Standardisierungsanreize bei technischen Systemen : eine wirtschaftstheoretische Analyse am Beispiel des digitalen Fernsehmarktes

The study offers first a selected survey of major contributions to the economic theory of standardization and then briefly characterizes the emerging German market for digital paytelevision. This market motivated the study’s central theme of ‘incentives of standardization‘. But owing to the high degree of abstraction, the analysis is applicable to a great variety of other technical systems.
The different game theoretic models are investigated focussing on the suppliers‘ incentives for using a standardized hardware component to secure compatibility for the consumers‘ benefit. The first two models are static and they differ mainly in their asumptions on consumer preferences. In these models two suppliers commit themselves to either a specific or a standardized technology before competing in prices in the market for digital pay-TV. In the (noncooperative) equilibrium of both models the suppliers turn out to opt for a
standardized technology. The underlying incentives arise from consumers‘ willingness-to-pay more for the programs offered when they do not need to purchase a different hardware component for each program. Comparing the outcome of the first two models reveals that the more divergent consumers‘ preferences are, the less differ the optimal pricing strategies in case of standardized or non-standardized hardware and the greater is the suppliers‘ advantage from standardization. The third model is a dynamic market entry game in which the
incumbent is incompletely informed about the newcomer’s entry costs. The main result is that choosing compatible standards tends to be in the suppliers‘ interest but under certain conditions the efficient compatible solution may fail to emerge as a cost of incomplete information.