IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/sur/surrec/1004.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Institutions and Long-Run Growth in the UK: the Role of Standards

Author

Listed:
  • Paul Temple

    (University of Surrey)

  • Robert Witt

    (University of Surrey)

  • Chris Spencer

    (University of Surrey)

Abstract

In this paper we consider the relationship between the standards created by national standards bodies and long run economic growth, exploring the relationship in the context of the UK and the British Standards Institution (BSI). We suggest that standards provide a key enabling mechanism for the widespread diffusion of major technologies, while being generally supportive of incremental innovation and general technological understanding. In order to further understanding of this mechanism we measure the ‘output’ of the BSI by estimating the size of the BSI ‘catalogue’ available to the economy since its inception in 1901. The measure allows us to estimate an augmented production function for the UK economy over the period 1948-2002. Within a co-integrating framework, we find a statistically significant and unique co-integrating vector between labour productivity, the capital-labour ratio, exogenous technological progress and the BSI catalogue. The long-run elasticity of labour productivity with respect to the standards stock is estimated to be about 0.05, so that the rapid growth of the catalogue in the postwar period is associated with about 13% of the aggregate growth in labour productivity.

Suggested Citation

  • Paul Temple & Robert Witt & Chris Spencer, 2004. "Institutions and Long-Run Growth in the UK: the Role of Standards," School of Economics Discussion Papers 1004, School of Economics, University of Surrey.
  • Handle: RePEc:sur:surrec:1004
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://repec.som.surrey.ac.uk/2004/DP10-04.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Nicholas Crafts, 2004. "Steam as a general purpose technology: A growth accounting perspective," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 114(495), pages 338-351, April.
    2. David, Paul A, 1985. "Clio and the Economics of QWERTY," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 75(2), pages 332-337, May.
    3. David, Paul A, 1990. "The Dynamo and the Computer: An Historical Perspective on the Modern Productivity Paradox," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 80(2), pages 355-361, May.
    4. Cohen, Wesley M & Levinthal, Daniel A, 1989. "Innovation and Learning: The Two Faces of R&D," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 99(397), pages 569-596, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Knut Blind & Andre Jungmittag, 2008. "The impact of patents and standards on macroeconomic growth: a panel approach covering four countries and 12 sectors," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 29(1), pages 51-60, February.
    2. Jielu Fu & Xiao Yu & Qian Xu, 2023. "Standard Radiation: A New Perspective Leading the Coordinated Development of Urban Agglomerations," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(2), pages 1-17, January.
    3. Caroline Buts & Ellen Van Droogenbroeck & Michaël R. J. Dooms & Kim Willems, 2020. "The Economic Impact of Standards in Belgium," International Journal of Standardization Research (IJSR), IGI Global, vol. 18(1), pages 44-64, January.
    4. Hany El Shamy & Paul Temple, 2008. "Entrepreneurship, Spillovers and Productivity Growth in the Small Firm Sector of UK Manufacturing," School of Economics Discussion Papers 0708, School of Economics, University of Surrey.
    5. Productivity Commission, 2006. "Standard Setting and Laboratory Accreditation," Research Reports, Productivity Commission, Government of Australia, number 22.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Harald Edquist & Magnus Henrekson, 2006. "Technological Breakthroughs and Productivity Growth," Research in Economic History, in: Research in Economic History, pages 1-53, Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
    2. Svante Prado, 2014. "Yeast or mushrooms? Productivity patterns across Swedish manufacturing industries, 1869–1912," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 67(2), pages 382-408, May.
    3. Clifford Bekar & Kenneth Carlaw & Richard Lipsey, 2018. "General purpose technologies in theory, application and controversy: a review," Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Springer, vol. 28(5), pages 1005-1033, December.
    4. Venturini, Francesco, 2022. "Intelligent technologies and productivity spillovers: Evidence from the Fourth Industrial Revolution," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 194(C), pages 220-243.
    5. Broadberry Stephen, 2012. "Recent Developments in the Theory of Very Long Run Growth: A Historical Appraisal," Jahrbuch für Wirtschaftsgeschichte / Economic History Yearbook, De Gruyter, vol. 53(1), pages 277-306, May.
    6. Bulat Sanditov & Saurabh Arora, 2016. "Social network and private provision of public goods," Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Springer, vol. 26(1), pages 195-218, March.
    7. Ajay Agrawal & Joshua Gans & Avi Goldfarb, 2019. "Economic Policy for Artificial Intelligence," Innovation Policy and the Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 19(1), pages 139-159.
    8. Giovanni Dosi & Richard Nelson, 2013. "The Evolution of Technologies: An Assessment of the State-of-the-Art," Eurasian Business Review, Springer;Eurasia Business and Economics Society, vol. 3(1), pages 3-46, June.
    9. Josef Taalbi, 2017. "Development blocks in innovation networks," Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Springer, vol. 27(3), pages 461-501, July.
    10. Mauro Napoletano & Andrea Roventini & Sandro Sapio, 2004. "Yeast vs. Mushrooms: A Note on Harberger's "A Vision of the Growth Process"," LEM Papers Series 2004/03, Laboratory of Economics and Management (LEM), Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies, Pisa, Italy.
    11. Hötte, Kerstin, 2020. "How to accelerate green technology diffusion? Directed technological change in the presence of coevolving absorptive capacity," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 85(C).
    12. Koutroumpis, Pantelis & Leiponen, Aija & Thomas, Llewellyn D W, 2017. "Invention Machines: How Control Instruments and Information Technologies Drove Global Technologigal Progress over a Century of Invention," ETLA Working Papers 52, The Research Institute of the Finnish Economy.
    13. Chatzistamoulou, Nikos & Kounetas, Kostas & Tsekouras, Kostas, 2022. "Technological hierarchies and learning: Spillovers, complexity, relatedness, and the moderating role of absorptive capacity," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 183(C).
    14. Kenneth Carlaw & Richard Lipsey, 2011. "Sustained endogenous growth driven by structured and evolving general purpose technologies," Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Springer, vol. 21(4), pages 563-593, October.
    15. Kopytov, Alexandr & Roussanov, Nikolai & Taschereau-Dumouchel, Mathieu, 2018. "Short-run pain, long-run gain? Recessions and technological transformation," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 97(C), pages 29-44.
    16. Kemeny, Tom & Petralia, Sergio & Storper, Michael, 2022. "Disruptive innovation and spatial inequality," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 115953, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    17. Bulat Sanditov & Saurabh Arora, 2016. "Social network and private provision of public goods," Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Springer, vol. 26(1), pages 195-218, March.
    18. Mario Cimoli & Nelson Correa, 2010. "ICT, Learning and Growth: An Evolutionary Perspective," Chapters, in: Mario Cimoli & André A. Hofman & Nanno Mulder (ed.), Innovation and Economic Development, chapter 7, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    19. Liao, Hailin & Wang, Bin & Li, Baibing & Weyman-Jones, Tom, 2016. "ICT as a general-purpose technology: The productivity of ICT in the United States revisited," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 36(C), pages 10-25.
    20. Klodt, Henning, 2001. "Die neue Ökonomie: Aufbruch und Umbruch," Open Access Publications from Kiel Institute for the World Economy 2575, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    standards; technological change; productivity.;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • O11 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Macroeconomic Analyses of Economic Development
    • O33 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Technological Change: Choices and Consequences; Diffusion Processes
    • O47 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Growth and Aggregate Productivity - - - Empirical Studies of Economic Growth; Aggregate Productivity; Cross-Country Output Convergence
    • L52 - Industrial Organization - - Regulation and Industrial Policy - - - Industrial Policy; Sectoral Planning Methods
    • C22 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Single Equation Models; Single Variables - - - Time-Series Models; Dynamic Quantile Regressions; Dynamic Treatment Effect Models; Diffusion Processes

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sur:surrec:1004. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Ioannis Lazopoulos (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/desuruk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.