Who creates change in markets and other financial institutions? My research for the past 15 years has investigated this question in a variety of empirical domains, ranging from amateur investors in the United States to the global wealth management profession. I am an economic and organizational sociologist by training, with an empirical focus on finance. I'm interested in how things get done--what social actors actually do in their daily lives--and how that aggregates to the macro-level of financial markets, culture and political institutions. My work intersects with the literatures of political economy, anthropology, social psychology and behavioral finance. At present, I am writing a book--under contract with Harvard University Press--on an elite occupational group within finance, and its impact on international law and stratification. Previously, my research examined the effects of diversity and decision-making processes on the performance of investment groups.
Wealth, Professions and Global Capital
From Trustees to Wealth Managers, Inherited Wealth, Justice and Equality (2012)
This chapter will address the question: why did trusteeship become a profession in its own...
Trust and Estate Planning: The Emergence of a Profession and Its Contribution to Socioeconomic Inequality, Sociological Forum (2012)
This article offers a new perspective on the connection between socioeconomic inequality and occupations by...
Trust and Estate Planning, Max Planck Institute Discussion Papers (2009)
This paper offers a fresh perspective on the connection between professional work and socio-economic inequality...
Financial Fraud
States and Financial Crises, Introduction to Political Sociology (2013)
Most states act to protect the “safety, prosperity, and happiness of the people” against the...
The Sociology of Financial Fraud, The Oxford Handbook of the Sociology of Finance (2012)
If there is an Urtext for the sociology of fraud, it is surely Herman Melville’s...
Deception: From Ancient Empires to Internet Dating (2009)
From internet dating profiles to Native American folktales, this volume offers the first broadly-accessible synthesis...
Introduction: Beyond True and False, Deception: From Ancient Empires to Internet Dating (2009)
It seems fitting to follow Murray Gell-Mann’s Foreword with a story involving two other illustrious...
Responding to Deception: The Case of Fraud in Financial Markets, Deception: From Ancient Empires to Internet Dating (2009)
The economic history of the 21st century reads like a litany of Biblical plagues: instead...
Sociology of the Stock Market
Scenes from a Power Struggle: The Rise of Retail Investors in the US Stock Market, Research in the Sociology of Organizations (2012)
This chapter examines the mass movement of Americans into investing during the 1990s as both...
Shame and Stock Market Losses: The Case of Amateur Investors in the US., New Perspectives on Emotions in Finance (2012)
Losing money evokes a host of emotions, most of them painful. In his earliest work,...
Pop Finance: Investment Clubs and the New Investor Populism (2008)
During the 1990s, the United States underwent a dramatic transformation: investing in stocks, once the...
Groups and Networks
Politics in the Public Sphere: The Power of Tiny Publics in Classical Sociology (with Gary Alan Fine and Sandro Segre), Sociologica (2008)
As Fine and Harrington [2004] have argued, the relationship between individuals and the social systems...
Where the Action Is: Small Groups and Contemporary Sociological Theory (with Gary Alan Fine), Small Group Research (2006)
Although small group research has been somewhat marginalized within sociology during the past decades, the...
Tiny Publics: Small Groups and Civil Society (with Gary Alan Fine), Sociological Theory (2004)
It has been conventional to conceptualize civic life through one of two core images: the...
The Pervasive Effects of Network Content, Academy of Management Best Paper Proceedings (2002)
While network research has become increasingly important to our understanding of organizations, there is growing...
Organizational Performance and Corporate Social Capital, Research in the Sociology of Organziations (2001)
This study develops a model of the causal impact of social capital on organizational performance,...
Public Policy
Can Small Investors Survive Social Security Privatization?, Faultlines: Debating the Issues in American Politics (2007)
It has become nearly axiomatic in this country to argue that everything would be better...
Methodology
The Social Psychology of Access in Ethnographic Research, Journal of Contemporary Ethnography (2003)
Media Coverage
Fun Fades at Investment Clubs--Wary of Market Uncertainty, Interest Wanes in Get-Togethers; Stocks Are 'Scary', Wall Street Journal (2013)
"Tipping Point for the European Union?", National Public Radio -- All Things Considered (2011)
US radio interview and print story. The segment on my work starts at about 8:45...