Macroeconomic Implications of Child-Labor Laws: A Theoretical Framework

本研究以动态一般均衡为框架，探讨童工法的决定与效果。在第一批工业化的国家，童工现象普遍存在，直到工业革命的早期阶段。今天，所有工业化国家都有童工和义务教育法，童工大多已经消失。在许多发展中国家，童工今天仍然很普遍，关于是否应该引入更多的限制，存在着激烈的辩论。 有许多作者研究了童工法对福利的影响。 然而，还没有任何研究能够发展出能够解释这些法律在其历史背景下的演变和影响的政治经济模型。 这个建议描述了一个动态的一般均衡模型与异质代理人谁决定童工限制（限制）在投票过程中。 这项研究是与斯德哥尔摩大学的Fabrizio Zilibotti联合进行的，得出了一个关于采用电子邮件的积极理论，并详细分析了电子邮件对经济和人口中不同群体的影响。该模型的关键机制是父母对子女数量的决定与他们对子女数量的偏好之间的相互作用。特别是，孩子少的父母从童工中几乎得不到什么好处，因此可能会赞成采取限制措施。另一方面，有许多工作子女的父母可能会反对这项计划。第二个影响对童工的偏好的因素是（人力或物质）资本资产：拥有与童工互补的因素的代理人将更有可能反对引入童工。一个关键的结果是，如果投票是允许的，该模型可以表现出多个稳态不同的童工政策。原因是政策鼓励行为的反馈，这反过来又导致对相同政策的政治支持。多个稳定状态的可能性可以解释这样一个事实，即即使在处于同一发展阶段的国家之间，童工的数量和发生率也存在很大的跨国差异。此外，由于消费者建立了自己的选区，该模型解释了为什么消费者通常会随着时间的推移而受到更多的限制。如果技术变革随着时间的推移提高了技能溢价，该模型可以产生从无监管到监管的过渡。这种变化促使父母选择较小的家庭，并投资于人力资本，随着时间的推移，大多数人都赞成引入家庭教育。关于向失业过渡的这种说法与以下看法是一致的，即在一些工业化国家，失业是在工资不平等加剧的时期之后开始实行的，而且与生育率迅速下降和教育水平提高的时期相吻合。该项目需要详细记录一些国家的童工改革和之前的政治辩论，并模拟一个校准的定量模型，以评估该模型在多大程度上能够重现改革的实际时间以及立法的后续后果。基本分析扩展到引入额外的政策，特别是义务教育法和学校补贴。 初步结果表明，如果能像许多工业化国家那样，同时进行教育改革，教育改革就更有可能取得成功。另一个扩展是允许在选民预见未来政策的框架内进行动态投票。 在这方面，预计未来将实行的限制措施可能会导致童工减少，甚至在限制措施生效之前。这一机制可以解释这样一个事实，即一些实证研究发现，只有相对较小的影响，童工供应后，他们被引入。

This project studies the determination and effects of child labor laws using a dynamic general-equilibrium framework. In the first countries to industrialize, child labor was widespread up to the early stages of the industrial revolution. Today, child labor and compulsory schooling laws are in place in all industrialized countries, and child labor has mostly disappeared. In many developing countries, child labor is still common today, and there is a lively debate as to whether more restrictions should be introduced. There are a number of authors who have studied the welfare implications of child-labor laws. There are no investigations, however, which develop political-economy models that can account for the evolution and effects of these laws in their historical context. This proposal describes a dynamic general-equilibrium model with heterogeneous agents who determine child-labor restrictions (CLR) in a voting process. The research, which is joint with Fabrizio Zilibotti of the University of Stockholm, results in a positive theory of the adoption of CLR, and allows a detailed analysis of the effects of CLR on the economy and different groups in the population. The key mechanism in the model is an interaction between parental decisions on the number of children and their preferences for CLR. In particular, parents with few children have little to gain from child labor, and are therefore likely to favor the introduction of restrictions. Parents with many working children, on the other hand, would be expected to oppose CLR. A second factor influencing preferences over CLR are (human or physical) capital assets: agents who own factors which are complementary to child labor will be more likely to oppose the introduction of CLR. A key result is that if voting is allowed, the model can exhibit multiple steady states with different child-labor policies. The reason is a feedback in which policies encourage behavior, which in turn leads to political support for the same policies. The possibility of multiple steady states can account for the fact that there are large cross-country variations in CLR and the incidence of child labor, even across countries at the same stage of development. In addition, since CLR build their own constituency, the model explains why CLR generally tend to get more restrictive over time. The model can generate a transition from no regulation to CLR if technological change raises the skill premium over time. This change induces parents to choose smaller families and invest in human capital, which over time creates a majority in favor of introducing CLR. This account of the transition to CLR is consistent with the observation that in a number of industrialized countries CLR were introduced after a period of rising wage inequality, and coincided with a period of rapidly declining fertility and rising education levels. The project entails a detailed documentation of child-labor reforms and the preceding political debate in a number of countries, and simulations of a calibrated, quantitative version of the model to assess how well the model can reproduce the actual timing of reforms, as well as the ensuing consequences of the legislation. The basic analysis is extended to introduce additional policies, especially compulsory schooling laws and schooling subsidies. Preliminary results indicate that CLR are more likely to be successful if they are accompanied by education reforms, as they were in many industrialized countries. Another extension is to allow dynamic voting in a framework where voters foresee future policies. Here an anticipated future introduction of CLR can result in a decline in child labor even before the restrictions come into force. This mechanism can account for the fact that some empirical studies find only relatively small effects of CLR on child labor supply after they are introduced.