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What's in a (Missing) Name? Status and Signaling in Open Standards Development

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Author Info
Tim Simcoe () (Joseph L. Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto)
David Waguespack () (Robert H. Smith School of Business, University of Maryland)
Lee Fleming () (Harvard business School)
Abstract

How much are we influenced by an author's identity? If identity matters, is it because we have a ``taste for status" or because it offers a useful shortcut --- a signal that is correlated with the likely importance of their ideas? This paper presents evidence from a natural experiment that took place at the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) --- a community of engineers and computer scientists who develop the protocols used to run the Internet. The results suggest that IETF participants use authors' identity as a signal or filter, paying more attention to proposals from high-status authors, and this has a surprisingly large impact on publication outcomes. There is little evidence of a “taste" for status.

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Paper provided by NET Institute in its series Working Papers with number 08-31.

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Length: 30 pages
Date of creation: Oct 2008
Date of revision: Oct 2008
Handle: RePEc:net:wpaper:0831

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L1 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance
O3 - Economic Development, Technological Change, and Growth - - Technological Change

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  4. John Knowles & Nicola Persico & Petra Todd, 2001. "Racial Bias in Motor Vehicle Searches: Theory and Evidence," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 109(1), pages 203-232, February. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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