Leniency and Loyalty in the Choice of Certifiers: Evidence from the BRC Food Safety Standard

Talia Bar and Yuqing Zheng

No 2016-22, Working papers from University of Connecticut, Department of Economics

Abstract: Standards play a vital role in promoting food safety. Certification bodies audit manufacturing sites to certify them for a standard. Using data from the British Retail Consortium global standards program, we offer a glimpse at the market for and examine manufacturers’ choices of certification bodies. Manufacturers prefer geographically close certifiers and those that assigned a higher share of A grades in the previous year. This behavior provides an incentive for lenient grading. We also find a strong tendency of manufacturers to return to the same certification body that audited their site in the previous year.

Keywords: Certifiers; Certification bodies; food safety; standard; product quality; audit grade; British Retail Consortium (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: L13 L15 L66 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 43 pages
Date: 2016-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr
Note: Talia Bar is the corresponding author
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