Child labor, family income, and the Uruguay Round

Conclusion We are no longer limited to qualitative discussions of the merits of a social clause in the GATT against child labor. Future debates should be in quantitative terms. Child labor can contribute up to 25 percent of family income-contributions that the ILO regards as critical to their survival. Child laborers have few alternatives if they lose their jobs as a result of a social clause on labor standards. It is reasonably clear that child labor falls away quickly with economic development. However, multilateral trade agreements against child labor such as those proposed for inclusion in the WTO (and ILO) do not promote economic development. The contrary is more likely to be the case: they may reduce the range of alternatives available to children and their parents as producers, consumers, and breadwinners in developing countries.     

Labour Standards and the 'Race to the Bottom': Rethinking Globalization and Workers' Rights from Developmental and Solidaristic Perspectives

There is a protracted stalemate between rich (the North) andpoor (the South) countries over the question of minimum labourstandards in developing economies. This paper is a sequel toSingh and Zammit (2000). It considers afresh key issues in thecontroversy. While fully recognizing the moral, political, andphilosophical dimensions of this complex issue, the paper concentrateson the central economic question of the ‘race to the bottom’.It emphasizes the difficulties of establishing labour standardsin the vast informal sectors in developing countries and suggeststhat the ILO conventions 87 and 98 should be amended to reflectproperly these concerns. It also argues that ILO core conventionsshould be broadened to include the right to a decent living.The overall conclusion is that labour standards are importantindicators of economic development, but their promotion is bestachieved in a non-coercive and supportive international environmentsuch as that provided by the ILO.     

COVID-19 and the intentions to migrate from developing countries: Evidence from online search activities in Southeast Asia

COVID-19 has had an enormous effect on labor markets globally. Economic restrictions, notably strict border controls and lockdowns, have led many workers to lose their jobs and forced many migrants to return to their homes or change their migration plans. While adverse effects on labor mobility are expected, variations in the prevalence of COVID-19 and governmental responses to the pandemic across countries are likely to influence workers’ intentions to migrate in different ways. To understand the effects of pandemics on the international labor supply, we explore the impact of COVID-19 and the various economic restriction policies on job search behavior by considering cases from Southeast Asian countries using the difference-in-differences (DID) approach with data from Google Trends Index (GTI). We find that the search volume of queries related to the labor market dramatically increased over time following the outbreak of COVID-19. However, we do not observe any positive impact on the search volume related to emigration, regardless of the infection control measures in the host countries. Our results imply that the job insecurity increases after the imposition of lockdown in the respective countries. On the other hand, the expectation to migrate outside of the country, which requires preparation time and incurs high costs, does not seem to have increased in developing countries.     

Children’s Work in Nigeria: Exploring the Implications of Gender, Urban–Rural Residence, and Household Socioeconomic Status

Child labor in developing countries continues to be a topic of policy and academic concern, particularly in Africa where there are more working children than in any other region. Scholarly attention has been drawn in part to gender, place of residence, and socioeconomic status as factors that shape the type of work that children perform and whether it impacts educational attainment. I explore these issues in the context of Nigeria through analysis of data from the 2004 Nigeria Demographic and Health Survey EdData Survey. A series of logistic regression models of child labor confirm the existence of gender and, especially, socioeconomic disparities in children??s work. The data also indicate that girls and rural children face a double risk of working if they belong to poor households. A policy implication is that poverty alleviation programs??such as Mexico??s Oportunidades program (the erstwhile PROGRESA)??may help to reduce those forms of child labor that interfere with schooling. That this program has been found to more beneficial for girls suggests it may be particularly appropriate for Nigeria where gender disparities persist.     

Labor Market Integration and Its Effect on Child Labor

This note demonstrates that when developing countries remove barriers to migration and integrate their labor markets, children may be driven out of schools and into informal or paid employment in the comparatively rich countries. In industrialized countries, the same mechanism might drive families into social security or government-subsidized jobs.     

过度竞争与贫困化增长——基于同质产品的产业内贸易的研究

随着越来越多的发展中国家按照各自的比较优势参与国际分工,发展中国家相对于发达国家的贸易条件持续恶化,进而陷入贫困化增长。本文构建了一个研究贫困化增长问题的分析框架,从过度竞争角度分析了贫困化增长的原因,并从理论上予以证明。本文研究结果表明,当一国某一部门的企业数量过多时,将会导致该国福利恶化。因此,一个国家尤其是发展中国家,在选择按比较优势参与国际分工时,一定要注意产品结构的差异化,避免低端的过度重复建设,谨防陷入贫困化增长。     

服务外包:金融危机下发展中国家的机遇与挑战

服务外包作为服务业国际分工格局形成和产业结构国际间传导的重要渠道,其发展对于发展中国家服务业能否进入全球分工体系具有重要意义。2008年全球金融危机的出现给服务外包带来挑战的同时,更使服务外包可能面临行业洗牌而给发展中国家提供了新的发展机遇。原处服务外包相对劣势的我国能否抓住这次契机,成为影响我国今后服务外包发展的新课题。     

Global Retail Chains and Poor Farmers: Evidence from Madagascar

Global retail companies (“supermarkets”) have an increasing influence on developing countries, through foreign investments and/or through the imposition of their private standards. The impact on developing countries and poverty is often assessed as negative. In this paper we show the opposite, based on an analysis of primary data collected to measure the impact of supermarkets on small contract farmers in Madagascar, one of the poorest countries in the world. Almost 10,000 farmers in the Highlands of Madagascar produce vegetables for supermarkets in Europe. In this global supply chain, small farmers’ micro-contracts are combined with intensive farm assistance and supervision programs to fulfill complex quality requirements and phyto-sanitary standards of supermarkets. Small farmers that participate in these contracts have higher welfare, more income stability and shorter lean periods. We also find significant effects on improved technology adoption, better resource management and spillovers on the productivity of the staple crop rice. The small but emerging modern retail sector in Madagascar does not (yet) deliver these benefits as they do not (yet) request the same high standards for their supplies.     

国际贸易中劳工标准之争的博弈分析及中国对策

劳工标准问题产生已久,在GATT和WTO多边体制中的历史也可以说是源远流长,但一直没有达到当前这么高的重视程度。近年来,发达国家以关注人权为理由,反复提出劳工标准问题,并极力把劳工标准与国际贸易挂钩。本文在研究国际贸易中劳工标准争端的发展历程的基础上,分析了发达国家与发展中国家对此问题的不同立场,并进一步分析了两种立场博弈可能产生的结果,最后阐述了我国在劳工标准问题上的原则以及对策。     

REMITTANCES AND AGGREGATE LABOR SUPPLY: EVIDENCE FROM SIXTY‐SIX DEVELOPING NATIONS

Do remittances reduce labor supply in recipient economies? This paper addresses this question with aggregate level data for a panel of sixty‐six developing countries from the Middle East and Africa, Asia and the Pacific, and Latin America and the Caribbean over the period 1985 to 2005. The results exhibit a positive and significant relationship between remittances and aggregate labor supply. The effect is clearly driven by men in each of the three regions. Three potential explanations are put forward to explain these empirical findings: (1) non‐migrating household members are likely to increase their labor supply in order to defray migration‐related expenses; (2) neighboring households increase their labor supply to help family members migrate after they become more aware of the benefits of remittances; and (3) remittances overcome credit constraints, thus generating employment.     

Behind the heterogeneous trade effects of standards: Multi-sector evidence from China

Standards can influence trades via multiple channels, such as signaling effects, common language effects, and compliance costs. We argue that the impacting channels of standards differ across sectors, which originates from diverse sector features and results in heterogeneous trade effects of standards. In this paper, we focus on the trade effects of standards in developing countries as exporters. Gravity models are applied on the panel data of China’s bilateral trades in 33 sectors from 2002 to 2016. We examine the moderating role of sector features, including the intensity of capital, labor, and technology, on the trade effects of standards. We find that trade-promoting effects of standards are stronger in high-capital sectors and weaker in high-labor sectors. In high-tech sectors, the trade-promoting effects are stronger for internationally harmonized standards while weaker for national standards. Our findings provide managerial implications on standardization policies for China and other developing countries. For instance, international harmonization of standards should be highlighted in high-tech sectors.     

Labeling and the Realization of Cultural Values

Labeling plays a role of increasing significance as a technique to reveal, with adequate certification, the content of a product in both a physical and a moral sense by reporting, say, on labor conditions, environmental sustainability or animal friendliness of the product chain. Whereas voluntary labeling leaves all initiative to the private sector, under mandatory labeling the state imposes an obligation to label, often in conjunction with the requirement to meet official standards. Besides aiming to ensure product safety, standards derive from paternalistic motives and seek to mitigate external effects of consumption, to manage catastrophic risks, to improve the representation of the poor, and to preserve the cultural heritage. Nowadays, they are also used in the fight against crime and terrorism and for the protection of intellectual property rights. Standard-based labeling is a source of recurrent conflict because it serves both to protect the own culture and to export it. Developed countries fear that discretionary policies at a national level would harm their exports. They call for international harmonization of the standards but developing countries are reluctant to participate, because their exports might suffer, while antiglobalists denounce it as an instrument of domination by the North. The paper reviews the arguments on both sides. It adopts a WTO perspective in proposing that for non-product standards, international harmonization, rather than being attached to products, should apply to territories, be organized by subject and delegated to specialized international agencies that operate under the mandate of separate international treaties. But we differ from the WTO position when we argue first, that product as well as non-product standards should be modulated so as to reflect the cultural diversity across countries and their different stages of development, and second, that it should be permitted that countries refusing to sign a treaty should face import restrictions by signatories.     

Strategic joint ventures with developing country in battles for technical standards

As technical standards become important in the network industry based on high technologies, advanced countries are actively seeking coalition for compatibility with developing countries, to win in the competition for technical standards. However, developing countries, in comparison with advanced countries, have a little interest in the international compatibility and a slow demand growth of network products. This paper examines what conditions are needed, under this constraint, to attract developing countries' early support for technical standards, and to design a sequential joint venture which is more Pareto-efficient than independent technology development.     

Technical change and labor absorption in Asian agriculture: Some emerging trends

Increased labor absorption in agriculture has been widely held to be the key to solving unemployment problems in developing Asia, following the historical experience of East Asian countries. The new seed-fertilizer technology, interacting with expansion of irrigation and cropping intensity, initially increased labor absorption in wheat and rice production. However, evidence from recent village studies indicates that new labor-saving chemical and mechanical innovations originating in the developed countries are being rapidly adopted by farmers of the developing countries owing to their private cost-reducing characteristics. This international transfer of technology contributes to increased productivity, but results in net reductions of agricultural labor use. Recognition of the declining capacity of the agricultural sector for labor absorption indicates the need to seek solutions to unemployment problems in the off-farm sector.     

国际劳工标准的贸易效应分析

随着贸易自由化的发展，传统的关税壁垒逐渐下降，然而劳工标准等社会壁垒问题随之产生，劳工标准与贸易交织在一起，其与贸易的联系具有必然性，二者的挂钩对贸易将产生不容忽视的影响。正因为如此，国际劳工标准正日益受到多角度的关注，并引发发达国家与发展中国家之间的争论。文章将主要就劳工标准的贸易效应加以具体分析。     

Population pressures and agricultural development in developing countries: A conceptual framework and recent evidence

The purpose of this paper are (a) to develop a more comprehensive conceptual approach for investigating the responses to increases in rural population density in developing countries; and (b) to present recent empirical evidence illustrating these responses. The variety of responses is empirically illustrated for broad regions in developing countries, including increases in arable land, land intensification, out-migration, and fertility decline, though the focus is on the economic changes. Viewing the economic changes both across countries and over time suggests wide scope for further increases in agricultural output, even with existing technology. Nevertheless, prospects for raising living standards in the developing countries are better with slower rates of population growth.     

中加双边贸易产品国际竞争力分析与比较

入世以来,中加双边贸易发展迅速,四年中双边贸易额增加1.6倍。中加双边贸易规模扩大潜力何在?本文对此进行了探讨。文内分别运用中加两方的统计数字,从“类”与“章”两个层次,对2002~2005年的贸易产品逐一进行贸易竞争力指数(TC)的测算。结论是两国间的国际分工主要建立在资源(要素)禀赋的基础上,主要体现的是作为资源大国的加拿大与作为劳动力资源丰富的中国之间的分工格局,加拿大作为技术大国的优势在双边贸易中并未充分体现。中加经贸规模要扩大,应重视发挥各自优势,扩展产业内的贸易分工,增加投资,扩大技术贸易与技术合作。     

培养专业化劳动力比较优势 破除贸易保护主义

经济全球化是发达国家调整产业结构的需要,始于次贷危机的全球金融危机重创了发达国家的经济,也因此迟滞了经济全球化的进程,贸易保护主义重新抬头。本文以劳动价值论为出发点,分析了专业化高端劳动力在各国的动态比较优势和经济增长中的核心地位及演变规律,指出后发国家有可能依靠专业化高端劳动力比较优势超越先发国家率先进行产业结构升级,从而主导世界贸易政策。因此,我国应该加强人才培养、自主研发和产品的技术含量,以产业升级促贸易发展。     

Free trade and income redistribution in some developing and newly industrialized countries

A competitive general equilibrium model of production is specified and the long-run comparative static elasticities of changing prices on factor prices are examined in eight developing and newly industrialized countries. Unskilled labor in these developing countries stands to gain from a program of global free trade characterized by increased manufacturing exports and falling prices of imported business services, while capital owners and skilled labor lose. Results are contrasted with developed countries, the United States in particular, where unskilled labor will lose while capital and skilled labor enjoy gains with global free trade.     

Marginalization Revisited: Women's Market Work and Pay,and Economic Development

A substantial literature argues that women have been left out of economic development, but evidence from labor force surveys in middle-income developing countries suggests otherwise. Women's participation rates in the market labor force have been increasing, women have shifted into white-collar occupations, and certain previously male-dominated occupations have become female-dominated (clerical work in Asia, for example). Women's relative pay has risen somewhat faster in Asia and Latin America than occurred during industrialization in the United States. Although inequalities remain, there is no evidence that women on average are being marginalized.