Publications

April 2002 (Revised March 2006)
Background Note

Economics of Retail Banking Note

By: Frances X. Frei and Dennis Campbell

Explains the financial operations of retail banking, highlighting profitability challenges facing the industry. For U.S. banks, it is quite common for more than half of the customer base to be unprofitable and to have relatively few customers make up the vast majority... View Details

Keywords: Customers; Economics; Cost; Banks and Banking; Profit; Revenue; Service Operations; Banking Industry; United States

December 2002
Case

National Economic Accounting: Past, Present, and Future

By: David A. Moss and Sarah A. Brennan

Presents the fundamentals of GDP accounting (including definitions, etc.), examines the history of national accounting, and surveys the international debate over "Green GDP." The first section explains the basic rules and definitions of national economic accounting and... View Details

Keywords: History; Natural Environment; Quality; Accounting; Forecasting and Prediction; Environmental Sustainability; Economy; United States

2015
Chapter

Firms and the Economics of Skilled Immigration

By: Sari Pekkala Kerr, William R. Kerr and William F. Lincoln

Firms play a central role in the selection, sponsorship, and employment of skilled immigrants entering the United States for work through programs like the H-1B visa. This role has not been widely recognized in the literature, and the data to better understand it have... View Details

Keywords: Business or Company Management; Human Capital; Immigration; Innovation and Invention; United States

29 Sep 2014
Other Presentation

Reshaping Regional Economic Development: Clusters and Regional Strategy

By: Michael E. Porter

Professor Michael Porter delivered a keynote speech at Mapping the Midwest's Future, a conference held in Minneapolis and hosted by the University of Minnesota that officially launched the new U.S. Cluster Mapping tool. His presentation focused on U.S. competitiveness... View Details

Keywords: Clusters; Regional Strategy; Industry Clusters; Economics; Minneapolis; United States

05 Jul 2006
Working Paper Summaries

What Roosevelt Took: The Economic Impact of the Panama Canal, 1903-29

Keywords: by Noel Maurer & Carlos Yu

Fast Answer

Historical and forecasted economic statistics

Where can I find... View Details

2016
Book

Slavery's Capitalism: A New History of American Economic Development

By: Sven Beckert and Seth Rockman

During the nineteenth century, the United States entered the ranks of the world's most advanced and dynamic economies. At the same time, the nation sustained an expansive and brutal system of human bondage. This was no mere coincidence. Slavery's Capitalism... View Details

Keywords: History; Development Economics; Ethics; Social Issues; United States

Find at Harvard

01 Mar 2009
News

HBS Students Blog on Economics

A blog launched last year by four HBS students, the Economic Policy Review (www.econblog.org) seeks to provide nonpartisan, balanced commentary on pressing economic issues facing the U.S. economy. Kyle Sable... View Details

Keywords: Colleges, Universities, and Professional Schools; Educational Services; News, Library, Internet, and Other Services; Information

July 28, 2020
Article

Economic Vulnerability of Households with Essential Workers

By: Grace McCormack, Christopher Avery, Ariella Kahn-Lang Spitzer and Amitabh Chandra

The label of “essential worker” reflects society’s needs but does not mean that society has compensated those workers for additional risks incurred on the job during the current pandemic. When an essential worker contracts severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus... View Details

Keywords: Essential Workers; Health Pandemics; Household; Financial Condition; United States

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05 Mar 2012
News

Apple's Job Creation Data Spurs an Economic Debate

Digital Dark Matter and the Economics of Apache

Researchers have long hypothesized that research outputs from government, university, and private company R&D contribute to economic growth, but these contributions may be difficult to measure when they take a non-pecuniary form. The growth of networking... View Details

October, 2022
Article

The Economic Dynamics of Competing Power Generation Sources

By: Gunther Glenk and Stefan Reichelstein

Competing power generation sources have experienced considerable shifts in both their revenue potential and their costs in recent years. Here we introduce the concept of Levelized Profit Margins (LPM) to capture the changing unit economics of both intermittent and... View Details

2018
Chapter

Why Do So Many Chinese Students Come to the United States?

By: William C. Kirby

Many books offer information about China, but few make sense of what is truly at stake. The questions addressed in this unique volume provide a window onto the challenges China faces today and the uncertainties its meteoric ascent on the global horizon has provoked.... View Details

Keywords: Asia; China; Emerging Country; Students; Education; Higher Education; Globalization; International Relations; History; Society; Education Industry; Asia; China; United States

Find at Harvard

01 Mar 2006
News

Can the United States Avoid a Fractured Future?

Fracturing, and Our Future (Crown Publishers, 2005), Enriquez looks at the very nature of countries: how they appear and disappear, how they grow and fade. With commentary about culture, politics, and economics around the world — and a... View Details

Keywords: Lewis I. Rice; Finance; Health, Social Assistance

January 2003 (Revised March 2009)
Case

The State of Connecticut: Strategy for Economic Development

By: Michael E. Porter and Kaia Miller

Describes the history of Connecticut's economy, its competitive challenges in the 1990s, and the steps taken to develop an economic plan for the state. A prominent issue is the competitive position of Connecticut's industry clusters and the efforts to create a formal... View Details

Keywords: Economic Growth; Economy; Government and Politics; Industry Clusters; Competition; Connecticut