"By and large, in the whole economy, the impact on productivity from security costs is negligible," said Arun Raha, Eaton's chief economist.
There's little dispute that forgoing the benefits of elevated safety, such as creating confidence among consumers, companies and investors, would carry costs of their own that are hard to measure.
Still, for some companies, the added security costs can't be ignored. Trizec Properties Inc, which manages the Sears Tower in Chicago, said the heightened risk has led to new expenses for metal detectors, guards and a digital system to identify tenants.
For 35,000 workers and visitors to the building each day, the measures initially meant delays of as much as 10 minutes to get past security, some tenants of the building said.
The Sears Tower has returned to "an atmosphere of new normalcy; we'll never go back to what it was," said Rick Matthews, a Trizec spokesman.
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