Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- List of contributors
- Introduction
- 1 Standard setting in markets: the browser war
- 2 Competition through institutional form: the case of cluster tool standards
- 3 The economic realities of open standards: black, white, and many shades of gray
- 4 Coordination costs and standard setting: lessons from 56K modems
- 5 Promoting e-business through vertical IS standards: lessons from the US home mortgage industry
- 6 Intellectual property and standardization committee participation in the US modem industry
- 7 Manipulating interface standards as an anticompetitive strategy
- 8 Delay and de jure standardization: exploring the slowdown in Internet standards development
- 9 Standardization: a failing paradigm
- 10 Standards battles and public policy
- 11 Switching to digital television: business and public policy issues
- 12 Should competition policy favor compatibility?
- Index
- References
Introduction
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- List of contributors
- Introduction
- 1 Standard setting in markets: the browser war
- 2 Competition through institutional form: the case of cluster tool standards
- 3 The economic realities of open standards: black, white, and many shades of gray
- 4 Coordination costs and standard setting: lessons from 56K modems
- 5 Promoting e-business through vertical IS standards: lessons from the US home mortgage industry
- 6 Intellectual property and standardization committee participation in the US modem industry
- 7 Manipulating interface standards as an anticompetitive strategy
- 8 Delay and de jure standardization: exploring the slowdown in Internet standards development
- 9 Standardization: a failing paradigm
- 10 Standards battles and public policy
- 11 Switching to digital television: business and public policy issues
- 12 Should competition policy favor compatibility?
- Index
- References
Summary
Technological standards are a cornerstone of the modern information economy. These standards affect firm strategy, market performance and, by extension, economic growth. While there is general agreement that swift movement to superior technological standards is a worthwhile goal, there is much less agreement on how an economy can attain those goals in specific instances. Sometimes there are even debates about whether appropriate standards arose in past episodes – for example, academics still dispute whether Betamax was a technically superior video cassette recorder (VCR) to VHS. Answers are not transparent because a variety of market and nonmarket processes determines the evolution of standards. By default, decentralized market mechanisms, private firms, and standards development organizations shape the development and diffusion of standards.
In addition, when government actors step in to sponsor a new standard or move the market between standards, as they occasionally do, debates about the interaction of competing market and technical factors are not merely academic, nor are the answers transparent. Government actors can make choices about competing specifications for a standard and often have the power to mandate compliance with the standard. Moreover, rarely are these decisions reversed, and when they are, the events are noted for their rarity. For example, the Federal Communication Commission's decision to alter its prior choice over the color television standard a few years later prevented the country from employing technology that all experts regarded as obsolete.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Standards and Public Policy , pp. 1 - 17Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2006
References
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