Michela Bonani

This paper studies how multimodal technologies affect consumer welfare by expanding the set of feasible transportation options. On transportation platforms, consumers may be unable to book their searched trip because the requested origin–destination pair is not served or because supply is unavailable at the time of booking. Multimodal technologies can relax these constraints by expanding the set of reachable destinations and by increasing the availability of transportation options across origin–destination pairs. However, the value of this technology depends on consumers' preferences for multimodal trips and on their willingness to pay for the resulting improvement in service. We develop an empirical model of transportation-mode choice across carpooling, buses, and an outside option on BlaBlaCar, the largest long-distance carpooling platform. Using proprietary BlaBlaCar data on passenger searches and bookings, together with information on the supply of BlaBlaCar cars and buses, we quantify consumers' disutility from not making the searched trip, measured by the distance (in km) between the searched and the booked origin–destination pairs. We use the estimated model to quantify consumers' value of multimodal technology and its implications for consumer surplus.

This paper investigates how stricter licensing rules affect firms' incentives to innovate in standard-related technologies. I study the 2015 patent policy revision by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), which limited SEP holders' ability to seek injunctions and encouraged royalties based on the smallest salable unit. Using a continuous difference-in-differences approach, I show that the new policy increases standard-related patenting, with the strongest effects among firms furthest from the standards' technology space. However, the effects differ across firm types. SEP holders reduced their innovation activity, consistent with weaker royalty incentives, while non-SEP firms expanded patenting, benefiting from lower licensing costs and new opportunities to reposition themselves. Although the policy created challenges for SEP owners, my results suggest that the broader increase in innovation among other firms outweighed these declines. These results highlight how patent policy design within standard setting organizations can reallocate innovation incentives across firms.

This paper studies how technological compatibility affects network investment and welfare in wireless markets. I develop an empirical model of consumer demand, spatial investment, and pricing using U.S. data from the 3G networks. Counterfactual experiments show that unifying the wireless network under a common standard increases welfare by expanding the effective network through roaming. However, compatibility shifts investment from previously unserved areas toward areas covered by compatible rivals, where firms internalize a larger share of returns. The welfare effects of compatibility depend not only on network size, but also on the spatial allocation of firms' investment responses.

This paper studies the relationship between firms' decisions to participate in standardization and the fit between a firm's technical knowledge and the standard's position in the technology space. Focusing on a set of firms that declare essential patents for several standards issued by different organizations, I study how firms allocate their contributions across standards, depending on a firm–standard similarity measure and the intensity of competition among participating firms. My findings suggest that the match between the technological fields of a standard and the firm's technical knowledge is positively related to the firm's decision to participate in standards development. In particular, a 1 percentage point increase in the technological fit between a firm and a standard increases the probability that the firm participates in the standard's development by 0.05 percentage points. Furthermore, my results support the hypothesis of a competition effect among participating firms: a one-unit increase in the intensity of competition among firms in the same standard, driven either by more contributing firms or by greater knowledge similarity among them, decreases the number of SEPs declared by 32.7% on average.