Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/115497 
Year of Publication: 
2014
Series/Report no.: 
IDB Working Paper Series No. IDB-WP-543
Publisher: 
Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), Washington, DC
Abstract: 
This paper analyzes whether Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) signed between the United States and Latin American countries during the last decade produced higher enforcement of labor regulations. The paper computes before-after estimates of the effect of FTAs on labor inspections and exploits variation across countries using non-signers as a comparison group. The empirical strategy benefits from the fact that about half of Latin American countries have signed a trade agreement with the United States. Difference-in-differences estimates suggest that signing an FTA produced a 20 percent increase in the number of labor inspectors and a 60 percent increase in the number of inspections. The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), however, does not appear to have the same positive impacts on Mexico. The paper concludes with a discussion of these results.
Subjects: 
Enforcement
Labor
Trade
Latin America
JEL: 
F16
J83
K31
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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