"Fear" and Offshoring: The Scope and Potential Impact of Imports and Exports of Services

Commentators, including Princeton University's Alan Blinder, estimate 40 million jobs could be at risk of being offshored over the next 20 years and suggest American workers should specialize in services that can be delivered face-to-face. In contrast, Jensen and Kletzer expect the process of globalization in services will proceed much as it has in manufacturing: They estimate only 15-20 million jobs are at risk of being offshored to low-wage, labor-abundant countries; approximately 40 percent of these jobs will be in the manufacturing sector, long considered "at risk." They expect these losses to be offset by job gains in high-wage activities from services exporting. The United States will retain its comparative advantage in high-skill, high-wage production and increase these activities in tradable service industries as trade barriers diminish. While the loss of low-wage activities that are offshored and the gain from high-wage service exports will cause dislocation, the globalization of services production is likely to have productivity-enhancing effects similar to the impact of globalization in the manufacturing sector, offering significant potential to improve living standards in the United States and around the world.

Tradable Services: Understanding the Scope and Impact of Services Outsourcing

We develop a new empirical approach to identify tradable service activities. Contrary to conventional views of service activities as nontradable, we find a significant number of service industries and occupations that appear tradable and substantial employment in these tradable activities. Workers employed in tradable service activities differ from those employed in tradable manufacturing and nontradable services. Workers in tradable service activities have higher skill levels and are paid higher wages than manufacturing workers or workers in nontradable service activities. In general, we find little evidence that tradable service activities have lower employment growth than other service activities. However, evidence suggests lower employment growth at the lowest end of the skill distribution. There is also evidence of higher worker displacement rates in tradable services. Workers displaced from tradable service activities are different from displaced manufacturing workers: Displaced tradable service workers have higher skills and higher predisplacement earnings than displaced manufacturing workers.services, offshoring, trade, labor, information technology, jobs

Off the beaten track : messaging as a means to reducing depreciative behaviour in a national park

Over the 2004 peak visitor season, a covert observational study was conducted at St. Lawrence Islands National Park, Ontario, Canada to assess the extent of social trail use on two islands. The study examined the effectiveness of message text, and location on signs aimed at reducing the amount of social trail use by visitors. Attribution and species-at-risk messages were more effective than simple messages at eliciting desired behaviours. Furthermore, when signs were posted at specific locations of interest, social trail use was reduced significantly compared to no messages, or messages located at points of entry alone. Attribution messages may lead to environmental attitudes becoming accessible. Gender and age of visitor also influenced social trial behaviour

A Social Network Analysis For Knowledge Integration and Extension of WEPGN Research

Solutions for complex water challenges not only require the development of novel data collection and modeling tools, but also the creation of strong research clusters and innovative knowledge mobilization instruments. There is a need to understand the focus and nature of interdisciplinary collaborative research, as well as the functionality and collaborative nature of the networks of researchers, extension and integration of partnerships. Deriving these solutions is essential for the integration and extension of research knowledge beyond disciplinary silos so that deeper understanding and relationship building between those who make water policy decisions and those who are impacted by them can be made

Sustainability Education in First Nations Schools: A Multi-site Study and Implications for Education Policy

This paper explores sustainability uptake in education policy in First Nations-managed K-12 schools and analyzes the implications of barriers for practices in First Nations’ educational communities. Interviews were conducted with educators across four different Canadian schools and content analysis used to draw out key themes of analysis. Themes include educators’ articulations of relationships to land, including of a relational-legacy of living in an implicitly sustainable and respectful way. Participants also described how culturally and geographically relevant pedagogical approaches to sustainability are challenged by systemic and localized barriers. Participants perceived under-resourcing and administrative barriers to limit integration of sustainability across curricular areas, hindering educators’ abilities to develop appropriate innovative programming and resources for First Nations’ students. Success in overcoming these obstacles was described as being achieved through harnessing community resources to indirectly include sustainability in the curriculum. Implications for local and global Indigenous educators, policy makers, and agencies are discussed

Report on the State of Available Data for the Study of International Trade and Foreign Direct Investment

This report, prepared for the Committee on Economic Statistics of the American Economic Association, examines the state of available data for the study of international trade and foreign direct investment. Data on values of imports and exports of goods are of high quality and coverage, but price data suffer from insufficient detail. It would be desirable to have more data measuring value-added in trade as well as prices of comparable domestic and imported inputs. Value data for imports and exports of services are too aggregated and valuations are questionable, while price data for service exports and imports are almost non-existent. Foreign direct investment data are of high quality but quality has suffered from budget cuts. Data on trade in intellectual property are fragmentary. The intangibility of the trade makes measurement difficult, but budget cuts have added to the difficulties. Modest funding increases would result in data more useful for research and policy analysis.

DIY meteorology: Use of citizen science to monitor snow dynamics in a data-sparse city

Cities are under pressure to operate their services effectively and project costs of operations across various timeframes. In high-latitude and high-altitude urban centers, snow management is one of the larger unknowns and has both operational and budgetary limitations. Snowfall and snow depth observations within urban environments are important to plan snow clearing and prepare for the effects of spring runoff on cities' drainage systems. In-house research functions are expensive, but one way to overcome that expense and still produce effective data is through citizen science. In this paper, we examine the potential to use citizen science for snowfall data collection in urban environments. A group of volunteers measured daily snowfall and snow depth at an urban site in Saskatoon (Canada) during two winters. Reliability was assessed with a statistical consistency analysis and a comparison with other data sets collected around Saskatoon. We found that citizen-science-derived data were more reliable and relevant for many urban management stakeholders. Feedback from the participants demonstrated reflexivity about social learning and a renewed sense of community built around generating reliable and useful data. We conclude that citizen science holds great potential to improve data provision for effective and sustainable city planning and greater social learning benefits overall

DIY meteorology: Use of citizen science to monitor snow dynamics in a data-sparse city

Cities are under pressure to operate their services effectively and project costs of operations across various timeframes. In high-latitude and high-altitude urban centers, snow management is one of the larger unknowns and has both operational and budgetary limitations. Snowfall and snow depth observations within urban environments are important to plan snow clearing and prepare for the effects of spring runoff on cities' drainage systems. In-house research functions are expensive, but one way to overcome that expense and still produce effective data is through citizen science. In this paper, we examine the potential to use citizen science for snowfall data collection in urban environments. A group of volunteers measured daily snowfall and snow depth at an urban site in Saskatoon (Canada) during two winters. Reliability was assessed with a statistical consistency analysis and a comparison with other data sets collected around Saskatoon. We found that citizen-science-derived data were more reliable and relevant for many urban management stakeholders. Feedback from the participants demonstrated reflexivity about social learning and a renewed sense of community built around generating reliable and useful data. We conclude that citizen science holds great potential to improve data provision for effective and sustainable city planning and greater social learning benefits overall

Locating social perspectives relevant to genomically-enhanced bioremediation strategies

Global Water Futures, Genomics Research for Optimization of constructed treatment Wetlands for water remediation, Genome Canad