Karen B. Clay
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Assistant Professor of Economics and Public Policy |
Professional Background
Karen Clay is an Assistant Professor of Economics and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University's H. John Heinz III School of Public Policy and Management. Dr. Clay’s degrees include a B.A. in Economics (Highest Honors) and Mathematics from the University of Virginia and a Ph.D. in Economics from Stanford University. Prior to coming to Carnegie Mellon, Dr. Clay was an Assistant Professor of Economics at University of Toronto. She has also been a visitor at the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon and at the California Institute of Technology.
Honors
In 1995, Dr. Clay was the recipient of the Polanyi Prize. This research-based prize is awarded annually to one outstanding junior faculty member at an Ontario university. Dr. Clay’s work has been supported by a number of sources including the Carnegie Bosch Institute, Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and the Huntington Library. Her graduate work was supported by a National Science Foundation Fellowship.
Research
Dr. Clay’s work focuses on the role of both public and private order institutions in the economy. Much of this work focuses on the nineteenth-century United States. Her research on economic history has appeared in a number of journals including the Journal of Economic History, Journal of Law, Economics, and Organizations, Explorations in Economic History, and the Journal of Legal Studies. Dr. Clay is currently working on a book manuscript with Daniel Berkowitz entitled Initial Conditions and the Evolution of Institutions: Evidence from the American States.
Another strand of Dr. Clay’s work has examined emergent institutions on the Internet. Her research in this area has appeared in Management Science, Information Systems Management, and the Journal of Industrial Economics.
Teaching
Her teaching currently includes economic history, industrial organization, and economic analysis.
Selected Publications
The Effect of Judicial Independence on Courts: Evidence from the American States (with Dan Berkowitz), Forthcoming 2006, Journal of Legal Studies
American Civil Law Origins: Implications for State Constitutions (with Dan Berkowitz), American Law and Economics Review, v7, n1 (Spring 2005): 62-84
Order Without Law? Property Rights During the California Gold Rush (with Gavin Wright) Explorations in Economic History, v42, n2 (April 2005): 155-183
Bigger may not be Better: An Empirical Analysis of Optimal Membership Rules in Peer to Peer Networks (with Atip Asvunund, Ramayya Krishnan, and Michael Smith) Information Systems Research, v.15, n2 (2004): 155-174.
Designing a Better Shopbot (with Alan Montgomery, Kartik Hosanager, and Ramayya Krishnan), Management Science, v50, n2 (February 2004): 189-206.
Further Tests of Static Oligopoly Models: Whiskey, 1882-1898 (with Werner Troesken), Journal of Industrial Economics, v51, n2 (June 2003): 151-166.
Strategic Behavior and Market Structure in Whiskey Distilling, 1887-1895 (with Werner Troesken), Journal of Economic History, v62, n4 (December 2002): 999-1023.
Institutional Barriers to Electronic Commerce: An Historical Perspective (with Robert Strauss), Advances in Strategic Management, v19 (2002):247-273.
Retail Strategies on the Web: Price and Non-Price Competition in the Online Book Industry (with Ramayya Krishnan, Eric Wolff, and Danny Fernnades), Journal of Industrial Economics, v50, n3 (September 2002): 351-67.
Prices and Price Dispersion on the Web: Evidence from the Online Book Industry (with Ramayya Krishnan and Eric Wolff), Journal of Industrial Economics, v49, n4 (December 2001): 521-39.