The main question guiding this study is whether international labor standards will benefit the poor, in particular, developing countries and the poor in those countries. We survey the theoretical literature on international labor standards, and give an overview of the analytical framework and...

This paper analyzes how a country's commitment to labor standards is affected by the relative international political power they possess. Powerful countries may be less committed to actual enforcement of certain labor standards since they are unlikely to face significant threats of international...

Several major trade agreements in recent years have included a provision that addresses labor standards. Other trade agreements that are now in the discussion stage are considering incorporating labor standards as an integral part of the final agreement. The goals of such agreements are noble -...

Various groups have been demanding that discussions of labor standards be included in all future trade negotiations. The press is full of stories of alleged exploitation of child labor and other employment abuses in developing countries and human rights groups have demanded that something be...

This paper unpacks the role of the domestic content of imports as a novel source of policy interdependence along the global supply chain. We show how a rise in local contents embodied in imports can skew national trade policy preferences, and pull upstream and downstream countries in asymmetric...

We ask how globalization affects a government's incentives to set labor standards for its workers. In a stylized equilibrium model of global value chains, we find two contrasting results. First, each country chooses stricter labor standards with globalization than it would under autarky, because...

As globalization gathered pace over the last four decades, workers’ rights advocates championed the use of trade rules and market access as leverage to encourage respect for labor standards, at home and abroad. The purpose of this chapter is to explore the strategies and politics of the actors...

The ratification of ILO Labour Standards Conventions is a key explanatory variable in the empirical literature linking labour standards to economic performance. The assumption is that ratification gives information about labour standards implemented in a country. This Paper investigates the...