In recent years, there has been an astonishing proliferation of empirical work on child labor. An Econlit search of keywords "child labor" reveals a total of 6 peer reviewed journal articles between 1980 and 1990, 65 between 1990 and 2000, and 143 in the first five years of the present decade....

Regulation of the minimum age of employment is the dominant tool used to combat child labor globally. If enforced, these regulations can change the types of work in which children participate, but minimum age regulations are not a useful tool to promote education. Despite their nearly universal...

We explore the relationship between greater 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...