Die Rolle von Normen innerhalb des Innovationssystems ist sehr umstritten. Es wird sogar vermutet, dass die Zeit der Normung bereits abgelaufen sei. Andererseits wird von einer erstarrenden Regelsetzung gesprochen, die die notwendige Flexibilität für Erfindungen und Innovationen verhindere....

The economic science has - lamented by some, applauded by others - turned into a monistic discipline. In this short research note, a socio-economic answer to the question of why this happened is provided by combining an economic approach to the market for economic ideas with a sociological...

The sharing economy gains momentum and develops a major economic impact on traditional markets and firms. However, only rudimentary theoretical and empirical insights exist on how sharing networks, i.e., focal firms, shared goods providers and customers, create and capture value in their...

The authors examine the timing and quality of product introduction in an R&D stopping game, where they allow for horizontal and vertical differentiation in the product market. They observe that discontinuous changes in introduction dates can occur as firms' abilities as researchers change....

Imposing a minimum quality standard (MQS) is conventionally regarded as harmful if firms compete in quantities. This, however, ignores its possible dynamic effects. We show that an MQS can hinder collusion, resulting in dynamic welfare gains that reduce and may outweigh the static losses which...

As consumers’ demand for organic products and especially organic food grows, organic certification for tropical fruit is increasingly promoted in many developing countries. Certified organic pineapple exports only started taking off after 2005 and are rapidly increasing. The organic and...

Who does, and who should initiate costly certification by a third party under asymmetric quality information, the buyer or the seller? Our answer ' the seller ' follows from a non-trivial analysis revealing a clear intuition. Buyer-induced certification acts as an inspection device, whence...

We examine the timing and quality of product introduction in an R&D stopping game, where we allow for horizontal and vertical differentiation in the product market. We observe that discontinuous changes in introduction dates can occur as firms' abilities as researchers change. Further, when the...

Extensive research has been conducted on the economics of standards in the last three decades. To date, standard-setting studies emphasize a superior role of demand-side-driven technology diffusion; these contributions assume the evolution of a user-driven momentum and network externalities. We...

Technological standards give rise to a complements problem that affects pricing and innovation incentives of technology producers. In this paper I discuss how patent pools can be used to solve these problems and what incentives patent holders have to form a patent pool. I offer some suggestions...