Consumer Boycott, Household Heterogeneity and Child Labour

IRES Discussion Paper 2010-36

22 Pages Posted: 23 Nov 2010

See all articles by Michele Di Maio

Michele Di Maio

Sapienza University of Rome

Giorgio Fabbri

Parthenope University - Dipartimento di Studi Economici

Date Written: November 22, 2010

Abstract

Consumer boycott campaigns against goods produced using child labour are becoming increasingly popular. Notwithstanding, there is no consensus on which are the e ects of such type of activism on child labour. If some agreement is to be found in the recent economic literature, it is that the boycott does not reduce child labour. We contribute to this debate presenting a simple model which shows, instead, that there are conditions under which a consumer product boycott does reduce child labour. We consider a small country two-factor economy populated by heterogeneous households. The boycott a ects both the adult and the child labour markets. The income distribution determines how these changes a ect child labour at the household level. We derive the conditions under which the consumer boycott reduces child labour also for some of the households whose' income is - before the boycott - under the subsistence level.

Keywords: Consumer product boycott, child labour, household heterogeneity, income distribution

JEL Classification: J13, C35

Suggested Citation

Di Maio, Michele and Fabbri, Giorgio, Consumer Boycott, Household Heterogeneity and Child Labour (November 22, 2010). IRES Discussion Paper 2010-36, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1713074 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1713074

Michele Di Maio (Contact Author)

Sapienza University of Rome ( email )

via del Castro Laurenziano 9
Rome
Italy

HOME PAGE: http://https://sites.google.com/a/uniroma1.it/micheledimaio/home

Giorgio Fabbri

Parthenope University - Dipartimento di Studi Economici ( email )

Via Medina 40
Via Generale Parisi, 13
Naples, 80133
Italy

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