Endogenous Technical Progress and the Emergence of Child Labor Laws

I develop a theory of technical progress that uncovers sufficient conditions for opposition to the adoption of child labor laws to disappear over time. The supply of child labor comes exclusively from unskilled parents, because of their inability to help their children benefit from formal education, while its demand originates from capitalists-the firms' owners. Because child labor crowds out adult employment, there are always social pressures to ban it. However, such pressures are met by capitalists' opposition. Capitalist oppose the adoption of a ban on child labor because such a ban reduces opportunities for earning a high return on capital. Technical progress, induced by skill accumulation, improves the earning prospects of firms hiring adult workers only, while it reduces those of firms hiring children only. As a result, more capitalists are drawn into the adult labor market, and industrial opposition to a ban on child labor eventually vanishes over time. Provided child labor exhibits skill-enhancing learning-by-doing, policy action to speed up the emergence of child labor laws should therefore focus on education reforms that raise the quality of education school-goers receive, and on political reforms that raise the cost of lobbying legislators against adopting a ban on child labor. However, in countries where child labor provides little or no opportunities for learning-by-doing, no law will emerge unless appropriately targeted poverty alleviation mechanisms are designed, in order to induce unskilled parents to allocate a positive fraction of child's time to schooling.Child labor, Learning-by-doing, Education, Technical progress, Lobbying cost, Voting equilibrium

Endogenous Technical Progress and the Emergence of Child Labor Laws

I develop a theory of technical progress that uncovers sufficient conditions for opposition to the adoption of child labor laws to disappear over time. The supply of child labor comes exclusively from unskilled parents, because of their inability to help their children benefit from formal education, while its demand originates from capitalists-the firms' owners. Because child labor crowds out adult employment, there are always social pressures to ban it. However, such pressures are met by capitalists' opposition. Capitalists oppose the adoption of a ban on child labor because such a ban reduces opportunities for earning a high return on capital. Technical progress, induced by skill accumulation, improves the earning prospects of firms hiring adult workers only, while it reduces those of firms hiring children only. As a result, more capitalists are drawn into the adult labor market, and industrial opposition to a ban on child labor eventually vanishes over time. Provided child labor exhibits skill-enhancing learning-by-doing, policy action to speed up the emergence of child labor laws should therefore focus on education reforms that raise the quality of education school-goers receive, and on political reforms that raise the cost of lobbying legislators against adopting a ban on child labor. However, in countries where child labor provides little or no opportunities for learning-by-doing, no law will emerge unless appropriately targeted poverty alleviation mechanisms are designed, in order to induce unskilled parents to allocate a positive fraction of child's time to schooling.

Education Subsidy, Fertility, and Growth

In this paper, we show that replacing a public-education regime by a private regime with public subsidization of education, causes agents to completely internalize the effect, on their offspring education, of their fertility decisions. As a result, fertility is lower compared to a public regime, while growth is enhanced.Education subsidy, Fertility, growth, Income tax

Why Banning the Worst Forms of Child Labour Would Hurt Poor Countries

Although it is intuitive and morally compelling that the worst forms of child labour should be eliminated, banning them in poor countries is unlikely to be welfare improving and can come at the expense of human capital accumulation. We show that the existence of harmful forms of child labour, in fact, has an economic role: it helps keep wages for child labour high enough to allow human capital accumulation. Therefore, unless appropriate mechanisms are designed to mitigate the decline in child labour wages caused by reduced employment options for children, a ban on harmful forms of child labour will likely prove undesirable in poor countries. We perform our analysis within a simple two-period model of parental investment in children's education and nutritional quality.Child labour, Human capital, Nutrition, Development

The Economics of Child Trafficking

In this paper, we highlight the economic effects of the existence of child trafficking. We show that the risk of child trafficking on the labor market acts as a deterrent to supply child labor, unless household survival is at stake. An imperfectly enforceable legislation aiming at fighting child trafficking, by raising the expected gains parents derive from sending their children to work, will cause a rise in the number of child laborers. We show that it can even cause the incidence of child trafficking to rise. Our findings are consistent with the view that the fight against child trafficking can only be won by effectively combining legislation with other policy measures, including better quality for education, redistribution, or appropriately targeted poverty alleviation programs.Child labor, Exploitation, Poverty, Law enforcement, Trafficking

Child Labor and Coordination Failures

In this paper, we show how coordination failures may explain the prevalence of child labor in developing countries. We do so within a simple game-theoretic setup. Child labor arises in our environment because of the lack of a coordination mechanism between parental decisions to invest in the human capital of their children and firm's decisions to invest in skill-intensive technology. Governmental policies that help coordinate expectations lead to the disappearance of child labor.Child labor, welfare, equilibrium selection, coordination

Why is Child Labor Illegal?

We argue from an empirical analysis of Latin-American household surveys that per capita income in the country of residence has a negative effect on child labor supply, even after controlling for other household characteristics. We then develop a theory of the emergence of mandatory-education laws. If parents are unable to commit to educating their children, child-labor laws can increase the welfare of altruistic parents in an ex ante sense. The theory suggest that measures that reduce child wages can make poor families better off, but that this may come at the expense of even poorer families.Child Labor Legislation, Economic Development

Fertility, Education, and Market Failures

We show that coordination failures may be part of an explanation for the demographic differences between rich and poor countries and their differing attitudes towards the use of child labor. Our analysis is carried out within a two-period, general equilibrium model with endogenous fertility, parental investment in children's education and firms' tradeoff between traditional technologies and the adoption of skill-intensive, modern ones. The model exhibits multiple equilibria due to the lack of a coordination mechanism between parental decisions on the quantity and the quality of children and entrepreneurs' technology choices.Endogenous fertility, education, child labor, skill-biased technology, welfare, multiple equilibria, coordination

Taxes, Inequality and the Size of the Informal Sector

In this note we develop a simple heterogeneous-agent model with incomplete markets to explain the prevalence of a large, low-productivity, informal sector in developing countries. In our models, taxes levied on formal sector agents are used to finance the provision of a productive public infrastructure, which creates a productivity premium from formalization. Our model offers endogenous differentiation of rich and poor countries. Complete formalization is an equilibrium only in countries with the appropriate initial conditions. We discuss existence of this equilibrium and highlight the ambiguous effect of taxes.Informal sector, Technology adoption, Infrastructure, Inequality, Taxation, Development

Immigration Policy, Remittances, and Growth in the Migrant-Sending Country

As evidence accumulates to expose the ineffectiveness of foreign aid, there are increasing calls for rich countries to open up their immigration policies so as to enable migrants' remittances to substitute for foreign aid as a growth-stimulant in poor, migrant-sending countries. In this paper, we use an endogenous growth model to argue that the growth effects of transnational migration and remittances are entirely mediated by the human capital profile of emigrants, as determined by immigration policy at the destination country. Quantitatively, we find that when immigration policy at the destination country provokes a "brain drain", growth is negatively impacted in the sending country despite remittances. The reverse is true when immigration policy targets workers with low levels of human capital.Remittances, migration, growth, education, general equilibrium, child labor