Measurement, standards and productivity spillovers

Abstract

This chapter examines productivity spillovers, defined mostly in terms of learning effects. The authors note that voluntary consensus standards constitute a venue for such spillovers in that they produce a body of codified knowledge which empirical studies have indicated has a close relationship to productivity growth at the level of national economies. However, the mechanisms of this relationship remain less well understood. In addressing this problem, the authors focus on metrology, the most basic and ubiquitous of all standards frameworks. The authors show how the integration of measurement infrastructures into standards can generate productivity growth. Thus, they suggest that the measurement infrastructure is an important subsystem that could indicate empirically many of the relationships between knowledge spillovers and innovation.