Empirical evidence suggests that entrepreneurs make mistakes: too many enter markets and, once there, persist too long. While scholars have largely settled on behavioral bias as the cause, we suggest that this consensus is premature. These mistakes may also arise from a process in which...

We propose a new role for money as a self-commitment device (in effect, a hostage against opportunism, after Williamson (1983)) in a bilateral exchange relationship such as a strategic alliance. Consider two firms who desire to exchange services over time. When a single unit of one service is...

This paper has the following two objectives: to examine how reinsurance coupled with new financial instruments can expand coverage to those residing in areas subject to catastrophic losses from natural disasters, and to show how reinsurance and the catastrophe-linked financial instruments can be...

This paper shows how idiosyncratic resources can be the basis of sustained profitability and persistent heterogeneity under competitive conditions: Generic inputs purchased in the market become idiosyncratic resources by investments in customization. Analytically, we show how heterogeneous firms...

Using a novel database containing the time-series details of the organizational structure of individual bank holding companies, this paper presents the first population-wide study of the transformation in business scope of U.S. banks. Expanding scope has a negative impact on performance on...

Designing a firm’s boundaries can lead to substantial strategic regeneration. But the question is, how? Moving beyond transaction-level analysis, we consider how the design of the firm’s overall boundaries (rather than individual make-vs-buy choices) yield strategic advantages in addition to...

This paper shows how idiosyncratic resources can be the basis of sustained profitability and persistent heterogeneity under competitive conditions: Generic inputs purchased in the market become idiosyncratic resources by investments in customization. Analytically, we show how heterogeneous firms...