Allee, T.; C. Peinhardt (2014): Evaluation of three explanations for the design of bilateral investment treaties. Weltpolitik 66(1), 47–87. AlleeT. PeinhardtC 2014 Evaluation of three statements for the design of bilateral investment treaties Global policy 66 1 47 87 Search in Google Scholar Bilateral employment contracts (NAPAs) are preferred policy models for regulating migration by many governments around the world. The Philippines has played a leading role in reaching agreements and exporting labour. A recent congressional invocation urges bureaucrats and academics to examine this policy strategy to verify its results and effectiveness. The following analysis answers the question “Do NAPAs affect the outward migration flows of Overseas Filipino workers (OFW)?” with a plausible exogenous variation to isolate a causal effect. I test the impacts of BLA with two instrumental variables (IVs), such as bilateral investment treaties (BITs) and formal alliances, and an original dataset of Philippine land and sea BLAMs and migrant populations in 213 unique areas from 1960 to 2018.

I find no empirical evidence that these treaties lead to migration. However, MPAs have a statistically significant impact on per capita gross domestic product (GDP) and exports, indicating other important channels through which these agreements affect economic performance. These zero scores are crucial for policymakers and diplomats, as resources devoted to negotiations are wasted when the main objective is to increase migration. La segunda es la creación de canales de contratación fiables y legales. Un acuerdo bilateral daría a los gobiernos del Triángulo Norte un gran incentivo para hacerse cargo y limitar la presencia a los agentes que incurren en prácticas de contratación abusivas como el cobro de tarifas ilegales. OECD countries alone have implemented more than 170 BLA (ILO/IOM/OSCE, 2007). In addition, according to the ILO, the country of origin with the highest number of MPAs is the Philippines with a total of 13 (ILO, 2019). An example of an agreement that contains specific social protection provisions is the Canadian Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program (SAWP) with Mexico. This BLA provides partial social protection coverage for temporary workers in the agricultural sector and guarantees access to social security and health care (Panhuys et al., 2017). States accede to NAPAs for a variety of social and economic reasons.

Reducing exploitation is a common social goal of countries of origin when they enter BLA. They want to protect the rights of their nationals abroad, improve working conditions and negotiate fair contracts with minimum standards (Blank, 2011; Chilton and Posner, 2018; Moraga, 2008). Sending workers may wish to strengthen economic relations with certain countries. Joining a BLA could create other positive pathways for trade and investment on the road. Other economic factors for countries of origin are mitigating a labour surplus, facilitating the return of remittances (Chilton and Posner, 2018), and preventing brain drain by negotiating contractual terms and repatriation (Moraga, 2008). ILO (2019). Bilateral agreements and regional cooperation. Available: www.ilo.org/asia/areas/labour-migration/WCMS_226300/lang–en/index.htm United Nations Conference on Trade and Development. (2019): Investment Policy Cluster.

investment-policy.unctad.org/international-investment-agreements/countries/166/philippines 2019 United Nations Conference on Trade and Development Investment Policy Hub investment-policy.unctad.org/international-investment-agreements/countries/166/philippines Search in Google Scholar The model includes a number of regional mannequins to further control regional variations and shocks over time. For consistency and reproducibility, I group countries according to the World Bank`s regional classifications: East Asia and the Pacific, Europe and Central Asia, Latin America, middle east and north africa, North America, South Asia, and sub-Saharan Africa. Model 3 interacts with these regional mannequins with a temporal trend (Table 2). The first is to establish links with American employers. The H-2 visa is fully managed by the employer. Unless a U.S. employer specifically requests the hiring of a Northern Triangle worker, that person cannot obtain an H-2 visa. But employers have few reasons or resources to make an effort to hire people from a particular country where they may have little familiarity or network. Therefore, the U.S. government cannot reserve H-2 visas for Honduras until U.S.

employers have contacted reliable honduran workers. Northern Triangle governments could easily do this through a bilateral partnership. Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA). (2016a). Bilateral (land) employment contracts. www.poea.gov.ph/laborinfo/bLB.html Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) 2016a Bilateral (land) labour agreements www.poea.gov.ph/laborinfo/bLB.html search in Google Scholar Panhuys, C. et al. (2017). Migrants` access to social protection under bilateral labour agreements: a review of 120 countries and nine bilateral agreements, ESS – Working Paper No. 57, International Labour Organization. 54 pp.

Available: www.social-protection.org/gimi/gess/RessourcePDF.action?ressource.ressourceId=54405 The results of equation (1) are presented in Table 2. The first column presents the OLS estimates, while columns 2 and 3 contain the results of estimate IV. All three models include a temporal trend, country-specific effects to control for unobserved heterogeneity between countries, and country-grouped standard errors to adapt to serial correlation. Column 3 contains terms of interaction between region dummies and time trend, which further controls region-specific time shocks that can affect migration. Examples include the oil boom in the Middle East in the 1970s and the Asian financial crisis of 1997. Similarly, reverse causality may also be present in Japan, one of the main destination countries for OFWs, especially seafarers (Go, 2004). The Philippines proposed a memorandum of understanding in 1988 to mobilize workers. Japan did not directly reject blah; Instead, they chose the path of inaction. Usage increased year after year from the late 1980s to the mid-2000s, until Japan tightened its visa restrictions on artists to combat human trafficking. The number of newly hired self-employed workers decreased by 81.7% between 2005 and 2006. Negotiations on the Japan-Philippine Economic Partnership Agreement (JPEPA), a single bilateral agreement on investment, trade and labour, were ongoing.

According to Amante, “the employment of Filipino nurses in Japan was the main point demanded by the Philippine side” (2007, p. 26). This indicates efforts to raise the stakes, dominate a new sector and reduce a surplus of care. JPEPA covers language for seafarers and nurses and eventually led to the conclusion of two specific memoranda of understanding with Japan in 2009 for these industries. The independent variable of interest is an indicator of the existence of an employment contract with the Philippines in country i at time t. The variable includes all forms of diplomatic tools used to reach an agreement that allows the Philippines to provide workers to a host country, such as memoranda of understanding, their annexes and protocols, as well as less restrictive forms such as memoranda of understanding. Seventy-one BLA have been identified between the Philippines and other states or provinces, 69 are land workers and the other two are based at sea. Of these, there are 29 unique country pairs, and the other 42 are updated protocols, renewals, or new agreements with previous partners. As a robustness test, I test two forms of these variables, BLA-onset and BLA-real, both dichotomous. BLA-onset expects an agreement for a national calendar to remain in effect until the end of the sampling period. The advantage of using the initial form is to test the lasting impact of a BLA on migration. This reflects the ongoing impact on migration, even after the agreement expires.

In addition to reverse causality, OLS likely suffers from a lack of variable bias caused by other unobserved factors behind Filipino migration patterns, which also correlate with the introduction of BLA. In the qualitative literature, there are arguments about the strength of social networks and the imitation of related migration patterns, also known as gradual migration (Francisco-Menchavez, 2020), which are not taken into account in the data. .