The Race To the Bottom, From the Bottom

Ravi Kanbur and Nancy Chau

No 2687, CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers

Abstract: The dominant perspective in discussions of labour and environmental standards and globalization is that of North-South competition and its impact on Northern standards. This Paper presents an alternative perspective, that of South-South competition to export to the North, and its impact on Southern standards. It develops a simple model of Southern competition on standards, which can begin to provide insights into some key questions. A Southern race to the bottom is possible but not inevitable. It depends intricately on the Northern demand curve, the size of big exporters relative to each other, and the relative size of the competitive fringe of small exporters ? a precise and complete characterization is developed in the Paper. The Paper also analyses the effect of Northern tariffs on Southern strategic competition in standards. It is shown that Northern trade protectionism undermines Southern standards.

Keywords: Labour and environmental standards; Strategic complementarity and substitutability; Logconcavity and logconvexity; Race to the bottom; Trade restrictions (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F16 J38 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2001-02
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://cepr.org/publications/DP2687 (application/pdf)
CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org

Related works:
Journal Article: The Race to the Bottom, from the Bottom (2006)
Working Paper: The Race to the Bottom, From the Bottom (2000)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:2687

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
https://cepr.org/publications/DP2687

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers Centre for Economic Policy Research, 33 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DX.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().