TY  - JOUR
AU  - Clougherty, Joseph A
AU  - Grajek, Michal
TI  - International Standards and International Trade: Empirical Evidence from ISO 9000 Diffusion
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 18132
PY  - 2012
Y2  - June 2012
DO  - 10.3386/w18132
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w18132
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w18132.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Joseph A. Clougherty
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
350 Wohlers Hall
1206 S. 6th Street, MC-706
Champaign, IL 61820
E-Mail: jaclough@illinois.edu

Michal Grajek
ESMT European School of 
  Management and Technology
Schlossplatz 1
D-10178 Berlin
Germany
E-Mail: grajek@esmt.org
M1  - published as Joseph A. Clougherty, Michał Grajek. "International Standards and International Trade: Empirical Evidence from ISO 9000 Diffusion," in Timothy Simcoe, Ajay K. Agrawal, and Stuart Graham, organizers, "Standards, Patents and Innovations" International Journal of Industrial Organization, Volume 36 (2014)

M3  - presented at "Patents, Standards and Innovation Conference", January 20-21, 2012
AB  - Empirical scholarship on the standards-trade relationship has been held up due to methodological challenges: measurement, varied effects, and endogeneity. Considering the trade-effects of one particular standard (ISO 9000), we surmount methodological challenges by measuring standardization via national penetration of ISO 9000, allowing standardization to manifest via multiple (quality-signaling, information/compliance-cost, and common-language) channels, and using instrumental variable, multilateral resistance and panel data techniques to overcome endogeneity. We find evidence of common-language and quality-signaling augmenting country-pair trade. Yet, ISO-rich nations (most notably European) benefit the most from standardization, while ISO-poor nations find ISO 9000 to represent a trade barrier due to compliance-cost effects.
ER  -