Most research on private governance examines the design and negotiation of particular initiatives or their operation and effectiveness once established, with relatively little work on why firms join in the first place. We contribute to this literature by exploring firms’ willingness to participate in two recent, high-profile private initiatives established in the aftermath of the Rana Plaza disaster in the Bangladesh ready-made garment (RMG) sector: the Accord on Building and Fire Safety and the Alliance for Worker Safety in Bangladesh. Using novel shipment-level data from U.S. customs declarations, we generate a set of firms that were “eligible” to join these remediation initiatives. We are able to positively attribute only a minority of US RMG imports from Bangladesh to Accord and Alliance signatories. Firms with consumer-facing brands, publicly-traded firms, and those importing more RMG product from Bangladesh were more likely to sign up for the Accord and Alliance. Firms headquartered in the USA were much less likely to sign onto remediation plans, especially the Accord.

大多数关于私人治理的研究都检查特定计划的设计和谈判，或者一旦确定，它们的运作和有效性，而关于公司为何首先加入的工作却很少。通过探索公司愿意参与孟加拉国成衣（RMG）部门Rana Plaza灾难后建立的两项近期，备受瞩目的私人计划，我们为这些文献做出了贡献：《建筑与消防安全协议》和《孟加拉国工人安全联盟。使用来自美国海关申报单的新颖装运级别数据，我们生成了一组“有资格”加入这些补救措施的公司。我们只能将美国从孟加拉国进口的少量RMG归因于Accord和Alliance签署方。拥有面向消费者的品牌的公司，公开交易的公司，以及从孟加拉国进口更多RMG产品的公司，更有可能签署Accord and Alliance。总部位于美国的公司签署补救计划的可能性要小得多，尤其是《协议》。