Could international labour rights play a role in US trade?

Christian Weller ()

Cambridge Journal of Economics, 2011, vol. 35, issue 1, 39-57

Abstract: During its last complete business cycle, from 2001 to 2007, the USA experienced unsustainably high trade deficits. Policymakers are considering a number of measures to avoid a recurrence of such large external imbalances. One such measure is the promotion of better labour rights around the world. Proponents argue that higher labour standards would boost US exports by increasing income growth abroad and reduce US imports by shrinking international price differences. Opponents of such a policy move argue that it is disguised protectionism that will impede trade and harm living standards in the USA and abroad. In this paper, I combine US trade data with data on international labour standards and other relevant economic variables to study any links between labour rights abroad and US trade. The results suggest that the USA would have benefited from more exports if there had been better worker rights around the world, but that labour rights would not have had any measurable impact on US imports. That is, the promotion of better worker rights around the world could contribute to smaller external imbalances without impeding international trade flows. Copyright The Author 2010. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Cambridge Political Economy Society. All rights reserved., Oxford University Press.

Date: 2011
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/cje/beq011 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
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:oup:cambje:v:35:y:2011:i:1:p:39-57

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://academic.oup.com/journals

Access Statistics for this article

Cambridge Journal of Economics is currently edited by Jacqui Lagrue

More articles in Cambridge Journal of Economics from Cambridge Political Economy Society Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP, UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().