Labor Force Policies For Regional Economic Development

This book identifies and examines the analytical connections between regional growth and development processes, on the one hand, and the region's labor force characteristics and qualities on the other. The applied policy focus of the discussion places the role of labor resources in the context of labor market institutions, theories of regional change, and a region's economic development path rather than treating labor as one of several quantifable economic inputs in a growth equation.

Winner of the 2009 Regional Studies Association Best Book Award! Since the early 1980s, the region has been central to thinking about the emerging character of the global economy. In fields as diverse as business management, industrial relations, economic geography, sociology, and planning, the regional scale has emerged as an organizing concept for interpretations of economic change. This book is both a critique of the "new regionalism" and a return to the "regional question," including all of its concerns with equity and uneven development. It will challenge researchers and students to consider the region as a central scale of action in the global economy, and at the core of the book are case studies of two industries that rely on skilled, innovative, and flexible workers - the optics and imaging industry and the film and television industry. Combined with this is a discussion of the regions that constitute their production centers. The authors’ intensive research on photonics and entertainment media firms, both large and small, leads them to question some basic assumptions behind the new regionalism and to develop an alternative framework for understanding regional economic development policy. Finally, there is a re-examination of what the regional question means for the concept of the learning region. This book draws on the rich contemporary literature on the region but also addresses theoretical questions that preceded "the new regionalism." It will contribute to teaching and research in a range of social science disciplines and this new paperback edition will also make the book more accessible to students and researchers in those disciplines, those individuals who will influence the re-structuring economies of the 21st century.

First published in 1970, Regional Economic Development: The Federal Role examines the economic viability of depressed areas and regions. This book questions whether there is adequate justification, on national economic grounds, for Federal involvement with distressed area revitalisation and looks at the main guidelines for intervention in relation to typology of distressed areas. This title is an ideal resource for students interested in politics, macroeconomics, and federal policies concerning the revitalisation of distressed areas and economies.

In this study, the author examines the complex problems of regional development and the government policies to which they have given rise. The author concludes that there is a paramount need for closer agreement between federal and provincial governments on development policies and on the respective roles individual governments should play in their implementation.