- 18 Jan 2017
- Working Paper Summaries
The Ties that Bind: Railroad Gauge Standards, Collusion, and Internal Trade in the 19th Century US
The author studies the conversion of 13,000 miles of railroad track to standard gauge in the southern United States in 1886 as a large-scale natural experiment in technology standards adoption that instantly integrated the South into the national transportation network.
- 04 Feb 2013
- Research & Ideas
Are the Big Four Audit Firms Too Big to Fail?
Although the number of audit firms has decreased over the past few decades, concerns that the "Big Four" survivors have become too big to fail may be a stretch. Research by professor Karthik Ramanna and colleagues suggests instead that audit firms are more concerned about taking risks. Closed for comment; 13 Comment(s) posted.
The IBM PC
The IBM PC was the first computer platform to be open by choice and not because of financial constraints. Initially, this openness kept IBM competitive. But IBM’s control over two strategic bottlenecks— standards embedded in the Basic Input Output System, and system integration and manufacturing of the computer itself—turned out to be weak.