Trade Adjustment Costs in Developing Countries: - World Bank ...

186Eric V EdmondsFigure 11.4: Economic Activity and the Volume of TradeThe volume of trade is the log of the sum of total merchandise imports and exports from the WorldDevelopment Indicators. See Figure 11.1 for a description of economic activity rates.ing crops are rare. The public policy debate and popular discourse is filled withexamples where children have been directly involved in the production of exportedgoods. Some of the more prominent recent examples are:• Uzbekistan was the third largest exporter of cotton in the world in 2008, andthere appears to be forced child labor in its cotton exports. News reports assertthat as many as 450,000 children were forced, with the help of police and governmentofficials including school teachers, away from schools to harvest cottonwith little or no compensation (for example, Newsnight on BBC Two,October 10, 2007).• West Africa (especially Cote d’Ivoire) accounts for 70 per cent of world cocoaproduction, and there are many reports of forced child labor, trafficking, andabuse on cocoa farms (Salaam-Blyther et al. 2005). Estimates of the number ofchildren involved can be as high as 300,000 with approximately 200,000 inCote d’Ivoire alone.• Handmade carpets are a traditional craft in South Asia, but the boom in the1990s of exports to the United States and Europe may have lead to increasedchild involvement in the sector. As many as 300,000 children are reported tobe involved in the export sector in India, Nepal, and Pakistan; there are accountsof trafficking of children as young as four, bondage, and abuse.These are a few examples. There are many others. However, specific examplesare difficult to isolate and identify in empirical work that focuses on population