IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/bdp/dpaper/0017.html

The irrelevance of fee structures for certification

Author

Listed:
  • Martin Pollrich
  • Roland Strausz

Abstract

In models of certification possible restrictions on the nature of the fee structures are commonly analyzed. We show that they are irrelevant for the certifier’s ability to maximize profits and trade efficiency. Our results establish that certification schemes involve two substitutable dimensions—the fee structure and the disclosure rule. In the context of a canonical unit good certification setup, these dimensions act as perfect substitutes for achieving trade efficiency and (monotone) distributions of rents; adjustments in the disclosure dimension can fully mitigate restrictions in the fee dimension, but these changes do affect market transparency.

Suggested Citation

  • Martin Pollrich & Roland Strausz, 2023. "The irrelevance of fee structures for certification," Berlin School of Economics Discussion Papers 0017, Berlin School of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:bdp:dpaper:0017
    DOI: 10.48462/opus4-4972
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://opus4.kobv.de/opus4-hsog/files/4972/BSE_DP_0017.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.48462/opus4-4972?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Mathis, Jérôme & McAndrews, James & Rochet, Jean-Charles, 2009. "Rating the raters: Are reputation concerns powerful enough to discipline rating agencies?," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 56(5), pages 657-674, July.
    2. Navin Kartik & Weijie Zhong, 2023. "Lemonade from Lemons: Information Design and Adverse Selection," Papers 2305.02994, arXiv.org, revised Sep 2025.
    3. Ozerturk, Saltuk, 2014. "Upfront versus rating contingent fees: Implications for rating quality," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 11(2), pages 91-103.
    4. Skreta, Vasiliki & Veldkamp, Laura, 2009. "Ratings shopping and asset complexity: A theory of ratings inflation," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 56(5), pages 678-695, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. is not listed on IDEAS
    2. S. Nageeb Ali & Andreas Kleiner & Kun Zhang, 2024. "From Design to Disclosure," Papers 2411.03608, arXiv.org, revised Jan 2026.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Kittiphod Charoontham & Thunyarat Amornpetchkul, 2023. "Compensation reform analysis on inflated credit rating attenuation," Economia e Politica Industriale: Journal of Industrial and Business Economics, Springer;Associazione Amici di Economia e Politica Industriale, vol. 50(3), pages 627-645, September.
    2. Matthieu Bouvard & Raphaël Levy, 2018. "Two-Sided Reputation in Certification Markets," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 64(10), pages 4755-4774, October.
    3. Stolper, Anno, 2009. "Regulation of credit rating agencies," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 33(7), pages 1266-1273, July.
    4. Kempf, Elisabeth, 2017. "The Job Rating Game: The Effects of Revolving Doors on Analyst Incentives," Working Papers 258, The University of Chicago Booth School of Business, George J. Stigler Center for the Study of the Economy and the State.
    5. Andreas Freytag & Martin Zenker, 2012. "The Credit Rating Market - Options for Appropriate Regulation," Global Financial Markets Working Paper Series 2012-39, Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena.
    6. Harald Hau & Sam Langfield & David Marques-Ibanez, 2013. "Bank ratings: what determines their quality? [Bank risk during the financial crisis: do business models matter?]," Economic Policy, CEPR, CESifo, Sciences Po;CES;MSH, vol. 28(74), pages 289-333.
    7. Gwion Williams & Rasha Alsakka & Owain ap Gwilym, 2013. "The Impact of Sovereign Credit Signals on Bank Share Prices during the European Sovereign Debt Crisis," Working Papers 13007, Bangor Business School, Prifysgol Bangor University (Cymru / Wales).
    8. Cornaggia, Jess & Cornaggia, Kimberly J. & Xia, Han, 2016. "Revolving doors on Wall Street," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 120(2), pages 400-419.
    9. Jeon, Doh-Shin & Lovo, Stefano, 2013. "Credit rating industry: A helicopter tour of stylized facts and recent theories," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 31(5), pages 643-651.
    10. Bar-Isaac, Heski & Shapiro, Joel, 2013. "Ratings quality over the business cycle," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 108(1), pages 62-78.
    11. Ozerturk, Saltuk, 2014. "Ratings as regulatory stamps," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 105(C), pages 17-29.
    12. Chiu, Jonathan & Koeppl, Thorsten, 2014. "Livin’ on the Edge with Ratings: Liquidity, Efficiency and Stability," Queen's Economics Department Working Papers 274661, Queen's University - Department of Economics.
    13. Sirio Aramonte & Frank Packer, 2022. "Information governance in sustainable finance," BIS Papers, Bank for International Settlements, number 132, May.
    14. Keser, Claudia & Özgümüs, Asri & Peterlé, Emmanuel & Schmidt, Martin, 2017. "An experimental investigation of rating-market regulation," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 144(C), pages 78-86.
    15. Yun Wang & Yilan Xu, 2015. "Race to the Top: Credit Rating Bias from Competition," Working Papers 2015-05-12, Wang Yanan Institute for Studies in Economics (WISE), Xiamen University, revised 10 Jul 2015.
    16. Yixiao Jiang, 2021. "Semiparametric Estimation of a Corporate Bond Rating Model," Econometrics, MDPI, vol. 9(2), pages 1-20, May.
    17. Marco Pagano & Paolo Volpin, 2010. "Credit ratings failures and policy options [Cash-in-the-market pricing and optimal resolution of bank failures]," Economic Policy, CEPR, CESifo, Sciences Po;CES;MSH, vol. 25(62), pages 401-431.
    18. Javed I. Ahmed, 2014. "Competition in lending and credit ratings," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2014-23, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    19. Matthias Efing, 2012. "Bank Capital Regulation with an Opportunistic Rating Agency," Swiss Finance Institute Research Paper Series 12-19, Swiss Finance Institute.
    20. Becker, Bo & Milbourn, Todd, 2011. "How did increased competition affect credit ratings?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 101(3), pages 493-514, September.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bdp:dpaper:0017. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Christian Reiter (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/bdpemde.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.