Quality Standards, Industry Structure, and Welfare in a Global Economy

Minimum Quality Standards, Industry Self Regulation, and Economic Welfare

We analyze the impact of an endogenous minimum quality standard (MQS) imposed on an industry collectively by producers based upon a profit criterion, a situation common to agricultural industries. A MQS can enhance net welfare in these settings because it may correct for deficient production of high-quality product by the industry in the absence of a MQS. However, we show that any MQS imposed v...

Standards as a platform for innovation and learning in the global economy: a case study of Chilean salmon farming industry

Conventionally, standards are considered as a governance tool in the production system in a one-directional and hierarchical relationship between foreign trans-national corporations (TNCs) or global buyers on one hand and subsidiaries and producers on the other. They were considered as transmitting necessary specifications of goods – codified knowledge – to the producers. Despite the fact that ...

The Emergence of a Standards Market: Multiplicity of Sustainability Standards in the Global Coffee Industry

The growing number of voluntary standards for governing transnational arenas is presenting standards organizations with a problem. While claiming that they are pursuing shared, overarching objectives, at the same time, they are promoting their own respective standards that are increasingly similar. By developing the notion of ‘standards markets,’ this paper examines this tension and studies how...

Government/industry Interactions in the Global Standards System*

We review the evolution of the global standards system and its relationship to industry. We then discuss some of the approaches that governments have taken in order to modify the system for the benefit of domestic and worldwide economic development. We use as an example an effort of the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology to encourage voluntary consensus standards for interopera...

The U.S. Information Economy: Value, Employment, Industry Structure, and Trade