A Theory of Exploitative Child Labor

Carol Ann Rogers and Kenneth Swinnerton ()
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Carol Ann Rogers: Georgetown University

Development and Comp Systems from EconWPA

Abstract: We develop a model of exploitative child labor with two key features: first, parents have imperfect information about whether employment opportunities available to their children are exploitative or not. Second, firms choose whether or not to exploit their child workers. In our model, a ban on exploitative child labor is desirable, because it resolves the problem of imperfect information faced by parents, and therefore leads to Pareto efficiency. We also find that a ban leads to an increase in the wages of child workers, and that firm profits, even for firms that do not exploit child workers, fall. Finally, a ban has ambiguous effects at the macroeconomic level: aggregate child employment and aggregate output can rise or fall.

Keywords: child labor; economic exploitation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D1 J2 J4 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dev, nep-lam and nep-ltv
Date: Written 2003-06-25
Note: Type of Document - ; pages: 28
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http://129.3.20.41/eps/dev/papers/0306/0306005.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: A Theory of Exploitative Child Labor (2005)
Working Paper: A Theory of Exploitative Child Labor
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