Cause And Regulation Of Certification Collusion

Certification is an activity to certificate products, processes or services if they have met relevant standards or technical institutions by a third party.It is the result of the development of commodity economy, which can effectively solve the problem of asymmetric information, promote market transactions, reduce market transaction costs, and increase market efficiency. Meanwhile, certification can encourage enterprises to improve the quality of products or services.In addition, certification standardizes the market order and promotes the development of international trade. With the further understanding of certification, its market demand has also increased. At present, certification has widely existed in the production and circulation of commodities in all sectors, and plays an increasingly important role in the market economy.However, due to high potential profits and low market entry barriers of the certification industry, asymmetric certification information and imperfect legal mechanism, false certifications are becoming more and more rampant in our country, which seriously harm the interests of consumers and corporations, hamper the development of certification market, and even trigger a credit crisis.Although the government has enhanced supervision, the effect is not obvious.Under this situation, the article analyzes the reason for the certification collusion from the perspective of market structure, and puts forward corresponding regulation measures.First, based on the traditional theory of collusion among firms, and combined with the characteristics of certification collusion, this article analyzes factors of the theoretical mechanism and certification systems that induce collusions, and further discusses specific impact paths of certification market structure on the formation of collusions. On this basis, adopting the method of static game, the article studies the conditions under which a collusion agreement can be reached in considering and not considering the reputation effect of the certification body, and then focuses on the impact of market structure on the collusion tendency of the certification body from its independency, profits and collusion risks.The results show that the collusion tendency will increase with more certification bodies and lower certification market concentration. At last, in terms of certification market structure, the article proposes effective policies recommendations on prevention of certification collusions.