Documents trade 740 results

"The question of how trade governance is – and should be – linked to labour standards has long been debated among academics, policymakers, and activists (Servais, 1989; McCrudden and Davies, 2000; Barry and Reddy, 2006). Especially the insertion of labour-related requirements into the relevant trade instruments as a means to improve workers' rights in the global economy has been the subject of controversy (Alston, 1993; Bhagwati, 1995; Tsogas, 1999). While largely absent from the multilateral trading framework, such requirements have been included in numerous bilateral and regional trade agreements (ILO, 2013, 2016, 2019a; Corley-Coulibaly et al., 2023b) as well as unilateral trade instruments, such as trade preference schemes and import ban legislation (Tsogas, 2000; Addo, 2015; Velluti, 2020). Forced labour, a form of modern slavery, has been a key issue addressed by these instruments (Compa, 1993; Ehrenberg, 1995; Plouffe-Malette and Bisson, 2019) and, until recently, together with prison labour the only labour-related subject matter for which dedicated import ban legislation has been enacted (Bade, 2000; Fanou, 2023; Lopez and Alghazali, 2023).
This raises the question of which implications such forced labour-related clauses in trade instruments entail for addressing forced labour issues in contexts related to global value chains (GVCs). With trade in GVCs constituting 70 per cent of overall trade in 2020 (OECD, 2020), the regulation of trade can have important implications for GVC governance (Corley-Coulibaly et al., 2023). Trade instruments typically involve policy levers, including economic incentives and disincentives, that can impact actors involved in GVC governance, such as states, companies, and civil society actors (Aissi et al., 2018). However, little is known about the extent to which, and the conditions under which, they have contributed to tackling forced labour in GVCs in an effective manner, that is, in a way that tackles the underlying causes of forced labour and has enduring impact."

This work is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

"International trade has been cited as a source of widening wage inequality in industrial nations. Most previous empirical evidence supports this claim by showing an effect in which increasing exports tilt demand towards firms which export and employ a relatively large proportion of higher-skilled workers from the group of firms which do not export. We find that, in addition to this, there is also an effect whereby, among exporting firms, there is a significant wage premium for high-skilled workers and a wage discount for low-skilled workers. These estimates are based on a matched employer–employee data set of western German manufacturing firms over the period 1993–2007. Our estimates suggest that export activity can be associated with up to 30% of within and between skill group wage inequality."

"We show the effects of trade cost reduction in the presence of a domestic firm's strategic output allocation between formal in-house production and subcontracting to the informal sector. Considering a one-way trade, we show that trade cost reduction increases the in-house unionised wage, in-house employment, union utility, the formal–informal wage gap and consumer surplus, it reduces informal production and the profit of the domestic firm, and it creates an ambiguous effect on welfare. Whether trade cost reduction increases the income gap between the domestic producer and the labour union is ambiguous, and depends on the trade cost and the cost of subcontracting. Considering a two-way trade with symmetric segmented markets, we show that a symmetric trade cost reduction reduces the domestic unionised wage, domestic in-house employment, union utility, it increases informal production, consumer surplus and it creates ambiguous effects of the profits."

"Outsourcing Economics has a double meaning. First, it is a book about the economics of outsourcing. Second, it examines the way that economists have understood globalization as a pure market phenomenon, and as a result have 'outsourced' the explanation of world economic forces to other disciplines. Markets are embedded in a set of institutions - labor, government, corporate, civil society, and household - that mold the power asymmetries that influence the distribution of the gains from globalization. In this book, William Milberg and Deborah Winkler propose an institutional theory of trade and development starting with the growth of global value chains - international networks of production that have restructured the global economy and its governance over the past twenty-five years. They find that offshoring leads to greater economic insecurity in industrialized countries that lack institutions supporting workers. They also find that offshoring allows firms to reduce domestic investment and focus on finance and short-run stock movements. Economic development has become synonymous with 'upgrading' in global value chains, but this is not sufficient for improved wages or labor standards, raising obstacles to sustained economic development for many emerging economies."

"In its May 2005 the Group of Economic Policy Analysis (GEPA) discussed the issue of EU competitiveness and industrial location. At that meeting, a request was made for BEPA to prepare a report taking stock of the phenomena of delocalisation and outsourcing in particular and globalisation in general assessing their impact on the European economy and considering how potential challenges can be addressed.

This report - a draft of which was presented to the GEPA in September 2005 - is a response to this request. The report discusses EU trade patterns, reviews factors affecting industrial location decisions, reviews relevant evidence on globalisation and relocation and their impact in particular on employment and presents a set of policies aimed at improving the EU's competitiveness and its ability to address challenges emanating from these shocks."

"This report sets out a range of recommendations to further deepen the economic relationship between the EU and the US. The report argues that only through joint effortS can Europe and the United States reinvigorate economic growth and job creation, overcome the shortcomings of transatlantic capitalism and Ensure that their economic model prevails in the global economy. The report is the outcome of a project on New Atlantic Capitalism and is based on the discussions of a High-Level Group convened by demosEUROPA - Centre for European Strategy (Warsaw), the German Marshall Fund of the United States (Washington, D.C.), Notre Europe (Paris), Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (Berlin) and the European Policy Centre (Brussels), with the EPC represented by Fabian Zuleeg."