Advanced Search

Journal Navigation

Journal Home

Subscriptions

Archive

Contact Us

Table of Contents

Click here to sign up for SAGE Journal Email Alerts today!

Sign In to gain access to subscriptions and/or personal tools.
Review of Radical Political Economics
This Article
Right arrow Full Text (PDF)
Right arrow References
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to Saved Citations
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrowRequest Permissions
Right arrow Request Reprints
Right arrow Add to My Marked Citations
Citing Articles
Right arrow Citing Articles via Google Scholar
Right arrow Citing Articles via Scopus
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Bivens, L. J.
Right arrow Articles by Weller, C. E.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
Social Bookmarking
 Add to CiteULike   Add to Complore   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us   Add to Digg   Add to Reddit   Add to Technorati   Add to Twitter  
What's this?

How Well Are We Measuring Workers’ Rights?

L. Josh Bivens

Economic Policy Institute, 1660 L Street NW, Suite 1200, Washington, DC 20036, USA, lbivens{at}epinet.org

Adam S. Hersh

University of Massachusetts-Amherst, Department of Economics, Amherst, MA 01003, USA, ahersh{at}econs.umass.edu

Christian E. Weller

Center for American Progress, 1333 H Street NW, 10th Floor, Washington, DC 20005, USA, cweller{at}americanprogress.org

The literature overwhelmingly supports the proposition that high-quality domestic institutions are a precondition for economic growth. Political freedoms have been shown to contribute to this institutional quality. A smaller literature suggests that the adoption and enforcement of core labor standards (CLS) that protect the rights of workers can be an important boon for economic development. This article aims to lay a stronger groundwork for the literature linking workers’ rights and economic outcomes by examining more closely some of the proxies that have been used to measure these rights. Our results suggest that the ratification of CLS is only weakly correlated with the improvement of broader political freedoms. The figures also show some link between CLS ratification and proxies for actual rights enjoyed by workers.

Key Words: economic growth • labor standards • institutions

Review of Radical Political Economics, Vol. 37, No. 3, 302-310 (2005)
DOI: 10.1177/0486613405278157


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Complore Complore   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us   Add to Digg Digg   Add to Reddit Reddit   Add to Technorati Technorati   Add to Twitter Twitter    What's this?