We investigate the impact of alternative certifying institutions on firms' incentives to engage in costly Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) activities as well as their relative market and societal implications. We find that the CSR certification standard is the lowest under for-profit private certifiers and the highest under a Non Governmental Organization (NGO), with the standard of a welfare-maximizing public certifier lying in between. Yet, regarding industry output, this ranking is reversed. Certification of CSR activities is welfare enhancing for consumers and firms and should be encouraged. Finally, the market and societal outcomes of CSR certification depend crucially on whether certification takes place before or after firms' CSR activities. JEL classification: L13, M14 Certification des activités de responsabilité sociale des compagnies dans des marchés oligopolistiques. On fait enquête sur l'impact de diverses institutions de certification sur les incitations des entreprisesà s'engager dans des activités coûteuses pour assurer la responsabilité sociale ainsi que sur les implications relatives de ces sortes de certification pour le marché et la société. On découvre que le standard de certification est le plus bas pour ceux qui certifient les organisations du secteur privéà but lucratif, et le plusWe are grateful to three anonymous referees and the co-editor Joanne Roberts for their valuable comments and suggestions that contributed substantially in the improvement of the paper. We would also like to thank Certification of corporate social responsibilities 283 elevé pour ceux qui certifient les organisations non-gouvernementales, et que le standard d'un certificateur public qui viseraità maximiser le bien-être tombe entre les deux. Pour ce qui est de la production industrielle, l'ordre est inversé. La certification des activités de responsabilité sociale améliore le bien-être des consommateurs et des entreprises, et devraitêtre encouragée. Finalement, les impactséconomiques et sociaux de cette certification dépendent de manière cruciale du fait que la certification a eu lieu avant ou après ces activités.

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The present paper studies the relative efficiency between hotels operating under a brand and hotels operating independently, in the island of Crete, Greece, using the Data Envelopment Analysis. Interestingly enough, we find that nationally branded hotels are the relatively most efficient; internationally branded are the least efficient, while those operating under a local brand and the independent ones lie in between. This efficiency ranking can be explained by the interplay between operating under a brand and being to changes in the local market's conditions. We also investigate the inefficiency causes and make suggestions for improvements, in the transformation of inputs to outputs, for each type of hotels studied.