Does ISO 9001 Quality Certification Influence Labor Productivity in EU-27?

Labor productivity stands between the main indicators assessing national economic conditions and contributing to the economic growth and welfare. This paper adds to the literature investigating the macroeconomic determinants of labor productivity, focusing on the role of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) quality certification standards. For this purpose we employ a panel data framework for EU-27 countries for the period 2000-2013 and we address potential endogeneity and heteroskedasticity issues, resorting to a two stages least square (2SLS) analysis and to the Generalized Method of Moments approach (system-GMM) proposed by Blundell & Bond (1998). Our findings show no impact of ISO 9001 quality certification on the labor productivity in EU-27 countries. The results remain unchanged when we compare the pre- and the post-crisis periods.