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When are Private Standards more Stringent than Public Standards?

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  • Vandemoortele, Thijs

Abstract

Retailers’ private standards are increasingly important in addressing consumer concerns about safety, quality and social and environmental issues. Empirical evidence shows that these private standards are frequently more stringent than their public counterparts. I develop a political economy model that may contribute to explaining this stylized fact. I show that if producers exercise their political power to persuade the government to impose a lower public standard, retailers may apply their market power to install a private standard at a higher level than the public one.

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File URL: http://purl.umn.edu/115544
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Paper provided by European Association of Agricultural Economists in its series 2011 International Congress, August 30-September 2, 2011, Zurich, Switzerland with number 115544.

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Date of creation: 2011
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Handle: RePEc:ags:eaae11:115544
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Keywords: Private Standards; Public Standards; Political Economy; Resource /Energy Economics and Policy;

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Find related papers by JEL classification:
  • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
  • L15 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Information and Product Quality

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Cited by:

  1. John C. Beghin & Miet Maertens & Johan Swinnen, 2015. "Nontariff Measures and Standards in Trade and Global Value Chains," Annual Review of Resource Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 7(1), pages 425-450, October.
  2. von Schlippenbach, Vanessa & Teichmann, Isabel, 2012. "The strategic use of private quality standards in food supply chains," DICE Discussion Papers 62, Düsseldorf Institute for Competition Economics (DICE), University of Düsseldorf.
  3. Johan Swinnen, 2014. "Global Agricultural Value Chains, Standards, and Development," RSCAS Working Papers 2014/30, European University Institute.
  4. Maertens, Miet & Swinnen, Johan, 2015. "Agricultural trade and development: A value chain perspective," WTO Staff Working Papers ERSD-2015-04, World Trade Organization (WTO), Economic Research and Statistics Division.
  5. Venus, Thomas & Punt, Maarten & Wesseler, Justus, 2015. "Influence of voluntary GMO-free production standards on the reputation and flexibility of agricultural value chains," 2015 Conference, August 9-14, 2015, Milan, Italy 211920, International Association of Agricultural Economists.

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