The correlations between economic freedom and human capabilities (e.g., income, health, education, happiness) are robust and well-documented. Using panel data for US charitable donations from itemized tax returns and the Economic Freedom of North America (EFNA) Index, we examine the state-level...

This paper studies philanthropy by multinational enterprises (MNEs) during institutional disruptions—the sudden and unexpected, temporary, and systemic breakdowns in market-oriented institutions. The central argument is that, under institutional disruptions, MNEs aim to restore factors that...

We evaluate the impact of affiliation to Fair Trade on a sample of Chilean honey producers. Evidence from standard regressions and propensity score matching shows that affiliated farmers have higher productivity (income from honey per worked hour) than the control sample. Additional results on...

The issue of outsourcing jobs abroad stirs great emotion among Americans. Economic free-traders fiercely defend outsourcing as a positive for the U.S. economy while critics contend that corporate desire for low wages solely drives this practice. In this study I focus on a specific type of...

What is freedom? What is equality? In which way can greater equality increase freedom? Such are the main questions which this paper tries to answer. The problem of the choice between freedom and equality indeed raises the problem of the definition of these two objects. Once this definition is...

The purpose of this article is to examine workers’ rights under Islamic law. The Shari’ah-based financing, investing and related industries establish their businesses on claims that they comply with the Shari’ah’s mandates for commercial practices. They focus almost exclusively on the...

The living wage standard has emerged as a norm in global initiatives targeting supply chain labor practices. This is unexpected, because the living wage, if actually paid, could impose substantial new supply chain costs. There is also considerable disagreement on how to calculate a living wage...