IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jeborg/v71y2009i2p259-272.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Labor standards, labor-management bargaining and international rivalry

Author

Listed:
  • Hur, Jung
  • Zhao, Laixun

Abstract

Using the labor union's bargaining power as an indication of government policy on labor standards issues, we analyze the competition between a domestic (North) firm and a foreign (South) firm, and their relationship with optimal labor standards (LS). First, we show that the optimal level of LS is higher when labor unions are employment-oriented than when they are not. Second, it is higher under free trade than under the optimal tariff system if labor unions are employment-oriented. Third, 'a race to the bottom' of LS occurs in the case of wage-oriented unions. Fourth, the North's imposing a tariff to force the Southern government to raise its LS is effective only if the Southern union is wage-oriented. In order to raise Southern LS, both countries may need some deeper form of economic integration, if the North does not want to abandon its free trade system.

Suggested Citation

  • Hur, Jung & Zhao, Laixun, 2009. "Labor standards, labor-management bargaining and international rivalry," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 71(2), pages 259-272, August.
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:jeborg:v:71:y:2009:i:2:p:259-272
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167-2681(09)00107-3
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Kaushik Basu, 1999. "Child Labor: Cause, Consequence, and Cure, with Remarks on International Labor Standards," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 37(3), pages 1083-1119, September.
    2. Nancy H. Chau & Ravi Kanbur, 2006. "The Race to the Bottom, from the Bottom," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 73(290), pages 193-228, May.
    3. Kyle Bagwell & Robert W. Staiger, 2001. "The WTO as a Mechanism for Securing Market Access Property Rights: Implications for Global Labor and Environmental Issues," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 15(3), pages 69-88, Summer.
    4. Kyle Bagwell & Robert W. Staiger, 2001. "Domestic Policies, National Sovereignty, and International Economic Institutions," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 116(2), pages 519-562.
    5. Jonathan Eaton & Gene M. Grossman, 1986. "Optimal Trade and Industrial Policy Under Oligopoly," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 101(2), pages 383-406.
    6. Mezzetti, Claudio & Dinopoulos, Elias, 1991. "Domestic unionization and import competition," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 31(1-2), pages 79-100, August.
    7. Clask, A. & Oswald, A., 1992. "Trade Union Utility Functions: A survey of Union Leaders' Views," Economics Series Working Papers 99132, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    8. Neumayer, Eric & Soysa, Indra de, 2006. "Globalization and the Right to Free Association and Collective Bargaining: An Empirical Analysis," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 34(1), pages 31-49, January.
    9. Kaushik Basu, 1999. "International Labor Standards and Child Labor," Challenge, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 42(5), pages 80-93, September.
    10. Zhao, Laixun, 2001. "Unionization, vertical markets, and the outsourcing of multinationals," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 55(1), pages 187-202, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Zhiqi Chen & Afshan Dar‐Brodeur, 2020. "Trade and labour standards: Will there be a race to the bottom?," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 53(3), pages 916-948, August.
    2. Lee, Ki-Dong & Lee, Woohyung, 2016. "Exports versus export-platform FDI with endogenous wage determination," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 54(C), pages 479-489.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Laixun Zhao, 2009. "International Labour Standards and North–South Competition," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 32(7), pages 1091-1114, July.
    2. Drusilla K. Brown, 2001. "Labor Standards: Where Do They Belong on the International Trade Agenda?," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 15(3), pages 89-112, Summer.
    3. Dimova, Ralitza, 2021. "The Political Economy of Child Labor," GLO Discussion Paper Series 816, Global Labor Organization (GLO).
    4. Laixun Zhao, 2006. "International Labor Standards and Southern Competition," Discussion Paper Series 193, Research Institute for Economics & Business Administration, Kobe University.
    5. Hefeker, Carsten & Wunner, Norbert, 2002. "The producer interest in foreign labor standards," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 18(3), pages 429-447, September.
    6. Basu, Kaushik & Das, Sanghamitra & Dutta, Bhaskar, 2010. "Child labor and household wealth: Theory and empirical evidence of an inverted-U," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 91(1), pages 8-14, January.
    7. Naschold, Felix, 2012. "“The Poor Stay Poor”: Household Asset Poverty Traps in Rural Semi-Arid India," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 40(10), pages 2033-2043.
    8. Matthias Doepke, "undated". "Origins and Consequences of Child Labor Restrictions: A Macroeconomic Perspective," UCLA Economics Online Papers 413, UCLA Department of Economics.
    9. Carol Ann Rogers & Kenneth A. Swinnerton, 2008. "A theory of exploitative child labor," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 60(1), pages 20-41, January.
    10. Menon, Nidhiya & Rodgers, Yana van der Meulen, 2018. "Child labor and the minimum wage: Evidence from India," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 46(2), pages 480-494.
    11. Gersbach, Hans & Siemers, Lars-H. R., 2010. "Land Reforms And Economic Development," Macroeconomic Dynamics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 14(4), pages 527-547, September.
    12. Jihye Kim & Wendy Olsen & Arkadiusz Wiśniowski, 2020. "A Bayesian Estimation of Child Labour in India," Child Indicators Research, Springer;The International Society of Child Indicators (ISCI), vol. 13(6), pages 1975-2001, December.
    13. Sundaram, Aparna & Vanneman, Reeve, 2008. "Gender Differentials in Literacy in India: The Intriguing Relationship with Women's Labor Force Participation," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 36(1), pages 128-143, January.
    14. Christopher B. Barrett, 2005. "Rural poverty dynamics: development policy implications," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 32(s1), pages 45-60, January.
    15. Fabre, Alice & Pallage, Stéphane, 2015. "Child labor, idiosyncratic shocks, and social policy," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 45(C), pages 394-411.
    16. Basu, Kaushik, 2003. "Policy Dilemmas for Controlling Child Labor," Working Papers 03-11, Cornell University, Center for Analytic Economics.
    17. Klymak, Margaryta, 2023. "The trade effects of information provision about forced and child labor," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 167(C).
    18. Jean-Pierre Lachaud, 2007. "Scolarisation et travail des enfants : Un modèle économétrique à régimes endogènes appliqué à Madagascar - 2001-2005," Documents de travail 134, Groupe d'Economie du Développement de l'Université Montesquieu Bordeaux IV.
    19. Basu, Kaushik & Narayan, Ambar & Ravallion, Martin, 1999. "Is knowledge shared within households?," Policy Research Working Paper Series 2261, The World Bank.
    20. Grieben, Wolf-Heimo & Şener, Fuat, 2017. "Wage bargaining, trade and growth," Research in Economics, Elsevier, vol. 71(3), pages 564-587.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:jeborg:v:71:y:2009:i:2:p:259-272. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/jebo .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.