This paper develops a model of evolving standards for academic publishing. It is motivated by the increasing tendency of academic journals to require multiple revisions of articles and by changes in the content of articles. Papers are modeled as varying along two quality dimensions: q and r. The...

As it becomes cheaper to copy and share digital content, vendors are turning to technical protections such as encryption. We argue that if protection is nevertheless imperfect, this transition will generally lower the prices of content relative to perfect legal enforcement. However, the effect...

This paper emphasizes the different nature of cross border liberalization in network related services, such as telecoms, compared to liberalization in goods. In the presence of network externalities, it argues that if two disjoint country service networks involving a small and large country are...

A major policy issue in standard setting is that patents that are ex-ante not that important may, by being included into the standard, become standard-essential patents (SEPs). In an attempt to curb the monopoly power that they create, most standard-setting organizations require the owners of...

Markets with asymmetric information will often employ third-party certification labels to distinguish between higher and lower quality transactions, yet little is known about the effects of certification policies on the evolution of markets. How does the stringency in quality certification...

Traditional analyses of standards in international trade identify standards as government regulations and investigate the potential for distortion of trade flows. In reality, however, private industry groups exercise critical influence on the determination of technical standards. The composition...

In a model of industry standard setting with private information about firms' intellectual property, we analyze (a) firms' incentives to contribute to the development and improvement of a standard, and (b) firms' decision to disclose the existence of relevant intellectual property to other...

56K modems were introduced under two competing incompatible standards. We show the importance of competition between Internet Service Providers in the adoption process. We show that ISPs were less likely to adopt the technology that more competitors adopted. This result is particularly striking...

This paper studies the intellectual property strategy of firms that participate in the formal standards process. Specifically, we examine litigation rates in a sample of patents disclosed to thirteen voluntary Standard Setting Organizations (SSOs). We find that SSO patents have a relatively high...

This paper empirically explores the procedures employed by standard-setting organizations. Consistent with Lerner-Tirole (2004), we find (a) a negative relationship between the extent to which an SSO is oriented to technology sponsors and the concession level required of sponsors and (b) a...