Do you know to what extent the arguments presented are still relevant 17 years later (particularly when it comes to observations made about the state of the labor market in certain developing countries in the early 2000s)?
Are you aware of any good critiques that have been made in response?
The 2nd edition of Benjamin’s book I linked at the start of the post was published in January 2025. I have now added this information to the start of the post.
I have not put much effort into finding critiques. I already had the prior that people working in sweatshops is good relative to the counterfactual. Otherwise, I would not have expected them to freely take the job. As a rule of thumb, I defer to people about what is best for them. This is not because I think people make optimal career choices. It is because I am sceptical of my ability to do better with very little knowledge about their situation (for example, just their country).
The 2nd edition of Benjamin’s book may have been published in 2025, but I’m not sure how much it updated from the 1st edition, which was published in 2014 - i.e. before the results of Blattman’s 2016 paper that I mentioned in my other comment.
I have not read Benjamin’s book but based on the Amazon description, it sounds like the 2025 edition contains fairly minimal updates.
Thanks for sharing!
Do you know to what extent the arguments presented are still relevant 17 years later (particularly when it comes to observations made about the state of the labor market in certain developing countries in the early 2000s)?
Are you aware of any good critiques that have been made in response?
Hi Mata,
The 2nd edition of Benjamin’s book I linked at the start of the post was published in January 2025. I have now added this information to the start of the post.
I have not put much effort into finding critiques. I already had the prior that people working in sweatshops is good relative to the counterfactual. Otherwise, I would not have expected them to freely take the job. As a rule of thumb, I defer to people about what is best for them. This is not because I think people make optimal career choices. It is because I am sceptical of my ability to do better with very little knowledge about their situation (for example, just their country).
The 2nd edition of Benjamin’s book may have been published in 2025, but I’m not sure how much it updated from the 1st edition, which was published in 2014 - i.e. before the results of Blattman’s 2016 paper that I mentioned in my other comment.
I have not read Benjamin’s book but based on the Amazon description, it sounds like the 2025 edition contains fairly minimal updates.
Thanks for the good point! The 1st edition has 198 pages, and the 2nd has 236, so only 19.2 % (= 236⁄198 − 1) more pages.