labour market rigidity reduces the impact of exchange rate shocks on employment. This effect is statistically significant for low-technology sectors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Today, multinational and domestic corporations in many industries are no longer self-contained vertical structures with permanent staff, but increasingly are horizontal organizations with fissured employment characteristics using outsourcing, franchising, and subcontracting with contractors and chains of subcontractors. Too often, the workers of the subcontractors suffer the consequences of the subcontractors' cost cutting measures, work in unfavorable conditions, and have low wages and few benefits, all for the purpose of serving the interests and profitability of the primary corporation. This paper therefore focuses on domestic laws that provide workers with an additional avenue of remedy from an expanded employment relationship--a doctrine of joint employer liability that places obligations "up the chain" on the in-country originating contractor who benefits from the supply chain or operates it for the benefit of the offshore multinational corporation. Some form of this doctrine is already used to provide workers with wage remedies against Chinese construction companies and to provide dispatch workers wage and "employee" benefit remedies. Given China's extensive role in multinational supply chains, this paper examines the doctrine of joint employer liability up the chain and evaluates whether it can be expanded in China to remedy labor law violations and protect workers in the labor supply chains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Japan the word for marriage broker, "Nakodo," is now being widely used to apply to business "brokers" who arrange joint ventures between firms. As detente opens new markets, particularly in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and China (where Western business executives have had little negotiating experience), an international Nakodo, partial to neither party, can expedite agreements which would otherwise be very difficult and very costly to negotiate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article deals with one of the major issues of Russian economy - with steps towards import substitution in the key Russian industries. The research is aimed to elaborate methodological approach to import substitution in Russian Federation industry. The main methods used in our research are complex analysis and system analysis as they enable us to reveal the system and local problems of import substitution, uncover the relations and interdependence of management subjects and elements of companies in import substituting industries and to develop methodological toolkit for problem-solving. In the article, methodological approach to organizing an import-substituting industry is developed, index of evaluating the competitiveness of import substituting production is introduced based at research of 10 industrial companies. Findings of this article can be useful for scholars interested in foreign trade and for specialists in industrial sector dealing with the production processes based on import substitution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Employment-related policies are sensitive by any standard, and they remain basically national despite international labour standards (ILS) being even older than the United Nations. Globalization is changing this situation where countries may have to choose between 'more' or 'better' jobs. The multilateral framework of the World Trade Organization (WTO) can only have an indirect impact. But Regional Trade Agreements (RTA) and International Investment Agreements (IIA) are emerging as a new way of gradually enhancing the impact of certain labour standards. In addition, unilateral measures both by governments and importers driven by social and environmental consumer preferences and pressure groups increasingly shape the international regulatory framework for national employment policies. Even small, locally operating enterprises risk marginalization and market exclusion by ignoring these developments. The long-term influence of this new 'network approach' on employment-related policies, including job location, gender issues, social coherence and migration remains to be seen. Nonetheless, the still flimsy evidence gathered here seems to indicate that this new, international framework might increase sustainable employment where and when supporting measures, including through unilateral preferences and even sanctions, form a 'cocktail' which export-oriented industries and their suppliers will find palatable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores the dynamic effects of US employment, real wages, employee overtime hours, travel costs and market shocks on tourism demand to Hawaii from the US mainland. The results show that US tourist arrivals and expenditure in Hawaii are sensitive to a change in total employment. These findings suggest that employment growth is a driving force of US tourism demand for Hawaii. In examining the magnitudes of the income and substitution effects of a change in real wages, the income effect is found to outweigh its substitution effect, indicating that a rise in income resulting from a higher wage increases tourist expenditure in the USA. In addition, the 2001 terrorist attacks and the 2008 financial crisis have had detrimental impacts on tourism demand for Hawaii destinations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the effects of exports on employment in China, Indonesia, Japan, and Korea, using the World Input-Output Database for the period from 1995 to 2009. One of the major findings is that, although more than 80 percent of exports in the four study countries are from manufacturing industries, a significant number of workers in non-manufacturing industries depend upon manufacturing exports through vertical inter-industry linkages. An implication is that even in cases where an industry is not particularly export-oriented through its reliance on the export of final goods, the industry may still be subject to potential effects-positive or negative-linked to changes in export demand. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since direct shipping routes between Europe and Asia opened up at the end of the 15th century, the growing intercontinental and regional shipping connections resulted in increasing entanglements between European and Asian maritime labour markets. This article analyses the long term development of the connections between European and Asian maritime labour markets and its impact on socio-cultural (and labour) relations through three elements: first, the changing connections between European and Asian maritime labour markets; second, the changing nature of European and Asian maritime labour markets and its influence on the positions of sailors; and third, the changing relations between European and Asian sailors and its effects on the reactions and interactions in a globalising maritime labour market. It explores how these changing global connections shaped encounters between European and Asian sailors on (intercontinental) shipping in and from the North Sea region, and how it affected the positions and reactions of its workers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contemporary labor markets are suffering from the recession and structural shifts, which can cause various mismatches through processes of search friction. A lack of informational transparency among worker- and job characteristics is the common denominator of these search frictions. In this paper, the potential of the career ePortfolio, which consists of information beyond what is typically found in a jobseeker's resume, in reducing these mismatches and search frictions is explored. The career ePortfolio, it is argued, leads to better worker-to-job matches, increased worker mobility, and reduced unemployment levels and transaction costs. By exploring mismatches and search frictions theoretically, the required features of such a career ePortfolio were identified. A multi-disciplinary approach was used, drawing from literature on labor market economics as well as human resource management. It was concluded that the career ePortfolio should consist of competence-based information on both the aggregate and individual levels in order to facilitate workers and firms in their career and personnel planning and help government and educational institutes devise appropriate labor market policies and curricula. Major challenges include the required shared understanding of competences among workers and firms, given their heterogeneity, as well as the need for credible information, given the asymmetrical nature of labor market information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes an ePortfolio implementation strategy at Federation University Australia, Victoria (formerly the University of Ballarat). The authors combined a personal and practical viewpoint to elicit pitfalls, challenges, and recommendations for improvement. The paper is divided into three main areas in order to outline the experiments that occurred. The first section provides a standard literature review around ePortfolio adoption as well as a research-based analysis of available ePortfolio software at Australian universities. The second part depicts the University's ePortfolio implementation strategy that focused on "test-to-production" and technology dissemination phases. This section is based on the authors' personal viewpoint of ePortfolio adoption at a university where a "top-down management decision making model" (Slade, Murfin, & Readman, 2013, p. 178) was used. Third, the evaluation strategy is reported, which was based on similar research conducted at Australian universities (Hallam & Creagh, 2010; Hallam, Harper, Hauville, Creagh, & McAllister, 2009). This part is offered as a modest-scoped, mixed methods evaluation process. The paper extends on ePortfolio implementation strategies (Bell & White, 2013; Coffey & Ashford-Rowe, 2014; Jarrott & Gambrel, 2011; Lambert & Corrin, 2007; Ring & Ramirez, 2012; Slade et al., 2013) and software analysis (ACODE, 2011; Slade et al., 2013). Recommendations are made for the careful integration of pre- and post-rollout of ePortfolio programs with face-to-face ePortfolio tutor support, offering online resources and alternative portfolio-making options for students with poor broadband access. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the past few years within South Africa there has been a proliferation of state-led community development initiatives tasked to form community-based cooperatives. It is into such a context that research was conducted during 2011–13 into how South African community development workers understand and conduct their professional practice in relation to cooperative formation. Findings from the research consider issues such as: a dilemma of statecraft – working within instrumental contexts; the emotional work required of the practitioner; and, finally, confusing the developmental process. The discussions contribute to both theory-building and practice wisdom, while also contributing to South African cooperative policy. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Specifics of rural areas and substantive nature of their economic security have been established. Threats to economic security in rural areas due to imperfection of agrarian reforms, transition to market-oriented economy and anticipated implementation of the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement have been studied. A set of mechanisms to minimize negative impacts on socio-economic and environmental development of rural areas has been proposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We develop a simple and tractable two-sector search model featuring a non-traded sector and endogenous search unemployment to examine the impact of terms of trade shocks on unemployment. We show that changes in terms of trade will not only lead to employment reallocation across sectors, as in the traditional trade models, but, more importantly, impact upon search unemployment within each sector. Specifically, we show that an improvement (deterioration) of terms of trade reduces (increases) unemployment rates in both traded and non-traded sectors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the nexus between inflation dynamics and economic growth in South Africa. Specifically, the study aims to assess whether the inflation Granger-causes economic growth in South Africa. In order to address the problem of omitted variable bias associated with some previous studies, the study incorporates the employment as a third (intermittent) variable affecting both inflation and economic growth - thereby creating a trivariate causality model. Using the recently developed ARDL-bounds testing approach, the study finds that there is a bidirectional causal relationship between inflation and economic growth in South Africa. The results apply, irrespective of whether the causality model is estimated in the short run or in the long run. Other results show that there is a prima facie causal flow from economic growth to employment in South Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Employment, career advancement, and financial independence are highly valued in the United States. As expectations, they are often instilled at a young age and incentivized throughout adulthood. Despite their importance, employment and economic sufficiency continue to be out of reach for most people with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD). Over the last quarter century, extensive research and effort has been committed to understanding and improving these phenomena. This paper summarizes this employment research base by reviewing the literature on the effectiveness of the current employment support system, employment-specific interventions, and the economics and cost benefits of employment for people with IDD. Recommendations and directions for future research are also presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International commerce between Colombia and the Pacific Basin is clearly detrimental to the former, producing weak conditions for production and exports. This relationship pattern is of inter-industrial trade, whereby Colombia exports raw materials and imports capital goods and manufactured items, repeating the scheme developed in the past with other industrialized countries. This article analyzes the behavior of the commercial balance in Colombia, the manufacturing export and import indices, job creation, competitive limits for the nation and a return to producing primary commodities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bamboo is one of the most important non-timber forest products in Bangladesh. Previous research, however, has focused mainly on its silvicultural aspects, with its socio-economic aspects remaining underexplored. In a study conducted between January and March in 2008, we surveyed 30 randomly selected bamboo-based entrepreneurs in a regional market in southern Bangladesh to identify employment and trade patterns, financial contributions, and marketing of bamboo and its products. Bamboo was found to be important in generating profits for entrepreneurs and employment for low-skilled rural workers.Bambusa balcooa,Melocanna baccifera,Bambusa tulda, andBambusa vulgariswere found to be the most traded species, withBambusa balcooaconstituting 39% of the market. Major uses of (secondary products from) bamboo were found to be construction, fences, mats, and domestic baskets and utensils. Operating costs varied across the enterprises according to their sales, workforce size, and purchases. Estimated net average incomes of the large, medium, and small enterprises were around Tk. 43,000 ($625), Tk. 30,000 ($435), and Tk. 19,300 ($280), respectively, during the year 2007. Medium-sized enterprises earned the most (32%) from the sale of secondary products. Three marketing channels were identified, with most of the bamboo in the area being found to be collected through intermediaries. Our discussion highlights the importance of bamboo and its secondary products in generating employment and profits in the area and also the presence of problems such as income variability throughout the year. Promoting the trade of bamboo and bamboo-based enterprises through appropriate technical and financial assistance to growers and entrepreneurs could be an effective strategy to improve local economies in Bangladesh. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Within the context of neo-liberal economic policy, and triggered by the looming demographic crisis of an ageing society, a cornerstone of the policies aimed at parents of the previous New Labour administrations in the UK ‘encouraged’ parents to take up paid work or to make themselves ‘work-ready’ to provide the skills to compete in a globalised labour market. Underpinned by a belief that most citizens should be in a position to participate in the paid labour market, government rhetoric actively perpetuated a normative code of economic participation in a political climate that appeared to increasingly marginalise and denigrate the work of social reproduction. Notions of good parenting and, in particular, good mothering were variously tied to (re)employment, financial independence and offering a productive role model to children. ‘Good parenting’ was supported by a host of policies which aimed to enable parents to take financial responsibility for their families, ensuring their children did not grow up in poverty. In this paper, I consider the impact on parents and children of one of the key policies aimed at parents to come out of the UK in the last decade: ‘The New Deal for Lone Parents’. In  doing so this article will highlight the role that economic and fiscal concerns have had in shaping the direction of policies aimed at parents in the UK. Drawing on empirical work which sought to explore the views of parents and their children of welfare reform, it will also argue that policy-makers must engage with children when developing policies aimed at parents. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Copyright of Estudios y Perspectivas en Turismo is the property of Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Turisticos and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article analyzes labor conflicts in Chinese trade businesses in Ghana. After introducing the general situation of Chinese trading companies and the labor market in Ghana, I explore the factors that tend to make Chinese-African employment relations in the trading sector dysfunctional and conflict-prone. In a qualitative ethnographic account, I investigate recruitment processes, interpersonal relationships, concepts of authority, and sanctions and incentives, and elaborate on the specificities of diverging interpretations of reciprocity, social roles, practices and related symbolic significations within the interpersonal relations between Chinese employers and Ghanaian employees. I argue that these dimensions of interpersonal relations are crucial for understanding the development of conflict in the economic field analyzed, and also suggest an alternative reading of Chinese-African industrial labor conflicts, which have so far been discussed exclusively in terms of violations of formal regulations by Chinese enterprises, and their exploitative and abusive practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The globalization of markets and the increased outsourcing of production have given rise to global production networks (GPNs) linking internationally branded companies in the West to vast networks of suppliers, contractors and workers in developing countries and countries in transition. However, the literature on GPNs has only recently begun to pay more detailed attention to conceptualizing the role that labor plays in such networks. This article makes a contribution to the emerging literature on labor agency in GPNs by arguing that labor agency in export-oriented industries in developing countries may be highly gendered and tends to be more constrained than facilitated by both vertical forces (the governance of GPNs) and horizontal forces (local socio-economic and labor market contexts). This is done through a case study of labor agency in the football manufacturing industry of Sialkot, Pakistan. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Copyright of Kafkas University, Journal of Economics & Administrative Sciences Faculty / Kafkas Üniversitesi Iktisadi ve Idari Bilimler Fakültesi Dergisi is the property of University of Kafkas, Faculty of Economics & Administrative Sciences and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Global processes are restructuring inequalities in complex ways. Globalization has uneven impacts on social formations as a consequence of the path dependent nature of societal development and variations in the forms of modernity. The multiple varieties of modernity, including neoliberalism and social democracy, involve diverse forms of gender regime as well as diverse forms of capitalism. Including gender inequalities in addition to class alters how we see the nature and changing patterns of inequalities. The paper investigates the extent to which variations in the form of gender and class inequalities in employment and in welfare provision map onto each other, using data from OECD countries. Significant points of divergence are found, leading to the conclusion that conceptualisation and analysis of varieties of modernity should include a gender dimension and not presume that this is reducible to class. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The focus of this Article is the effect that globalization has had on social inequalities within large corporate professional firms, in both the United Kingdom and the United States. While globalization is an imprecise term, there is general agreement about its destructive impact on traditional society. Some see this as producing a range of negative effects (such as psycho-social fragmentation and insecure employment). Others, however, have viewed it as opening up the possibility for individuals to create their own biography. This is due in part to globalization's "capitalization of everything" which, in the case of the legal profession, has transformed the large law firm from a relatively parochial organization, in which personal relations remained highly significant, into a multinational organization governed by Human Resource Management (HRM), commonly employing Diversity Management (DM) techniques and dominated by discourses of entrepreneurialism. These developments could be expected to have resulted in significant progress toward a more socially representative profession. Yet statistical surveys and qualitative research suggest that gender, race, and class remain strongly determinant of career progress in both the U.S. and U.K. legal professions, including in the globalized corporate sector. This Article considers some of the theoretical models which might explain the persistent salience of social categories for legal careers. It then draws on these models in a discussion of recent qualitative research conducted for the U.K. Legal Services Board (LSB). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a discussion of trade and employment which had changed in the decades of globalization, and the policies that Europe must follow to prosper in the global economic landscape, adapted from a recent talk at the Notre Europe in Paris, France.

Capital reproduces itself, expands and breaks down territorial barriers through transnational corporations and their "financialization," just as unemployed and poor people jump geographical and territorial fences in their eagerness to expand; some are in search of capital and/or speculative markets, others in search of subsistence labor markets. This paper begins with a look at the two economic crises that have jeopardized global capitalism (1929 and 2008) and the arrangements made by the State to stop the chain reaction crisis. Next, the impact of neoliberal globalization on nations and individuals is presented. Official programs for global poverty that lead inevitably to capitalism without labor are examined. This work concludes with the deterritorialization of capital as well as the workforce. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Sozialer Fortschritt is the property of Duncker & Humblot GmbH and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In line with previous literature, we find that strict employment protection deters foreign direct investment. This finding is consistent with the view that rigid labour markets result in high adjustment and exit costs which discourage firm investment. Moreover, our results are consistent with the view that the deterrent effect of rigid labour markets depends on the skill intensity of an industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drayse M. H. Globalization and innovation in a mature industry: furniture manufacturing in Canada, Regional Studies. Canadian furniture manufacturers have been relatively successful in responding to the competitive challenges of more open continental and global economies. The industry has followed a high-road development path based on innovation in products, processes, and business practices, and exploitation of export markets in the United States. While employment has declined in recent years due to a slowdown in US sales and increasing use of imports by Canadian firms - trends reinforced by the current recession - the furniture industry has been more successful than most Canadian manufacturing industries since the beginning of the modern free-trade era in 1989. [image omitted] Drayse M. H. La mondialisation et l'innovation dans une industrie en pleine maturite: l'industrie du meuble au Canada, Regional Studies. Au Canada, l'industrie du meuble a reussi grosso modo a repondre aux defis competitifs des economies europeennes et mondiales plus ouvertes. L'industrie a suivi un sentier de croissance dynamique base sur l'innovation dans des produits, des procedes et des pratiques en affaires, et sur la percee des marches d'exportation aux Etats-Unis. Tandis que l'emploi a diminue au cours des dernieres annees a cause d'un ralentissement des ventes aux E-U et d'une augmentation des importations par les entreprises canadiennes - des tendances qui sont renforcees par le marasme actuel - l'industrie du meuble reussit plus que la plupart de l'industrie canadienne depuis le debut de l'epoque moderne du libre-echange en 1989. Mondialisation Innovation Industrie du meuble Canada Drayse M. H. Globalisierung und Innovation in einer vollentwickelten Industrie: die Mobelherstellung in Kanada, Regional Studies. Die Hersteller kanadischer Mobel sind den Herausforderungen des Wettbewerbs in einer offeneren kontinentalen und globalen Wirtschaft relativ erfolgreich begegnet. Die Industrie hat einen Pfad der nachhaltigen Entwicklung eingeschlagen, der auf Innovationen im Bereich der Produkte, Verfahren und Geschaftspraktiken sowie auf einer Nutzung der Exportmarkte in den USA beruht. Wahrend das Beschaftigungsniveau in den letzten Jahren aufgrund eines Ruckgangs des Umsatzes in den USA und wegen der gestiegenen Nutzung von Importen durch kanadische Firmen - Trends, die sich durch die momentane Rezession noch verstarkt haben - gesunken ist, war die Mobelindustrie seit Beginn der modernen Freihandelsara im Jahr 1989 erfolgreicher als die meisten produzierenden Industrien Kanadas. Globalisierung Innovation Mobelherstellung Kanada Drayse M. H. Globalizacion e innovacion en una industria madura: la industria del mueble en Canada, Regional Studies. Los fabricantes de muebles en Canada han tenido un relativo exito al responder a los retos competitivos de economias continentales y globales mas abiertas. La industria ha seguido una via de desarrollo sostenible basandose en la innovacion de productos, procesos y practicas comerciales y la explotacion de los mercados de exportacion en los Estados Unidos. Mientras que el empleo ha disminuido en los ultimos anos debido a una desaceleracion economica en las ventas estadounidenses y un aumento en el uso de importaciones por parte de empresas canadienses - tendencias reforzadas por la actual recesion- la industria del mueble ha tenido mas exito que la mayoria de industrias manufactureras en Canada desde que comenzo la era moderna del libre comercio en 1989. Globalizacion Innovacion Industria del mueble Canada [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]