The Trade Impacts of the Naming and Shaming of Forced and Child Labor

This paper investigates whether the provision of information regarding what foreign goods might be produced with child and forced labor affects imports to the United States. I use three different measures of information revelation: inclusion on the U.S. government's list of goods produced with child or forced labor, a media coverage index and an index composed from reports of the International Labor Organisation. Across all specifications I find no evidence that information provision decreased imports of these goods to the United States. The key policy implication of this finding is that public information strategies without more concrete measures will not act as a large disincentive for countries that export goods made with child and forced labor.