This paper surveys the contributions that economists have made to understanding standards-setting processes and their consequences for industry structure and economic welfare. Standardization processes of four kinds are examined, namely: (1) market competition involving products embodying unsponsore...

The goal of this paper is to help set a research agenda for examining the effect of compatibility barriers to trade. The paper explores the relationship between compatibility standards and international trade flows from an industrial organization perspective. I provide a brief survey of the literatu...

We provide a selective overview of the literature on standardization. We first summarize the essential mechanisms underlying the economics of product compatibility and in so doing we review the various frameworks that have been used. Then we survey existing work about the consequences of compatibili...