There are often benefits to consumers and to firms from standardization of a product. We examine whether these standardization benefits can "trap" an industry in an obsolete or inferior standard when there is a better alternative available. With complete information and identical preferences...

We discuss three common mechanisms for achieving coordination, with particular reference to the choice of compatibility standards. The first involves explicit communication and negotiation before irrevocable choices are made: It represents what standardization committees do. The second...

Incentives for profitable innovation may be enhanced by employing a "visionary" CEO whose "vision" biases him in favor of certain projects. CEO vision changes which projects get implemented and thus affects the incentives of employees who can be compensated for their innovative ideas only when...

We study why production and sales departments tend to disagree, with the former wanting long production runs and the latter wanting a broad product line. We then analyze why these disagreements lead to overt conflict in which functional areas fight with each other by presenting arguments that...

Introduction

This article examines the strategic pricing of duopolists in anticipation of a takeover of one by the other. In equilibrium the acquiring firm may expand its output to signal that it is a low-cost rival and thereby improve the takeover terms. If the merged form will face potential entry, a...

The networks literature suggests a network's value increases in the number of locations it serves (the "network effect") and the number of its users (the "production scale effect"). We show this implies a firm's expected time until adoption of a network technology declines in both users and...

We analyze an overlapping-generations model of duopolistic competition in the presence of consumer switching costs. Competition for established buyers is continually intermingled with competition for new, uncommitted buyers. In equilibrium the firm with attached customers typically specializes...

In an experience-goods industry, an entrant who could make positive profits by providing a better deal to buyers than do incumbents may cheat buyers by providing goods of low quality to make even greater profits. If buyers foresee this possibility, they will be unwilling to buy from an entrant....

We show how costless, nonbinding, nonverifiable communication (cheap talk) can achieve partial coordination among potential entrants into a natural-monopoly industry, where the payoffs are qualitatively like the "battle of the sexes." The analysis would apply equally in other economic situations...