Economics Insights @ CBS

In this paper, we develop an account of the failure of private market-governance institutions to maintain market order by highlighting how control of their distributional function by powerful elites limits their regulatory capacity. We examine the New York Clearing House Association (NYCHA), a private market-governance institution among commercial banks in Manhattan that operated from 1853 to 1913.

We measure price elasticity across 19 grocery categories over 24 quarters. For each category we estimate a separate random coefficients logit model with quarter-specific price covariates and control functions to address endogeneity. Our specification yields a novel set of 456 elasticities across categories and time that were generated using the same method and therefore can be directly compared. The majority of categories are countercyclical — price sensitivity rises when the macroeconomy weakens.

A high quality customer database is a cornerstone of successful interactive marketing strategies and tactics. Based on the notion that customer data quality is not only a technical but also an organizational problem, this study develops and tests an organizational learning framework of the relationship between organizational processes, customer data quality and firm performance. The findings show that high quality customer data impact both customer and business performance and that the most important driver of customer data quality comes from the executive suite.

We review the literature on recent changes to US employment relationships, focusing on the causes of those changes and their consequences for inequality. The US employment model has moved from a closed, internal system to one more open to external markets and institutional pressures. We describe the growth of short-term employment relationships, contingent work, outsourcing, and performance pay as well as the success of social identity movements in shaping employment benefits.