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Clio and the Economics of QWERTY
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Journal Article
Clio and the Economics of QWERTY
1985
Overview
A path-dependent sequence of economic changes is one of which significant influences upon the eventual outcome can be exerted by temporally remote events, including occurrences dominated by chance elements rather than systematic forces. The dynamic process thus assumes an essentially historical character. The story of QWERTY illustrates why the study of economic history is vital to the making of an economist. Nothing in the engineering of computer terminals requires the awkward keyboard layout known as QWERTY. Devotees of the Dvorak Simplified Keyboard (DSK) hold the world's records for speed typing, yet QWERTY persists. Despite the presence of the kind of externalities that standard static analysis asserts would interfere with the achievement of the socially optimal degree of system compatibility, competition in the absence of perfect futures markets drove the typewriter industry prematurely into standardization on the wrong system, where decentralized decision making has been sufficient to hold it. Such an outcome seems only too possible given strong technical interrelatedness, scale economies, and irreversibility of investments.
Publisher
The American Economic Association,American Economic Association
