Despite widespread application of real options theory in the literature, the extent to which firms actually delay irreversible investments following an increase in the uncertainty of their environment is not empirically well-known. This paper estimates firms' responsiveness to changes in...

Since the mid-1980s many authors have investigated the influence of information technology (IT) on productivity. Until recently there has been no clear evidence that productivity increases as a result of IT spending. This productivity paradox is partly due to the difficulty in correctly...

Using firm-, industry-, and country-level data, we document a link between family ownership and labor relations. Across countries, we find that family ownership is relatively more prevalent in countries in which labor relations are difficult, consistent with firm-level evidence suggesting that...

When a firm forms a market closes. Resources that were previously allocated via the price system are allocated by managerial authority within the firm. We explore this choice of organizational form using a model of price formation in which agents negotiate prices on behalf of their principals...

In order to study networks of collaboration between researchers, we propose a simple measure of the intensity of collaboration, which can be easily interpreted in terms of relative probability and aggregated at the laboratory level. We first use this measure to characterize the relations of...

This essay reviews progress in empirical economics since Leamer's (1983) critique. Leamer highlighted the benefits of sensitivity analysis, a procedure in which researchers show how their results change with changes in specification or functional form. Sensitivity analysis has had a salutary but...

Many water utilities use outdoor watering restrictions based on assigned weekly watering days to promote conservation and delay costly capacity expansions. We find that such policies can lead to unintended consequences - customers who adhere to the prescribed schedule use more water than those...

The empirical literature on contagion has mainly measured the propagation of shocks across countries using daily stock markets, interest rates, and exchange rates. Several methodologies have been used for this purpose, however, the properties of the data introduces important limitations on the...

Innovation was rampant in the computer industry during the late 1960s and the 1970s. Did innovation vastly extend the capabilities of computers or simply reduce the costs of doing the same thing? This question goes to the heart of whether the rate of decline in 'constant-quality' computing...