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 …

In this paper we examine the causal impact of competition on management quality. We analyze the hospital sector where … geographic proximity is a key determinant of competition, and English public hospitals where political competition can be used to … construct instrumental variables for market structure. Since almost all major English hospitals are government run, closing …

between hospitals. Patients were given choice of location for hospital care and provided information on the quality and … approximately 68,000 discharges per year per hospital from 160 hospitals. We find that the effect of competition is to save lives … the impact of competition on hospital outcomes. The English government introduced a policy in 2006 to promote competition …

This study investigates hospitals’ dynamic incentives to select patients when hospitals are remunerated according to a … spiral of prices is possible which induces hospitals to focus on low-severity cases. For high altruism, dynamic price …