This paper considers the contribution of voluntary consensus based standards, as developed through the British Standards Institution (BSI), to collective learning and productivity growth in Britain. It discusses the pivotal contribution of professional engineers to the establishment of a...

In this paper we consider the relationship between the standards created by national standards bodies and long run economic growth, exploring the relationship in the context of the UK and the British Standards Institution (BSI). We suggest that standards provide a key enabling mechanism for the...

This paper considers the sources of technological change and productivity growth in the small firm sector of UK manufacturing over the period 1973- 2002, focusing on the mechanisms by which spillovers occur between the large firms which perform the bulk of R&D and smaller firms which are the...