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

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

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 …

(which are naturally subject to more regulations and standards), so the discrimination may have an 'escalating' feature, much …

Because standards and regulations respond to a society's demand for specific public goods, we expect them to be shaped … standards should be equal in different societies. This paper studies the interaction between standards and international trade …. It shows that although standards can be used to manipulate trade flows, there is no logical connection between standards …

Traditional analyses of standards in international trade identify standards as government regulations and investigate … the determination of technical standards. The composition of these groups is affected by technology and market conditions … harmonization ‘from the bottom’. If standards are public goods whose ideal value differs across economic activities and across …

Empirical scholarship on the standards-trade relationship has been held up due to methodological challenges …