In many ways, standards are chief determinants of economic activity. For businesses, standards can present major barriers to market entry (as is true for many SMEs), or they can reinforce economies of scale and remove competition (as is true for many big businesses). For regulators, standards can serve as mechanisms to ensure that products are safe, reliable, and of good quality for consumers, and can also be used to restrict market access in lieu of tariffs. When standards are formed around a convergence of business and regulatory interests, they facilitate growth and the expansion of trade. Equally, when standards are formed idiosyncratically around industries or along national borders, they can restrict trade and limit growth. Thus, the power of standards to shape markets and set the terms of trade demands rigorous and comparative historical analysis. But where, exactly, do standards originate? How have firms responded to and sought to influence standards? Have regulators implementing standards been more motivated by facilitating economic growth, or protecting consumers? And how have standards been used to increase or inhibit economic activity?
This panel convenes historians working on standards from a variety of geographic and temporal perspectives around these questions.
Paper 1: As part of her larger body of work on business and European integration, Grace Ballor (European University Institute) will examine the role of standards in shaping the Single European Market, focusing in particular on the influence of big business.
Paper 2: Stephen Mihm (University of Georgia) will examine a small, relatively obscure private association founded in 1918 -- the American Engineering Standards Committee -- which expanded its power in the first twenty years of its existence at the expense of competing, government agencies like the Bureau of Standards. This development, the paper argues, heralded a wave of private standards setting that has shaped the development of the modern regulatory state.
Paper 3: Alma Igra (Columbia University) will present part of her research on international food standards and the League of Nations between the world wars. She will discuss scientific, political and economic discoveries in the making of nutritional standards.
Together, these papers will shed light on the origins and effects of standards in various contexts, thereby offering a new historical perspective of the relationships between businesses, markets, and the state.