In many countries, the authorities turn a blind eye to minimum wage laws that they have themselves passed. But if they are not going to enforce a minimum wage, why have one? Or if a high minimum wage is not going to be enforced one hundred percent, why not have a lower one in the first place?...

This paper develops a theory of employment guarantees when labor markets are imperfect and when the credibility of government policy announcements could be in doubt. The basic feature of an EGS is that any individual who satisfies a set of specified criteria is guaranteed public employment at a...

This paper is concerned with the institution of debt bondage and child labor employment in the context of an agrarian economy with overlapping generations. The model explores the principal-agent interaction between landlords and tenants, and identifies a set of reasons why households put...

Why do some countries establish their own national eco-labeling programs and some do not? In this paper, we provide both theoretical arguments and empirical evidence suggesting that the answer to this question can shed new light on three questions that have taken center-stage in the trade and...

This paper develops a positive theory of two-way capital flows -- the simultaneous outward flight of capital assets, and the inflow of foreign direct investment that acquires ownership of local production units. The basic model exploits insights from entrepreneurial decision making under...

Does labeling products "Child-Labor Free" provide a market-based solution to the pervasive employment of child labor? This paper explores the promise of social labeling in the context of its four oft-noted objectives: child labor employment, consumer information, welfare, and trade linkages,...

The paper examines the effectiveness of eco-labeling in providing a market-based solution to the under-consumption of eco-friendly products in developing and developed countries. The authors show that whether labeling is an effective device in solving the problem of asymmetric information...