Publications

May 2016 (Revised August 2022)
Case

RegionFly: Cutting Costs in the Airline Industry

By: Susanna Gallani and Eva Labro

RegionFly is a small, private airline specializing in ultra-premium services. Founded shortly after the "Golden Age of airline travel," RegionFly's financial performance had been strong for several decades. More recently, however, the results have taken a downward... View Details

Keywords: Recession; Downsizing; Profitability; Cost Management; Profit; Luxury; Competitive Strategy; Mergers and Acquisitions; Business Divisions; Logistics; Decision Making; Strategic Planning; Air Transportation Industry

December 1993 (Revised April 1994)
Case

Polaroid: Managing Environmental Responsibilities and Their Costs

Costs relating to companies' impact on the environment are increasing at a dramatic rate. Thus, managing, measuring, and reporting of these costs has become an important issue for managers. Accounting for environmental responsibilities is one of the largest and most... View Details

Keywords: Cost; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Accounting; Environmental Sustainability

Article

How Not to Cut Health Care Costs

By: Robert S. Kaplan and Derek A. Haas

Health care providers in much of the world are trying to respond to the tremendous pressure to reduce costs—but evidence suggests that many of their attempts are counterproductive, raising costs and sometimes decreasing the quality of care. Using evidence from field... View Details

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February 1996 (Revised November 2003)
Case

Indianapolis: Activity-Based Costing of City Services (A)

By: Robert S. Kaplan

A new administration in the City of Indianapolis is initially determined to privatize many municipal services. Before taking this action, however, the city managers want to know the current cost of performing these services with the municipal workers. Existing... View Details

Keywords: Cost Management; Public Sector; Activity Based Costing and Management; Service Delivery; Privatization; City; Indianapolis

2002
Working Paper

Effects of Demographic Factors and Provider Structures on the Cost and Length of Stay for Hemodialysis Patients with Vascular Access Failure

By: Louis Brenner, Dennis Campbell, Frances X. Frei and Ajay Singh

September 2011
Article

How to Solve the Cost Crisis in Health Care

By: Robert S. Kaplan and Michael E. Porter

Existing health care costing systems have serious flaws that make it impossible to measure costs accurately at the individual patient and medical condition level. This gap has severely limited meaningful cost reduction throughout the system. The paper describes a new... View Details

Keywords: Cost; Health Care and Treatment; Measurement and Metrics; Service Delivery; Outcome or Result; Quality; Health Industry

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Article

Comparative Costs of Advanced Proton and Photon Radiation Therapies: Lessons from Time-driven Activity-based Costing in Head and Neck Cancer

By: Nikhil G. Thaker, Steven J. Frank and Thomas W. Feeley

Time-driven activity-based costing (TDABC) is an innovative costing tool in healthcare that can be used to directly compare the true cost of competing technologies over the full care cycle. Rather than only comparing therapeutic effectiveness over a limited number of... View Details

Keywords: Head And Neck Cancer; IMRT; Proton Therapy; Time-Driven ABC; Information Technology; Activity Based Costing and Management; Medical Specialties

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Fast Answer

Cost of living data

Where can I find comparative cost of living information for the U.S. and across international cities? U.S.: There are a number of websites that allow comparing the cost of living in different... View Details

22 Jun 2020
News

On Track: Health Care, Patient Data, and Provider Performance

December 2023
Article

Advances in Power-to-Gas Technologies: Cost and Conversion Efficiency

By: Gunther Glenk, Philip Holler and Stefan Reichelstein

Widespread adoption of hydrogen as an energy carrier is widely believed to require continued advances in Power-to-Gas (PtG) technologies. Here we provide a comprehensive assessment of the dynamics of system prices and conversion efficiency for three currently prevalent... View Details

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Fast Answer

Cost of doing business

How can I compare the costs of doing business in various countries or regions? The World Bank reports on the "cost of business start-up procedures (as % of GNI per capita). This variable is part of their B-Ready project... View Details

17 Apr 2015
News

This CEO Blind Spot Is Costing Shareholders Billions

04 Nov 2013
Research & Ideas

The Real Cost of Bribery

that launch anticorruption efforts grow their businesses more slowly than firms that don't, especially in regions where bribery is the expected norm. “If you think of the cost [of bribery] as just fines and regulatory actions, you're... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

24 Sep 2018
Research & Ideas

How Cost Accounting is Improving Healthcare in Rural Haiti

condition (like HIV) or providing routine service (like preventative women’s health care). The differences were especially stark in the case of women’s health care, with costs per visit averaging $4.98 at... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Health

24 Sep 2014
Op-Ed

We Need a Miracle. New Nuclear Might Provide it.

On September 4, the US Energy Information Agency (EIA) published its 2014 International Energy Outlook. Earlier this year, the International Energy Agency (IEA) released its latest World Energy Investment Outlook. Both watchdogs tell us the same story. Energy... View Details

Keywords: by Joseph Lassiter; Energy; Utilities

17 Feb 2010
News

Cut Costs and Improve Care? That's True Reform

2017
Article

The Impact of Training Informal Healthcare Providers in India: A Randomized Controlled Trial

By: Jishnu Das, Abhijit Chowdhury, Reshmaan Hussam and Abhijit Banerjee

Health care providers without formal medical qualifications provide more than 70% of all primary care in rural India. Training these informal providers may be one way to improve the quality of care where few alternatives exist. We report on a randomized controlled... View Details

Keywords: Health Care; India; Business Training; RCT; Health Care and Treatment; Training; Performance Evaluation; Performance Improvement; India