Quantifying the Trade Impact of Compatibility Standards and Barriers: An Industrial Organization Perspective

Neil Gandal

1/01/2005
(Original Publish Date: 2001)

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 literature on the economics of compatibility and standardization, as well as a brief survey of the literature on how standards affect international trade. I then discuss several industries that provide 'natural experiments' to measure the effect of compatibility standards on international trade.