When Are Private Standards More Stringent than Public Standards?
构建了一个政治经济学模型，解释零售商私人标准为何常比公共标准更严格，并分析了生产者政治游说与零售商市场力量对标准水平的影响。
Abstract Retailers' private standards are increasingly important for 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. This article develops a political economy model that helps explain this stylized fact. We 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, depending on several factors.