Local Global Watchdogs: Trade, Sourcing and the Internationalization of Social Activism

Arbeitspapier

NGO campaigns against firms with value chains involving production in developing and emerging economies are a salient feature of economic globalization. What determines the patterns of the internationalization of NGO campaigns? Stylized facts obtained from recently available data containing 102 532 campaigns by 4 343 NGOs targeting 11 429 firms from 145 countries guide our theoretical analysis. We propose a model of global sourcing and international trade in which heterogeneous NGOs campaign against heterogeneous firms in response to infringements along their international value chains. We find that campaigns are determined by a triadic gravity equation, i.e. bilateral trade costs between the country of the NGO, the country of the firm and the sourcing country affect campaigns. Most notably, the latter implies that by advancing the internationalization of production, falling trade costs boost the internationalization of NGO campaigns. We use our data to estimate the NGO level triadic gravity equation implied by our model and find strong support for our predictions.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: CESifo Working Paper ; No. 9068

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Models of Trade with Imperfect Competition and Scale Economies; Fragmentation ; Empirical Studies of Trade ; Economic Impacts of Globalization: General ; Nonprofit Institutions; NGOs; Social Entrepreneurship ; Social Innovation
• Subject: international trade ; international sourcing ; gravity ; NGOs ; campaigns ; social activism

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Koenig, Pamina ; Krautheim, Sebastian ; Löhnert, Claudius ; Verdier, Thierry
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): Center for Economic Studies and Ifo Institute (CESifo)
• (where): Munich
• (when): 2021

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/235438
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:42 AM CET