We recover the valuation for multimodal technologies using detailed data from a long-distance transportation platform in France. About 66% of the trips booked on the platform start or end in a different location from the one consumers initially searched for. We estimate a structural demand model and quantify the disutility arising from these spatial mismatches. We find that consumers are willing to pay EUR 6.95 to eliminate the average distance gap, and older and privacy-sensitive consumers would pay more than younger ones. We use our estimates to study the gains from eliminating spatial mismatches through the multimodal technology. The technology would raise total consumer surplus by EUR 11.7 million: EUR 0.57 per searcher or EUR 5.6 per booking. We show that the platform could charge a uniform fee of up to EUR 5.2 per trip for the technology without reducing the average 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.