Existing studies show that intermediaries can help verify or screen product quality for buyers. This paper examines this claim both theoretically and empirically in the context of international trade. We develop a heterogeneous-fi rm model that features vertical and horizontal differentiation of...

Existing studies show that intermediaries can help verify or screen product quality for buyers. This paper examines this claim both theoretically and empirically in the context of international trade. We develop a heterogeneous firm model that features vertical and horizontal differentiation of...

We propose and validate a new measure of earnings quality based on a hidden Markov model. This measure, termed earnings fidelity, captures how faithful earnings signals are in revealing the true economic state of the firm. We estimate the measure using a Markov chain Monte Carlo procedure in a...