Technological Choice In Voluntary Standards Committees: An Empirical Analysis

Weiss, Martin B. H.; Sirbu, Marvin A.

doi:10.1080/10438599000000007

Cited by 98 publications

(41 citation statements)

References 8 publications

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“…But aside from case studies, 7 empirical research on SSOs remains scant. Weiss and Sirbu (1990) examine 7 Case studies of compatibility standard setting include Besen and Johnson (1988), Besen and Saloner (1989), Foray (1995), Lehr (1995) and Eisenman and Barley (2006). Combining case research with descriptive data analysis, Bekkers et al (2002) show how the patent portfolios and alliance network of firms participating in the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) evolved over time.…”

Section: Related Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

Choosing the rules for consensus standardization

Farrell

Simcoe

2012

The RAND J of Economics

120

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Consensus standardization often involves bargaining without side payments or substantive compromise, creating a war of attrition that selects through delay. We investigate the tradeoff between screening and delay when this process selects for socially valuable but privately observed quality. Immediate random choice may outperform the war of attrition, or vice versa. Allowing an uninformed neutral player to break deadlocks can improve on both mechanisms. Policies that reduce players' vested interest, and hence delays, can strengthen the ex ante incentive to improve proposals. JEL Codes: L15, C78, D71, D83. * We thank the National Science Foundation and the Berkeley Committee on Research (Farrell) and the UC Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society (Simcoe) for research support. For helpful comments on a much earlier version, we thank seminar participants at Berkeley, Davis, UCLA, Santa Barbara, Lisbon, Barcelona, LSE, USC, Calgary, Vancouver, TPRC, Harvard, NBER, Aix-en-Provence, OECD, and Oxford; and especially James Dana, Glenn Ellison, Barry Nalebuff, Eric Rasmusen, Pierre Regibeau, Michael Whinston, and Charles Wilson, as well as the members of ANSI's X3 Strategic Planning Committee, especially its former Chairs, S.P.Oksala and C. Cargill, and Chris Simpson and Anthony Raeburn of the IEC, and Christian Favre of the ISO. Alerto Galasso, Matt Mitchell, Shane Greenstein and Victor Stango provided useful comments on a more recent version. Comments are welcome:

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Section: Related Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

Choosing the rules for consensus standardization

Farrell

Simcoe

2012

The RAND J of Economics

120

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“…Cargill (1989) describes the standards process in information technology. Weiss and Sirbu (1990) econometrically study technology choices in voluntary consensus standards committees. Lehr (1995) describes consensus standardization in the internet; see also Simcoe (2004).…”

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confidence: 99%

“…130 Weiss and Sirbu (1990);Farrell (1996). 131 In a hybrid mechanism, compatibility may result either by consensus or by one proponent driving a market bandwagon (but if both try simultaneously, the result is incompatibility).…”

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confidence: 99%

Coordination and Lock-In: Competition with Switching Costs and Network Effects

2006

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PRELIMINARY DRAFT: PLEASE SEND COMMENTSKEYWORDS: switching costs, network e ects, lock-in, network externalities, co-ordination, indirect network e ects JEL CLASSIFICATIONS: L130 market structure, rm strategy and market performance: oligopoly and other imperfect markets; monopolistic competition; contestable markets L150 information and product quality; standardization and compatibility L120 market structure, rm strategy and market performance: monopoly L140 transactional relationships: contracts and reputation: networks D430 market structure and pricing: oligopoly and other forms of market imperfection D420 market structure and pricing: monopoly. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS: We're grateful to many friends and colleagues for numerous helpful suggestions and comments over several substantial rewrites of this paper since our rst 1997 draft. Special thanks are due to Alan Beggs, Simon AbstractSwitching costs and network e ects bind customers to vendors if products are incompatible, locking customers or even markets in to early choices. Lock-in hinders customers from changing suppliers in response to (predictable or unpredictable) changes in e ciency, and gives vendors lucrative ex post market power|over the same buyer in the case of switching costs (or brand loyalty), or over others with network e ects.Firms compete ex ante for this ex post power, using penetration pricing, introductory o ers, and price wars. Such \competition for the market" or \life-cycle competition" can adequately replace ordinary compatible competition, and can even be ercer than compatible competition by weakening di erentiation. More often, however, incompatible competition not only involves direct e ciency losses but also softens competition and magni es incumbency advantages. With network e ects, established rms have little incentive to o er better deals when buyers' and complementors' expectations hinge on non-e ciency factors (especially history such as past market shares), and although competition between incompatible networks is initially unstable and sensitive to competitive o ers and random events, it later \tips" to monopoly, after which entry is hard, often even too hard given incompatibility. And while switching costs can encourage small-scale entry, they discourage sellers from raiding one another's existing customers, and so also discourage more aggressive entry.Because of these competitive e ects, even ine cient incompatible competition is often more pro table than compatible competition, especially for dominant rms with installed-base or expectational advantages. Thus rms probably seek incompatibility too often. We therefore favor thoughtfully pro-compatibility public policy.

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“…This may help explain the global attention gravitating toward TD-LTE. Weiss and Sirbu (1990) empirically demonstrated that market power (measured by market share) and financial resources (measured by net assets) serve as crucial factors that influence the choice of technologies used in standards committees. We investigated the market power and financial resources of the main sponsors of TD-LTE and WiBro.…”

Section: Centralities Of the Networkmentioning

confidence: 99%