Archive for the ‘Economic sociology’ Category
What does economics have to do with riots, some may think: isn’t economics all about markets, employment and inflation? Well, the answer is NO under many respects. It is no mere coincidence that a resurgence of mass protest has accompanied the recent financial turmoil and austerity measures in many countries – from anti-government demonstrations in […]
Filed under: Economic sociology, Economic theory, Social networks, Social science methodology | Leave a Comment
Tags: 2011 UK riots, Agent-based models, Civil violence, Economic analysis, economic methodology, Mixed methods, Public policy analysis, Social simulation, social theory, Trans-disciplinarity, Web-based social networks
Do economists, as a professional community, behave like sheep -all following the sheepdog? Or like fish, moving altogether in schools? However bizarre these analogies might seem at first sight, they have been applied successfully to finance, where the concept of “herding behaviour” denotes cases in which a majority of traders adopt a shared, or very similar, pathway. It […]
Filed under: Economic sociology, Economic theory, Philosophy of economics, Research, Social science methodology | Leave a Comment
Tags: Economic analysis, economic methodology, Economic profession, Economists, Sociology, Sociology of economics
The happiness of migrants
The Economist of last week (I’m late with my posting…) dedicated two articles to the benefits of migration. One, in Economics focus, was on the costs and benefits of migration and how the countries of origin of migrants, mostly in the developing world, gain from migration primarily through remittances. The other was a review of […]
Filed under: Economic sociology, Economic theory, Sociology | Leave a Comment
Tags: Economic analysis, economic development, poverty alleviation, Public policy analysis, social theory, Sociology, Well-being
In the media and public opinion, economics is not immediately related to the personal, intimate sphere. Economics has to do with competition, inflation, unemployment, crisis. Or so the saying goes. However, a closer look reveals that the discipline has by and large moved away from its traditionally narrow focus to encompass a much wider range […]
Filed under: Economic sociology, Economic theory, Philosophy of economics, Social science methodology, Socioeconomic studies of health | Leave a Comment
Tags: Behavioral economics, Economic analysis, History of economics, social theory, Trans-disciplinarity
BSA conference 2011 now finished
The Annual Conference of the British Sociological Association (BSA), on “60 years of sociology”, which I attended this week at the London School of Economics, is now over. A very nice experience -I appreciated the quality of the presentations, both in parallel and plenary sessions, and the organisation which was impeccable. I also felt reassured […]
Filed under: Consumer behaviour, Economic sociology, Social science methodology, Socioeconomic studies of health | 2 Comments
Tags: History of social science, social theory, Sociology
2010 comes to an end and with it, arrives the ritual of establishing a top-ten list of books of the year. Many newspapers and some blogs have already contributed, and I’ll follow the tradition too -all the more so as I have read a lot this year, during my 2-hour daily commuting time in the […]
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Tags: Economic analysis, History of economics, social theory
In a new post, author Anne Mai Bertelsen claims that greater availability of data and visualisation tools may greatly contribute to the fight against hunger which -despite common misperceptions- still afflicts parts of the USA and in fact parallels the recent rise in obesity. Combining different data sources and enabling access to powerful visualisation tools, […]
Filed under: Consumer behaviour, Economic sociology, Social science methodology, Socioeconomic studies of health | Leave a Comment
Tags: Eating behaviors, Economic analysis, economic methodology, Food choices, Obesity, Philanthropy, Public policy analysis, Social science data, social theory
A new blog post by Martin Ravallion of the World Bank proposes a new way in which research done there may support developing countries. Instead of a traditional “retailing model” under which researchers investigate a specific issue in a given setting and period of time, and produce findings for use in that context, he promotes […]
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Tags: Economic analysis, economic development, economic methodology, Open access to scientific publications, Public policy analysis, Social science data, social theory
Tomorrow at the University of Paris Dauphine, there will be a workshop on social processes inviting the use of social and organisational network analysis tools. My colleague Ana Marr and I will present part of our ongoing work on wholesale lending networks in microfinance. Slides here.
Filed under: Business networks, Economic sociology, Philanthropy and microfinance, Social networks | 2 Comments
Tags: Inter-organisational Networks, Microfinance, Network Analysis, Networks and Markets, Philanthropy, poverty alleviation
My colleague Ana Marr and I gave a paper on “Global Partnerships in Microfinance: India, Peru and Tanzania” last Monday at the conference we organised at the University of Greenwich. We used a networks approach (below) to illustrate the lending relationships between microfinance institutions in these three countries, and their funders worldwide. The slides are […]
Filed under: Business networks, Economic sociology, Economic theory, Philanthropy and microfinance | Leave a Comment
Tags: economic development, Inter-organisational Networks, Microfinance, Models of markets, Networks and Markets, Philanthropy, poverty alleviation
