Enforcing higher labor standards within developing country value chains: Consequences for MNEs and informal actors in a dual economy

The 2013 collapse of the Rana Plaza building in Dhaka, Bangladesh, led external stakeholders to insist on higher labor standards in apparel global value chains (GVCs). Stakeholders now expect MNEs to take ‘full-chain’ responsibility. However, the increased monitoring and enforcement costs of a large network of suppliers have been non-trivial. MNEs instead implement a ‘cascading compliance’ approach, coupled with a partial re-internalization....