There is a wide disparity of views on issues of international labor standards. Labor and social activists are concerned about the increased imports from countries in which labor standards are ostensibly not enforced at a sufficiently high level. They fear that these imports will be detrimental to wages and employment conditions in the industrialized importing countries and that workers in the developing countries will be exploited, their wages suppressed, and that they will be subjected to abusive work conditions. This paper explores these different views and the available options for addressing the issues involved. The paper begins with the definition and scope of labor standards and then turns to theoretical aspects of the economic effects of labor standards and a summarizes the empirical evidence on the effects on wages, trade, and foreign direct investment, and the role of interest groups. Global, regional, national/unilateral, and other arrangements for the monitoring and enforcement of labor standards are discussed and implications for policy presented
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Paper provided by Research Seminar in International Economics, University of Michigan in its series Working Papers with number
496.
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References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
Drusilla Brown & Alan Deardorff & Robert Stern, 1998.
"Trade and Labor Standards,"
Open Economies Review,
Springer, vol. 9(2), pages 171-194, April.
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Brown, K.D. & Deardorff, A.V. & Stern, R.M., 1997.
"Trade and Labor Standards,"
Working Papers
394, Research Seminar in International Economics, University of Michigan.