The Link Between Standardization and Economic Growth: A

Bibliometric Analysis
Jussi Heikkilä, Timo Ali-Vehmas, Julius Rissanen

arXiv (arXiv: 2201.09125v1)

Generated on May 25, 2025

 The Link Between Standardization and Economic Growth: A Bibliometric Analysis

Abstract
We analyze the link between standardization and economic growth by
systematically reviewing leading economics journals, leading economic growth
researchers' articles, and economic growth-related books. We make the following
observations: 1) No article has analyzed the link between standardization and
economic growth in top5 economics journals between 1996 and 2018. 2) A
representative sample of the leading researchers of economic growth has
allocated little attention to the link between standardization and economic
growth. 3) Typically, economic growth textbooks do not contain "standards" or
"standardization" in their word indexes. These findings suggest that the
economic growth theory has neglected the role of standardization.

DOI: 10.4018/IJSR.287101International Journal of Standardization Research

Volume 19 • Issue 1
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provided the author of the original work and original publication source are properly
credited.*Corresponding Author
1The Link Between Standardization
and Economic Growth:
A Bibliometric Analysis
Jussi Heikkilä, University of Jyvaskyla, Finland & LUT University, Finland
Timo Ali-Vehmas, Independent Researcher, FinlandJulius Rissanen, Nokia Technologies,
Finland
ABSTRACT
The authors analyze the link between standardization and economic growth by systematically
reviewing
leading economics journals, leading economic growth researchers’ articles, and economic
growth-related books. They make the following observations: 1) No article has analyzed the link
between standardization and economic growth in top 5 economics journals between 1996 and
2018. 2) A representative sample of the leading researchers of economic growth has allocated
little attention to the link between standardization and economic growth. 3) Typically, economic
growth textbooks do not contain “standards” or “standardization” in their word indices. These
findings suggest that the economic growth theory has neglected the role of standardization.
KEywo RdS
Allocation of Attention, Bibliometric Analysis, Economic Growth, Standardization
1 INTR odUCTI oN
“The lack of cooperative standardization in British industry is conspicuous in regard to
locomotives. Every considerable railway has its own models, though the materials are to some
extent standardized”
Alfred Marshall (1919, p.591)“Standardisation and connection standards may seem purely
technical details to the casual observer,
but in fact they reflect the importance of achieving economies of scale.”
Nathan Rosenberg (1983, p.183)
“Perhaps because these standards are so taken for granted, they are rarely the subject of
discussion in circles beyond those in which they are formulated. They are even more rarely the
subject of discussion in the public square in democratic institutions of government, or among
friends. Indeed, standards are so taken for granted, so mundane, so ubiquitous, that they are
extremely difficult to write about. They are usually noticed only when they fail to work.”

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2Lawrence Busch (2011, p.2)
Standards can be defined as rules, guidelines, or characteristics established by consensus and
approved by a recognized body (see ISO/IEC, 2004). According to ISO/IEC (2004),
standardization is “the process of development and application of standards” (see Choi et al.,
2011). Standards are ubiquitous, and every one of us is exposed to several standards every day
(Kindleberger, 1983; Busch, 2011). Consider, for instance, the measurement of time, metric
systems, various safety standards, electricity standards, including plugs and sockets, data, image,
video and audio compression technologies (codecs), Internet protocols, connectivity of devices
via cellular networks, Wi-Fi or Bluetooth, etc. Standards have obvious public good
characteristics (Kindleberger, 1983; David & Greenstein, 1990; Swann, 2000; Blind &
Jungmittag, 2008) and, generally, the promotion of standards is considered beneficial, as
reflected, for instance, by the increasing number of national and voluntary standards
organizations and their expressed missions. For example, the International Organization for
Standardization (ISO) has more than 164 national standards organizations as members that
promote standardization nationally.
1
It has been documented that societies underinvest in R&D (Jones & Williams, 2000; Lucking
et al., 2018). Much less empirical evidence exists on whether societies under- or overinvest in
standardization. According to Rysman and Simcoe (2009, p.1932): “the importance of SSOs has
been widely discussed, yet there have been no attempts to systematically measure the effects of
these institutions.” Standards can be national, international, or global by their geographical
dimension (Swann et al., 1996; Nadvi, 2008; Blind et al., 2018). Scale and network effects are
typically greater the more international the scope of a standard is.
2 Standards have played an indispensable role,
for instance, in creating and maintaining the proper functioning of the European Single Market
(Pelkmans, 1987; David & Steinmueller, 1994; EC, 2018; Blind et al., 2018). Economists agree
that institutions matter for economic growth (North, 1991; Mokyr, 2002; Acemoglu & Robinson,
2012). Blind and Jungmittag (2008) noted that “standards can also be interpreted as institutions.
Institutional economists postulate a close relationship between institutional development and
economic growth.” This is also an important premise of the current article: Standards are
important institutions that matter for technological progress, innovation, and, therefore, for
economic growth and development.
While there exists a variety of different types of standards, we focus here on standards that are
a result of open and voluntary standard development or setting and are related to technologies.
We also note that the dimension of feedback processes classifies standardization organizations.
Their operational mode is either one-shot standard setting or dynamic standard development
(Teece, 2018).
3 Economists share the belief that innovations and technological progress are the key drivers of
economic growth in the long run (Aghion & Howitt, 2009) and, presumably, technology
standardization impacts the rate and direction of technological change.
4 While researchers of network economics and
industrial organization economists have extensively studied standardization (e.g., Farrell &
Saloner, 1985; Katz & Shapiro, 1986) and the role of patents in standard development (e.g.,
Lerner & Tirole, 2015), it appears that economic growth theory is almost silent about the
macroeconomic impacts of standardization (e.g., Blind & Jungmittag, 2008; Swann, 2010; Baron
& Schmidt, 2017). Consequently, we know much more about the microdynamics than the
macrodynamics of standardization.
It is interesting that the macroeconomic impacts of technology standardization have received
little
attention among economists, particularly as standardization organizations have existed for more
than a century.
5 Examples of standards that have had a substantial global impact include, among others,
freight container standards (ISO/TC 104 Freight containers; Levinson, 2006; Bernhofen et al.,
2016), Internet standards (IETF, W3C, Simcoe, 2015) and telecommunication standards (ETSI,
ITU, Röller & Waverman, 2001; Teece, 2018). These standards have significantly promoted
globalization and technological change. The heterogeneous nature of different standards and
standardization processes makes it challenging to analyze the aggregate macroeconomic impacts
of standardization. Presumably, this is a major factor explaining the dearth of research on the
topic. The goal of this article is to shed more light on this research gap and the link between
standardization and economic growth. We

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3contribute to the existing literature by providing a systematic bibliometric analysis on this link
and
by reviewing the role of technology standardization in leading economics journals and
particularly in economic growth theory.
The rest of the paper is structured as follows. Section 2 discusses the theoretical and empirical
links between standardization and economic growth. Section 3 describes the theoretical
framework. Methods and data are presented in Section 4, and the findings are report in Section 5.
Section 6 concludes the paper.
2 STAN dARdIZATI oN, TECHN oLoGICAL
PRoGRESS, AN d ECoNoMIC GR owTH
2.1 Theoretical Link Between Standardization and Economic Growth
The leading researchers of economic growth have analyzed a variety of factors that are
associated
with economic growth.
6 Economists and economic historians share the belief that technological
progress is the key driver of economic growth in the long run (Solow, 1956; Mokyr, 2002;
Aghion & Howitt, 2009). However, often, economists do not dig deeper into the details, or “the
black box” (Rosenberg, 1983), of technological progress. Standardization has been discussed and
analyzed for more than a century by economists, including Thorstein Veblen (1904) and Alfred
Marshall (1919).
7
As early as 1919, Marshall discussed standardization extensively in his 1919 book, “Industry and
Trade,” and emphasized the important role that “multiform standardization” has had in
promoting mass production in the U.S. (Langlois, 2001).
8 Yet, the paradigm of economic growth theory seems to
have neglected the role of standardization in technological progress and in our increasing
wellbeing.
To a large extent, the rate and direction of technological change are determined by the allocation
of R&D investments, and there are several institutions that determine the incentives to invest in
R&D (Arrow, 1962; Scotchmer, 2004). As mentioned, the role of institutions as determinants of
economic growth has received increasing attention (North, 1990; Acemoglu & Robinson, 2012).
According to North (1991), “institutions are the humanly devised constraints that structure
political, economic and social interaction.” By this definition, technical standards are also
“institutions” (cf. Blind & Jungmittag, 2008; Featherston et al., 2016; Maze, 2017). The key
message of new institutional economics is that “institutions matter” for economic growth. From
the perspective of technological progress, the institutions that promote the creation and diffusion
of knowledge, i.e., “efficient functioning of the knowledge infrastructure” (cf. Edquist, 1997),
are the key factors. Standards are an important institution that can promote the diffusion of
technologies (Blind & Jungmittag, 2008) and foster competition (Koski & Kretschmer, 2005).
Standards promote interoperability, adoption of technologies, and network effects (Matutes &
Regibeau, 1996; Shapiro & Varian, 1999; Swann, 2000). Thus, standards also matter for
economic growth. First generation endogenous technological change models (Romer, 1990;
Grossman & Helpman, 1991; Aghion & Howitt, 1992) added realism to earlier models of
economic growth by treating innovation processes as endogenous. Similarly, standardization is
an endogenous process that shapes technological progress.
R&D investments create positive externalities, and important progress has been made in the
analysis of these knowledge spillovers (Lucking et al., 2018). Still, the quantification of
externalities remains a great challenge to economists (Jones, 2016). For instance, Jones (2016)
notes that there is a need for economic growth researchers to learn more about “the extent of
knowledge spillovers across countries” as “each country benefits from knowledge created
elsewhere in the world.” Similarly, spillovers from standardization are not easily quantifiable.
According to Leiponen (2008): “Opportunities to learn and accumulate social and political
capabilities are thus of the essence in the creation of new standards. Firms are advised to engage
in a broad cooperative approach if they wish to influence the evolution of standards.” On the
other hand, Blind and Mangelsdorf (2016) note: “Significant knowledge flows are apparent
within standardization processes, especially from larger to the smaller German companies
opposite of that seen in other types of strategic alliances. SDOs

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4are – as shown in Sherif (2015) for Chinese companies – interactive learning spaces.
Consequently,
companies’ knowledge management, including their open innovation strategies, must take these
opportunities into account when considering entrance into standardization.”
A particular type of technology that creates large amounts of positive externalities is a “general
purpose technology” (GPT). GPTs include electricity, steam, semiconductors, and the Internet
(Bresnahan & Trajtenberg, 1995; Simcoe, 2015, p.16).
9 From the economic perspective, standards
that promote interoperability are also particularly important (cf. Simcoe, 2015), as
interoperability promotes efficiency. Standardization of technologies is closely linked to the
development of general purpose technologies (Simcoe, 2015, p.26).
10 Standardized technologies, such as cellular connectivity,
can be viewed as a general purpose technology (Teece, 2018) that enables downstream
technological trajectories (Dosi, 1982)
11 in multiple industries (Kim et al., 2017). Standards are a heterogeneous
set (Tassey, 2000; Simcoe et al., 2009; Wiegmann et al., 2017; Teece, 2018; Baron & Spulber,
2018; Baron et al., 2019), and some “upstream” standards enable a larger variety of downstream
products and innovations. Swann (2000) notes: “The ultimate measure of how a standards
infrastructure contributes to the economy is the sum of additional innovative products and
services (and any attendant cost reductions) that grow on the back of that standards
infrastructure.”
Endogenous models of economic growth have incorporated competition and innovation into the
analysis of economic growth, and researchers have derived stylized facts and predictions that can
be explained by these dynamics (Aghion et al., 2015). However, coordination in innovation
activity and how this affects the sequence of knowledge accumulation, i.e., direction of
innovation, has thus far received less attention. The patent system in itself is a decentralized
coordination mechanism that allocates the attention and investments of profit-maximizing agents
to research projects that have the highest expected returns (Scotchmer, 2004). The public sector
can also affect the rate and direction of technological change by using other “innovation policy
instruments” (Takalo, 2013) or “policy toolkits” (Bloom et al., 2019), including, for example,
R&D subsidies, R&D tax exemptions, and IPR systems.
Economists highlight the role of the combinatorial growth of ideas and related increasing returns
(Romer, 1993; Weitzman, 1998; Jones, 2005). However, ideas-based growth cannot be only
about increasing the variety of ideas because human attention and resources are limited. In a
world where attention and resources are scarce, there needs to be some mechanisms that define
which ideas to pursue and, also, in which sequence. The allocation of R&D investments crucially
impacts the rate and direction of technological change and technological trajectories. Economic
growth researchers often focus on innovation incentives but neglect incentives to create
compatible and interoperable products in the value chain.
The abovementioned institutions all affect the rate and direction of technological change, but
they rely mainly on competition of ideas and products in the market. Standardization, on the
other hand, is based on a balance between competition and collaboration (i.e., “coopetition”)
where the aim is to achieve consensus (Schmidt & Werle 1998; Egyedi, 2000; Simcoe, 2015).
Standardization can be understood as a coordination mechanism (Maze, 2017; Wiegmann et al.,
2017) by which economic actors can collaboratively decide the technical specifications for
products, etc. (Simcoe, 2015; Wiegmann et al., 2017) based on specific criteria and through
either consensus or majority vote (Baron et al., 2019).
12 The focus is not on increasing the variety of ideas but, in contrast, reducing the
number of ideas and amount of variety. Standardization is, in essence, variety reduction (Farrell
& Saloner, 1985; Tassey, 2000). This process leads to focused technological trajectories with
reduced market uncertainty (Gaynor, 2001). Sometimes, there are also competing standards
(Wiegmann et al., 2017) that can co-exist and compete on the market. It is not hard to see why
increasing variety of incompatible or non-interoperable product interfaces is anything but
welfare increasing. In the standardization process, decision makers collectively select technical
solutions on the basis of a consensus, and there is thus no need for all of the competing standards
to enter the market when competition and selection of technical solutions occur within
standardization process instead.

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5Standards can be concurrently defined as either knowledge, ideas, meta-ideas, technology,
recipes, or institutions. Standardization is a process in which the technical specifications of
certain
aspects of technologies are codified, and thus the standard is codified knowledge. “Idea” is a
very broad concept that forms the basic unit of “ideas-based growth” (Romer, 1993; Jones, 2005)
and can be defined as “instructions or recipes, things that can be codified in a bitstring as a
sequence of ones and zeros” (Jones, 2005). According to Romer (1993), “Perhaps the most
important ideas of all are meta-ideas—ideas about how to support the production and
transmission of other ideas.”
13
Standards fit this definition. As already mentioned, standards are also institutions, i.e., rules of
the game, as they constrain future technological development by reducing variety (cf. North,
1991). Moreover, the standardization process is a meta-idea or institution, as it is an idea about
how to produce efficiently better ideas. Standards are technologies or recipes since they specify
how one gets a specific output from a set of inputs (Romer, 1990). In addition, standards can be
regarded as “technological trajectories” (Dosi, 1982, 1988; Cozzi, 1997; Kim et al., 2017). By
reducing the variety of technologies, standardization promotes the more efficient allocation of
resources as economic agents abandon some technological trajectories.
According to Grossman and Helpman (1994), “profit-seeking investments in knowledge play
a critical role in the long-run growth process.” Knowledge, technology, and innovations are not
“manna from heaven” (cf. Audretsch, 2007). Similarly, standards are not manna from heaven. In
Romer’s (1990) endogenous growth model, growth “is driven by technological change that arises
from intentional investment decisions made by profit-maximizing agents.” Economic agents
require appropriate incentives to invest in standardization activities and adopt standardized
technologies. Thus, the observation that companies participate in technology standardization and
adopt standardized technologies indicates that companies consider standardization to have
positive expected returns.
2.2 Empirical Link Between Standardization and Economic Growth
The importance of standards has increased over the past decades (Lerner & Tirole, 2015),
particularly
in the ICT sector (Shapiro & Varian, 1999; Baron et al., 2019). According to Baron et al. (2019),
standardization has long been recognized as playing an important role in technological
innovation, the diffusion of new technologies, and economic growth. Therefore, it is expected
that standards’ impact on the rate and direction of technological progress and economic growth
has similarly increased. Standards are a heterogenous set, as are standard development
organizations (SDOs, Wiegmann et al., 2017; Teece, 2018; Baron & Spulber, 2018; Baron et al.,
2019). Here, we briefly review whether there is any empirical link between standardization and
innovation and technological change.
Schumpeterian growth theory (Aghion et al., 2015) predicts that incumbents do the most R&D.
Incumbents also do the most standards development, according to empirical evidence (Larouche
& Schuett, 2019). Existing empirical evidence on the impact of standards is scant (Blind &
Jungmittag, 2008; Rysman & Simcoe, 2008; Baron & Schmidt, 2017). The typical challenge is
the lack of data on counterfactual worlds. However, empirical evidence suggests that
standardization has important impacts in multiple fields.
14
Whereas a large share of the standardization literature has discussed the possibility that standards

may lead to a lock-in to inferior technologies (David, 1985; Maze, 2017), empirical evidence
suggests that SDOs perform well in selecting important technologies (Rysman & Simcoe, 2008).
15 Kim et al.
(2017) find that standards are a driving force of technological convergence. Interestingly, it
seems that in the economics literature, the potential negative impacts of standards seem to be
sometimes more frequently cited than the benefits of standards. The anecdote of the QWERTY
keyboard as an inferior de facto standard is a very popular example used to illustrate how path-
dependence and standardization can lead to a lock-in to an inefficient equilibrium outcome
(David, 1985).
Our understanding of the impacts of standards has expanded over time. While David (1987)
identified three different purposes of the standards – (1) compatibility or interoperability, (2)
minimum quality or safety, and (3) variety reduction - Swann (2010) listed eight: (1) variety
reduction, (2) quality

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6and performance, (3) measurement, (4) codified knowledge, (5) compatibility, (6) vision, (7)
health
and safety, and (8) environmental (see also Swann, 2015). For more extensive reviews of the
impacts of standards, see Swann (2000, 2010). Network infrastructures particularly require
compatibility standards (Farrell & Saloner, 1985). Telecommunication and broadband
infrastructures have been found to positively affect economic growth (Röller & Waverman,
2001; Czernich et al., 2011), and telecommunication is an archetypal example of a network
industry in which standards have been and continue to be subject to extensive IO analysis
(Leiponen, 2008).
An important aspect of standards and standardization is geography. Standards are often classified

as national, international, or global (Swann et al., 1996; Nadvi, 2008). The geographical
dimension affects particularly strongly the scale effects and, in the case of compatibility and
interoperability standards, the network effects of standardization. Researchers of economic
growth have allocated a significant amount of their attention to country comparisons and cross-
country knowledge spillovers. International trade promotes the efficient division of labor, fosters
the diffusion of ideas, and causes economic growth (Frankel & Romer, 1999). Empirical
evidence suggests that certain standards promote trade (Swann et al., 1996; Levinson, 2006;
Bernhofen et al., 2016). Standardization increases the size of the markets and promotes
economies of scale by enabling compatibility. When standards are national and differ across
countries, domestic companies may face entry barriers to foreign markets due to incompatible
standards. International standardization promotes, therefore, international competition, and
competition puts pressure on companies to innovate. Table 1 summarizes the economic impacts
of standards discussed in prior literature.
To summarize, standards are ubiquitous and their economic impact is mainly positive according
to
existing empirical studies. The extensive use, support, and development of standards that we
observe in practice signal that standards are welfare increasing and economic growth promoting.
The research question of this article is, thus, what is the role of technology standardization in
leading economics journals and particularly in economic growth theory? Do leading economic
growth researchers acknowledge the link between standardization and economic growth? Do
books on economic growth discuss standardization? In the next section, we provide a theoretical
framework for analyzing these questions.
3 ALL oCATI oN oF ATTENTI oN IN SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH AN d EdUCATI oN
Why do certain research topics receive significant attention while others receive negligible
attention
or no attention at all? Which factors determine the set of research trajectories that we observe,
and which factors determine the division of labor across scientists and the distribution of
attention over the (in)finite set of research topics? How does the famous “invisible hand”
generate, via a decentralized process, an equilibrium of supply and demand of scientific
knowledge and enable self-interested researchers to produce scientific knowledge that meets the
needs of society?
16 In this section, we
present a simple framework to analyze the allocation of attention among researchers.17 We
move from
general scientific progress to the specificities of economics.
3.1 General Framework
Science is a social institution, and researchers who produce scientific knowledge are, of course,
also human beings possessing human limitations, interests, and intrinsic and extrinsic motives18
(Goldman & Shaked, 1991; Leonard, 2002). The attention of scientists is a scarce resource and a
coordination device in the production of scientific knowledge and in the development of new
ideas (Klamer & van Dalen, 2001; Simcoe & Waguespack, 2011). Hence, the allocation or
distribution of attention is typically skewed (Klamer & van Dalen, 2001): Some pieces of
knowledge attract more cumulative attention than others. Researchers are necessarily boundedly
rational decision makers, as their time and capacity to review all the existing scientific literature
are limited. As a consequence,

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7we understand more about those structures and behaviors of the physical world to which
researchers
allocate their attention.
According to Klamer and van Dalen (2001), researchers tend to cluster with likeminded
researchers. There exists empirical evidence that status helps draw critical attention to a new idea
(Merton, 1968; Simcoe & Waguespack, 2011). This “Matthew effect” may lead to herding and
the path-dependent accumulation of scientific knowledge (Merton, 1968). There are also
pecuniary rewards to received attention, and studies report a positive association between
citations and salary (see Hamermesh, 2018, Table 8 for a summary).
Technological progress and standard development, as well as scientific progress and allocation
of
attention among researchers, are endogenous processes - that is, they are defined “within the
system.” The dynamics of these processes could be analyzed using rational choice theory, as
would any other decision-making situation in which an optimizing decision maker with certain
preferences makes choices (cf. Diamond, 1988; Brock & Durlauf, 1999). Suppose there is a
finite set of researchers, an infinite set of research topics, and finite time. Researchers aim to
produce scientific knowledge and compete for priority (Dasgupta & David, 1994; Strevens,
2013). Researchers’ “return” would thus be conditional on being the first to create new ideas and
new research results. Thus, the optimization problem faced by a researcher at a specific point in
time could be characterized as a choice of distributing attention and research effort over a menu
of research topics that maximizes expected utility over the researcher’s career given her or his
preferences, existing scientific knowledge, institutions, and beliefs over the choices of other
researchers.
Irrespective of the exact form of researchers’ heterogenous objective functions, preferences,
and incentive systems, it is clear that researchers face tradeoffs and must make choices about
how to allocate their scarce attention during the finite time that they have. The limited attention
of academic researchers is necessarily focused on a specific set of topics during the finite
research career.
19
Researchers must prioritize given their preferences over the set of possible research topics and
also concurrently take into account and have beliefs and second-order beliefs about the choices
of other Table 1. Economic impacts of standards, examples
Standards by
purposePotential positive impacts Potential negative impacts
Compatibility/
InterfaceNetwork externalities Lock-in in old technologies if strong network
externalities
Avoids lock-in in old technologies Risk of monopolization
Increases variety of system products
Efficiency in supply chains
Minimum Quality/
SafetyAvoids adverse selection (Greshman´s Law) Risk of regulatory capture; Raising rivals’
costs
Creates trust Barriers to entry
Reduces transaction costs
Variety Reducing
standardsEconomics of scale Reduces choice
Focus and critical mass in emerging
technologies and industriesRisk of premature selection of technologies
Reduces transaction costs
Information/
MeasurementFacilitates trade
Provides codified knowledge
Reduces transaction costs
Notes: Summary based on Swann (2000, 2010) and Blind (2013).

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8competing researchers. The outcome of these correlated research topic choices and allocation of

attention is a set of research paradigms and trajectories that we observe. In other words, the
observed research outputs reveal researchers’ preferences and beliefs about what they have
considered important and worth researching.
20 These choices may have path-dependent consequences on the careers of
researchers (cf. Jensen, 2013).
Weitzman (1998) notes that several authors have argued that invention or discovery in any
sector takes place by combining ideas. Since science is cumulative by nature, there is a tendency
of path-dependence and lock-in on specific topics, theories, and/or methodological choices
(Akerlof, 2019). Researchers stand on the shoulders of giants and build their studies on prior
existing studies and research trajectories (Kuhn, 1962; Furman & Stern, 2006). Kuhn (1962)
highlighted the role of books in establishing research paradigms. He writes that “textbooks
expound the body of accepted theory, illustrate many or all of its successful applications, and
compare these applications with exemplary observations and experiments”, and that “from
textbooks each new scientific generation learns to practice its trade” (p.10). The content of
textbooks and existing research articles have an impact on the framing of certain topics. Figure 1
illustrates that researchers stand on the shoulders of giants and that the existing knowledge stock
defines the research topics and syllabi of courses based on prior research.
Notes: Authors’ illustration.Systematic reviews and bibliometric analyses can reveal research
gaps or under-researched topics.
Romer (1990) describes ideas as recipes that can be combined, and Weitzman (1998) formalized
an idea-based growth model by “introducing a production function for new knowledge that
depends on new recombinations of old knowledge” (see also Olsson, 2000, 2005). Research gaps
can be understood as combinations of ideas that have not yet been investigated in the existing
literature. Researchers have not even considered these idea combinations, or they have
considered them but have instead allocated their limited attention to different, more promising
topics or combinations of ideas.Figure 1. Allocation of attention or division of cognitive labor of
researchers
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93.2 Economics Framework
Which factors determine the set of research trajectories that we observe in the field of
economics?
How do researchers choose their research topics in the field of economics? Which research
articles
are accepted by editors to be published in leading economics journals? The sociology of
economics
research that focuses on these types of questions has a long tradition (e.g., Samuelson, 1962;
Stigler
& Friedman, 1975; Colander, 1989; Coupé, 2004; Hamermesh, 2018).
Empirical evidence indicates that publications and citations matter for labor market outcomes
and
for the salaries of economists (Coupé, 2004; Hamermesh, 2018). Therefore, economists as
economic agents may focus on topics that fit well into the orthodox views of the research
community and are therefore easier to publish in journals (cf. Brock & Durlauf, 1999; Akerlof,
2019; Heckman & Moktan, 2019). There can be a conflict between societal preferences and the
individual preferences of economics researchers in the allocation of researchers’ attention (i.e.,
allocative inefficiency). Even if the society might benefit from increased useful knowledge in
one topic, economics researchers might still choose to focus on another topic.
Moreover, it has been documented that most novel and innovative ideas may face harsh
resistance
before they are accepted (Gans & Shephard, 1994), and there exists evidence of bias against
novelty in science (Wang et al., 2017; Akerlof, 2019). For instance, W. Brian Arthur’s seminal
article (1989) was published only after multiple rejections by leading economics journals over a
six-year period (Gans & Shephard, 1994). Sometimes, important new ideas are only discovered
years after they are published.
21
Hodgson and Rothman (1999), among others, have documented the dominance of a few U.S.
institutions in published journal articles and journals’ editorial boards. They raise the concern
that such “institutional and geographical concentration of editors and authors may be unhealthy
for innovative research in economics.” Similarly, Coupé (2003) reports that U.S. universities and
American economists dominated in the production of economics literature during 1990-2000,
although the extent of their dominance did decrease over this period. Drèze and Estevan (2007,
see Table 11) provide further evidence of this U.S.-oriented concentration by reporting that
authors based in U.S. institutions dominate publishing in top economics journals. According to
Frey and Eichenberger (1993), American economists tend to specialize in theory but neglect
local institutions, whereas European economists are theoretically broad and institutionally
specialized. Institutional differences between U.S. and Europe can play a role in the context of
standardization research.
Presumably, researchers who focus on the theory of economic growth are no different from
other researchers. Also, they build their new ideas and theories by combining ideas generated by
past economic growth theory researchers. In the context of economic growth theory (and
economics more generally), recipients of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics, Robert Solow
and Paul Romer, among others, could be described as “giants” upon whose shoulders current and
future growth theorists stand. The high number of forward citations received by their research
articles is a clear indication of this (see Table 4).
As the curricula of economics courses themselves comprise an institution that directs the
attention
of economics students, it is important to analyze their content. A conscious or unconscious
choice to leave some important topics, such as the economic impact of standards, out of
economics curricula is likely to have certain outcomes. Students probably less often write their
theses about those topics that are not discussed in their courses. The process is endogenous and
incremental: Economics students become experts mainly in the fields in which they receive their
education.
To our knowledge, there are no bibliometric analyses on how economists have allocated their
attention to standardization and particularly on the role of standardization in the context of
economic growth. Narayanan and Chen (2012) summarized the primary research streams and
key arguments of technology standards research but did not focus on the perspectives of
economics literature. They concluded that “the greatest opportunity lies in integrative works that
will take us one step closer to a comprehensive view of technology standards.” Choi et al. (2011)
documented, using a bibliometric

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10analysis, that standardization and innovation research has continuously increased over time: In
1995,
there were 13 published articles focusing on these topics; in 2008, there were 68 articles on these
topics (altogether, 528 articles in Web of Science). Choi et al. (2011) identified six subject-group
domains of management, economics, environment, chemistry, computer science, and
telecommunications, and suggested that future studies could more deeply analyze the details of
these subject-group domains. This article focuses on the economics domain and seeks to offer
one integrative view by analyzing the link between standardization and economic growth.
4 METH odo LoGy ANd dATA
In order to analyze the attention allocated to the link between standardization and economic
growth
in the economics literature, we conduct a bibliometric analysis that uses a variety of different
search techniques and methods. The analysis is purely descriptive and comprises three sections:
(1) Standardization in leading economics journals, (2) Standardization in the peer-reviewed
articles of leading researchers of economic growth, and (3) Standardization in a set of economic
growth-related books. Scientific articles and books comprise the core of the knowledge base that
impacts the allocation of attention by future researchers and teachers (see Figure 1). In the
following sections, we transparently explain the data-gathering process in detail so that other
researchers can replicate the analyses in the future.
4.1 Articles in Leading Economics Journals
Leading academic journals in economics enjoy authoritative positions. Following prior studies
(e.g., Kalaitzidakis et al., 2003; Heckman & Moktan, 2018; Hamermesh 2013, 2018), we focus
on the so-called “top5” economics journals: American Economic Review (AER), Quarterly
Journal of Economics (QJE), Econometrica, Journal of Political Economy (JPE), and Review of
Economic Studies (RES). It is justifiable to say that they form “the core” of the scientific
knowledge stock in economics. The majority of the most cited economics papers have been
published in these journals.
22
Heckman and Moktan (2018) report that the top5 publications “have a powerful influence on
tenure decisions and rates of transition to tenure,” and that the “pursuit of T5 publications has
become the obsession of the next generation of economists.” They also show, using a survey,
that the perceptions of young economists are consistent with this view.
Furthermore, several of the most important articles in the field of economic growth have been
published in top5 journals. These include Romer (1990), published in JPE; Solow (1956),
published in QJE; Grossman and Helpman (1991) and Acemoglu (2002), published in REStud;
Aghion & Howitt (1992), published in Econometrica; and Kuznets (1955) and Nelson and Phelps
(1966), published in AER. Of these authors Kuznets, Solow, Phelps, and Romer received Nobel
Memorial Prizes in Economic Sciences, in 1971, 1987, 2006, and 2018, respectively.
As we focus on analyzing the association between standardization and economic growth, we
add the Journal of Economic Growth to complement top5 journals in the sample of economics
journals. The Journal of Economic Growth is the leading special journal in the field. Here, the
unit of observation is an article in the sample of the mentioned leading economics journals. The
search query that we apply in the Scopus database is ALL(“standardization” OR
“standardisation”) AND ALL(technology OR technologies OR technological OR technical)
AND ALL(“economic growth”).
4.2 Articles by Leading Researchers of Economic Growth
Leading researchers of economic growth are the key decision makers who make important
choices
about how the paradigms and trajectories of economic growth research evolve over time (cf.
Figure 1). Their allocation of attention directs, in a path-dependent manner, the attention of other
researchers.
We analyze whether leading researchers of economic growth have studied the link between
standardization and economic growth. We acknowledge that there are various alternative ways to

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11define the leading researchers of economic growth. We limited the sample to editors of
Journal of
Economic Growth (as of June 2019), which is one of the leading journals in the field, and which
has been published since 1996. Its editorial board includes Paul Romer and Paul Krugman, both
recipients of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics. In addition, most of the editors have
written articles to the “Handbook of Economic Growth,” which was also edited by Philippe
Aghion and Steven Durlauf, editors of the Journal of Economic Growth. There were 34 editors
as of June 2019, and Scopus found 2212 documents (incl. articles and books) published by them
as of 14 August 2019. The number of documents is biased downward as the Scopus database
does not include all older articles (pre-1996). In order to identify documents that focus on
standardization and economic growth, we conducted keyword searches in the Scopus database
for each author’s documents separately using the following search query: ALL(“standardization”
OR “standardisation”) AND ALL(technology OR technologies OR technological OR technical)
AND ALL(“economic growth”). Each author had on average 65 publications (median: 53) in the
Scopus database. Thus, the unit of observation here is an article written by an editor of the
Journal of Economic Growth.
4.3 Books Related to Economic Growth
Although books are not the major vehicle of scholarly communication in economics
(Hamermesh,
2018), they are still often used in teaching as textbooks. Presumably, books on economic growth
are an important knowledge source for students of economic growth (cf. Figure 1) since they are
often used as coursebooks and enter the syllabi of university courses that focus on economic
growth theory.
23
Books may therefore frame the thinking of future economic growth researchers (cf. Kuhn, 1962).
We limit our attention to books published by editors of the Journal of Economic Growth. We
inquired whether “standardization” or “standards” occurred in their indexes. The unit of
observation is an index of an economic-growth-related book written by an editor of the Journal
of Economic Growth.
5 FIN dINGS
5.1 Top Economics Journals
Table 2 reports the numbers of articles published in the leading economics journals that are
captured
using the specific search terms. The table indicates that there are only a few articles published in
top5 journals related to standardization and economic growth. Table 3 lists the articles that are
found using the search terms in column 3 of Table 2.
A manual check of the articles in Table 3 reveals that they in fact do not focus on standardization

in the sense discussed in this article (i.e., standards development). Articles by Adserà and Ray
(1998) and Sákovics and Steiner (2012) are captured by the keyword search because they cite
Farrell and Saloner’s (1985) article, which has the word “standardization” in its title, instead of
actually analyzing the association between standardization and economic growth. Similarly,
Acemoglu (2007) cites Farrell and Saloner (1985) but mentions “standardization” also on page
1378 in a footnote: “I assume that the research firm can only choose one technology, which
might be, for example, because of the necessity of standardization across firms.” Also, Jovanovic
and Rousseau (2014) does not focus on standards
development, although they write on page 864, “Our distinction between extensive investment in
new projects and intensive investment in continuing projects is related to one made by
Acemoglu, Gancia, and Zilibotti 2012 between innovation and standardization costs.” Acemoglu
and Restrepo (2018)
have a labor economics perspective on standardization, as they focus on “standardization of
tasks” instead of product standardization and standards development. Finally, Acemoglu et al.
(2018) is captured because it refers to Acemoglu et al. (2012), which has the word
“standardization” in its title.
To summarize, we did not find one single article published in top5 economics journals that
analyses the link between standardization and economic growth. It is worth noting that in the
context

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12Table 2. Leading economics journals
Scopus search queries
JournalTime
windowALL(“standardization”
OR “standardisation”)
AND ALL(technology
OR technologies
OR technological
OR technical)
AND SRCTITLE
(“*Journal*”) ALL(“standardization”
OR “standardisation”)
AND ALL(“economic
growth”) AND
SRCTITLE(“*Journal*”) ALL(“standardization”
OR “standardisation”)
AND ALL(technology
OR technologies OR
technological OR technical)
AND ALL(“economic
growth”) AND
SRCTITLE(“*Journal*”)
AER1996-
2018 12 3 3
QJE1996-
2018 3 0 0
JPE1996-
2018 1 1 1
Econometrica1996-
2018 1 1 1
REStud1996-
2018 5 1 0
J Econ
Growth1996-
2018 1 1 1
Notes: Time window is limited to 1996-2018.
Table 3. Articles related to standardization and economic growth
Article Author(s) Year Journal Issue Scopus
citations
1 History and coordination failure Adserà, A. & Ray, D. 1998Journal of Economic Growth 3(3),
267-27626
2 Equilibrium bias of technology Acemoglu, D. 2007 Econometrica 75(5), 1371-1409 80
3 Who matters in coordination problems?Sákovics, J.
& Steiner, J.2012American Economic Review 102(7),
3439-346122
4Extensive and intensive investment over
the business cycleJovanovic, B.
& Rousseau, P.L.2014Journal of Political Economy
122(4), 863-9087
5The race between man and machine:
Implications of technology for growth,
factor shares, and employmentAcemoglu, D.
& Restrepo, P.2018American Economic Review 108(6),
1488-154216
6 Innovation, reallocation, and growthAcemoglu,
D., Akcigit, U., Alp,
H., Bloom, N.
& Kerr, W.2018American Economic Review
108(11), 3450-349113
Notes: Based on Scopus results. As of 14 Aug 2019.

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13of labor economics, the concept of standardization is more related to “standardization of tasks”
(e.g.,
Acemoglu et al., 2012, 2018) than product or system standardization or technical specifications.
5.2 Leading Researchers of Economic Growth
As of August 2019, the Journal of Economic Growth had published no articles that (1) focus on
technology standardization (see Section 4.1), (2) list “standard,” “standards,” or
“standardization” as keywords, or (3) list “L15” as a JEL classification code.
24 Using economics jargon: It seems that
the existing research on standardization has not been used as an input in the production of
economic growth theory. Therefore, we focus in this and the next section on more deeply
analyzing the attention allocated to standardization by the editors of the Journal of Economic
Growth.
Table 4 reports the number of articles by leading economic growth researchers
25 that mention
specific keywords related to standardization and economic growth. It is notable that only six out
of 34 editors (~18%) are affiliated with European universities, while 26 are affiliated with
American universities, and three with an Israeli university.
Table 5 lists the articles that are authored by editors of the Journal of Economic Growth and are
captured by the specific search terms related to standardization and economic growth presented
in Section 4.2. Note that there is a significant overlap between articles in Table 3 and Table 5, as
four articles can be found in both tables. Notably, Acemoglu is an author in seven of the 11
identified articles. We explained already above why Adserà and Ray (1998), Acemoglu (2007),
Acemoglu (2018), and Acemoglu and Restrepo (2018) are captured. A closer look at the contents
of the seven other articles reveals why the search query captures them. Durlauf (2005) is
captured because its reference list includes Farrell and Saloner (1985), and Acemoglu et al.
(2015) and Zilibotti (2017) are captured because they cite Acemoglu et al. (2012). Acemoglu and
Akcigit (2012) is captured as it cites Acemoglu et al. (2012) in footnote 7, and Acemoglu (2012)
is an introduction to the special issue of the Journal of Economic Theory which includes and
introduces Acemoglu et al. (2012). Acemoglu et al. (2012) focuses on standardization but from a
slightly differing theoretical “labor economics” perspective. In other words, Aghion et al. (2009)
is the only article by an editor of the Journal of Economic Growth that actually discusses
standardization from the perspective of this article. Interestingly, their perspective on
standardization seems to be relatively negative, as they write (p.689): “In network industries, and
in product markets characterized by network externality effects, a policy stance of avoiding
deliberate standard-setting is not a strategy sufficient to prevent regrettable standardization
outcomes, in which industries are ‘locked in’ to an inferior technical system
that proves costly to abandon.” They also highlight on page 689 that “Perhaps the most
productive question to ask is how we can identify situations in which, at some future time, most
technology users would look back and agree that they would have been better off had they
converged on the adoption of an alternative technical option (David, 1987).”
5.3 Books Related to Economic Growth
Table 6 shows that most economic growth theory textbooks do not mention “standardization” in
their
indexes. Most prominently, the authoritative “Handbook of Economic Growth” (Aghion &
Durlauf, 2006, 2014) is among that majority. Yet, a few exceptions are found. David Weil (2012)
mentions standards briefly but focuses on government-imposed standards on page 305:
“Excessive standards – Governments impose standards on all sorts of goods that are sold in their
countries, ranging from regulations designed to protect public health (e.g., pure-food standards)
to requirements that enable different pieces of equipment to work together. Often, however,
standards are used to keep foreign products out of the market. For example, Israel, with a
population of only 6 million, requires the use of an electrical plug that is unique in the world, to
give an advantage to local manufacturers of electrical equipment.”

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14Table 4. Leading researchers of economic growth
Editor Affiliations Number of
documents in
Scopus**Number
of articles
published in
Top5**Share
of Top5
articles
of all
documents
in Scopus**Coauthors** Number
of citing
documentsArticles
focusing on
standardization
and economic
growth***
Oded Galor*Brown University;
Hebrew University52 17 32.69% 21 46440
Daron Acemoglu MIT 238 74 31.09% 126 20408 7
Philippe Aghion Harvard University 148 27 18.24% 146 10821 1
Ufuk Akcigit University of Chicago 19 11 57.89% 20 295 2
Alberto Alesina Harvard University 121 28 23.14% 86 15857 0
Quamrul Ashraf Williams College 12 3 25.00% 8 457 0
Roland Benabou Princeton University 15 10 66.67% 7 3442 0
Jess Benhabib New York University 89 9 10.11% 44 4194 0
Jagdish Bhagwati Columbia University 140 13 9.29% 48 3780 0
Francesco Caselli Harvard University 29 10 34.48% 20 2810 0
Carl-Johan
DalgaardUniversity of Copenhagen29 1 3.45% 16 8170
Matthias Doepke UCLA 26 11 42.31% 12 976 0
Steven Durlauf University of Wisconsin 102 11 10.78% 64 5389 2
William Easterly New York University 99 7 7.07% 47 10295 0
James Fenske University of Warwick 22 2 9.09% 11 232 0
Gene Grossman Princeton University 89 32 35.96% 23 8719 0
Vernon
HendersonBrown University 99 15 15.15% 56 57300
Peter Howitt Brown University 66 14 21.21% 41 3768 0
Charles Jones Stanford University 31 16 51.61% 8 6332 0
Paul Krugman Princeton University 106 9 8.49% 27 12972 0
Ross Levine Brown University 84 6 7.14% 39 16628 0
Stelios
MichalopoulosBrown University 15 5 33.33% 9 5170
Omer Moav Hebrew University 21 6 28.57% 13 1311 0
Joel Mokyr Northwestern University 84 3 3.57% 40 2977 1
Torsten PerssonIIES, Stockholm
University 77 22 28.57% 33 53520
Debraj Ray New York University 96 27 28.13% 107 3084 1
Paul Romer Stanford University 25 9 36.00% 10 8993 0
Nancy Stokey University of Chicago 29 5 17.24% 16 2938 0
Jonathan Temple Bristol University 39 1 2.56% 18 2518 0
Hans-Joachim
VothPompeu Fabra University 54 12 22.22% 21 10200
Romain Wacziarg UCLA 25 5 20.00% 16 4322 0
David Weil Brown University 62 17 27.42% 40 9334 0
Joseph Zeira Hebrew University 19 4 21.05% 12 1689 0
Fabrizio Zilibotti Stockholm University 50 12 24.00% 32 2877 4
Notes: *Editor in chief ** As of 14th August 2019 ***Search in Scopus: Among the documents
published by the selected author, ALL(“standardization” OR
“standardisation”) AND ALL(technology OR technologies OR technological OR technical)
AND ALL(“economic growth”)

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15Mokyr (2002) mentions “standardization” a few times, for instance, on page 111:
“Modularization was closely related to standardization, making all products of particular type
conform to a uniform standard. Standardization, much like modularization, helped not just
during the production stage of output but also in the maintenance of durable equipment.
Whoever could repair one Model T could repair any Model T.”
These observations suggest that standardization plays no focal role in economic growth books.
This indicates that researchers of economic growth do not generally consider standardization to
be an important factor affecting technological progress and economic growth.
A comprehensive keyword search within the content of these books is left for future research.
However, we conducted a keyword search using the search term “standardization” among the
articles that are included in volumes 1 and 2 of the Handbook of Economic Growth (Aghion &
Durlauf, 2006, 2014). The “Handbook of Economic Growth” which is edited by world-leading
researchers of economic growth, could be considered to represent the stage of the current
scientific paradigm. We found one article that included the word “standardization”: Ventura
(2005) mentions “Advances in telecommunications technology and the standardization of
software allow producers around the world to combine physical and human capital located in
different regions in a single production process,” Table 5. Articles by editors of the Journal of
Economic Growth
Article Authors* Year JournalCitations
in
Scopus**
History and coordination failure Adserà, A., Ray, D. 1998Journal of Economic
Growth26
Complexity and empirical economics Durlauf, S.N. 2005Economic Journal 115(504),
pp. F225-F24380
Equilibrium bias of technology Acemoglu, D. 2007Econometrica 75(5), pp. 1371-140980
Science, technology and innovation for economic growth: Linking policy research and practice
in ‘STIG Systems’Aghion, P., David, P., Foray, D. 2009Research Policy 38(4), 681-693105
Intellectual property rights policy, competition and innovationAcemoglu, D., Akcigit, U.
2012Journal of the European Economic Association 10(1), pp. 1-4270
Introduction to economic growth Acemoglu, D. 2012Journal of Economic Theory 147(2), pp.
545-5507
Competing engines of growth: Innovation and standardizationAcemoglu, D., Gancia,
G., Zilibotti, F.2012Journal of Economic
Theory 147(2), pp. 570-
601.e348
Offshoring and directed technical changeAcemoglu, D., Gancia,
G., Zilibotti, F.2015American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics 7(3), pp. 84-12231
Growing and slowing down like China Zilibotti, F. 2017Journal of the European Economic
Association 15(5), pp. 943-9882
Innovation, reallocation, and growthAcemoglu, D., Akcigit, U., Alp, H., Bloom, N., Kerr,
W.2018American Economic Review 108(11), pp. 3450-349113
The race between man and machine: Implications of
technology for growth, factor shares, and employmentAcemoglu, D., Restrepo, P. 2018American
Economic
Review 108(6), pp. 1488-
154216
Notes: *Editors of J of Econ Growth bolded. **As of 14 Aug 2019

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16but it does not discuss standardization more extensively. This observation further corroborates
the
currently missing link between standardization and economic growth theory.
To summarize, these findings suggest that there is a research gap regarding the association
between standardization and economic growth. The current paradigm of economic growth theory
does not incorporate standardization. Top economics journals published no articles related to the
topic between 1996 and 2018. The leading journal in its field, the Journal of Economic Growth,
has not yet touched upon standardization, and most researchers on its editorial board have
allocated only little attention to standardization. Finally, the concept of standardization is not
well-specified and, recently, seems to be more often related to “standardization of tasks.”
5.4 Limitations and Avenues for Future Research
The current analysis has several limitations. For instance, it includes only a small portion of
leading
economics journals and excludes several journals that have published important articles related
to standardization (e.g., Journal of Economics and Management Strategy, The Economic Journal,
European Journal of Political Economy). Second, the applied keyword search methodology is not
necessarily the most accurate one, and additional robustness checks could be conducted. Finally,
the current analysis is just a snapshot of a specific research gap at a specific point in time and
thus it becomes obsolete quickly as the literature on standardization continue to grow.
Initially, we planned to use the Journal of Economic Literature (JEL) classifications codes
in identifying standardization-related articles (cf. Cherrier, 2017). JEL classification code L15 is
“Information and Product Quality: Standardization and Compatibility” and, according to JEL
guidelines it “includes studies on standardization and on compatibility, which reduces the
problems associated with the information-product-quality nexus.”
27 The JEL classification also lists “compatibility,”
“standardization,” and “ISO” as keywords belonging to L15. However, the use of JEL
classification codes is not always consistent. As an example, whereas Baron and Schmidt (2017)
is classified into categories E32, E22, O33, O47, and L15, Blind and Jungmittag (2008) is
classified into O41, O52, O11, and E13. There is no overlap despite the fact that both articles
analyze the macroeconomic impact of standards. When looking at keywords, there is a similar
lack of overlap, but both articles have “standards” or “standardization” as keywords.
28 Due to these inconsistencies, this alternative
JEL-classification search option is left for future studies and possible replications and updates.
As illustrated in Section 3.2, accumulated economics research and textbooks affect the
curricula of economic growth courses. Future studies could extend the analysis to reviewing the
role of standardization in economics courses. Acemoglu (2013) has recommended that
economics instructors should spend more time on teaching economic growth at the
undergraduate level and also on emphasizing the importance of technology as the key
determinant of economic growth. The same growth course could be accompanied by a brief
review of standardization so that economics students can acknowledge the importance of
standards. There already exist multiple initiatives to increase awareness of the importance of
standards (de Vries & Egyedi, 2007; Choi & de Vries, 2011; Blind
& Dreschler, 2017).
Economics has shifted over time, increasingly from theoretical modelling to empirical analysis
(Hamermesh, 2013). As there are ever-increasing data on standardization available for
researchers (e.g., Baron & Spulber, 2018; Baron & Gupta, 2018), it is expected that there will
also be more publications on the topic and empirical economists will begin to allocate more
attention to standards. Future research could focus on analyzing and quantifying the macro-level
economic impact of standards. Evidence-based policies require rigorous empirical analysis and,
presumably, the welfare effects of standardization will receive more attention in the future.

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17Table 6. Books related to economic growth
Authors Book Publisher Year Index includes
“standards” or
“standardization”
Joel Mokyr The Lever of Riches: Technological Creativity and
Economic ProgressOxford University Press 1990 -
Gene Grossman and Elhanan HelpmanInnovation and Growth in the Global Economy MIT Press
1991 -
Gene Grossman Economic Growth: Theory and Evidence Edward Elgar
Publishing1996 No access
Philippe Aghion and Peter
HowittEndogenous Growth Theory MIT Press 1997 -
Philippe Aghion and Jeffrey WilliamsonGrowth, Inequality, and Globalization: Theory, History,
and PolicyCambridge University Press1999 -
William Easterly The Elusive Quest for Growth: Economists’ Adventures and Misadventures in
the Tropics (The MIT Press) MIT Press 2002 -
Philippe Aghion and Rachel GriffithCompetition And Growth: Reconciling Theory And
EvidenceMIT Press 2005 -
Philippe Aghion and Abhijit BanerjeeVolatility and Growth Oxford University Press2005 -
Asli Demirgüç-Kunt and Ross LevineFinancial Structure and Economic Growth MIT Press 2005
-
Philippe Aghion and Steven Durlauf (eds.)Handbook of Economic Growth 1A Elsevier/North
Holland2006 -
Philippe Aghion and Steven Durlauf (eds.)Handbook of Economic Growth 1B Elsevier/North
Holland2006 -
Daron Acemoglu Introduction to Modern Economic Growth Princeton University Press2008 -
Philippe Aghion and Peter HowittEconomics of growth MIT Press 2008 -
Oded Galor Unified Growth Theory Princeton University Press2011 -
Joel Mokyr The Gifts of Athena: Historical Origins of the Knowledge EconomyPrinceton
University Press2011 standardization, 58, 60, 63,
111, 229, 257
David Weil Economic growth (3rd ed.) Routledge 2012 Standards, as trade barriers,
305
Charles I. Jones and Dietrich VollrathIntroduction to Economic Growth (3rd ed.) W. W. Norton
& Company2013 -
Jagdish Bhagwati and Arvind PanagariyaWhy Growth Matters: How Economic Growth in India
Reduced Poverty and the Lessons for Other
Developing CountriesPublicAffairs 2014 -
Philippe Aghion and Steven
Durlauf (eds.)Handbook of Economic Growth 2A Elsevier/North Holland2014 -
Philippe Aghion and Steven Durlauf (eds.)Handbook of Economic Growth 2B Elsevier/North
Holland2014 -
Francesco Caselli Technology Differences over Space and Time Princeton University Press2016
-
Joel Mokyr A Culture of Growth: The Origins of the Modern EconomyPrinceton University
Press2016 -
Asli Demirgüç-Kunt and Ross LevineFinance and Growth International Library of Critical
Writings in EconomicsN/A No access
Notes: Economic-growth-related books published by the editors of the Journal of Economic
Growth as of August 2019.

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186 CoNCLU dING REMARKS
The main findings of this article are the following. No article has analyzed the link between
standardization and economic growth in top5 economics journals and the Journal of Economic
Growth. A representative sample of leading researchers of economic growth has allocated only
negligible attention to the link between standardization and economic growth. Economic growth
theory textbooks and closely related books only occasionally mention standardization. Based on
these findings, it is plausible to conclude that the current paradigm of economic growth theory
neglects standardization. We confirm the observation that there are very few academic studies in
the field of economics that analyze the contribution of standardization to economic growth
(Blind et al., 2005; Blind & Jungmittag, 2008; Baron & Schmidt, 2017).
Existing empirical evidence suggests that standards may have significant economic impacts.
Yet, the role of standardization as a factor in economic growth and development has, thus far,
been neglected. These observations indicate that mainstream economic growth researchers have
not considered standardization to be an important determinant of economic growth and
prosperity. This lack of attention may have significant implications. Since university teaching is
research-based, with the limited accumulated research on the role of standards in technological
change there exists a risk that standardization will receive little attention in the future as well.
Standards matter for technological progress, productivity, and economic growth. Economic
growth researchers could further shed light on the black box of technological progress by
allocating more attention to standardization.
ACKN owLEdGEMENTS
Earlier versions of this paper have been presented at the XXXVI Summer Seminar of Finnish
Economists, JSBE Research Seminar, ETLA brownbag seminar, the Finnish Economic
Association’s 42nd Annual Meeting and it was accepted for presentation at the European
Academy for Standardisation (EURAS) conference in Glasgow (postponed due to COVID-19).
We thank Samira Ranaei, Johan Willner, Peter Swann and several anonymous reviewers for
helpful comments. Joakim Wikström provided excellent research assistance. The views
expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of their
employers. All errors are our own.

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24ENdNoTES
1 https://www.iso.org/members.html Last accessed on 1 August 2019.
2 Although some national standards organizations are also very important.
3 One way to describe the difference is to note that standard setting and development constitute
a competition
between standards and within standards, respectively.
4 Technological progress and technological change are used interchangeably throughout the
paper. We do not use the term “technical change.”
5 The British Standards Institute, BSI, was the world’s first National Standards Body, formed in
1901. The German Institute for Standardization, DIN, was founded in 1917, and the American
National Standards Institute, ANSI, was founded in 1918.
6 Akcigit (2017) provides an overview of the past, present, and future of economic growth
theory, and Jones (2016) an overview of the facts. Chu (2018) provides an overview of economic
growth teaching curricula. A glimpse into the most recent version of the “Handbook of
Economic Growth” provides an overview of the growth factors to which growth researchers have
recently allocated their attention (Aghion et al., 2014).
7 David and Greenstein (1990) provides an overview.
8 See also Veblen (1904) for early contributions on the “economics of standardization” field.
9 Standardized written and spoken languages can also be considered as the ultimate “GPTs.”
Mokyr (2002, p. 58) notes: “For communication between individuals to occur, a common
terminology is essential. Language is the ultimate general purpose technology, to use Bresnahan
and Trajtenberg (1993) well-known term. It provides the technology that creates others.” As a
more recent example of language standardization: Emojis, special pictorial symbols, are
standardized by Unicode Emoji Subcommittee.
10 “If one views the Internet as a general purpose technology, these standard-setting
organizations may provide a forum where GPT-producers can interact with application-sector
innovators in an effort to internalize the vertical (from GPT to application) and horizontal
(among applications) externalities implied by complementarities in innovation across sectors, as
modeled in Bresnahan and Trajtenberg (1995).” (Simcoe 2015, p.26).
11 Dosi (1982) defines “technological paradigm” as procedures, definitions of the “‘relevant”
problems, and as the specific knowledge related to their solution, and “technological trajectory”
as the direction of advance within a technological paradigm.
12 For instance, regarding the standardization of the Internet, Simcoe notes that ”Consensus
standardization within SSOs (specifically IETF and W3C, as described below) is arguably the
dominant mode of coordinating the design decisions and the supply of new interfaces on the
modern Internet” (2015 p.26).
13 https://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/EconomicGrowth.html Last accessed 16 Aug 2019.
14 Quantification is challenging, and existing country comparisons rely on a “stock of
standards” proxy variable when analyzing the association between standards and economic
growth (e.g., Blind & Jungmittag, 2008).
15 Rysman and Simcoe (2008): “The large difference in baseline citation rates suggests that
SSOs perform well in selecting important technologies. If we are willing to place a causal
interpretation on the disclosure effect, these results also imply that SSOs increase the
significance of standardized technology through formal endorsement and other efforts to
promote industry coordination.”
16 According to Leonard (2002): “Scientific rules, and the means for their enforcement,
constitute the invisible-hand mechanism, so that scientific rules (sometimes) induce interested
scientific actors with worldly goals to make epistemically good choices.”
17 Division of labor in economics has been studied from various perspectives in prior literature
(de Langhe, 2010).
18 For herding behavior of researchers, see, e.g., Volume 20 Issue 1 of the Journal of Economic
Methodology.
19 Kitcher (1990) uses the concept (cognitive division of labor).
20 Interestingly, there exists empirical evidence that preferences and self-selection seem to be
gender-specific, with the shares of women and men differing across economic research topics
(Chari & Goldsmith-Pinkham, 2018).
21 These research articles are sometimes called “sleeping beauties” (van Raan, 2004).
22 See https://ideas.repec.org/top/top.item.nbcites.html Accessed on 29 February 2020.
23 E.g., “Economic growth” course by prof. Daron Acemoglu at MIT in 2016,
https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/economics/14-452-economic-growth-fall-2016/syllabus/ uses
Acemoglu (2016) as a textbook.
24 L15 “Information and Product Quality: Standardization and Compatibility”
https://www.aeaweb.org/jel/guide/jel.php. The only keyword that was found to contain the term
“standards” was “International Labor Standards.”

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2525 Interestingly, economic growth research seems to be male-dominated, as there is only one
woman on the
editorial board. This observation is consistent with findings of Chari and Goldsmith-Pinkham
(2018).
26 In addition to these articles, the search query captures three book chapters that are excluded
from this table.
27 See https://www.aeaweb.org/jel/guide/jel.php Accessed on 27 July 2019
28 The keywords of Baron and Schmidt (2017) are “technology adoption; business cycle
dynamics; standardization; aggregate productivity; Bayesian vector autoregressions.” Blind and
Jungmittag (2008) listed as keywords “Growth; Innovation; Standards; Patents; Country effects;
Industry effects.”