This research had two main purposes: understanding the development of the private institution "Programa Integrado de Desenvolvimento e Qualificação de Fornecedores - (PRODFOR)", a program directed to the standardization and certification of local suppliers in the State of Espirito Santo; and testing hypotheses related to the program's impact on the transaction costs of the buyer companies. The concepts from the New Institutional Economics were used in order to develop hypotheses regarding the impact of certification on the sponsors' buying performance. The results obtained from the field research and the non-parametric tests of equality of means revealed that the certification caused a reduction on both the ex-ante and the ex-post buyers' transaction costs. Moreover, it was possible to observe that the impact was greater on the ex-post transaction costs.
Suppliers development; Private institutions; Transaction costs
