The objective of this paper is to investigate whether international rivalry will lead to a “race-to-the-bottom” (RTB) in labour standards. We derive the equilibrium levels of labour standards in an environment that is most conducive to a RTB, specifically the Brander and Spencer (1985) model...

Despite its exclusion from the Doha agenda, the issue of trade and labor standards remains an intensely discussed subject among economists, policymakers, international agencies and nongovernmental organizations. In the past few years, both World Trade Organization (WTO) and International Labor...

Using a gravity model, we examine whether labor standards are important determinants of bilateral export performance for EU-15 countries over the period 1988-2001. We assess the conventional wisdom that countries with low labor standards and less stringent regulations have performed better in...

The development of an appropriate regime for trade, investment and the movement of creative and professional workers in the cultural industries will be among the issues for negotiation at the WTO in 2002 and beyond. One proposal calls for a New Instrument on Cultural Diversity (NICD), an...