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Economists have been searching for the sources of economic growth since the end of the 18th century. For Adam Smith the division of labour and the accumulation of capital were causes for the increasing wealth of nations. The Austrian-American economist Joseph Alois Schumpeter further established that innovations in products and processes are prerequisites for economic growth:
»The fundamental drive that starts up the capitalist machine and keeps it running comes from the new consumer goods, the new production and transport methods, the new markets, the new forms of industrial organisation, which capitalist entrepreneurship creates.«
Building on these fundamental ideas, during the 1950s American Robert M. Solow – later a Nobel prize winner – developed the first formal mathematical model of economic growth. Solow was able to use a simple model to Show that economic growth within the USA could be described by three determinants: an increase in capital (e.g. machinery and infrastructure), an increase in labour, and technical progress. Later other economists were able to further refine Solow‘s growth theory. While technical progress was accepted during the early years as a fact, it became ever easier to theoretically describe and quantify its causes. The central idea of these new models is that the state and
businesses invest in research and development, thus continually stimulating economic growth through new products and production methods.
The paper addresses the role of technical standards in bilateral trade relationship between the European Union (EU) and China. Traditional aggregate demand functions for imports and exports have been applied to estimate the effects of national and international standards. The panel dataset covers 14 years (1995–2008) and 36 two-digit technological fields based on the International Classification of Standards (ICS). The results indicate negative effects of purely national Chinese standards but positive effects of Chinese international standards for European exports. European standards and European standards aligned with international standards have a positive impact on exports and imports. Based on these results, we conclude that both China and the EU should increase their efforts to harmonise national standards.
In this paper, we explore the relationship between firms' approaches to open innovation and their decision to participate in Standardization alliances. Based on micro data of Dutch Companies surveyed in the Forth Community Innovation Survey we show that the importance of extemal knowledge is positively correlated with participation in Standardization. This suggests that firms aim to access the knowledge of other Companies and stakeholders in Order to increase their own knowledge base. The analysis also shows that firms cooperating with different actors are more likely to join Standardization. Due to the positive relationships with incoming knowledge spillovers and forms of Cooperation, we conclude that Standardization represents a specific form of collaborative knowledge-sharing and knowledge-creating strategy. In addition, we are able to show that absorptive capacity measured via Companies’ research intensity is promoting the involvement in Standardization. Besides the focus on knowledge and Cooperation variables, we explore the traditionally considered factors for alliances Formation and show that firm size, export activities and patent protection are positively correlated with participation in Standardization.
Using a new database on Standards in China, we estimate the impact of voluntaiy and mandatory Standards - either harmonized to international norms or purely domestic — on Chinese food exports. The data covers seven Chinese products over the period 1992-2008. We find that Standards have a positive effect on China's export performance, as the benefits to Standardization in terms of reducing potential Information asymmetiy and signaling enhance food safety and quality in foreign markets seem to surpass compliance costs. Our estimation results Show that the positive effect of Chinese Standards is larger when they are harmonized to international measures. The results suggest that there are clear benefits to China’s Steps to base their domestic Standards and regulations on international measures.
Aufgrund der Immaterialität von Dienstleistungen ist es dem Nachfrager von Dienstleistungen nur schwer möglich, vor dem Konsum die Qualität einer Dienstleistung einzuschätzen. Dementsprechend fehlt es oft an Vertrauen zwischen den Anbietern von Dienstleistungen und den Nachfragern. Das fehlende Vertrauen der Dienstleistungsnachfrager oder - anderes gesagt - die Informationsasymmetrien zwischen Käufer und Verkäufer erhöhen die Transaktionskosten und lassen einen Vertragsabschluss weniger wahrscheinlich werden. Das fehlende Vertrauen der Nachfrager in die Qualität von Dienstleistungen berührt nicht nur den inländischen Handel, sondern beeinträchtigt gerade den internationalen und damit auch den innereuropäischen Handel mit Dienstleistungen.
Eine Eurobarometerumfrage aus dem Jahr 2002 zeigt, dass 26% der befragten europäischen Verbraucher einem Anbieter aus einem EU-Land außer ihrem eigenen weniger vertrauen als einem nationalen Anbieter. Aus dieser Umfrage ging ebenfalls hervor, dass die Verbraucher das Sicherheitsniveau von ausländischen Produkten und Dienstleistungen als geringer empfinden als Angebote aus ihrem eigenen Land. Das mangelnde Vertrauen der Nachfrager in ausländische Dienstleistungsanbieter ist auf die fehlende Transparenz der Dienstleistungsqualität und den damit implizierten Informationsasymmetrien zurückzuführen. Die im Dienstleistungssektor vorhandenen Informationsasymmetrien verursachen beachtliche volkswirtschaftliche Kosten bzw. Ineffizienzen, die im Vergleich zu den Produktmärkten ausgeprägter sind, da Produkteigenschaften im Gegensatz zu Eigenschaften von Dienstleistungscharakteristika auch für den Endverbraucher vor dem Kauf leichter zugänglich und auch besser nachprüfbar sind.
Using a new database on standards in China, we estimate the impact of voluntary and mandatory standards – either harmonized to international norms or purely domestic – on Chinese food exports. The dataset covers seven Chinese products over the period 1992–2008. We find that standards have a positive effect on China's export performance, as the benefits to standardization in terms of reducing potential information asymmetry and signaling enhance food safety, and quality in foreign markets seem to surpass compliance costs. Our estimation results show that the positive effect of Chinese standards is larger when they are harmonized to international measures. The results suggest that there are clear benefits to China's steps to base their domestic standards and regulations on international measures.
This paper explores the decision of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to participate in official standard setting alliances. Based on micro data of German firms in the electrical engineering and machinery industry, we show that innovation-related variables follow the predictions of our hypotheses. Research and development (R&D) intensity exhibits an inverse U-shaped relationship on the likelihood to join alliances. The positive relation suggests that SMEs aim to access the knowledge of larger firms whereas the negative relationship indicates that SMEs exceeding a certain threshold of R&D activity are reluctant to participate in standardization because their knowledge is too essential to disclose to competitors. The importance to access external knowledge via standardization committees is underlined by a positive correlation with the relevance of incoming knowledge spillovers and a negative correlation with the relative size of companies' patent portfolios. Besides these variables, we also explore the traditionally considered factors for alliance formation and show that firm size and export intensity are positively correlated with participation.
In this paper, we identify the strategic motives of German manufacturing companies in the electrical engineering and machinery industry to be involved in standards development organizations. First, we present the general motives for the formation of strategic alliances and relate them to specific standardization motives. Then, we identify pursuing specific company interests, solving technical problems, knowledge seeking, influencing regulation, and facilitating market access as motives to standardize by means of factor analysis. In a second step, we test hypotheses on the relationship between the importance of strategic motives and firm level variables, e.g. R&D intensity, innovation activities, and firm size. The results reveal that firms in electric engineering and machinery have a particularly strong interest in ensuring industry-friendly design of regulations, which can be achieved by standards. Moreover, the results confirm that small firms also from these two sectors are active in standardization alliances to access knowledge from other involved stakeholders.
El sólido vínculo entre las instituciones sociales de control de la calidad y la innovación no siempre resulta obvio. En los párrafos que siguen se sostiene que los servicios de normalización, metrología, evaluación del cumplimiento de las normas y acreditación prestados por la Infraestructura Nacional de la Calidad (INC) son grandes propulsores de nuevos avances sociales y tecnológicos. Todos los elementos de la infraestructura de la calidad ayudan a la sociedad a hacer frente a distintos desafíos en un entorno cambiante, mediante la creación y difusión de nuevas tecnologías.
We use a new database of food producing firms to explain different outcomes of third party certification audits across firms. The database from the retailer-initiated certification scheme of the International Featured Standard (IFS) includes auditing reports from more than 13,000 firms producing in 96 countries over the period 2011 to 2013. Information on each firms' conformance with the private standard require-ments as well as company specific characteristics such as branch, region, past experience with the standard and firm size is provided. While the previous literature emphasizes the role of auditor independence for differing audit results, we suggest that company specific variables play an important role. In our empirical analysis, we find a U-shaped relationship between firm size and performance: microenter-prises and large companies are more likely to conform to the requirements of the standard than small to medium sized companies – confirming our predictions from organizational theory. We conclude our research with suggestions for further re-search.
We base our paper on data from a global company survey of certified companies carried out by the International Accreditation Forum (IAF) in 2010/11. We use multivariate Probit and ordered Probit models to analyze how company internal and external factors influence the perception of benefits from accredited certification. Benefits from accredited certification are divided into added value for the organization, increased sales and regulatory compliance. As for company external factors, we find that benefits from certification are higher for companies that went through a challenging certification process, had a competent certification body team, and are aware of the importance of accreditation. Internal factors are related to different motives for seeking certification. We find that the benefits from accredited certification are largest when companies become certified in order to improve their own business performance. Dividing our sample in high-income and middle income countries shows that the latter put more emphasis on company internal improvement through certification and are more likely to benefit from certification when they employ an external consultant. Finally, we can show that benefits are unequally distributed among companies. That is, smaller companies have a lower probability to benefit from certification compared to larger companies.