The effect of trade liberalization on child labor

The question of how trade liberalization affects the employment of children in developing economies is at the core of the debate on globalization. Trade theory predicts that an increase in the price of an exported good could either increase or decrease child labor depending on the magnitudes of the substitution and income effects. In this paper, we study the relationship between changes in the relative price of an exported commodity and child labor using household-level data from within a poor country. In particular, we relate child labor to regional and intertemporal variation in the real price of rice surrounding national and international rice market integration in Vietnam. We find that higher rice prices are associated with declines in child labor. Income effects play an important role in this relationship. Rice price increases are associated with the largest declines in child labor in households that are large net producers of rice. These findings show that greater market integration can be associated with less child labor. Moreover, our results suggest that the use of punitive trade sanctions on exports from developing countries to eradicate child labor is unlikely to yield the desired outcome.     

International trade and child labor: Cross-country evidence

We explore the relationship between exposure to trade (as measured by openness) and child labor in a cross-country setting. Our methodology accounts for the fact that trade flows are endogenous to child labor (and labor standards more generally) by examining the relationship between child labor and variation in trade based on geography. We find that countries that trade more have less child labor. At the cross-country means, the data suggest an openness elasticity of child labor of − 0.7. For low-income countries, the elasticity of child labor with respect to trade with high-income countries is − 0.9. However, these relationships appear to be largely attributable to the positive association between trade and income. We consistently find a small and statistically insignificant association between openness and child labor when we control for cross-country income differences in the full sample, when we split the sample into different country groups, consider only trade between high- and low-income countries, or focus on exports of unskilled-labor intensive products from low-income countries. Thus, the cross-country data do not substantiate assertions that trade per se plays a significant role in perpetuating the high levels of child labor that pervade low-income countries.     

Effects of Trade Barrier Perception on International Services Trade

Abstract

While the United States is the world's largest exporter of business services, barriers erected by foreign governments seem to have severely depressed the penetration of insurance services in some of the world's largest markets.

Previous studies of the effects of barriers have concentrated on exporters of goods rather than services. Some of these studies conclude that foreign government restrictions are a major concern for exporters while others find that exporters perceive these barriers as less important.

The present study focuses on the effect of executives perceptions of trade barriers on their actions. Those who chose not to enter particular markets did not perceive these markets as more difficult to enter than all respondents did. Managers planned and took the most actions in the market perceived to be the least difficult to enter but results for other countries did not correlate with the perception of entry difficulty.     

Relationship Strategies for Market Entry

Abstract

With the fall of Communism, many New Zealand exporters joined the initial euphoria of the business community and took steps to re-establish trade with Eastern Europe. Despite some initial problems, most exporters are now establishing themselves in these markets. This paper examines the strategy of two large New Zealand firms and argues that forming a relationship with Eastern European traders is context driven. It is further argued that relationship-marketing models more accurately capture the trading realities of market entry in Eastern Europe. Based on the case studies, a series of propositions are developed examining the role of uncertainty in market entry, the formation of alliances and     

Why labor income shares seem to be constant?

Abstract

The common assumptions that labor income share does not change over time or across countries and that factor income shares are equal to the elasticity of output with respect to factors have had important implications for economic theory. However, there are several theoretical reasons for why the elasticity of output with respect to reproducible factors should be correlated with the stage of development. In particular, the behavior of international trade and capital flows and the existence of factor saving innovations imply such a correlation. If this correlation exists and if factor income shares are equal to the elasticity of output with respect to factors then the labor income share must be negatively correlated with the stage of development. The existence of a labor intensive sector that produces non-tradable goods would explain why labor income share has no correlation with income per capita.     

An Explanation of the International Variation in the Prevalence of Child Labour

It is hypothesized that the institutional acceptability of child labor will be more prevalent when the other members of a society gain from its use. Therefore, the cross‐country variation in the prevalence of child labor depends on the degree to which child labor affects the welfare of the remaining members of a society. It is demonstrated theoretically that the non‐child‐labor factors gain from child labor when the economy is closed. As an economy becomes more open to international trade, those gains diminish and even turn negative as the size of the economy increases. Child labor will not exist in capital abundant countries since, in them, child labor makes the non‐child‐labor factors worse off. It is shown empirically that the cross‐country prevalence of child labor falls with increases in a nation's per capita income, its openness to trade, and its economic size. It is argued that trade sanctions, as a remedy for child labor, may be counter‐productive since an open economy reduces the benefits of child labor to the other members of a society, and thereby reduces the society's incentive to allow child labor. The model also demonstrates that the economic changes brought on by democracy undermine the practice of child labor.     

The ‘amelioration’ of child labor, ‘a modest proposal’

More than 317 million children between the age of 5 and 17 are working in the world. Child labor is a persistent phenomenon, even though its incidence has subsided with economic development. In this paper, we conduct a panel study of 101 countries from 1980 to 2004 where child labor is proxied by the labor force participation of children aged 10–14. We look at the relationships between child labor and investments in human capital, foreign direct investments, countries’ openness to trade, and credit market constraints. We depart from the contributions of cross-country studies by employing a fixed effects instrumental variable (FE-IV) panel data model by employing a fixed effects instrumental variable (FE-IV) panel data model to account for unobserved heterogeneity and endogeneity of child labor and individual country-specific effects. We find support for the conclusions of the above-mentioned studies: countries that trade more and have a higher stock of foreign direct investment have less child labor. More generally, we find that trade openness, investments in human capital, and financial development are associated with a reduction of child labor. Child labor persists but tailored policies on trade, investment, and financial reform can lessen child labor along with economic growth, improvements in health, and rising standards of living.     

Using survey data to assess the distributional effects of trade policy

This paper develops a method to estimate the general equilibrium distributional effects of trade policies using household survey data. Trade reforms cause the domestic prices of traded goods to change and this, in turn, triggers a series of general equilibrium effects. Among these, I estimate the impacts of trade on the prices of traded goods, non-traded goods, and wages. By combining the estimates of the consumption impacts and the labor income impacts, I am able to assess how trade policies affect households across the entire range of the income distribution. An application of the procedure to the study of the distributional effects of Mercosur shows that the average poor and middle-income family in Argentina has benefited from the trade agreement.     

国际产品内贸易对中国收入分配的效应研究——基于中国工业行业数据的经验分析

采用中国35个工业行业的面板数据,检验国际产品内贸易对中国行业内部熟练劳动力和非熟练劳动力收入分配的效应。研究表明:现阶段,与技术进步相比,国际产品内贸易并不是造成中国收入差距拉大的重要影响因素;同时,由于中国熟练劳动力要素禀赋的相对缺乏,国际产品内贸易发生的行业要素密集度不同,对收入分配的影响也不同,其中劳动密集型和资本密集型行业内不同性质劳动者的收入差距会缩小,而技术密集型及兼具资本密集型和技术密集型的行业内收入差距则会拉大。     

Product specialization in international trade: A further investigation

In an influential paper, Schott [Schott. Peter K. (2004). “Across-product versus within-product specialization in international trade.” Quarterly Journal of Economics, 119 (2): 647–678] makes two empirical observations about U.S. imports. (1) The United States is increasingly sourcing the same product (however narrowly defined) from both developed and developing countries. That is, ‘across-product specialization’ has been decreasing. (2) The unit values of these multiple-sourced products are positively and significantly correlated with the capital and skill abundance of exporters and with the capital–labor ratios used by exporters. That is, endowments-driven ‘within-product specialization’ has been increasing. We show that both these observations extend to the imports of Brazil, India and Japan. However, our main finding is that observation (1) is largely driven by two factors. First, China is the dominant low-wage exporter of multiple-sourced products. Second, the most developed countries remain the primary exporters of multiple-sourced products. The U.S. case is the most extreme of our four importers: When China is deleted from the U.S. import data there is no trend in across-product specialization and rich exporters are increasing their trade share of multiple-sourced products. Since deleting China has no theoretical justification, these results must be viewed not as a contradiction of Schott's work but as a way of deepening our understanding of his empirical results.     

Timing of trade liberalization

Abstract

This paper studies the effects of trade liberalization on growth and long-run global income inequality using a two-country model of human capital accumulation by credit-constrained households. I show that the timing of trade liberalization is a crucial determinant of its effects on growth. Moreover, I show that the size of the long-run income gap between the two countries depends on the difference in domestic income inequality when they open up to trade. Based on these results, I analyze the effects of redistributive policy within a country. I show that redistribution in one country may increase income per capita of its trading partner if it is undertaken in a steady state, while the opposite is true if the policy is undertaken during transition.     

Pro-poor trade policy in Sub-Saharan Africa

This paper examines the presence of a pro-poor bias in the existing structure of protection of six Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Côte d'Ivoire, Ethiopia, Gambia, and Madagascar. We build on a simple agricultural household production model and we propose an extension to include adjustments in labor income. Our approach, which can be implemented without repeated cross-sections of household level data, suits well the data constraints in SSA. It also allows us to capture the heterogeneity in trade protection at the tariff line level. The pro-poor bias indicators suggest that SSA's trade policies tend to be biased in favor of poor households, as these policies redistribute income from rich to poor households. This is because protection increases the agricultural prices of goods that are sold by African households and this effect dominates both the impacts of higher consumption prices and the strong Stolper–Samuelson effects that benefit skilled over unskilled workers.     

Subsidies for FDI: Implications from a model with heterogeneous firms

This paper analyzes the welfare effects of subsidies to attract multinational corporations when firms are heterogeneous in their productivity levels. I show that the use of a small subsidy raises welfare in the FDI host country, with the consumption gains from attracting more multinationals exceeding the direct cost of funding the subsidy program through a tax on labor income. This welfare gain stems from a selection effect, whereby the subsidy induces only the most productive exporters to switch to servicing the host's market via FDI. I further show that for the same total subsidy bill, a subsidy to variable costs delivers a larger welfare gain than a subsidy to the fixed cost of conducting FDI, since a variable cost subsidy also raises the inefficiently low output levels stemming from each firm's markup pricing power.     

Trade, demand spillovers, and industrialization: The emerging global middle class in perspective

In this paper, we investigate international demand spillovers brought about by a global middle class and their impact on trade patterns and industrialization. We propose a multi-industry and two-country trade model featuring demand complementarities propagating increasing returns across industries and national boundaries. We show how the international extent of demand spillovers depends upon asymmetries in domestic income distribution, labor efficiency, and labor force size; that is, on the global distribution of real income.     

Welfare implications of trade liberalization and fiscal reform: A quantitative experiment

This paper studies the welfare implications of revenue-neutral trade liberalization and fiscal reform programs for developing economies using a multi-sector dynamic general equilibrium model of a small open economy. We analyze how different combinations of tariffs – on imported consumption goods, intermediate inputs, and capital goods – and taxes – on consumption, labor income and capital income – affect the transitional and long-run welfare. We report three main findings. First, trade liberalization programs financed by consumption and labor income taxes tend to result in substantial welfare gains, but financing the lost tariff revenue through capital income taxes can have an adverse impact on welfare. Second, a significant fraction of welfare changes is due to transitional effects stemming from the allocation of resources in response to changes in tariffs and taxes. Third, trade liberalization and fiscal reform programs often translate into much larger welfare gains in countries that are more open to international financial markets.     

Trade,demand spillovers,and industrialization: The emerging global middle class in perspective

In this paper, we investigate international demand spillovers brought about by a global middle class and their impact on trade patterns and industrialization. We propose a multi-industry and two-country trade model featuring demand complementarities propagating increasing returns across industries and national boundaries. We show how the international extent of demand spillovers depends upon asymmetries in domestic income distribution, labor efficiency, and labor force size; that is, on the global distribution of real income.     

Trade structure and economic growth

Abstract

How do the number of trade partners and the concentration of trade among partners affect the economic growth of a country? We refer to these characteristics as the structure of trade, and explore this question empirically in this study. We find that the structure of trade, independently of the level of trade itself, has an important effect on the rate of economic growth. The results of the study suggest that the number of trading partners is positively correlated with growth across all countries, and this effect is more pronounced for rich countries. Trade concentration is positively correlated with growth for all countries, and the effect is concentrated in poor countries. Previous work has overlooked these characteristics of trade, although we find them to be quite relevant and that they could lead to new ways of understanding the trade – growth relationship.     

Assessing the Impact of Rice Import Quota Policy on the Malaysian Rice Sector

ABSTRACT

After the food crisis in 2008, the Malaysian government reintroduced their efforts to reach rice self-sufficiency and to stabilize domestic prices by using a rice import quota of 700,000 tons per year. Though with the emergence of trade liberalization and regional agreements, Malaysian government interventions should be limited. Therefore, this article attempts to assess the impact of removing the rice import quota on the rice sector in Malaysia using a system dynamics model. The simulated results showed that due to developing rice-based industry in Malaysia and its effects on the rice market situation, the rice import quota might have a negative impact on increasing farmers’ income, more affordable prices for consumers, and diversification of food in Malaysia.     

A profile of UK exporting companies—an empirical study

The export marketing literature in the UK has tended to focus on successful exporting companies, whilst much of the key literature is based on experience of exporters in the USA and Canada. This paper reports on a study of UK manufacturing exporters. It provides a profile of the UK exporter together with evidence on the methods used by manufacturers to find and select an overseas representative. The results also show that most manufacturers are satisfied with their relationships with overseas agents and distributors, although relationships with some agents and distributors were clearly difficult.     

国际贸易、技术变动对我国工业部门劳动收入份额的影响

文章较为系统地分析了国际贸易、技术进步等因素对中国工业部门劳动收入份额的影响。研究显示在1999～2009年期间,我国工业部门的劳动收入份额总体上呈现出缓慢下降的趋势,工业部门劳动收入份额变动主要是行业内部劳动力再配置的结果;利用中国工业部门21个细分行业的面板数据,通过系统广义矩方法对国际贸易、技术变革对行业劳动收入份额的影响进行计量分析表明,国际贸易具有较为显著的提高我国工业部门行业劳动份额的效应,而技术进步则存在显著降低工业行业劳动份额的效应,这与我国工业部门在研究期内的技术进步具有劳动节约型特征有关。