Why do some countries establish their own national eco-labeling programs and some do not? In this paper, we provide both theoretical arguments and empirical evidence suggesting that the answer to this question can shed new light on three questions that have taken center-stage in the trade and...

We model competing ecolabels sponsored by an industry trade association and an environmental group. For either sponsor in autarky, multi-tier labels are more attractive when there are many producers with high cost of quality, and the cost gap between low-cost and high-cost firms is large. When...