| Introduced by the International Organization for Standardization in 1987, the ISO 9000 family of standards is a 'generic quality management standard' that has been claimed to have a great impact on company performance and upon a company's ability to satisfy customers' expectations (ISO, 2009e). In addition, ISO 9000 standards also help to create consensus on requirements and standards all around the world and in doing so can facilitate trade. While many studies have examined claims about the impact of ISO 9000 standards as a trade facilitation tool results, thus far, are ambiguous. ISO 9000 standards also have different impacts across countries of different economic status.;To more rigorously assess the trade impacts of ISO 9000 certification, this paper builds a gravity model for the trade flows by taking into account the ratio of ISO 9000 certified firms within a particular country and industry. Alternative specifications also include measures of trading country's economic status. Results suggest that there is a significant interaction between the impact of ISO 9000 certification and trading partner economic status. This study shows that the adoption of ISO 9000 will have a significant and positive impact on trade of most countries. The scale of increase in trade flows, however, is different across economic levels. These results are consistent with findings of other authors (e.g. Clougherty and Grajek, 2008) that ISO 9000 standards have more impact on developing and least developed countries than developed ones. Suggestions for further research are provided. |
