Article |
Review of Economics and Statistics |
July 2020
Exporting Sweatshops? Evidence from Myanmar
Key Insights for Managers
How does the decision of garment factories in developing countries to begin exporting to serve foreign clients affect their factory working conditions? In a field study of garment plants in Myanmar between 2013-2015, author Mari Tanaka finds that the decision leads to significant improvements in occupational health, freedom of negotiation, and fire safety. While the decision to export has negligible influence on wages or working hours, it does have positive effects in management practices—such as production monitoring, quality control, and machine maintenance—and the likelihood of receiving a labor auditing to assess working conditions.
Replication data for this paper is available at Harvard Dataverse.