Small, Medium, Large: How Government Made the U.S. into a Manufacturing Powerhouse

We live in a world of seemingly limitless consumer choice. Yet, as every shopper knows without thinking about it, many everyday goods-from beds to batteries to printer paper-are available in a finite number of "standard sizes." What makes these sizes "standard" is an agreement among competing firms to make or sell products with the same limited dimensions. But how did firms-often hotly competing firms-reach such collective agreements?



In exploring this question, Colleen Dunlavy puts the hist...