Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-lnqnp Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T19:03:31.720Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

3 - The Economics of Sweatshop Wage Determination

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2014

Benjamin Powell
Benjamin Powell
Affiliation:
The Free Market Institute, Texas Tech University
Get access

Summary

Critics point out working conditions in sweatshops that any citizen in the developed world would find deplorable. The anti-sweatshop movement suggests many laws, regulations, and consumer activist tactics in the hope of improving the lives of sweatshop workers. Sentiments such as those expressed by Sheri Davis, a graduate student at Ohio State University and participant at a USAS rally, are common: “Everybody wants to have a living wage. Everybody wants to be able to take care of themselves and their family. Everybody wants to retire and feel good, enjoy life. Breathe. Live. Eat. You know, the regular shit. We’re not asking for nothing extra special.” Unfortunately, wishing does not make it so.

Each law, regulation, or activist activity impacts the incentives of companies that hire sweatshop workers. Some of these actions may help sweatshop workers. Unfortunately, others will have unintended secondary consequences that impact employer incentives and, as a result, leave already poor sweatshop workers even worse off. Activists need to understand the market forces that determine wages to understand which policies can help workers and which will hurt them.

Type
Chapter
Information
Out of Poverty
Sweatshops in the Global Economy
 , pp. 23 - 47
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2014

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Samuelson, ’s quote was: “What good does it do a black youth to know that an employer must pay him $2 an hour if the fact that he must be paid that amount is what keeps him from getting a job?” Economics, 9th ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1973), 393–394Google Scholar
Barzel, Yoram, “A Theory of Rationing by Waiting,” Journal of Law and Economics 17 (1974), 73–95CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rottenberg, Simon, “Minimum Wages in Puerto Rico,” The Economics of Legal Minimum Wages, ed. Rottenberg, (Washington: American Enterprise Institute, 1981), 327–339Google Scholar
Card, David and Krueger, Alan, Myth and Measurement: The New Economics of the Minimum Wage (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995)Google Scholar
Deere, Donald Riche, Murphy, Kevin, and Welch, Finis, “Sense and Nonsense on the Minimum Wage,” Regulation 18 (1995), 47–56Google Scholar
Neumark, David and Wascher, William, Minimum Wages (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harrison, Ann and Scorse, Jason, “Multinationals and Anti-Sweatshop Activism,” American Economic Review 100 (2010), 263CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Elliot, Kimberly and Freeman, Richard, “White Hats or Don Quixotes? Human Rights Vigilantes in the Global Economy,” in Emerging Labor Market Institutions for the Twenty First Century, eds. Freeman, R. et al. (Chicago: University of Chicago, 2004)Google Scholar
“Sanctions,” in The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics, ed. Henderson, David (2008), retrieved from
“Protecting Family and Race: The Progressive Case for Regulating Women’s Work,” American Journal of Economics and Sociology 64(3): (2005), 757CrossRef
Garwood, Shae, Advocacy across Borders: NGOs, Anti-Sweatshop Activism, and the Global Garment Industry (Sterling, VA: Kumarian Press, 2011), 180–185Google Scholar
Arnold, Denis G. and Bowie, Norman E., “Sweatshops and Respect for Persons,” Business Ethics Quarterly 13 No. 2 (2003), 238CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Arnold, Denis and Hartman, Laura, “Moral Imagination and the Future of Sweatshops,” Business and Society Review 108 No. 4 (2003), 427.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Arnold, Denis, “Philosophical Foundations: Moral Reasoning, Human Rights, and Global Labor Practices,” Rising above Sweatshops: Innovative Approaches to Global Labor Challenges, eds. Hartman, Laura, Arnold, Denis and Wokutch, Richard E. (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2003), 79Google Scholar
Miller, John, “Why Economists Are Wrong about Sweatshops and the Anti-Sweatshop Movement,” Challenge, January/February (2003), 97Google Scholar
Pollin, Robert, Burns, Justine, and Heintz, James, “Global Apparel Production and Sweatshop Labor: Can Raising Retail Prices Finance Living Wages?” Cambridge Journal of Economics 28, No. 2 (2004), 153–171CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Arnold, Denis and Hartman, Laura, “Beyond Sweatshops: Positive Deviancy and Global Labour Practices,” Business Ethics: A European Review 14, No. 3 (2005), 208CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Arnold, Denis and Hartman, Laura, “Worker Rights and Low Wage Industrialization: How to Avoid Sweatshops,” Human Rights Quarterly 28, No. 3 (2006), 676–700CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Arnold, Denis G. and Bowie, Norman E., “Respect for Workers in Global Supply Chains: Advancing the Debate over Sweatshops,” Business Ethics Quarterly 17, No. 1 (2007), 139CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Arnold, Denis, “Working Conditions: Safety and Sweatshops,” in The Oxford Handbook of Business Ethics, eds. Brenkert, George and Beauchamp, Tom (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 635Google Scholar
Hayek, Friedrich, “The Use of Knowledge in Society,” American Economic Review 35, No. 4 (1945), 519–530Google Scholar
Viscusi, Kip, Harrington, Joseph, and Vernon, John, Economics of Regulation and Antitrust, 4th ed. (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005), 836Google Scholar
Munger, Michael, “Euvoluntary or Not, Exchange Is Just,” Social Philosophy and Policy 28, No. 2 (2011), 211CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stringham, Edward, “Economic Value and Costs Are Subjective,” Handbook on Contemporary Austrian Economics, ed. Boettke, Peter (Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar, 2010), 43–66Google Scholar
Hayek, Freidrich, “Competition as a Discovery Procedure,” in New Studies in Philosophy, Politics, Economics, and the History of Ideas (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Powell, Benjamin, “In Reply to Sweatshop Sophistries,” Human Rights Quarterly 28, No. 4 (2006), 1031–1042CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boettke, Peter, Living Economics: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow (Oakland: The Independent Institute, 2012), xviiGoogle Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×