Global Production and its Watchdogs: Firms and NGOs in the Regulatory Void

过去三十年的特点是生产过程前所未有的国际化。但是，它的规章（例如关于劳工或环境的规章）仍然主要在国家一级。因此，将生产地点设在不同的国家使企业能够从各国监管和执法能力的巨大差异中获益：“监管空白”。这为在国际经济政策领域出现一种新的非政府参与者奠定了基础，这种参与者以前在国际贸易研究中很少受到关注：倡导（或监督）非政府组织，如绿色和平组织、热带雨林行动网络或大赦国际等。这些集团已调整其战略以适应生产的国际化，并越来越多地通过（威胁）运动和消费者抵制直接影响公司，而不是以国家管制为目标。1998年针对耐克的反血汗工厂运动（批评印尼供应商工厂的工作条件）表明，非政府组织的运动可以对公司造成相当大的损害（利润：-49%；股票市场估值：-20%）。这场运动导致了对非政府组织要求的实质性让步，并对供应商工厂的工资产生了因果影响。我们将这一尚未充分研究的新因素置于经济政策领域，并将其与国际活跃企业的互动置于分析的中心位置。构成本提案的两个关键研究问题是：1。当全球监管空白允许以牺牲工人和环境为代价节省大量成本，但这也可能导致消费者抵制和倡导非政府组织运动时，企业如何组织国际生产？我们的分析基于Antràs发起的国际生产组织的既定文献（QJE, 2003）。基于我们在Herkenhoff & Krautheim的初步工作，我们设想在理论和实证方面都有重要的贡献。* * * 2。该项目的其他初步工作（Hatte & Koenig， WBER，即将出版）表明，国际非政府组织运动的地理位置可以很好地用三元重力方程来描述。这就引出了第二个研究问题：跨境贸易流动和生产联系是否塑造了国际倡导非政府组织运动的地理格局？它们是如何相互作用的？我将与Thierry Verdier和Pamina Koenig（都是巴黎经济学院的）合作。在实证结果的指导下，基于我们之前在Krautheim和Krautheim & Verdier的工作，我们将设计和分析一个包含异类企业和异类非政府组织、贸易、国际生产和非政府组织活动的模型。该模型的可测试意义将使用与初步工作中使用的相同的专有数据集进行分析。

The last three decades have been characterized by an unprecedented internationalization of the production process. Its regulation (e.g. regarding labor or the environment), however, remained mainly on the national level. Locating production in different countries therefore allows firms to benefit from massive cross-country differences in regulation and enforcement capacity: the "regulatory void". This has set the stage for a novel, non-governmental player in the international economic policy arena which has previously received little attention in research on international trade: advocacy (or: watchdog) NGOs like Greenpeace, Rainforest Action Network or Amnesty International etc. These groups have adjusted their strategies to the internationalization of production and increasingly influence firms directly through (the threat of) campaigns and consumer boycotts, instead of targeting national regulation. The anti-sweatshop campaign against Nike (criticizing work conditions in Indonesian supplier factories) in 1998 illustrates that NGO campaigns can induce sizable damage on firms (profits: –49%; stock market valuation: –20%). The campaign led to substantial concessions to the NGO demands and had a causal impact on wages in supplier factories. We place this under-researched novel agent in the economic policy arena and its interaction with internationally active firms at center-stage of our analysis. The two key research questions which also structure this proposal are: 1. How do firms organize international production when the global regulatory void allows for substantial cost savings at the expense of workers and the environment, but when this may also induce consumer boycotts and advocacy NGO campaigns? We base our analysis on the established literature on the international organization of production initiated by Antràs (QJE, 2003). Based on our preliminary work in Herkenhoff & Krautheim we envision important contributions both on the theoretical and the empirical side. *** 2. Other preliminary work for this project (Hatte & Koenig, WBER, forthcoming) shows that the geography of international NGO campaigns is captured very well by triadic Gravity equations. This leads to the second research question: Do trade flows and production linkages across borders shape the geographical patterns of international advocacy NGO campaigns and how do they interact? I will cooperate with Thierry Verdier and Pamina Koenig (both: Paris School of Economics). Guided by the empirical results and building on our previous work in Krautheim and Krautheim & Verdier, we will design and analyze a model with heterogeneous firms and heterogeneous NGOs, trade, international production and NGO campaigns. Testable implications of the model will be analyzed using the same exclusive data set used in the preliminary work.