Consider a two-product firm that decides on the quality of each product. Product quality is unknown to consumers. If the firm sells both products under the same brand name, consumers adjust their beliefs about quality subject to the performance of both products. We show that if the probability...

Economists have emphasized the role of dissipative advertising and price as signals of quality. Most works, however, limit the number of types to two options: high and low quality. Yet, production costs and quality both result from R&D efforts and therefore are both uncertain. I characterize the...

Who does, and who should initiate costly certification by a third party under asymmetric quality information, the buyer or the seller? Our answer - the seller - follows from a nontrivial analysis revealing a clear intuition. Buyer-induced certification acts as an inspection device,...