Publications
Publications
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- Faculty Publications (17)
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- 2025
- Book
Space to Grow: Unlocking the Final Economic Frontier
By: Matthew Weinzierl and Brendan Rosseau
Your guide--using the compelling stories of changemakers and the tools of economics--to the transformation and future possibilities of the business and economics of space.
Space is a place of unparalleled possibility for humanity, and it's undergoing a... View Details
Space is a place of unparalleled possibility for humanity, and it's undergoing a... View Details
- June 2024
- Article
Real Growth in Space Manufacturing Output Substantially Exceeds Growth in the Overall Space Economy
By: Tina Highfill and Matthew Weinzierl
Accurately measuring real economic output in the space economy is made difficult by the rapid increase in capabilities and decrease in prices of launch and satellite technologies achieved over the past two decades. Nominal measures of output in space will tend to... View Details
- September 2021 (Revised March 2024)
- Case
Tesla in 2023: 'Electrified' Competition
By: Eric Van den Steen, Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and Karen Elterman
Over its 17 years in existence, Tesla had redefined people’s view of electric cars, and in 2020, the company saw its stock rise by more than 700% to became the most valuable carmaker in the world. In December 2020, Tesla celebrated its fifth consecutive quarter of... View Details
Keywords: Barrier To Entry; Competitive Advantage; Innovation; Tesla; Automotive Industry; Sustainable Competitive Advantage; Values; Vision; Learning By Doing; Economies Of Scale; Electric Vehicle; Scenario Planning; Batteries; Competitive Strategy; Product Positioning; Profit; Competition; Industry Growth; Auto Industry
- June 2021 (Revised December 2021)
- Case
The Lunar Gateway, Moon vs. Mars, and the Political Governance of Space Activities
By: Matthew C. Weinzierl and Mehak Sarang
In 2017, the Trump Administration made a bold claim—that they would return the next man and the first woman to the lunar surface by 2024, this time to establish a sustainable presence to enable further exploration in the solar system. With the Artemis Program, NASA has... View Details
Keywords: Space; Space Economy; Aerospace; Nasa; Governance; Policy; International Relations; Infrastructure
- May 2021
- Case
The International Space Station, Principal-Agent Problems, and NASA's Quest to Keep Humans in Space
By: Matthew Weinzierl and Mehak Sarang
In building the International Space Station (ISS), NASA opened the door to the development of a robust in-space economy in low-Earth Orbit, and yet the decision to build the station, and continue to extend its lifetime, placed a huge burden on NASA’s Human Spaceflight... View Details
- February 12, 2021
- Article
The Commercial Space Age Is Here
By: Matt Weinzierl and Mehak Sarang
In May of 2020, SpaceX made history as the first private company to send humans into space. This marks not only a tremendous technological achievement, but also the first indication that an entirely new “space-for-space” industry—that is, goods and services designed to... View Details
- December 2020 (Revised March 2021)
- Case
Made In Space, Expectations Management, and the Business of In-Space Manufacturing
By: Matthew C. Weinzierl and Mehak Sarang
After having proven its base technology (3D printing) through NASA solicitations and contracts, Made In Space was searching for a viable commercial application. But the business case for the leading candidate, high-quality fiber optic cable for use on Earth, remained... View Details
- May 2020
- Article
Negotiating a Better Future: How Interpersonal Skills Facilitate Inter-Generational Investment
By: Nava Ashraf, Natalie Bau, Corinne Low and Kathleen McGinn
Using a randomized control trial, we examine whether offering adolescent girls nonmaterial resources—specifically, negotiation skills—can improve educational outcomes in a low-income country. In so doing, we provide the first evidence on the effects of an intervention... View Details
- April 2020 (Revised October 2021)
- Case
SpaceX, Economies of Scale, and a Revolution in Space Access
By: Matthew C. Weinzierl, Kylie Lucas and Mehak Sarang
From the time he transformed the world of online banking, Elon Musk established himself as a bold innovator. After selling X.com to PayPal in 2002, he founded a series of revolutionary start-ups, starting with Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX). Hoping to "make... View Details
- March 2019 (Revised May 2019)
- Case
Space Angels, Multiple Equilibria, and Financing the Space Economy
By: Matthew C. Weinzierl and Alissa Haddaji
Chad Anderson had reason to be proud of his young space-focused investment firm, Space Angels. Since becoming CEO, Anderson had overseen growth along multiple dimensions, and Space Angels was “the preeminent name in space finance” according to one prominent space... View Details
- Article
Space, the Final Economic Frontier
After decades of centralized control of economic activity in space, NASA and U.S. policymakers have begun to cede the direction of human activities in space to commercial companies. NASA garnered more than 0.7% of GDP in the mid-1960s but is only around 0.1% of GDP... View Details
- September–October 2017
- Article
Managing Our Hub Economy: Strategy, Ethics, and Network Competition in the Age of Digital Superpowers
By: Marco Iansiti and Karim R. Lakhani
A small number of digital superpowers—Alibaba, Amazon, Microsoft, and others—have become “hub firms” because they control access to billions of mobile customers coveted by all kinds of product and service providers. These hubs drive increasing returns to scale and... View Details
- April 2017
- Case
Planetary Resources Inc., Property Rights, and the Regulation of the Space Economy
By: Matthew Weinzierl and Angela Acocella
Planetary Resources, Inc. (PRI) had a bold, some said crazy, vision: to mine asteroids. One might have assumed that developing the right technology would be the greatest challenge facing PRI. But even if the fledgling company could develop and deploy the sophisticated... View Details
- February 2016 (Revised May 2016)
- Case
Astroscale, Space Debris, and Earth's Orbital Commons
By: Matthew Weinzierl, Angela Acocella and Mayuka Yamazaki
An engineer and technology entrepreneur, Nobu Okada, had turned a mid-life crisis into a bold—some would say quixotic—quest to prevent a tragedy of the commons at the global scale. Namely, Okada believed the accumulation of debris in near-Earth orbital space posed a... View Details
- May–June 2015
- Article
Dead Weight: How Greece Wound up Trapped in the European Union
By: Debora L. Spar
In the early 1990s, Greece fell far afield of the economic criteria laid out by the Maastricht Treaty, the EU's founding document. In 1999, when the European monetary union was launched, Greece failed to meet the criteria again, but managed to squeeze into the body two... View Details
- 2009
- Working Paper
Assess, Don't Assume, Part I: Etiquette and National Culture in Negotiation
When facing a cross-border negotiation, the standard preparatory assessments -- of the parties, their interests, their no-deal options, opportunities for and barriers to creating and claiming value, the most promising sequence and process design, etc. -- should be... View Details
- 2009
- Working Paper
Assess, Don't Assume, Part II: Negotiating Implications of Cross-Border Differences in Decision Making, Governance, and Political Economy
When facing a cross-border negotiation, the standard preparatory assessments—of the parties, their interests, their no-deal options, opportunities for and barriers to creating and claiming value, the most promising sequence and process design, etc.—should be... View Details