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 unsponsored standards, (2) market competition among sponsored (proprietary) standards, (3) agreements within voluntary standards-writing organizations, a18d (4) direct governmental promulgation. The major trajectories along which research has been moving are described and related to both the positive and the normative issues concerning compatibility standards that remain to be studied.

The Economics Of Compatibility Standards: An Introduction To Recent Research 1

Networks and innovation in a modular system: Lessons from the microcomputer and stereo component industries

If informed voters receive favorable policies, then the invention of a new mass medium may affect government policies since it affects who is informed and who is not. These ideas are developed in a voting model. The model forms the basis for an empirical investigation of a major New Deal relief program implemented in the middle of the expansion period of radio. The main empirical finding is that U. S. counties with many radio listeners received more relief funds. More funds were allocated to poor counties with high unemployment, but controlling for these and other variables, the effects of radio are large and highly significant.

Radio's Impact on Public Spending

I use variation across markets in the timing of television’s introduction to identify its impact on voter turnout. The estimated effect is significantly negative, accounting for between a quarter and a half of the total decline in turnout since the 1950s. I argue that substitution away from other media with more political coverage provides a plausible mechanism linking television to voting. As evidence for this, I show that the entry of television in a market coincided with sharp drops in consumption of newspapers and radio, and in political knowledge as measured by election surveys. I also show that both the information and turnout effects were largest in off-year congressional elections, which receive extensive coverage in newspapers but little or no coverage on television.

Television and Voter Turnout

Many important economic questions hinge on the extent to which new goods either crowd out or complement consumption of existing products. Recent methods for studying new goods are based on demand models that rule out complementarity by assumption, so their applicability to these questions has been limited. I develop a new model that relaxes this restriction, and use it to study the specific case of competition between print and online newspapers. Using new micro data from the Washington DC market, I show that the major print and online papers appear to be strong complements in the raw data, but that this is an artifact of unobserved consumer heterogeneity. I estimate that the online paper reduced print readership by 27,000 per day, at a cost of $5.5 million per year in lost print profits. I find that online news has provided substantial welfare benefits to consumers and that charging positive online prices is unlikely to substantially increase firm profits.

Valuing New Goods in a Model with Complementarity: Online Newspapers

The context of broadcasting. The prehistory of broadcasting (to 1919). The beginnings of broadcasting (1920-1926). The coming of commercialism (1926-1933). Radio's golden age (1934-1941). Radio goes to war (1941-1945). Era of great change (1945-1952). The age of television (1952-1960). Accommodation and adjustment (1961-1976). Challenge and competition: 1977-1988. Lessons from the past for the future. Appendices. Index.

Stay tuned: A concise history of American broadcasting

John B. Thompson, profesor en la Universidad de Cambridge, ha dedicado los últimos 10 años de su vida e intereses en la investigación, a comprender la lógica que hay detrás de la producción de publicaciones, tanto en el ámbito académico como en el comercial. En el año 2005 publicó su libro Books in the Digital Age, el cual devela el mundo de las publicaciones académicas en dos entornos anglosajones: el de Estados Unidos y el de Inglaterra. Una reseña a este libro fue publicada en Comunicación y Sociedad (Fuentes Navarro, 2006, pp. 181-185). Posterior a la descripción y análisis de las publicaciones en el entorno académico, Thompson se propuso un reto mayor: describir y analizar la industria de la publicación de libros pero ahora comerciales –tanto de ficción como no ficción–, también en Estados Unidos y en Inglaterra.

Merchants of Culture: The Publishing Business in the Twenty-First Century

Contents: The Context of Broadcasting. The Prehistory of Broadcasting (to 1919). The Beginnings of Broadcasting (1920-1926). The Coming of Commercialism (1926-1933). Radio's Golden Age (1934-1941). Radio Goes to War (1941-1945). Era of Great Change (1945-1952). The Age of Television (1952-1960). Accommodation and Adjustment (1961-1976). Challenge and Competition (1977-1988). Change and Evolution (1988-2001). Lessons From the Past for the Future. Appendices: A Short Chronology of American Broadcasting. Glossary. Historical Statistics on Broadcasting. Selected Bibliography.

Christopher H. Sterling

Papers

Stay tuned: A concise history of American broadcasting

Merchants of Culture: The Publishing Business in the Twenty-First Century

Stay Tuned : A History of American Broadcasting

Broadcasting in America: A Survey of Electronic Media

The irony of regulatory reform