Research on standards and standardization

This online library offers a collection of research publications on standards and standardization. This evidence base is designed to support the work of ISO members, researchers and others with an interest in standards. This library provides links to external sources - some are open access and some publications require journal subscription (or access can be purchased to a single article).

You can browse the collection using the search fields, or, if you’re looking for something specific, try the keyword search. We have also highlighted some publications of interest below, including research conducted by ISO members.

We will continue to add publications to this repository. If you would like to share a publication for inclusion here, please contact us at research@iso.org.

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Publications

Institutional publication
Standards & Economic Growth: ISO Members’ Research on the Impact of Standards on Their National Economies

Many of us believe that standards have a positive impact on society, but with such a large range of standards types and topics, how can we measure this impact? ISO members around the globe have probed this question, asking ‘what is the impact of standards on our national economy’? We ...

Institutional publication
International Standards and Trade - A Review of the Empirical Literature

This paper reviews empirical studies that have investigated how international standards impact trade. It looks at different kinds of studies, from econometric studies to studies based on surveys of exporting firms. It concludes that the available literature does not provide a single answer to the qu...

Book
The Economics of Standards, Theory, Evidence, Policy

This book provides a comprehensive overview of the important topic of standards, which remains a vastly underresearched field of empirical inquiry. It presents a variety of interesting empirical analyses which reveal the driving forces and the economic impacts of standardization in both the manufact...

RESEARCH CONDUCTED BY ISO MEMBERS

Member publication
The influence of standards on the Nordic economies

This study gives a broad perspective on the impact of standardization in the Nordic Economies (Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland and Iceland. It finds, via a macroeconomic study, that standardization has contributed to increased labor productivity and GDP growth in all of the Nordic countries. It als...

Member publication
The Economic Benefits of Standards to New Zealand

The Standards Council of New Zealand, and several industry stakeholders, co-sponsored Business and Economic Research Ltd (BERL) to undertake a project to measure the economic effects of Standards on the New Zealand economy, in particular in the building and construction sector. The project invol...

Member publication
The Economic Impact of Standardization: Technological Change, Standards Growth in France

The AFNOR study, which was authored by AFNOR's Marketing and Innovation Department, comprises two dimensions: Firstly, a macroeconomic analysis in order to assess the relationship between standards and growth in the long term. This analysis is based on a methodology which was used for the first t...