This paper provides some empirical evidence on issues raised by the global anti-sweatshop movement. We first consider the relationship between wage and employment growth, finding no consistent trade-off between them. We then measure the share of labor costs in the production of garments in the...

Over recent decades, there has been the substantial rise in the proportion of people engaged in what is termed informal employment, generating a broad trend toward "informalization" of labor market conditions in developing countries, even when economic growth is proceeding. We consider the...

The institutional structure of global commodity chains and cross-border production networks will have a profound impact on how the benefits of globalized production are distributed. This paper develops a model that combines the insights of earlier unequal exchange theorists and new work on...

This paper explores the institutional factors behind the crisis of capital accumulation in South Africa in the 1970s and 1980s. Because of its focus on institutional stability, the paper contributes to the literature on the existence of an apartheid social structure of accumulation in which...