This paper deals with processes that require several complementary inputs subject to improvements in quality. If after a quality upgrade one of these inputs requires a period of learning before it can be used effectively, then in general it will pay to purchase the inputs at different dates --...

Recent advances in information technology (IT) have enabled firms in many industries to give middle managers new access to timely production data. Process monitoring' technologies give distant managers a window to production which can both lower their cost of monitoring subordinates and provide...

A salient feature of globalization in recent decades is the emergence of "global supply chains" in which different countries specialize in different stages of a sequential production process. In Arnaud Costinot, Jonathan Vogel and Su Wang (2011), CVW hereafter, we have developed a simple theory...

This paper introduces a new cost dataset for a commercial aircraft firm and uses this data to analyze the dynamics of learning in commercial aircraft production. This dataset is found to be inconsistent with the simple learning hypothesis, and particularly the prediction that a firm's unit cost...

In many industries firms can learn about new technologies from other adopters; mandatory disclosure regulations represent an understudied channel for this type of social learning. We study an environmentally-focused law in the shale gas industry to examine firms' claims that disclosure...

Learning by exporting refers to the mechanism whereby firms improve their performance (productivity) after entering export markets. Although this mechanism is often mentioned in policy documents, a significant share of econometric studies has not found evidence for this hypothesis. This paper...

In an important and influential work, Gompers, Ishii, and Metrick (2003) show that a trading strategy based on an index of 24 governance provisions (G-Index) would have earned abnormal returns during the 1991-1999 period, and this intriguing finding has attracted much attention ever since it was...

In the presence of uncertainty about what a country can be good at producing, there can be great social value to discovering costs of domestic activities because such discoveries can be easily imitated. We develop a general-equilibrium framework for a small open economy to clarify the analytical...

We examine how two highly successful new biotechnology firms (NBFs) source their most critical input -- scientific knowledge. We find that scientists at the two NBFs enter into large numbers of collaborative research efforts with scientists at other organizations, especially universities. Formal...