فراتر از فن آوری و عملکرد اقتصادی: شواهد از اندازه گیری زیرساخت های انگلیس

This paper investigates the impact on the United Kingdom of the measurement activity that provides the basic underpinning technology, or infra-technology, for a diverse set of economic activities. Using data on R&D, patents and input–output relationships we track the nature and extent of spillover effects from measurement technology into the wider economy. The results show that measurement R&D has a significant impact, equivalent to around 2% of GDP. This benefit is economy wide but is particularly important for certain high technology and other industries. The presence of a measurement infrastructure is also important in supporting investment and export activity.

Economists now almost universally accept the importance of technology in understanding the economics of industrial evolution and economic growth. As a result there is an extremely large literature in this area. However a somewhat neglected aspect of the story is the importance of underpinning technologies or infratechnologies, which are often quite sophisticated pre-requisites to technological innovation. A useful working definition of infratechnologies is provided by Tassey (1992, Chapter 8) as follows: Infratechnologies are a varied set of ‘technical tools’ that include measurement and test methods, artefacts such as standard reference materials that allow these methods to be used efficiently, scientific and engineering databases, process models and the technical basis for both physical and functional interfaces between components of systems technologies such as factory automation and communications.

This paper has set out to investigate whether the concept of measurement infratechnology provides us with a sufficiently coherent and important set of economic processes to provide guidance for technology policy in advanced economies. On the basis of the preliminary evidence presented here we find that the set of processes are indeed sufficiently coherent to warrant further research. Moreover, we find that if measurement R&D related investments are representative of R&D as a whole, then they have made a substantial contribution to the growth of productivity in the UK. On the basis of existing empirical research and the assumption that such R&D is representative of R&D as a whole, we suspect that the cumulative impact of measurement related R&D has amounted to over 2% of GDP. Foreign sources have been an increasingly important element in this impact. We then turned to the question of whether measurement might be an especially important process when considered from a policy perspective. Using a disaggregated approach based on compatible OECD R&D and input–output data, we found that there were significant differences in both the production and use of measurement related R&D. In particular, we found that physical investment decisions were rather intensive in their use of measurement compared to other forms of R&D. Arguably, this means that some measurement activity may be difficult to internalise and that spillover consequences may be closer to being a broadcast phenomenon than R&D activities more generally. This may provide a rationale for continuing public support.