An economic evaluation of the Baldrige National Quality Program

Albert Link and John Scott

Economics of Innovation and New Technology, 2006, vol. 15, issue 1, 83-100

Abstract: All federal programs are accountable for their use of public funds. This paper presents conservative estimates of the net social benefits associated with the Baldrige National Quality Award Program, established within the National Institute of Standards and Technology in 1987. On the basis of survey data from members of the American Society for Quality, we estimate cost savings benefits to members, extrapolate those benefits to the economy as a whole, and compare the benefits to the social costs associated with the Program. Our estimation method implies that the ratio of economy-wide benefits to social costs probably exceeds 207:1, supporting the hypothesis that the public investments in quality-standards infrastructure are worthwhile.

Keywords: Evaluation methods; Public program evaluation; Social benefits and costs (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2006
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1043859042000332204 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:ecinnt:v:15:y:2006:i:1:p:83-100

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/GEIN20

DOI: 10.1080/1043859042000332204

Access Statistics for this article

Economics of Innovation and New Technology is currently edited by Professor Cristiano Antonelli

More articles in Economics of Innovation and New Technology from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().