We examine the buyer's problem of inducing the supplier's quality effort using two arrangements: the appraisal regime and the certification regime. In the appraisal regime, the buyer inspects the units supplied and either charges a penalty for defective units identified during inspection or pays...

We consider situations where the a priori guidance provided by theoretical considerations indicates only that the function linking the endogenous and exogenous variables is monotone and concave (or convex). We present methods to evaluate the adequacy of a parametric functional form to represent...