We are living on a finite planet. Mankind is overstepping planetary boundaries, however. In 2021, worldwide consumption has exceeded the yearly bio-capacity of the Earth (what we call the overshoot day) on the 29th of July. For industrialised countries, the situation is far worse: In 2022, Belgium reached that overshoot day on the 26th of March. In the face of these urgent challenges of sustainable resource use, there is wide agreement on the need for a transition, a fundamental societal shif...

Standards play an important role within society, shaping many transactions between consumers and companies, citizens and governments, as well as customer/supplier relationships in the broadest sense. This book investigates the economic and strategic importance of standards in a small, strongly globalised economy. The case of Belgium is developed from both a macro-economic and micro-economic perspective.

Based on an econometric model, the macro-economic part quantifies the impact of standards ...