uncertain of their quality at the time of hiring a certification intermediary and if the decision to get a rating is not …

liquidity and certification agencies to become aggressive competitors in a new speculative grade market. …

convince consumers of the high quality of its products. Alternatively, a firm can rely on external certification of the quality … external certification. We also show that the potential to signal quality is improved if consumers condition their beliefs on … the source of information, namely whether information comes from external certification or from random detection. …

Who does, and who should initiate costly certification by a third party under asymmetric quality information, the buyer …--induced certification acts as an inspection device, whence seller--induced certification acts as a signalling device. Seller …--induced certification maximizes the certifier's profit and social welfare. This suggests the general principle that certification is, and …

We use a comprehensive dataset of Funds-of-Hedge-Funds (FoFs) to investigate performance, risk and capital formation in … superior performance over time. In keeping with this implication, we provide evidence that even successful hedge funds have … experienced a recent, dramatic decline in risk-adjusted performance. …

Performance indicators are increasingly used to regulate quality in health care and other areas of the public sector …

We analyse the effect of ownership on post-privatization performance in a virtually complete population of medium and … ownership improves economic performance, but domestic private ownership does not, relative to state-owned firms. Foreign firms … increasing profit. Ownership concentration is associated with superior performance, thus providing support to the agency theory …

against our data. We find that team size affects the impact of the incentive scheme upon performance. Moreover, while the …

In this paper firm level data are used to test whether competition affects productivity performance in three transition … pressure has a positive impact on firm performance in Hungary and Slovenia, but not in Romania, while in Romenia short …-run competitive pressure has a positive impact on performance. The paper also finds evidence that ownership matters. Traditional firms …