Economics

For decades, the five-forces model of competition has dominated the thinking about strategy. But it describes competition among traditional "pipeline"...

It’s condescending, for one thing.

Forecasting total market demand can be crucial to creating a smart marketing strategy. Some companies--and even whole industries--have learned the hard...

The ubiquity of internet access has caused a sharp rise in the number of businesses offering platforms that connect users for communication or commerce....

Small tweaks based on behavioral economics.

Companies in industries such as banking, software, and media make money by linking markets from different sides of their customer networks—audiences and advertisers, for example. The distinct character of these businesses demands a new approach to strategy.

Though corporate profits are high, and the stock market is booming, most Americans are not sharing in the economic recovery. While the top 0.1% of income...

Have we found a better gauge of success than GDP?

Today's digital innovations are doing for brainpower what the steam engine, and related, technologies did for muscle power during the Industrial Revolution....

With emerging markets like China and politically unstable countries like Saudi Arabia figuring more than ever into companies' investment calculations,...

The U.S. economy has been on the upswing for more than four years. Inflation is low, corporate profits are up, and the stock market has risen beyond anyone's...

HBR asked top management thinkers to share what they were resolved to accomplish in 2011. Here are their answers: Joseph E. Stiglitz will be crafting...

Not as fast as “new economy” pundits would like to think.

The short answer is: not much. And that’s a good thing.

Simply shifting costs won’t work.

Increasing returns cause products that are ahead to get further ahead. The concept has revolutionized economics. Business is next.

If you practice kicking a soccer ball with your eyes closed, it takes only a few tries to become quite good at predicting where the ball will end up. But when “random noise” is added to the situation—a dog chases the ball, a stiff breeze blows through, a neighbor passes by and kicks the ball—the […]

Underneath every economic model involving math lies a substrate of great simplification and imagination, says Columbia University's Emanuel Derman.

Simple changes can reap big rewards.

In 2007, Chuck Prince, then the CEO of Citigroup, made a notorious comment about the subprime mortgage market: "As long as the music's playing, you've...