Overview of Labor Enforcement Issues in Free Trade Agreements

[Excerpt] Since 1993, the Administration has negotiated and Congress has approved 10 Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) that contain labor provisions with different degrees of enforceability. Three more (with Colombia, Peru, and South Korea) await congressional consideration. This report identifies two types of enforcement issues: (1) those that relate to the FTA provisions themselves, including their definitions and their enforceability, and (2) those that relate to executive branch responsibilities, such as resource availability and determining dispute settlement case priorities. This report will be updated as events warrant

Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) Renewal: Core Labor Standards Issues: A Brief Overview

[Excerpt] This report is a brief overview of key issues addressed in CRS Report RL33864, Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) Renewal: Core Labor Standards Issues. Trade promotion authority (TPA), formerly known as “fast-track” authority, is scheduled to expire July 1, 2007. With it will expire the President’s authority to negotiate trade agreements that Congress will then consider without amendment and with limited debate. For the 110th Congress, a likely issue in this debate is whether to include enforceable core labor standards as a principal negotiating objective in trade agreements. Accordingly, this report (1) identifies key labor provisions in the current TPA law and how they have translated into free trade agreements negotiated under it; (2) presents some legislative options, and summarizes arguments for and against listing enforceable core labor standards as a principal negotiating objective; and (3) looks at possible outcomes and implications of the legislative options. This report will be updated as events warrant

Trade Promotion Authority (Fast-Track): Labor Issues (Including H.R. 3005 and H.R. 3019)

CRS ReportCRSTradePromotionAuthorityLabor_20Issues1201.pdf: 211 downloads, before Oct. 1, 2020

Free Trade Agreements with Singapore and Chile: Labor Issues

This report discusses the United States free trade agreements with Singapore and Chile that include labor provisions

A Price is a signal: on intrinsic motivation and crowding-out

If a previously unpaid activity (donating blood) is paid then we often observe that this activity is reduced. In this paper, it is hypothesised that the price offered is taken as a proxy for the "market value" of the activity. Depending on how the actor valued the activity previously, crowding-out or crowding-in, as well as persistence (or not) of the effect after the abandoning of payment is implied. This "naive" explanation is confronted with Bénabou and Tirole´s (2003) priciple-agent model where the opposite signalling effect is hypothesised: a higher price is taken as an indication for a lower value. --Intrinsic Motivation,Crowding-out,Signaling

Overview of Labor Enforcement Issues in Free Trade Agreements

Since 1993, the Administration has negotiated and Congress has approved 13 free trade agreements (FTAs) with labor provisions, and is considering additional FTAs. Based on similarity of language, these FTAs can be sorted into four groups, or “models,” which have evolved to contain successively greater levels of enforceability. This report first identifies the enforceable labor provisions in each model. Second, it identifies two types of labor enforcement issues: (1) those that relate to the FTA provisions themselves, including their definitions and their enforceability, and (2) those that relate to executive branch responsibilities, such as resource availability and determining dispute settlement case priorities. This report does not address other labor issues in the various free trade agreements, including cooperative consultation and capacity-building provisions

Over- and under-investment according to different benchmarks

In a two-stage oligopoly, with investment in the first stage and quantity or price competition in the second stage, there is a kind of Folk Theorem: We find (i) over-investment if the goods are substitutes and competition is in strategic substitutes, (ii) under-investment if we have either complements instead of substitutes or strategic complements instead of strategic substitutes, and (iii) again over-investment if both attributes change. The existing literature, however, lacks a proof of this theorem and, in particular, it lacks a systematic comparison of the different benchmarks for over-and under-investment. A "naive" benchmark is the efficient investment with respect to the subgame perfect (closed loop) equilibrium quantities. Alternative benchmarks (which are more often proposed) are the open loop equilibrium investment or the welfare maximizing investment. The chosen benchmark is critical because the Folk Theorem applies (under certain conventional conditions) only for the naïve benchmark. The other two benchmarks require additional assumptions or the distinction of subcases. --Oligopoly,technology choice,efficiency,under-investment,overinvestment

NAFTA Labor Side Agreement: Lessons for the Worker Rights and Fast-Track Debate

CRS ReportCRSNAFTALaborSideAgreements1001.pdf: 2024 downloads, before Oct. 1, 2020