Strengthening the Compliance of the OIC Member States
to International Standards
13
One way of dealing with the trade difficulties linked to divergent national standards is to harmonize, i.e.
adopt the same standard for two countries or a group of countries. The use of international standards is
a special case of harmonization with a wide group—in theory, all of the world that agrees to be part of
the international harmonization effort. Under a harmonization strategy, compliance with a single
standard gives a firm the ability to access all markets in the harmonization zone (Figure 3). There is
substantial empirical evidence that harmonization of product standards lowers trade costs, with
consequent gains for exporters: they can export more of existing products, and introduce new products
into foreign markets (Czubala et al., 2009; Shepherd and Wilson, 2013; and Shepherd, Forthcoming).
Figure 3: Schematic representation of harmonization
Source: Shepherd (2014).
There is no single body that issues international standards, i.e. harmonized standards that apply in a
wide range of countries. Rather, a number of organizations are active in the area. The most well-known
is ISO, which has consultative processes and issues standards in a wide variety of areas. For electrical
goods, IEC is a commonly used benchmark, again with wide-ranging consultative processes, but a more
limited sectoral scope than ISO. Finally, the Codex issues food safety standards that are used as the basis
of national standards in many countries, making it another agent of international harmonization of
standards.
Regional bodies are also relevant to the standards agenda (see Maur and Shepherd, 2011 for a review).
Many new generation regional trade agreements (RTAs) contain provisions on standards. However, a
wide range of approaches is in evidence. At one extreme lies the EU, where there is a regional standards
body responsible for issuing harmonized standards, and a set of legal directives setting out core
requirements for particular products. The other extreme is perhaps the Asia Pacific Economic
Cooperation (APEC), a forum that does not use legally binding instruments: instead, member economies
have committed to progress international harmonization with particular attention to an agreed set of