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

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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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  • Tim Simcoe & David Waguespack & Lee Fleming, 2008. "What's in a (Missing) Name? Status and Signaling in Open Standards Development," Working Papers 08-31, NET Institute, revised Oct 2008.
    • Handle: RePEc:net:wpaper:0831
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    JEL classification:

    • L1 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance
    • O3 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights

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