Publications

Purchase

March 2013
Article

Financial Development, Fixed Costs and International Trade

Exporting firms face significant up-front costs in product design, marketing, and distribution, which likely would be difficult to finance externally. We argue that a developed financial system can facilitate exports, and we test three implications. First, a more... View Details

Keywords: Trade; Finance

April 2015
Case

Who Owns the Whale? (Abridged)

By: Thales S. Teixeira and David E. Bell

Judge William Wright considers the case of the dispute of a whale carcass wherein several whaling ships claim ownership based on each one's contribution to its killing. The judge must weigh in the differing efforts and costs of three ships who each played a role at... View Details

Keywords: Whaling; Attribution; Norms-of-ownership; Transaction Costs; Deadweight Losses; Free-rider Problem; Advertising; History; United States; United Kingdom

Educators

Purchase

12 Aug 2009
Working Paper Summaries

Culture Clash: The Costs and Benefits of Homogeneity

Keywords: by Eric J. Van den Steen

1996
Working Paper

The Determinants of Optimal Currency Hedging

By: Kenneth Froot and André Perold

Keywords: Hedging; Transaction Costs; Exchange Rates; International Markets; International Finance; Currency; Asset Pricing

May – June 1971
Article

Funds Control Versus Cost Control

By: J. Ronald Fox

Keywords: Cost; Money

12 Sep 2024
HBS Seminar

Jose Vasquez, London School of Economics

2025
Working Paper

Markups and Cost Pass-through Along the Supply Chain

By: Santiago Alvarez-Blaser, Alberto Cavallo, Alexander MacKay and Paolo Mengano

We study markups and pricing strategies along the supply chain. Our unique dataset combines detailed price and cost information from a large global manufacturer with matched retail prices collected online for the period July 2018 through June 2023. We show that total... View Details

Keywords: Markups; Pricing; Price; Supply Chain; Inflation and Deflation; Cost

SSRN

December 1978 (Revised November 1985)
Background Note

Economic Cost-Benefit Analysis

By: James E. Austin

Keywords: Cost vs Benefits

23 Jan 2013
Working Paper Summaries

Cost of Capital Dynamics Implied by Firm Fundamentals

Keywords: by Matthew Lyle & Charles C.Y. Wang

Article

Using Internet Data for Economic Research

By: Benjamin Edelman

The data used by economists can be broadly divided into two categories. First, structured datasets arise when a government agency, trade association, or company can justify the expense of assembling records. The Internet has transformed how economists interact with... View Details

Keywords: Data and Data Sets; Research; Internet; Cost Management; Information Management; Factories, Labs, and Plants; Reports; Archives; Surveys; Economics

29 Jun 2016
Research & Ideas

The $1 Trillion Link Between Mental Health and Economic Productivity

In April, the World Health Organization released a groundbreaking study that established a definitive link between mental health and economic productivity. The findings were both depressing and hopeful. On the downside, depression and... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

September 2005
Article

Holding Companies: Size-Related Cost Economies

By: Alvin J. Silk and Ernst R. Berndt

Keywords: Size; Cost; Economy; Business Ventures

January 2018
Article

The Effect of Cost Sharing on an Employee Weight Loss Program: A Randomized Trial

By: Leslie K. John, Andrea Troxel, William Yancy, Joelle Y. Friedman, Jingsan Zhu, Lin Yang, Robert Galvin, Karen Miller-Kovach, Scott Halpern, George Loewenstein and Kevin Volpp

Purpose: We tested the effects of employer subsidies on employee enrollment, attendance, and weight loss in a nationally-available weight management program.
Design: A randomized trial tested the impact of employer subsidy: 100%; 80% 50% and a hybrid 50% subsidy... View Details

Keywords: Affordable Care Act (ACA); Subsidies; Weight Loss; Obesity; Incentives; Behavioral Economics; Motivation and Incentives; Behavior; Health Disorders; Health Care and Treatment; Compensation and Benefits; United States

05 Jun 2009
What Do You Think?

What Does Slower Economic Growth Really Mean?

Summing Up If not useful growth, what are we measuring? And why? This column does not thrive on general agreement. And this past month discussants came close to general agreement on the proposition that economic growth is not measured... View Details

Keywords: by Jim Heskett; Financial Services; Construction; Real Estate

October 2010
Article

Culture Clash: The Costs and Benefits of Homogeneity

By: Eric Van den Steen

This paper develops an economic theory of the costs and benefits of corporate culture-in the sense of shared beliefs and values in order to study the effects of "culture clash" in mergers and acquisitions. I first use a simple analytical framework to show that shared... View Details

Keywords: Cost vs Benefits; Organizational Culture; Economics; Information Management; Forecasting and Prediction; Values and Beliefs; Mergers and Acquisitions; Framework; Satisfaction; Motivation and Incentives; Power and Influence; Communication

Purchase

2023
Working Paper

Spatial Mobility, Economic Opportunity, and Crime

By: Gaurav Khanna, Carlos Medina, Anant Nyshadham, Daniel Ramos-Menchelli, Jorge Tamayo and Audrey Tiew

Neighborhoods are strong determinants of both economic opportunity and criminal activity. Does improving connectedness between segregated and unequal parts of a city predominantly import opportunity or export crime? We use a spatial general equilibrium framework to... View Details

Keywords: Urban Development; Transportation Networks; Crime and Corruption; Transportation Industry; Medellín; Colombia; South America

2009
Working Paper

Culture Clash: The Costs and Benefits of Homogeneity

By: Eric J. Van den Steen

This paper develops an economic theory of the costs and benefits of corporate culture—in the sense of shared beliefs and values—in order to study the effects of "culture clash" in mergers and acquisitions. I first use a simple analytical framework to show that shared... View Details

Keywords: Mergers and Acquisitions; Cost vs Benefits; Values and Beliefs; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Organizational Culture; Motivation and Incentives; Theory

March 2025
Article

Do Public Financial Statements Influence Private Equity and Venture Capital Financing?

By: Brian K. Baik, Natalie Berfeld and Rodrigo S. Verdi

We study whether private firm public financial statements influence the probability of raising venture capital (VC) and private equity (PE) financing. In particular, we propose that private firms’ public financial statements can help the VC/PE search process by... View Details

Keywords: Business Economics; Search Costs; Accounting; Venture Capital; Governance; Private Equity; Financial Statements

SSRN