Alternative Trade Strategies and Employment - Plan of Research for Country Studies

This paper was originally prepared as part of the first stage of the research project, Alternative Trade Strategies and Employment. The project as a whole is focused upon identifying the relationships between alternative trade strategies -- export promotion and import substitution -- and growth in the demand for labor. The project has altogether three stages: (1) the preparatory stage, in which the theory underlying the relationship between trade strategy and employment was developed and a methodology for undertaking empirical research was formulated; (2) the second stage, in which project participants undertook the empirical research for individual countries and also for particular topics of special interest for the project as a whole, based upon the papers prepared in the first stage; and (3) a summing up, in which the results of the individual studies are analyzed in order to ascertain what insights into the trade-employment relation seem generally applicable. At the present time, the second stage of the project is nearing completion. This paper constituted one part of the first stage of the project: it spells out much of the basic methodology that underlies the individual country studies.