Nancy H. Chau

Turning a Blind Eye: Costly Enforcement, Credible Commitment and Minimum Wage Laws

In many countries, non-compliance with minimum wage legislation is widespread, and authorities may be seen as having turned a blind eye to a legislation that they have themselves passed. But if enforcement is imperfect, how effective can a minimum wage be? And if non-compliance is widespread, why not revise the minimum wage? This paper examines a minimum wage policy in a model with imperfect competition, imperfect enforcement and imperfect commitment, and argues that it is the combination of all three that produces results which are consistent with a wide range of stylized facts that would otherwise be difficult to explain within a single framework. We demonstrate that turning a blind eye can indeed be an equilibrium phenomenon with rational expectations subject to an ex post credibility constraint. Since credible enforcement requires in effect a credible promise to execute ex post a costly transfer of income from employers to workers, a government with an objective function giving full weight to efficiency but none to distribution is shown, paradoxically, to be unable to credibly elicit efficiency improvements via a minimum wage reform.

The Race to the Bottom, From the Bottom

The dominant perspective in discussions of labour and environmental standards and globalization is that of North-South competition and its impact on Northern standards. This paper presents an alternative perspective, that of South-South competition to export to the North and its impact on Southern standards. It develops a simple model of Southern competition, and demonstrates that whether a Southern race to the bottom is possible depends intricately on the Northern demand curve, the size of large exporters relative to each other and the relative size of the competitive fringe of small exporters. The possibility that Northern trade protectionism may undermine Southern standards is also examined. Copyright (c) The London School of Economics and Political Science 2006.

Strategic Amnesty and Credible Immigration Reform

Why do countries that impose employer sanctions to deter the illegal entry of foreign workers nevertheless grant amnesty to illegal immigrants? In this article, I provide a positive theory of amnesty provision in a model where the constrained optimal immigration reform, involving the joint use of employer sanctions and border interdictions, is time‐inconsistent. In particular, my framework demonstrates that host countries of immigration can enhance the credibility of their immigration reforms by “binding their own hands” and strategically granting a socially excessive amount of amnesty to illegal workers.

Eco‐Labeling and Stages of Development

The paper examines the effectiveness of eco-labeling in providing a market-based solution to the under-consumption of eco-friendly products in developing and developed countries. The authors show that whether labeling is an effective device in solving the problem of asymmetric information between sellers and buyers, or whether false labeling severs the link between willingness to pay and environmental conscious production choices, depends crucially on how monitoring intensities respond endogenously to economic growth, openness to trade, and technology transfers. In particular, by accounting for endogenous policy responses to economic growth, it is shown that an inverted-U relationship exists between consumer spending on eco-unfriendly products and national income. In addition, while international trade unambiguously benefits the environment in the presence of eco-labeling with perfect enforcement, trade openness may nevertheless delay the turning point of the growth and environment relationship, when the cost of enforcement falls disproportionately on developing countries, and when environmental policies are employed to reap terms-of-trade gains.

Transnational Trafficking, Law Enforcement and Victim Protection: A Middleman Trafficker's Perspective

We explore two hitherto poorly understood characteristics of the human-trafficking market—the cross-border ease of mobility of traffickers and the elasticity of buyers’ demand. In a model of two-way bargaining, the exact configuration of these characteristics is shown to determine whether domestic and foreign crackdowns on illicit employment mutually reinforce or counteract one another in efforts to stem the tide of trafficking. Estimation results from a gravity model of trafficking present evidence consistent with the mutual-reinforcement view, indicating considerable ease of mobility and inelastic demand.

Migration under Asymmetric Information and Human Capital Formation

We study the migration of skilled workers, along with the skill acquisition incentives created by the prospect of migration. We trace out the dynamics of migration as foreign employers accumulate experience in deciphering the skill levels of individual migrants. It is found that migration by the relatively highly skilled is followed by return-migration from both tails of the migrant skill distribution; that the possibility of migration induces skill acquisition at home; that until the probability of discovery reaches its steady state equilibrium, migration consists of a sequence of moves characterized by a rising average skill level; and that migration of skilled workers can entail a home-country welfare gain. Copyright 1999 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

Exploitation of Child Labor and the Dynamics of Debt Bondage

This paper is concerned with the institution of debt bondage and child labor employment in the context of an agrarian economy with overlapping generations. The model explores the principal-agent interaction between landlords and tenants, and identifies a set of reasons why households put children to work in response to the need to service outstanding debts, only to realize that child labor work is “ exploited”, and households are made strictly worse off in general equilibrium. Debt bondage in one generation is further shown to leave spillover effects, and contribute to the cycle of debt, bonded child labor and poverty across generations. In this context, the effectiveness of trade sanctions as a policy response to bonded child labor is evaluated. Contrary to expectations, a trade ban can set off a sequence of increasing indebtedness among agrarian households that offset the intended (static) disincentives to employ child labor.

On export rivalry and the greening of agriculture–the role of eco-labels

Why do some countries establish their own national eco-labeling programs and others do not? In this paper, we provide theoretical arguments and empirical evidence suggesting that the answer to this question can shed new light on three questions that have taken center-stage in the trade and environment debate: (i) does trade exacerbate the exploitation of the environment; (ii) are countries competing in export markets engaged in a race to the bottom in environmental performance; and (iii) do market-based environmental instruments benefit the rich and hurt the poor?

New Frontiers in Environmental and Social Labeling

Outline and Emerging Issues.- The Design of an Eco-Marketing and Labeling Program for Vehicles in Maine.- Performance-based Labeling.- Do Social Labeling NGOs Have Any Influence on Child Labor?.- Economic Analysis of Eco-Labeling: The Case of Labeled Organic Rice in Thailand.- Eco-labeling and Strategic Rivalry in Export Markets.- Science, Opportunity, Traceability, Persistence, and Political Will: Necessary Elements of Opening the U.S. Market to Avocados from Mexico.- The Labels in Agriculture, Their Impact on Trade and the Scope for International Policy Action.- Social Standards and Their Impact on Exports: Evidence from the Textiles and Ready-Made Garments Sector in Egypt.- Developing Country Responses to the Enhancement of Food Safety Standards.- Scope and Limitations for National Food Safety and Labeling Regimes in the WTO-Frame.

Harnessing the Forces of Urban Expansion - The Public Economics of Farmland Development Allowance

For decades, rapid urban expansion has led to concerns over the loss of cultivated land in rural China. This contrasts sharply with another salient feature of the Chinese land policy reform landscape that has gone on largely unnoticed: the addition of newly cultivated land in China through land development has consistently exceeded land conversion. In a model featuring fiscal decentralization, plus local governments as custodians of land use and development, along with a land development allowance policy instituted in 1998, we show that a land development allowance policy can harness the forces of urban expansion to encourage agricultural land development.