Suchergebnisse

Dieses Buch untersucht die Auswirkungen von Globalisierung auf Kinderarbeit sowohl aus theoretischer als auch aus empirischer Perspektive, wobei der hauptsächliche Fokus auf empirischer Evidenz liegt. Das Buch präsentiert zuerst deskriptive Evidenz über die Formen und Verbreitung von Kinderarbeit, und skizziert den internationalen Regelrahmen, in dem Kinderarbeitsstandards festgelegt werden. Nach einem Literaturüberblick über die unterschiedlichen ökonomischen Gründe für Kinderarbeit werden die Determinanten von Kinderarbeit anhand der geschlechtsspezifischen Unterschiede in der Arbeits- vs. Schulentscheidung von nordindischen Kindern diskutiert. Die darauffolgende Analyse von Kinderarbeit in indonesischen Kleinunternehmen geht explizit auf die Niederlassungsentscheidung von Kleinunternehmen ein und hebt damit das Zusammenspiel von nachfrageseitigen und angebotsseitigen Faktoren hervor. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass Faktoren die das Wirtschaftswachstum begünstigen, kurzfristig auch zu mehr Kinderarbeit führen können. Die theoretische Untersuchung über die Auswirkungen von Handelsliberalisierung auf das Angebot von Kinderarbeit analysiert die Effekte von Einkommensumverteilung durch Außenhandel, und zeigt, dass die positiven Einkommenseffekte nicht unter allen Umständen ausreichen, um Kinderarbeit zu reduzieren. Dieses Argument wird auch empirisch untermauert. Der letzte Teil des Buches präsentiert eine empirische Untersuchung über die kausalen Auswirkungen von Handelsliberalisierung auf Kinderarbeit und Schulbesuch in Indonesien für den Zeitraum 1993-2002. Es wird gezeigt, dass Kinderarbeit signifikant starker in den indonesischen Regionen zurückging, die dank ihrer Wirtschaftsstruktur der Handelsliberalisierung stärker ausgesetzt waren. Dies war insbesondere dem größeren Rückgang an Armut in diesen Regionen zu verdanken. Aus der wirtschaftspolitischen Perspektive bleibt es festzuhalten, dass im Kampf gegen Kinderarbeit alternative Politikmaßnahmen den eventuell durch Handelssanktionen erzwungenen Kinderarbeitsverboten überlegt sind. Vorausschauende Wirtschaftspolitik sollte mit Armutsreduktion und mit einer tatsächlichen Verbesserung des Schulsystems gegen Kinderarbeit ankämpfen, und dadurch die Anreize für einen Schulbesuch verbessern. Die Auswirkungen von Globalisierung und insbesondere Handelsliberalisierung bleiben kontextspezifisch, in Folge deren Kinderarbeit kurzfristig sowohl ansteigen als auch zurückgehen kann. Wenn aber es den Ärmsten gelingt von dem Wirtschaftswachstum zu profitieren, und gleichzeitig Schulbesuch aktiv gefördert wird, kann der Abbau von Handelsbarrieren auch zum globalen Rückgang von Kinderarbeit beitragen. ; This book investigates the effects of globalization on child labor from a theoretical and empirical perspective, focusing more strongly on the empirical evidence. From the multitude of aspects of globalization, the book concentrates on the effects propagated through the channel of goods trade. Trade liberalization affects child labor outcomes primarily through shifting goods and factor prices. In a developing country, these price changes can increase the demand for unskilled labor, but at the same time they can be expected to raise the income of the poor; the resulting income and substitution effects will also affect household decisions on child labor supply. After presenting the regulatory environment and an overview of the main factors leading to child labor, the book addresses supply side determinants by emphasizing the gender-specific differences in the trade-off between different forms of work and schooling (based on North Indian evidence). The subsequent analysis of the determinants of child labor in Indonesian small scale manufacturing explores the interplay of supply and demand side factors by addressing explicitly firm location decisions, and hence the demand for child labor. It demonstrates that increases in economic activity, although beneficial per se, can also raise the demand for child labor. The theoretical analysis on the effects of trade liberalization on child labor supply emphasizes the role of relative price changes and poverty. It argues that the redistributive effects of more open trade are reducing child labor incidence, but potentially not in the poorest countries; the presented empirical analysis (based on a country panel) supports this claim. The last part of the book addresses the causal effects of trade liberalization on regional child labor and schooling outcomes in Indonesia over the time-span of 1993-2002. It finds that child labor reduced significantly more in those Indonesian regions that were more strongly exposed to trade liberalization, which can be attributed to larger reductions in poverty in those regions. From a policy perspective, the book argues that child labor bans, induced by the threat of trade restrictions or otherwise, might be less effective in addressing the global child labor problem than other policy instruments. The forward-looking policy response to child labor should entail promoting consequential pro-poor policies, improving significantly the school system, and shifting the incentives in favor of education. Globalization, more specifically trade liberalization, can both increase and reduce child labor and thus its effects on working children are context specific. But if the poor can reap the benefits from the increasing production, while at the same time policies actively promote schooling, the reduction of trade barriers can contribute to the eradication of child labor.

Armed conflicts are expected to be harmful to education but micro-level studies find at times contradicting results. Therefore, this article identifies under which conditions and to what extent armed conflicts harm the long-term educational attainment of children in rural Sub-Saharan Africa. By combining 66 rounds of DHS surveys with geo-coded conflict information, our study contextualizes the findings of a series of country-specific case studies on the effects of conflict on education, and provides evidence on the mechanisms through which these effects occur. Our main identification strategy compares educational losses of youth living within the same household, while also controlling for local weather shocks and countrywide dynamics in education. The effects of conflict on education are strongly context-dependent. High-intensity conflicts reduce local educational attainment on average, although this effect becomes insignificant in strong autocracies. By contrast, education is generally unaffected by localized low-intensity conflict. Human capital loss due to conflict is most severely felt in weak states, and in response to non-state based conflicts, highlighting the importance of state capacity in mediating the educational costs of local conflicts.

Countries that control foreign direct investment (FDI) often face the trade-off between following national policy interests and suffering efficiency losses arising from FDI restrictions. We demonstrate the presence of this trade-off in the case of a protectionist FDI policy in Indonesia that restricts FDI at the product level. Using a yearly census of Indonesian manufacturing firms for 2000 to 2015, we link productlevel changes in FDI regulation to changes in firm-level productivity. Controlling for an extensive set of fixed effects as well as potential political-economy drivers of regulation, we find that newly introduced limitations on FDI were successful at reducing foreign capital use within the regulated firms. Although the drop in foreign capital has been more than compensated by increases in domestic capital, regulated firms have experienced a substantial loss in productivity that was concentrated in the sectors most dependent on external finance and technological innovation. ; Revised Version June 2019

We use under-explored municipality level datasets to assess the recent economic and policy determinants of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon. We estimate yearly panel data models (from 2002 to 2009) for 457 municipalities in the region. The results show that recent deforestation is related to economic incentives, and especially to fluctuations in product (meat and soybean) prices. Moreover, we document that the increasing monitoring efforts of the Brazilian environmental police (IBAMA) were effective in reducing deforestation rates.

The purpose of this article is to identify the determinants of displacement behavior based on various push and pull factors at the village level. The study concentrates on changes in village population during three years of civil conflict (1999—2002) in Aceh, Indonesia. The empirical analysis is based on a unique dataset from two census rounds of the Indonesian Village Potential Census (PODES). It uses data on around 5,200 Acehnese villages and relates village-level population change to conflict variables, geographic patterns, and traditional socio-economic determinants of migration. By applying quantile regressions, the push (outflow) factors and the pull (inflow) determinants of migration can also be distinguished. The authors identify the following factors as the main determinants of the Aceh migration pattern in this period. First, conflict clashes induced large rearrangements of the population between villages in highly affected districts, as well as strong village emigration from the geographically remote regions in Central Aceh towards the less conflict-affected coastal industrial areas. Besides conflict factors, an (ongoing) rural—urban migration process, driven by socio-economic factors, has taken place during the conflict period. Second, there is also evidence that security considerations, such as the presence of police in a village or neighborhood, were either emigration-reducing or immigration-inducing. Third, although the presence of ethnic Javanese has not been a primary cause of conflict incidence, their intimidation by the rebel movement has led to a significant outflow, primarily from conflict-affected villages in Central Aceh. These results reveal that, beside a conflict-induced fear of violence, population movements in Aceh have also been an outcome of traditional migration determinants.