Sequential investment opportunities or the presence of a rival typically hasten investment under risk neutrality. By contrast, greater price uncertainty or risk aversion increase the incentive to postpone investment in the absence of competition. We analyse how price and technological...

The aim of this paper is to investigate the causal effect of a recent attempt undertaken by the EPO to improve the quality of the patent granting process. To do so we examine a policy change that aimed at including the information revealed during the standardisation-setting process into the...

This paper looks at the emergence of what is described here as the QWERTY family of standards (QWERTY and its international adaptations QZERTY, AZERTY, and QWERTZ). QWERTY has been described as an inferior solution and an accident of history. However, the analysis here finds that each member of...

This paper explores empirically the interplay between patent pooling and litigations using data on 1564 United States patents belonging to eight modern I.C.T. pools and to a control database with patents having the same characteristics. First, our analysis makes it possible to highlight that...

We use basic probability theory and simple replicable electronic search experiments to evaluate some reported “myths” surrounding the origins and evolution of the QWERTY standard. The resulting evidence is strongly supportive of arguments put forward by Paul A. David (1985) and W. Brian...

We use basic probability theory and simple replicable electronic search experiments to evaluate some reported “myths” surrounding the origins and evolution of the QWERTY standard. The resulting evidence is strongly supportive of arguments put forward by Paul A. David (1985) and W. Brian...