On 28th November OxTalks will move to the new Halo platform and will become 'Oxford Events' (full details are available on the Staff Gateway).
There will be an OxTalks freeze beginning on Friday 14th November. This means you will need to publish any of your known events to OxTalks by then as there will be no facility to publish or edit events in that fortnight. During the freeze, all events will be migrated to the new Oxford Events site. It will still be possible to view events on OxTalks during this time.
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International buyers vary in their sourcing strategies, with some adopting “relational” strategies that entail sourcing from fewer suppliers and providing higher rents (Cajal-Grossi, Macchiavello, and Noguera, 2023), and others adopting more “spot” strategies that entail sourcing from many suppliers and providing lower rents. We hypothesize that exposure to relational buyers causes exporters to invest in capabilities to build stronger relationships with their workers (Gibbons and Henderson, 2012) and in better working conditions. This may be because relational buyers care more about working conditions or because performance in the relational contract requires or induces better conditions. We document that workers employed by Bangladeshi garment exporters that supply to relational buyers experience better working conditions and have longer tenure. Using exposure and responses to the 2013 Rana Plaza disaster, we show that relational buyers do not appear to select suppliers with ex ante better conditions, nor do they appear to care more about working conditions. Instead, relational buyers’ investment in trading relationships appears to causally improve conditions.
