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AbstractSpatial, cultural, and linguistic barriers create information asymmetries between buyers and sellers that impede international trade. The International Organization for Standardization's ISO 9000 program is designed to reduce these information asymmetries by providing assurance about the product quality of firms that receive its certification. Based on analyses of a panel of 140 countries from 1994 to 2004, we find that ISO 9000 certification levels are associated with increases in countries' bilateral exports, particularly for developing countries' exports, which may be due to their more severe quality assurance challenges. © 2009 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.

Informationsasymmetrien sind ein typisches Merkmal der Beziehung zwischen Investoren und dem Management eines Unternehmens. Diese Asymmetrien können zu einer ineffizienten Ressourcenallokation und Wohlfahrtsverlusten führen. Ziel dieser Thesis ist es, aktuelle Einflüsse auf diese Informationsasymmetrien besser zu verstehen. Zu diesem Zweck werden drei generische Mitigationsstrategien (Screening, Einbeziehung von Informationsintermediären und Signaling) analysiert. Anders als in einem Großteil der finanzwirtschaftlichen Literatur, die sich diesem Themengebiet häufig mit marktbasierten Ansätz...

Informationsasymmetrien sind ein typisches Merkmal der Beziehung zwischen Investoren und dem Management eines Unternehmens. Diese Asymmetrien können zu einer ineffizienten Ressourcenallokation und Wohlfahrtsverlusten führen. Ziel dieser Thesis ist es, aktuelle Einflüsse auf diese Informationsasymmetrien besser zu verstehen. Zu diesem Zweck werden drei generische Mitigationsstrategien (Screening, Einbeziehung von Informationsintermediären und Signaling) analysiert. Anders als in einem Großteil der finanzwirtschaftlichen Literatur, die sich diesem Themengebiet häufig mit marktbasierten Ansätz...

In this paper, I conduct one of the first evaluations of a voluntary management program that features an independent verification mechanism to determine whether it is achieving its ultimate objectives. Using a sample of thousands of manufacturing facilities across the United States, I find evidence that the ISO 14001 Environmental Management System Standard has attracted companies with superior environmental performance, and that adoption leads to further performance improvement. This contrasts sharply with findings from prior evaluations of voluntary management programs that lacked verification mechanisms. This suggests that independent verification mechanisms such as certification may be necessary for voluntary management programs to mitigate information asymmetries surrounding difficult-to-observe management practices. Implications are discussed for the industry-associations, government agencies, and the non-governmental organizations that design these programs, the companies that are investing resources to adopt these programs, and those that are relying on them as a credible signal of superior management practices. The substantial variation in magnitude and significance of the results across comparison groups and performance metrics highlights the need for researchers to conduct robustness tests when evaluating voluntary management programs.

With emerging recognition of changing climates' impact on agricultural productivity, a sharper lens is focused on how to target agricultural public investments for development. This paper contributes to an understanding of budget decision-making processes in agricultural development, by examining to what extent those with superior information and expertise on a sector have sway over how public resources to the sector are allocated. The empirical qualitative analysis of this paper employs process tracing with an embedded case study design, based on interviews of 79 senior public sector key-informants in Nigeria. We also analyzed quantitative public expenditure data in the study areas. We draw insights from theories of information asymmetries in the public sector along three dimensions. Within the first type of information asymmetry, we find that, despite the higher agricultural technical expertise that sector bureaucrats have vis-à-vis the elected non-sector-specific chief executives, it is the latter who heavily influence agricultural resource allocation. In the second form of information asymmetry, the benefits from superior lower-tier information are only exploited at one subnational (state) level but not at the other (local government) level. Within the third kind of information asymmetry, public leaders prioritize funding for those types of public investments that are more visible by their nature, and outputs of which materialize relatively rapidly; this disfavors agriculture. Going beyond the literature on the impact of information interventions, this study sheds light on the extent to which information already in the public sector is tapped into to guide the provision of public goods and services. ; IFPRI3; CRP2; Feed the Future Nigeria Agricultural Policy Project; ISI ; PIM ; PR ; CGIAR Research Program on Policies, Institutions, and Markets (PIM)