ABSTRACT
The economics ofstandards and standard setting has grown to considerable prominence in the last few years. 1 Buttressed by influential neoclassical models of network externalities (Farrell & Saloner, 1985; Katz & Shapiro, 1985), this intellectual edifice has as its keystone David's (1985) famous history ofthe QWERTY keyboard. In David's account, the now,familiar ar, rangement of keys is a paradigmatic instance of path dependency. The choice of the QWERTY design was essentially a matter of historical acci, dent; and, once that arrangement became dominant, the spiraling benefits of its network of complementary capabilities-notably touch,typing skills-effectively "locked" users into the QWERTY standard.
