Abstract
With the enactment of the WTO/TBT Agreement and other developments, international standards have come to play an increasing number of roles. Maintenance and development of competitiveness of Japanese industry require international standardization activities aimed at securing international standards originating from Japan. Industry also needs to actively participate in such proposal-oriented international standardization activities. A key requisite for enabling such participation is thorough understanding of the value of these activities among top management of industry. Accordingly, to show industry the appeal of these activities, we have launched study on their economic effect. In fact, the study was implemented in a Working Group (WG) established as a part of the national project entrusted to JSA (Japanese Standards Association) by METI (Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry). Here, I will focus on the idea of economic effect and on some case studies obtained by the WG.
