The Roles and Impacts of Technical Standards on Economic Growth and Implications for Innovation Policy

The Roles and Impacts of Technical Standards on Economic Growth and Implications for Innovation Policy assesses the economic nature, roles, and impacts of technical standards over the entire technology life cycle and the required public policies to effectively provide this critical infrastructure.The author uses a public-private asset model to characterize and assess the various functions of standards over a technology’s life cycle. An accurate asset-based growth model must incorporate the infrastructure character of standards, including their specific functions across the technology life cycle.  Doing so is necessary to understand their economic impacts and the complementary roles of industry and government in developing and promulgating them. In addition, the dynamic nature of technology evolution is also a critical element of such a model, because the timely creation, modification, and application of standards can be just as important for economic growth as their structure. Thus, maximizing long-term economic growth requires continual adjustments to standards and their development strategies.