The Evolving Geography of Productivity and Employment: Ideas for Inclusive Growth through a Territorial Lens in Latin America and the Caribbean employs a territorial lens to understand the persistently low economic growth rates in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). Using new data and methods, it shows that deindustrialization, distance, and divisions offer intertwined explanations for an urban productivity paradox in the LAC region: its highly dense cities should be among the world’s most productive, yet they are not. LAC cities have been held back by lack of dynamism, poor connectivity, and divisions into disconnected poor and affluent neighborhoods. Deindustrialization has shifted urban employment, especially in the largest LAC cities, away from manufacturing and toward less dynamic, low-productivity nontradable activities, such as retail trade and personal and other services, that profit less from agglomeration, especially in highly congested cities. Although employment in urban tradable services has risen, the increase has not been strong enough to offset the decline in manufacturing employment. Meanwhile, intercity connectivity issues have undermined the performance of the region’s network of cities by restricting market access and firms’ ability to benefit from specialization in smaller cities. Within cities, poor connectivity and residential labor market segregation have limited the gains from agglomeration to neighborhoods in central business districts where formal firms operate. Informality has persisted in low-income neighborhoods, where residents face multiple deprivations. By contrast, many agricultural and mining areas have benefited from the strong demand for commodities by China and other fast-growing economies, particularly during the Golden Decade (2003†“13), leading to a decline in territorial inequality in most countries in the region. The report concludes that to encourage inclusive growth, countries must more efficiently transform natural wealth into human capital, infrastructure, and institutions and improve the competitiveness of the urban economy. It then sketches out the contours of such a development strategy, identifying policy priorities at the national, regional, and local levels.

This report employs a territorial lens to understand the persistently low economic growth rates in Latin America and the Caribbean. Using new data sources and methods, it argues that deindustrialization, distance, and divisions constrain the productivity of Latin America's cities.

Makes correlations between success and geography, explaining how such rising centers of innovation as San Francisco and Austin are likely to offer influential opportunities and shape the national and global economies in positive or detrimental ways.

Work-Life Advantage analyses how employer-provision of ‘family-friendly’ working arrangements - designed to help workers better reconcile work, home and family - can also enhance firms’ capacities for learning and innovation, in pursuit of long-term competitive advantage and socially inclusive growth. Brings together major debates in labour geography, feminist geography, and regional learning in novel ways, through a focus on the shifting boundaries between work, home, and family Addresses a major gap in the scholarly research surrounding the narrow ‘business case’ for work-life balance by developing a more socially progressive, workerist ‘dual agenda’ Challenges and disrupts masculinist assumptions of the “ideal worker” and the associated labour market marginalization of workers with significant home and family commitments Based on 10 years of research with over 300 IT workers and 150 IT firms in the UK and Ireland, with important insights for professional workers and knowledge-intensive companies around the world

While technological developments are evolving at a rapid pace, employee workplace skills are falling behind. This rate of change will continue to accelerate, and it is the responsibility of businesses to provide their employees with a solid foundation for keeping pace with the technology surrounding them. Technology-Driven Productivity Improvements and the Future of Work: Emerging Research and Opportunities provides a comprehensive discussion of the latest strategies and methods for creating harmony between the workplace population and their technological environments. Featuring coverage on relevant topics such as STEM skills, economic complexities, and social programs, this is an informative resource for all business owners, professionals, practitioners, and researchers who are interested in discovering new methods that will enable humans and technology to work together.

The world, of late, has seen a productivity slowdown. Many countries continue to recover from various shocks in the macro business environment, along with structural changes and inward looking policies. In contemporary times of growth slumps, various exits and protectionist regimes, this book engages with the study of productivity dynamics in the emerging and industrialized economies. The essays address the crucial aspects, such as the roles of human capital, investment accounting and datasets, that help understanding of productivity performance of global economy and its several regions. This book will be of interest to academics, practitioners and professionals in the field of economic growth, productivity and development studies. This will also be an important reference on empirical industrial economics in both India and the world.

Based on two theoretical approaches: the Global Commodity Chain and the Global Production Network, this book investigates the multitude of processes, as well as diverse consequences of global integration upon industries, regions, enterprises and employees. In doing so, it draws from the experience of Western and Eastern and South-eastern Europe. These European cases are complemented with evidence from Kenya, Thailand as well as US, China, India and Mexico. The book explores multiple causes of decentralization, arguing beyond the pursuit of cheap and adaptable labour. It goes on to argue that the effects of delocalization within Europe, unlike those in the rest of the developed world, are less negative than usually portrayed. It concludes by putting forward recommendations for best future practice of successful adjustment strategies and examines how these might be adopted elsewhere in the world.

The International Encyclopedia of Human Geography provides an authoritative and comprehensive source of information on the discipline of human geography and its constituent, and related, subject areas. The encyclopedia includes over 1,000 detailed entries on philosophy and theory, key concepts, methods and practices, biographies of notable geographers, and geographical thought and praxis in different parts of the world. This groundbreaking project covers every field of human geography and the discipline’s relationships to other disciplines, and is global in scope, involving an international set of contributors. Given its broad, inclusive scope and unique online accessibility, it is anticipated that the International Encyclopedia of Human Geography will become the major reference work for the discipline over the coming decades. The Encyclopedia will be available in both limited edition print and online via ScienceDirect – featuring extensive browsing, searching, and internal cross-referencing between articles in the work, plus dynamic linking to journal articles and abstract databases, making navigation flexible and easy. For more information, pricing options and availability visit http://info.sciencedirect.com/content/books/ref_works/coming/ Available online on ScienceDirect and in limited edition print format Broad, interdisciplinary coverage across human geography: Philosophy, Methods, People, Social/Cultural, Political, Economic, Development, Health, Cartography, Urban, Historical, Regional Comprehensive and unique - the first of its kind in human geography

The process of globalization has had profound, often destabilizing, effects on space, at all levels (i.e. local, regional, national, international). This revealing book analyzes, both theoretically and empirically, the effects of globalization over space. It considers, through a dialogue among different paradigms, the ways in which space has become more important in the global economy. Globalization has been advocated as a way of shrinking time and space which will lead to a homogenized global market; a suggestion challenged in differing ways and with a variety of approaches by all the contributors to this volume. Leading authorities from a range of disciplines are represented amongst this impressive list of contributors, including Eric Sheppard, Bjørn Asheim, Richard Walker and Peter Swann. The chapters demonstrate persuasively the continuing, and even increasing, role of space in the global economy, and throughout, the book covers viewpoints from the fields of: international political economy economic geography regional and local economics. This impressive volume, which contains a selection of the best in contemporary scholarship, will be of interest to the international arena of academicians, policy makers and professionals in these or related fields.

Economic geographers increasingly consider the significance of history in shaping the contemporary socio-economic landscape, and increasingly believe that experiences and competencies, acquired over time by individuals and entities in particular localities, to a large degree determine present configurations as well as future regional trajectories. Attempts to trace, understand, and investigate the pathways from past to present have given rise to the thriving and exciting sub-field of Evolutionary Economic Geography (EEG). EEG highlights the important factors that initiate, inhibit, or consolidate the contextual settings and relationships in which regions and their respective agents, which comprise and shape economic activity and social reproduction, change over time. It has at its core the production and destruction of novelty in space, and the links between innovation and regional economic fortunes. The creation of knowledge, its movement and recombination within different regional ensembles of economic agents and institutions plays a critical role in the evolution of the space-economy. EEG provides a framework to disentangle the complexity of technological change and regional economic development based on a variety of theoretical and methodological approaches. In only a short time, EEG has established itself as a promising and rapidly evolving research framework with its focus on the driving forces of regional development across various scales and its attempt to translate findings into public policy. This book advances the theoretical foundations of EEG, and demonstrates how EEG utilises and operationalises conceptual frameworks, both established and new. Contributions also point to future research avenues and extensions of EEG, attempting to build stronger ties between theory, empirical evidence, and relevance to policy. This book was originally published as a special issue of Regional Studies.