Success and Upgrading after the End of the MFA

Abstract

Analyzes employment, wages, and working conditions in the textile and garment (T&G) sector in Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, and Vietnam, where T&G remains important in exports and employment (mostly female) as well as in upgrading for unskilled workers. Governments had an active role in development and preparation for the more competitive market after the Multi-fibre Arrangement (MFA) phaseout ( 2004), utilizing state policies such as subsidies and upgrading funds and internal country factors for modernization. Overall, the phaseout favored T&G firms and workers, with employment, export revenues, and the industry wage premium improving, but changes in working conditions varied. India had positive change in informal apparel and female employment but negative change in outcomes and working conditions. Bangladesh saw an expansion in firms and employment, with a negative change in garment firms, but a positive change in textiles. Vietnam and Pakistan showed negative change in T&G employment and textile female employment.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 20 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.