Information revelations and certification intermediaries

I discuss the role of intermediaries that search out the information of pri vately informed parties and then choose what to reveal to uninformed partie s. My focus is on the strategic manipulation of information by these certif ication intermediaries. I show that in a class of environments the optimal choice for a monopoly intermediary is to reveal only whether quality is abo ve some minimal standard. Despite this minimal information transmission the intermediary can capture a large share of the surplus. I also show that co mpetition among intermediaries can lead to full information revelation.