The scope and competencies of accreditation have developed considerably in recent decades. Accreditation bodies (AB) demonstrate their competence by participating in international agreements such as the IAF Multilateral Recognition Arrangement (MLA) and the ILAC Mutual Recognition Arrangement (MRA). Building on this basis, we have developed a novel indicator to assess the accreditation experience of an economy.
Please read our article published in the IAF Outlook:
Continue readingAs we continue our efforts to measure quality infrastructure (QI) development and improve QI data collection to understand QI’s contribution to economic growth, we turn our attention to metrology. We examined the relationship between the Global Quality Infrastructure Index (GQII) and the number of metrology patents filed to understand whether it would be a suitable proxy for metrology development. We expect a strong positive relationship between the variables of interest, suggesting that countries with higher metrological competencies will likely have more metrology patent applications.
Continue readingOne reason for investing in Quality Infrastructure (QI) is its contribution to a country’s economic growth. QI enhances economic performance through several avenues, including opening markets, reducing entry barriers, promoting knowledge transfer and better management procedures, facilitating production along value chains, enabling economies of scale, and reducing adverse selection and asymmetric information (Gonçalves and Peuckert, 2011). While interest in QI has been increasing over the years, QI experts, researchers and practitioners are challenged with quantifying the economic benefits of QI to highlight its importance and justify the need for investment and further development. So far, there have been various studies on the macroeconomic impact of individual QI components, such as standards, metrology and conformity assessment. However, an impact analysis for the entire system is still pending. This blog explores the methodologies used for the macroeconomic impact assessments of the different QI components and the possibility of conducting an assessment of the overall QI system.
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Quality Infrastructure for Development 