Wages and Bottlenecks: Free Trade, Ethics, and Information: Reconciling International Trade with National Ethical Standards

Joshua Frank
Additional contact information
Joshua Frank: State University of New York at Cortland

A chapter in Proceedings of the International Conference on Globalization and Its Discontents, 2007, pp 53-63 from Izmir University of Economics

Abstract: Increasing globalization and free trade agreements have generated a number of controversies. One significant issue is the potential conflict between free trade and ethical standards. While free trade in theory need not be antithetical to ethical standards, as defined in practice by major trade organizations free trade conflicts with national ethical standards for issues such as labor standards, environmental impact, and animal welfare. The concerns of trade organizations on this issue have some merit. However, the one-sided position of trade organizations is both flawed and politically unsustainable. A balance must be achieved between legitimate ethical issues and minimizing trade barriers. Guidelines or principles are presented for how trade organizations can balance legitimate ethical issues against free trade considerations. In addition, it is argued that the provision of information valued by consumers should be allowed as a matter of general principle. In fact, the rather than information provision being a trade barrier, the prohibition of information provision is in fact a trade barrier.

Keywords: globalization; free trade agreements; ethical standards; ethics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2007
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://eco.ieu.edu.tr/wp-content/proceedings/2007/0704.pdf (application/pdf)

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:izm:prcdng:200704

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Papers of the Annual IUE-SUNY Cortland Conference in Economics from Izmir University of Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Ayla Ogus Binatli ().