The Quality of Audits - A Comparative Study of Auditing and Certification Schemes in the Food Sector

In spite of the increasing number of certification schemes in the food sector, there is only few research about the economics of certification. Given the rapid growth and the lack of experience the actors have to cope with different forms of opportunistic behaviour. The following paper describes the basic structure and information economics reasons why certification schemes are created. Subsequently, an institutionalistic model is presented which includes several starting points to increase quality of certification systems mainly based on analogies in financial auditing.