An economic analysis of standard reference materials

Standard Reference Materials® (SRMs®) are high-technology infrastructural elements developed and distributed by the U.S. national metrology institute, the National Institute of Standards and Technology. SRMs are used throughout the economy to enhance production efficiency by reducing information asymmetries and thereby reducing transaction costs between affected parties. To date, the domestic market demand for SRMs in the United States has not been studied. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to estimate a market demand model for SRMs; the empirical results show that market demand is cyclical, that is it increases with positive changes in multifactor productivity.