Out of Poverty: Sweatshops in the Global Economy

This book provides a comprehensive defense of third-world sweatshops. It explains how these sweatshops provide the best available opportunity to workers and how they play an important role in the process of development that eventually leads to better wages and working conditions. Using economic theory, the author argues that much of what the anti-sweatshop movement has agitated for would actually harm the very workers they intend to help by creating less desirable alternatives and undermining the process of development. Nowhere does this book put "profits" or "economic efficiency" above people. Improving the welfare of poorer citizens of third world countries is the goal, and the book explores which methods best achieve that goal. Out of Poverty will help readers understand how activists and policy makers can help third world workers.

Author: Benjamin Powell
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 03/10/2014
Pages: 198
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.60lbs
Size: 8.90h x 5.90w x 0.60d
ISBN: 9781107688933

Review Citation(s):
Choice 02/01/2015 pg. 1029

About the Author
Powell, Benjamin: - Benjamin Powell is the Director of the Free Market Institute at Texas Tech University and a Visiting Professor in the Rawls College of Business. He is a Past President of the Association of Private Enterprise Education and a Senior Fellow with the Independent Institute. Professor Powell is editor of Making Poor Nations Rich: Entrepreneurship and the Process of Development (2008) and co-editor of Housing America: Building Out of a Crisis (2009). He is author of more than 50 scholarly articles and policy studies. His primary fields of research are economic development, Austrian economics, and public choice. Dr Powell's scholarly research on sweatshops has been published in Comparative Economic Studies, the Journal of Labor Research, Human Rights Quarterly, and the Journal of Business Ethics. His research findings have been reported in more than 100 popular press outlets including the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. He received his PhD in economics from George Mason University.