We consider a market where privately informed sellers resort to certification to overcome adverse selection. There is uncertainty about the certifier's ability to generate accurate information. The profit of a monopolistic certifier is an inverted U-shaped function of his reputation for...

In a market where sellers solicit certification to overcome asymmetric information, we show that the profit of a monopolistic certifier can be hump-shaped in its reputation for accuracy: a higher accuracy attracts high-quality sellers but sometimes repels low-quality sellers. As a consequence,...

We consider social learning in a changing world. With changing states, societies can remain responsive only if agents regularly act upon fresh information, which drastically limits the value of observational learning. When the state is close to persistent, a consensus whereby most agents choose...