The end of the MFA and apparel exports: has good CSR allowed Cambodia to hold steady against China in a quota free environment?

Stephen Frost and Mary Ho

Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, 2006, vol. 13, issue 1, 37-46

Abstract: In the lead up the end of the Multi‐Fiber Arrangement (MFA), commentators routinely argued that Chinese apparel exports would surge in a quota‐free environment. It was also expected that Southeast Asian apparel exporting nations would suffer declines, leading to job and economic losses. Of particular concern was Cambodia, a country that relies almost exclusively on apparel exports for foreign earnings. By mid‐2005, as trade data started to filter in, the doomsday scenario for countries like Cambodia seemed less clear cut. Although China's apparel exports had indeed soured, a surprising outcome was that exports to the US from Cambodia (and several other neighbours such as Indonesia and Vietnam) had also increased. This article focuses specifically on Cambodia (which of all the Southeast Asian countries surveyed has shown the greatest growth in apparel exports) and examines some of the CSR initiatives that help explain why gloomy prognostications have not yet become true. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.

Date: 2006
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1002/csr.111

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wly:corsem:v:13:y:2006:i:1:p:37-46

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management from John Wiley & Sons
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().