where do markets come from production markets have two sides producers are a fully connected clique transacting with buyers as a separate but aggregated clique each producer is a distinctive firm with a distinctive product each side continually monitors reactions of the other through the medium of a joint social construction the schedule of terms of trade each producer is guided in choice of volume by the tangible outcomes of other producers not by speculation on hypothetical reactions of buyers to its actions each producer acts purely on self interest based on observed actions of all others summarized through a feedback process the summary is the terms of trade schedule which reduces to constant price only in limiting cases the market emerges as a structure of roles with a differentiated niche for each firm explicit formulae both for firms and for market aggregates are obtained by comparative statics methods for one family of assumptions about cost structures and about buyers evaluations of differentiated products not just any set of firms can sustain terms of trade with any set of buyers there prove to be three main kinds of markets and three sorts of market failure within a parameter space that is specified in detail one sort of market paradox has a madison avenue flavor another is more conventional grind and a third crowded is a new form not included in any existing theory of markets current american industrial markets are drawn on for 20 illustrations of which three are presented in some detail inequality in firms market shares measured by gini coefficients is discussed

the credit crisis as a problem in the sociology of knowledge this article analyzes the role in the credit crisis of the processes by which market participants produce knowledge about financial instruments employing documentary sources and 87 predominantly oral history interviews the article presents a historical sociology of the clusters of evaluation practices surrounding abss asset backed securities most importantly mortgage backed securities and cdos collateralized debt obligations despite the close structural similarity between abss and cdos these practices came to differ substantially and became the province e g in the rating agencies of organizationally separate groups in consequence when abs cdos cdos in which the underlying assets are abss emerged they were evaluated in two separate stages this created a fatally attractive arbitrage opportunity large scale exploitation of which sidelined previously important gatekeepers risk sensitive investors in the lower tranches of mortgage backed securities and eventually magnified and concentrate

bulls bears and market sheep abstract a deterministic excess demand model of stock market behavior is presented that generates stochastically fluctuating prices and randomly switching bear and bull markets

a re evaluation of adaptive expectations in light of global nonlinear dynamic analysis we undertake an analysis of the dynamic behaviour of a discrete time nonlinear monetary dynamics model with adaptive expectation that is a basic mechanism in a broad class of descriptive macrodynamic models we consider in particular a variety of ways in which the adaptive expectations mechanism may be formulated these differ in the degree of rationality of the economic agents that inhabit the model we study in detail the local and global properties of the maps determining the price dynamics

the death and rebirth of a party system peru 1978 2001 this article evaluates structural institutional and actor centered explanations of the collapse of the peruvian party system around 1990 and its surprising partial recovery in 2001 it begins by describing the changes in the dependent variable the emergence collapse and partial resurrection of the 1980s peruvian party system the next section examines the argument that the large size and rapid growth of the informal sector undermined the party system and led to its collapse the author shows that the evidence does not support this argument the article then examines changes in the electoral system the author demonstrates that contrary to theoretical expectations the changes in the electoral system do not correlate with the observed changes in the party system the final section shows that performance failure by political elites including corruption in government was more important than social cleavages or electoral institutions in the collapse and partial recovery of the party system

reconciling the advantages and liabilities of foreignness towards an identity based framework this article leverages identity theory to address the question of when and how foreignness acts as an advantage and liability for the mne subsidiary applying an organizational identity lens i delineate how subsidiaries manage their foreignness by accentuating and attenuating internal and external organizational attributes drawing on this conceptualization i theorize how an accentuated foreign identity moderates context specific advantages and liabilities in offering a more nuanced understanding of how subsidiaries actively manage their foreignness and its contextual implications an identity based framework helps to both explain and reconcile the advantages and liabilities of foreignness

the social structure of a national securities market in this article a national securities market the stock options market is characterized as a social structure represented by the networks of actors who traded options on the floor of a major securities exchange trading among actors exhibited distinct social structural patterns that dramatically affected the direction and magnitude of option price volatility the argument that this market is socially structured is constructed in four parts behavioral assumptions about the nature of economic actors models of micronetworks models of macronetworks and price consequences in the ideal typical model of the market actors are assumed to be hyperrational and never to act opportunistically with these behavioral assumptions the micronetworks of actors should be expansive a condition which would result in undifferentiated and homogeneous macronetworks such macronetworks would tend to reduce the volatility of option prices but in the empirical market studied here actors are subject to bounded rationality a

global microstructures the virtual societies of financial markets using participant observation data interviews and trading transcripts drawn from interbank currency trading in global investment banks this article examines regular patterns of integration that characterize the global social system embedded in economic transactions to interpret these patterns which are global in scope but microsocial in character this article uses the term global microstructures features of the interaction order loosely defined have become constitutive of and implanted in processes that have global breadth this study draws on schutz in the development of the concept of temporal coordination as the basis for the level of intersubjectivity discerned in global markets this article contributes to economic sociology through the analysis of cambist i e trading markets which are distinguished from producer markets and by positing a form of market coordination that supplements relational or network forms of coordination

on the specification of noise in two agent based asset pricing models abstract the paper is concerned with two recent agent based models of speculative dynamics from the literature one by gaunersdorfer and hommes 2007 and the other by he and li 2007 at short as well as long lags both of them display an autocorrelation structure in absolute and squared returns that comes fairly close to that of real data at a daily frequency the note argues that these long memory effects are to be ascribed to the stochastic specification of the price equation which despite the wide fluctuations in these models fails to normalize the price shocks under an appropriate respecification the long memory completely disappears it is subsequently shown that an alternative introduction of randomness which may be called structural stochastic volatility can restore the original properties and even improves upon them

the informal sector and tax on employment a dynamic general equilibrium investigation abstract this paper elaborates on the evolution of the informal sector vis a vis the evolution of agricultural and formal sectors in a developing country economy in process of growth the analytical contribution of this essay extends the ramsey theory of growth into a framework that includes an informal sector and household preferences that display engel effects in agricultural and in informally produced goods besides showing that the informal sector s importance diminishes over time as the country s economy grows the results from the model demonstrate that a country can successfully reduce its informal employment by reducing tax on employment in the formal sector

standardization preferences a function of national culture work interdependence and local embeddedness both theoretical and empirical studies of professional service employee standardization preferences are relatively scarce using responses from 398 employees of an international public relations firm this study finds that employees from high power distance high uncertainty avoidance and high context cultures prefer greater standardization whereas employees from high individualism cultures prefer less standardization additionally work interdependence is positively associated with standardization preferences whereas local embeddedness is negatively associated with standardization preferences

the spread of the multidivisional form among large firms 1919 1979 the multidivisional form is the favored form of organization for the large firms that dominate the american economy this study takes up the causes of the dissemination of that form among large firms from 1919 to 1979 five theories are initially proposed as possible explanations for the changes observed and these theories are operationalized and tested the model that seems most consistent with the data emphasizes the ability of key actors to alter structure under three circumstances when the firm has a product related or unrelated strategy which is consistent with chandler s 1962 theorizing when the corporate presidents have a background in sales or finance and when other firms in the industry alter their structures the implications of these results for theories of organizational change are discussed with special reference to the importance of conceiving how actors operate with varying rationalities in this process

interactions between stock bond and housing markets abstract we develop a model in which investors can participate in stock bond and housing markets investors market entry decisions are subject to herding effects and depend on the markets price trends and on their mispricings the dynamics of our model is governed by a four dimensional nonlinear map and its unique inner steady state is characterized by standard present value relations between dividends rents and the bond rate amongst other things we show that endogenous stock and housing market dynamics emerge countercyclical to each other if investors react strongly to the markets price trends such a cross feedback reflects investors tendency to transfer their enthusiasm from one speculative market to another

the informal sector and the macroeconomy a computable general equilibrium approach for peru abstract this paper examines the macroeconomic implications of the informal sector in peru through the use of a structuralist computable general equilibrium model the lack of formal sector employment drives informal activity while formal and informal output are treated as imperfect substitutes simulations show that informal activity reduces the keynesian multiplier and complicates distributional issues as the income of formal workers and informal producers can move in opposite directions a final simulation highlights the limitations of strategies designed to promote the informal sector total output and income of informal producers decline following an increase in productivity in these processes

emergent properties of a new financial market american venture capital syndication 1960 2005 the recorded transactions of venture capital investments permit a direct examination of the braudel hypothesis that regional markets evolve dynamically and interdependently in reference to a global system this hypothesis contradicts the popular belief that regional financial development is anchored in dense clusters using methods of complex graphs we analyze 159 561 transactions over nearly 45 years to demonstrate the rapid emergence of a national network of syndications a giant component emerges early in the history of the industry which subsumes the regional and sectoral subgraphs the results confirm the braudel hypothesis over the role of regional clusters rejects preferential attachment in favor of repeated ties among trusted partners and emphasizes the importance of dynamics and complex weighted graphs for the analysis of social and economic behavior

status inconsistency and product valuation in the california wine market this study develops a theoretical model on the role of multidimensional status and status inconsistency in market evaluation processes a product or an organization may acquire multiple status indicators in association with a multitude of market institutions we argue that when status indicators are consistently positive each exerts a greater positive effect on the valuation of a product or an organization conversely inconsistency among multiple indicators undermines the status claim we test this theoretical proposition by examining patterns of product valuation in the california premium wine market our findings show that when an individual wine s tasting score rated by critics and another more general status indicator classified appellation affiliation extra designation on the label or a winery s organizational status are consistently positive each makes a greater contribution to wine price in contrast when status indicators are inconsistent the value of the positive status indicator is reduced our study explicates the scope conditions under which market status may yield different outcomes and sheds light on the interplay among status indicators in market valuation

when being in the minority pays off relationships among sellers and price setting in the champagne industry economic sociologists have studied how social relationships shape market prices by focusing mostly on vertical interactions between buyers and sellers in this article we examine instead the price consequences of horizontal relationships that arise from intergroup processes among sellers our setting is the market for champagne grapes using proprietary transaction level data we find that female grape growers a minority in the growers community charge systematically higher prices than do male grape growers we argue that the underlying mechanism for this unexpected pattern of results involves the relationships developed and maintained by minority members specifically in depth fieldwork reveals that female growers get together to compensate for their isolation from the majority this behavior enables them to overcome local constraints on the availability of price relevant information constraints that stem from prevailing norms of market behavior individualism and secrecy we discuss the implications

tools of the trade the socio technology of arbitrage in a wall street trading room to analyze the organization of trading in the era of quantitative finance we conduct an ethnography of arbitrage the trading strategy that best exemplifies finance in the wake of the quantitative revolution in contrast to value and momentum investing we argue arbitrage involves an art of association the construction of comparability across different assets in place of essential or relational characteristics the peculiar valuation that takes place in arbitrage is based on an operation that makes something the measure of something else associating securities to each other the process of recognizing opportunities and the practices of making novel associations are shaped by the specific socio spatial and socio technical configurations of the trading room calculation is distributed across persons and instruments as the trading room organizes interaction among diverse principles of valuation

embeddedness and contractual relationships in china s transitional economy interfirm contracts represent common economic relations in the marketplace they are also deeply embedded in social relations and social institutions in the context of china s transitional economy this study examines how three mechanisms economizing transaction costs network based social relations and institutional links affect interfirm contractual relationships in 1 the choice of search channels for contractual partners 2 the formality and provisions in a contract and 3 the intensity of social interaction in contract implementation empirical evidence is drawn from information collected on 877 contracts from 620 firms in two chinese cities beijing and guangzhou the authors find distinct roles of social relations institutional links and regulatory environments in the initiation of contractual partners and the forms of contracts adopted whereas transaction specific factors play a significant role in the intensity of social interaction in contract implementation these findings suggest the interplay among economic calculativeness social networks and institutional links and the complementarity in the underlying theoretical ideas

why derivatives need models the political economy of derivative valuation models derivatives markets continue to turn over enormous volumes and are an important part of financialised capitalism in the early twenty first century a surprising and yet key feature of these large and apparently liquid markets is that they seem to be bound up with the widespread use of mathematical valuation and risk management models by market participants the paper investigates derivative models and risk management by highlighting the grounds for their emergence their establishment and their influence on market developments a political economy of derivatives markets provides insights into the essential nature of derivatives defining them against the material circumstances in which they arise and allows the logical development of valuation models and risk management as the necessary complement to the large scale derivatives markets that have developed since the 1980s the paper builds from finding prices for potential new trades to valuing completed trades and risk managing portfolios to show how and why valuation models and risk management are bound up with today s derivatives markets

a role based ecology of technological change this article considers what factors determine whether an innovation becomes a foundation for future technological developments rather than a dea end the authors introduce the concept of the technological niche which includes a focal innovation the innovations on which the focal innovations builds the innovations that build upon the focal innovation and the technological ties among the innovations within the niche using patents and patent citations to measure characteristics of innovation niches within the semiconductor industry the authors show that the size of the niche and the status of the actors within the niche have a positive effect on the likelihood that subsequent innovations will build upon the focal innovation competitive intensity within the niche has a negative effect on this likelihood

alternatives to coca production in bolivia a computable general equilibrium approach pressured and aided by the united states bolivia has reembarked on a program to eradicate the cultivation of coca used for cocaine production over the next three years the united states plans to inject us soo million into bolivia to wean the country from producing drugs and replace the cultivation of coca with other crops and agricultural activities previous research has shown that coca cultivation and cocaine production benefits the bolivian economy de franc0 and godoy 1992 by raising income creating employment and increasing the availability of credit particularly for smallholders and the informal sector melvin and ladman 1991 given that the macroeconomic impact of a reduction in coca leaf production could devastate the economy the bolivian government has little economic or political incentive to eradicate coca a solution could be to find substitute crops and agricultural activities which would provide comparable levels and distribution of income we use a computable general equilibrium cge model to study the effects of alternatives to coca production the model contains 38 sectors and four social classes the model allows for a detailed assessment of the economic feasibility of switching from coca to other crops in the simulations we reduce coca production and allow each substitute to adjust to restore the real income of smallholders which existed before eradication twenty one crops are then ranked by the feasibility of the needed price and output change the effect on gross domestic product gdp inflation and workers real incomes the results of the simulations suggest that sugar cattle forestry and maize are the strongest candidates for a coca substitution program but there are practical complications in implementing each of the substitutes as will be discussed below indeed the results of this study justify the reluctance on the part of the bolivian authorities to fully cooperate with us efforts to eradicate coca section 2 provides the background to bolivia s coca dependence in section 3 we develop the model and in section 4 we present the equations and an explicit closure statement for the model the results of the simulations are discussed in section 5 the conclusion section 6 contains a discussion of the problems likely to surface in implementing alternatives to coca cultivation

implications of rational inattention abstract a constraint that actions can depend on observations only through a communication channel with finite shannon capacity is shown to be able to play a role very similar to that of a signal extraction problem or an adjustment cost in standard control problems the resulting theory looks enough like familiar dynamic rational expectations theories to suggest that it might be useful and practical while the implications for policy are different enough to be interesting

a three stage theory of international expansion the link between multinationality and performance in the service sector it is generally assumed that the performance of a firm improves with greater multinationality yet recent empirical studies have shown both a u shaped relationship which suggests an initially negative effect of international expansion on performance before the positive returns of international expansion are realized and an inverted u shaped relationship which suggests that international expansion beyond an optimal level is again detrimental to performance and results in a negative slope this paper proposes a new unified three stage theory of international expansion that incorporates both concepts in a sigmoid hypothesis it then tests this on data from 11 service industries highlighting the difference between knowledge based and capital intensive service sectors

too close for comfort geographic propinquity to political power and stock returns abstract we show that firm headquarters geographic proximity to political power centers state capitals is associated with higher abnormal returns consistent with the notion that this effect is rooted in social network links we find it is more pronounced in communities with high levels of sociability and political values homophily and that it dissipates when firms move their headquarters to another state finally in line with the view that investors perceive such networks to be associated with political risk we find that this effect is particularly strong when there are substantial levels of corruption dependency on government spending and politicians turnover

market networks and corporate behavior data on market relations between a large population of corporations and investment banks are used to study the organization market interforce the pattern of direct market ties between a firm and its banks forms of interfaces range from a long term exclusive tie the relationship interface to many short lived episodic ties the transaction interface with hybrid forms between the two poles contrary to widespread belief the article finds that strong relationships still exist transactions interfaces are rare most firms use hybrid interfaces a firm s interface is conceptualized as the intentional result of its efforts to reduce dependence and exploit power advantages observed interfaces are shown to be related systematically to various power dependence concepts including resource intensity number of transactions and dollar amounts raised criticality the availability of resource alternatives power asymmetry between a firm and its main bank organization size standardization of exchange and

on the social structure of markets economic theorists have seldom discussed the social structures behind markets even though market trading relies heavily on seller buyer roles and personal relations among traders this paper considers the structural basis of markets and proposes a layered approach which accommodates a wide range of competitive and relational trade within a definition of markets that distinguishes them from non market exchange giving due regard to social structures lays bare the institutional character of markets and provides a rationale for case studies of how particular markets function

the stability of american markets much of the evidence of coordination between corporations and their markets comes from cross sectional conducted within portions of the american economy during the past two decades we know especially for manufacturing during the late 1960s that certain structural qualities of markets predict profits and the organization of large firms but this evidence is open to an uncomfortable empirical question to what extent did the social structural qualities determining resource dependence in american markets change during the 1960s and 1970s so as to limit the generalizability of cross sectional evidence the analysis here shows that markets were dramatically stable in he social structure of production relations known to predict the structure of large firms relying principally on department of commerce data the article traces the american economy through the 1960s and 1970s in terms of 77 broadly defined markets describing the stability of market boundaries and patterns of transactions with suppliers and c

how investor portfolios shape regulatory outcomes privatized infrastructure after crises summary many developing countries privatized utilities during the 1990s their weak institutional environments however make them prone to crises that generate incentives for governments to renege on contractual commitments to investors to understand variation in post crisis regulatory outcomes in such contexts scholars must consider investors prior choices regarding portfolio structure investors facing high reputational costs from exit are more likely to remain following expropriation and those holding diverse assets in their contract jurisdiction to secure compensation these factors account for significant unexplained within sector and subnational variation for which we provide qualitative and quantitative evidence from argentina s water and electricity sectors following the 2001 crisis

do foreign owners favour short term profit evidence from germany comparing domestic and foreign owned firms in germany this paper finds that foreign owned firms are more likely to focus on short term profit this influence is particularly strong if the local managers of the german subsidiary are not sent from the foreign parent company moreover the physical distance between the foreign parent company and its german subsidiary increases the probability of focusing on short term profit these findings conform to the hypothesis that foreign owners facing an information disadvantage concerning the local conditions of their subsidiaries are more likely to favor short term profit however we do not identify differences in short termism between investors from anglo saxon and other foreign countries rather results point in the direction of more general features of international business investment

terms of trade and class conflict in a computable general equilibrium model for mexico a computable general equilibrium model for mexico is constructed in which class conflict over the distribution of the surplus is the principal determinant of the terms of trade the model consists of seven social classes and eight productive sectors classes are distinguished as fundamental or subsumed according to whether their incomes are primarily determined by conscious class struggle or by the resulting system of relative prices flexible prices are assumed to clear markets for which non produced means of production such as agricultural land limit supply while output in the remaining sectors is determined by the level of effective demand for the latter sectors two theories of price formation are compared and are seen to differ radically in their implicit conception of the nature of class conflict a keynes kalecki closure is considered in which prices are determined by a fixed mark up on costs this enables capitalists to protect themselves from incursions on the rate of profit due to labou

internationalization and performance degree duration and scale of operations we assess the theoretical underpinnings and associated empirical findings of the three stage sigmoid curve relationship between degree of internationalization doi and performance by re examining the results reported in one of the prominent studies in the literature we further conduct our own analyses of 23 474 observations of 2 620 us manufacturing firms over the period 1976 2008 and account for self selection of firms into different degrees of internationalization by using a generalized propensity score estimator both sets of results show that the relationship between doi and performance conforms to a mostly negative sigmoid curve and does not support the three stage theorization further examination reveals that two major conceptual and empirical shortcomings underlie the disparity between the theoretical predictions of the three stage model and these empirical findings first whereas theory relies overwhelmingly on enhanced scale of operations as a causal mechanism through which internationalization contributes to performance empirical studies preclude proper identification of scale related benefits second theory and empirics tend to confuse temporary difficulties experienced upon entry into international markets with examining the benefits realizable at different levels of doi regardless of the firm s short term difficulties in realizing those benefits our empirical results show that correcting for each of these shortcomings contributes to diminishing the theory empirics gap

stitched on the edge rule evasion embedded regulators and the evolution of markets while the role of laws and regulations in structuring markets is well established it is less understood how rule evasion affects the evolution of markets or how the interaction between regulators and the regulated about the meaning of compliance influences this effect the authors study this issue by looking at the development of the asset backed commercial paper abcp market in france germany and the netherlands from 1999 to 2009 in all three countries this market involved financial innovations designed to evade regulations the authors identify diverging trends in the abcp market that are a result of whether and how regulators were embedded in the different interpretive communities that defined regulatory compliance such embeddedness being dependent on their discretionary and sanctioning power as well as their expertise focusing on these regulatory networks that embed institutions in markets they propose a synthesis of relational and institutional accounts of the embeddedness of markets

on the growth of foreign affiliates multinational plant networks joint ventures and flexibility we take a flexibility perspective to analyse employment growth in a large sample of japanese manufacturing affiliates in nine asian countries during the years leading up to and into the asian financial crisis 1995 1999 we find that joint ventures are less flexible than wholly owned affiliates in responding to changing environmental conditions in the focal country and underperform in high growth environments multinational enterprises mnes use the flexibility created by their multinational plant network to adjust affiliate employment in response to labour cost changes in other countries in which they operate plants however no evidence was found that the presence of joint ventures in multinational plant networks reduces this network flexibility our findings suggest that more research is needed on the heterogeneous responses of mnes and their affiliates to changing economic environments

social capital structural holes and the formation of an industry network the formation of a network is determined by the opposition of two forces the first is the reproduction of network structure as a general social resource for network members the second is the alteration of network structure by entrepreneurs for their own benefit the idea of reproduction is a conventional one in organizational sociology but has taken on increased importance due to the work of bourdieu and coleman in contrast burt stresses the entrepreneurship of individual agents in exploiting structural holes that lie between constrained positions though complementary the theories of social capital and structural holes have fundamentally different implications for network formation this paper investigates these theories by examining empirically the formation of the interorganizational network among biotechnology firms we propose that network structure determines the frequency with which a new biotechnology firm or startup establishes new relationships network structure indicates both where soci

cooperation in microcredit borrowing groups identity sanctions and reciprocity in the production of collective goods cooperation to produce collective goods is widespread in society and yet so is its failure theorists have identified competing mechanisms for facilitating group cooperation including group identity sanctions and reciprocity here i use empirical data to explore how these mechanisms influence cooperation in the natural laboratory of microcredit borrowing groups microcredit makes loans to high risk borrowers through borrowing groups in which individuals access to credit is dependent on the behavior of other members of the group thereby creating a social dilemma for members and an opportunity to observe cooperation in real world groups by analyzing both collective goods production loans and compliance repayment i find that the competing mechanisms have differential effects group identity sanctions and reciprocity are all associated with more borrowing in the group only reciprocity however limits loan delinquency and is associated with group longevity suggesting both that collective goods p

fdi spillovers over time in an emerging market the roles of entry tenure and barriers to imitation in this study we examine how foreign direct investment fdi spillovers to domestic firms in an emerging market occur over time from the organizational learning perspective we propose that as entry tenure of foreign firms in an industry increases domestic firms can learn from the foreign firms over time and improve their productivity we further build upon the competitor imitation argument to propose that this effect will be stronger when barriers to imitation faced by the domestic firms are lower based upon a comprehensive panel dataset on manufacturing firms in china in 1998 2007 our findings strongly support these arguments we find that entry tenure of foreign firms in an industry has a positive relationship with the productivity of individual domestic firms in the same industry albeit at a diminishing rate we also find that this positive relationship is stronger when the foreign firms have lower export intensity lower intangible asset intensity and have followed a more rhythmic i e less irregular entry pattern situations characterizing lower barriers to imitation

boom bust dynamics in a stock market participation model with heterogeneous traders abstract the boundedly rational heterogeneous agent literature can be considered to have properly started with a number of contributions in the early 90s with the impressive contribution by carl chiarella who amongst his huge field of research developed several milestone models of heterogeneous interacting agents that are able to generate a number of dynamic outcomes compatible with the empirical evidence in this paper we propose a stock market model in which participation depends upon an attractiveness measure related to the market activity and the fundamental value of the market a market maker adjusts the stock price with respect to the current endogenous excess market demand which in turn depends on the demands of the different types of agents populating the economy market participants are also allowed to switch between different strategies analytical and numerical results confirm how the participation mechanism amplifies the occurrence of endogenous booms and busts in line with empirical and experimental evidence

persistent parochialism trust and exclusion in ethnic networks decentralized groups such as close knit residential neighborhoods and ethnically linked businesses often achieve high levels of cooperation while engaging in exclusionary practices that we call parochialism we investigate the contribution of within group cultural affinity to the ability of parochial groups to cooperate in social dilemmas we analyze parochial networks in which the losses incurred by not trading with outsiders are offset by an enhanced ability to enforce informal contracts by fostering trust among insiders we show that there is a range of degrees of parochialism for which parochial networks can coexist with an anonymous market offering unrestricted trading opportunities

when truces collapse a longitudinal study of price adjustment routines we analyze the microfoundations of the routine in a study of price adjustment processes at a manufacturing firm existing theory says that truces balance cognitive and motivational differences across functions but there is scant evidence on how truces work we show both stability and change in routines for minor price adjustments routines incorporate truces in stable but separate market interpretations by the sales and marketing groups major price changes put truces at risk as latent conflict over information and interests becomes overt the ensuing battle shows how interests information and truces are intertwined in performing the routine routines are not just stable entities but adaptive performances that include conflict we illustrate how our approach addresses fundamental problems such as how firms perform economics how routines incorporate economic theory and how routines shape macroeconomic dynamics we argue that our approach can be extended to any routine based organizational work

institutional regime shift in intellectual property rights and innovation strategies of firms in china this study develops a novel conceptual framework to understand the differential impact of formal institutional regime shift in intellectual property rights on the innovation and patenting strategies of chinese and western firms operating in china we argue that to the extent that chinese firms have been deeply embedded in china s informal institutions they are less responsive to formal institutional changes than western firms operating in china using the major china patent law reform of 2001 as an exogenous event we find results consistent with our key arguments with the strengthening of the previously weak utility model patent protection chinese firms are less likely to apply for such patents to safeguard their innovations than western firms however this difference becomes less pronounced in regions with higher quality intellectual property rights and legal institutions that foster research and development and innovation and when western firms gain longer operational experience in china this s

the size of the informal sector in peru a critical comment on hernando de soto s el otro sendero abstract in el otro sendero hernando de soto presented four statistics concerning i the number of workers and ii the number of hours worked in the informal sector in peru in 1984 iii total informal gdp from 1951 to 1984 and iv the growth of the informal sector from 1985 to 2000 these statistics are being quoted internationally by for example the world bank and the economist of london in this paper we demonstrate that there are apparent inconsistencies between i and ii and that iii and iv are based on the application of inappropriate models that are econometrically suspect

paying the professor sources of salary variation in academic labor markets using a set of 58 academic fields as distinct labor markets we examined the extent of wage variation within markets the degree to which wages vary is an indicator of market efficiency and of whether a market wage exists holding constant differences in human capital we found that the degree of wage variation in an academic labor market is negatively related to mobility within that market and positively related to the oversupply of labor we also found that as wage variation increases male female wage differentials also increase

the economics of organization the transaction cost approach the transaction cost approach to the study of economic organization regards the transaction as the basic unit of analysis and holds that an understanding of transaction cost economizing is central to the study of organizations applications of this approach require that transactions be dimensionalized and that alternative governance structures be described economizing is accomplished by assigning transactions to governance structures in a discriminating way the approach applies both to the determination of efficient boundaries as between firms and markets and to the organization of internal transactions including the design of employment relations the approach is compared and contrasted with selected parts of the organization theory literature

the dynamics of the liability of foreignness a global study of survival in financial services we study the impact of foreignness on survival in interbank currency trading worldwide over the period 1974 93 in particular we develop hypotheses on the behavior of the liability of foreignness over time and on the consequences of evolving sources of firm level competitive advantage on this liability we test these hypotheses on the population of 2667 market making trading rooms located in 47 countries worldwide that either existed in 1974 or entered the industry between 1974 and 1993 the results show that there is a liability of foreignness and that it changes over time further strategic and organizational factors such as the adoption of technology by these firms and their mode of internal control significantly influenced survival as did location related factors such as the intensity of local and foreign competition 1997 by john wiley sons ltd

born global or born regional evidence from an exploratory study in the costa rican software industry this paper provides empirical evidence about born global firms in the software industry of a small developing country with an open economy costa rica the paper is based on data collected through interviews with ceos or founders of 40 costa rican software companies findings show that there are few born global firms among costa rican software providers we find that most companies followed a gradual approach to internationalization and they did not export immediately upon birth a careful analysis of firms that exported soon after they were born reveals that most firms are actually born regional

the global configuration of a speculative trading operation an empirical study of foreign exchange trading this paper proposes a theory of firm boundaries based on fore knowledge development and exploitation in speculative or informed trading foreign exchange trading provides this study s empirical context from research on information economics we suggest optimal speculative trading operations are multiunit and globally dispersed alternatively transaction cost economics suggests atomistic actors prevail in the market for fungible commodities like currencies we also develop competing hypotheses about information technology s effects on foreign exchange trading operations speculation arguments predict that the global scope of trading operations will expand after the introduction of generic information technologies transaction cost economics proposes that when atomistic actors do not prevail trading operations will contract after this introduction we test competing predictions with models of the expansion contraction and net change in a firm s global dispersion we estimate these models with data from the population of banks worldwide engaged in interbank foreign exchange currency fx trading from 1974 to 1993 our results uncover two types of firms those that approach the atomistic actor of transaction cost economics and those that resemble the globally dispersed multiunit configuration from our speculation discussion these results encourage reflection on how the theory of the firm differs when firms trade to produce versus speculate

international business competence and the contemporary firm the trend of increasing internationalization of small and medium enterprises smes is noteworthy because such firms typically have far fewer financial and tangible resources than large multinational enterprises as a result international business is often more challenging for smaller firms in this study we investigate the widespread internationalization of smes and specific factors that support their superior performance abroad we uncover a collection of intangible capabilities that are especially salient to these firms and their growing international involvement we identify international business competence ibc as an intangible overarching firm resource that engenders superior international performance in the international sme through case studies and a comprehensive literature review we identify four dimensions of ibc we devise and assess a model that links ibc to sme international performance results suggest that international orientation international marketing skills international innovativeness and international market orientation are all significant dimensions of ibc and that ibc is instrumental in sme international performance we discuss resultant findings and offer managerial implications

widening the lens rethinking distance diversity and foreignness in international business research through positive organizational scholarship the point of departure for the special issue is that current theory and research in international business ib may have overly emphasized a negative view on foreignness distance and differences of all kinds national cultural organizational and institutional with an emphasis on liabilities and adverse outcomes associated with such differences while existing research is certainly valuable we argue that focusing on mostly negative processes and outcomes has hindered our understanding of the dynamics processes and conditions that enable organizations to benefit from diversity in a wide range of ib contexts the goal of this special issue is to promote research that is in line with a positive organizational scholarship perspective which encourages scholars to look at commonly considered phenomena in new ways as well as to explicitly consider positive phenomena in ib research we then introduce the three articles included in the special issue and highlight how they help ib scholars better understand when and how foreignness distance and diversity can enhance organizational effectiveness and performance at multiple levels

network location and learning the influence of network resources and firm capabilities on alliance formation this paper presents a dynamic firm level study of the role of network resources in determining alliance formation such resources inhere not so much within the firm but reside in the interfirm networks in which firms are placed data from extensive fieldwork show that by influencing the extent to which firms have access to information about potential partners such resources are an important catalyst for new alliances especially because alliances entail considerable hazards this study also assesses the importance of firms capabilities with alliance formation and material resources as determinants of their alliance decisions i test this dynamic framework and its hypotheses about the role of time varying network resources and firm capabilities with comprehensive longitudinal multi industry data on the formation of strategic alliances by a panel of firms between 1970 and 1989 the results confirm field observations that accumulated network resources arising from firm participation in the network of accumulated prior alliances are influential in firms decisions to enter into new alliances this study highlights the importance of network resources that firms derive from their embeddedness in networks for explaining their strategic behavior copyright 1999 john wiley sons ltd

the rise and fall of small worlds exploring the dynamics of social structure this paper explores the interplay between social structure and economic action by examining some of the evolutionary dynamics of an emergent network that coalesces into a small world system the study highlights the small world system s evolutionary dynamics at both the macro level of the network and the micro level of an individual actor this dual analytical lens helps establish that in competitive and information intensive settings a small world system could be a highly dynamic structure that follows an inverted u shaped evolutionary pattern wherein an increase in the small worldliness of the system is followed by its later decline as a result of three factors 1 the recursive relationship between the evolving social structure and individual actors formation of bridging ties which eventually homogenizes the information space and decreases actors propensity to form bridging ties creating a globally separated network 2 self containment of the small world network or increasing homogenization of the social system which makes the small world less accepting of and less attractive to new actors thereby limiting formation of bridging ties to outside clusters and 3 fragmentation of the small world network or the small world system s inability to retain current clusters the study uses data on interorganizational tie formation in the global computer industry in the period from 1996 to 2005 to test the hypothesized relationships

causes of the difficulties in internationalization we study the causes of the difficulties faced by firms when they internationalize in search of new markets we build on the resource based theory to argue that the difficulties in internationalization can be separated into three main sets based on their relationship to advantage loss of advantage provided by resources transferred abroad creation of a disadvantage by resources transferred abroad and lack of complementary resources required to operate abroad in each set we further distinguish difficulties that are specific to a firm from those that are common to a set of firms we argue that only a few of the resulting types of difficulties of internationalization are exclusive to the cross border expansion and propose solutions that address the root cause of each type

developing science technology and innovation indicators what we can learn from the past the science technology innovation system is one that is continuously and rapidly evolving the dramatic growth over the last twenty years in the use of science technology and innovation sti indicators appears first and foremost the result of a combination between on the one hand the easiness of computerized access to an increasing number of measures of sti and on the other hand the interest in a growing number of public policy and private business circles in such indicators as might be expected in societies which increasingly use organised science and technology to achieve a wide variety of social and economic objectives and in which business competition is increasingly based on innovation as highlighted on the basis of 40 years of indicators work frontiers and characteristics that were important last century may well no longer be so relevant today and indeed may even be positively misleading

lost that lovin feeling the erosion of trust between small high distance partners we investigate the role of high distance in trust erosion between small partners high distance is known to hinder the formation of trust between potential partners but its role in trust erosion in established partnerships is less understood by international business scholars through a qualitative longitudinal study we extend current theory of how high distance affects the trust dynamics between cross border partners specifically we unearth three interrelated mechanisms that together explain how and why trust can erode due to high distance we show that before a partnership is formed high distance can lead partners to erroneously attribute cues to a potential partner s high quality leading to over expectations of partner performance once the partnership is operational high distance hinders actors ability to understand situational factors associated with disappointing outcomes and so they are attributed to failings of the partner at the same time distance related challenges of bounded reliability render partners reluctant to discuss partnership outcomes this can result in a vicious cycle of inertia as partners strive to protect goodwill while abandoning efforts to produce partnership outcomes because of doubts of the other s quality thus our theoretical model illustrates the limitations of trust and explains how paradoxically high distance can facilitate both trust formation and trust erosion

capital market development and mass privatization are logical contradictions lessons from russia and the czech republic the introduction of mass privatization policies in russia and the czech republic depended on the creation of impersonal capital markets to finance the needs of privatized companies and to provide a secondary market for the trading of securities yet mass privatization created the contradictory conditions of generating millions of poorly informed shareholders with no efficient markets for the sale of the shares the absence of financial markets created systematic pressures to move assets by illegal or non transparent means to users who value them more privatization created the incentives to destroy the financial markets critical to its success a comparative case analysis of post privatization market formation in both these countries demonstrates that the functional necessity for these markets does not engender their own creation in the absence of institutional mechanisms of state regulation and trust markets become arenas for political contests and economic manipulation the irony of these policies is that a principal lesson has been that market reforms cannot create viable markets only institutional formation can copyright 2002 oxford university press

the sociological approach to financial markets as a part of the renaissance and growth of economic sociology during the past two decades and in response to processes such as economic globalization financial markets have been increasingly scrutinized by sociologists their investigation is seen as relevant with respect to understanding the structure and dynamics of advanced societies the dynamics of social development as well as fundamental aspects of human behaviour this paper charts recent developments in the sociology of financial markets its starting point is the treatment of the concept of information within three sociological orientations the social structural approach sociological neo institutionalism and the newer social studies of finance by highlighting their different assumptions about information and market behaviour i discuss how these approaches conceptualize financial markets the methodological implications and the ways in which they contribute to the study of financial exchanges

speed of the internationalization process the role of diversity and depth in experiential learning by analyzing internationalization as a dynamic process we attempt to explain the speed of international operations in terms of learning acquired in the course of past international activities we consider that the speed of the internationalization process depends on the type of experiential learning that results from decisions implicit in the internationalization process choice of location and modes of operation firms develop two types of learning activities with respect to the selection of foreign markets and modes of operation diversity and depth of accumulated international activities we propose that depth of international activities has an inverted u shaped impact on the speed of the internationalization process while diversity of international activities has a u shaped influence on the speed of internationalization process the results of our longitudinal study of 889 firms over 23 years 1986 2008 suggest that diversity of international activities promotes long term learning by exposing the firm to richer experiences although such learning only takes place over time depth of international activities may accelerate the internationalization process in the short term but it eventually restrains its potential for development in the long term our research highlights the short term vs long term consequences of different types of decisions related to the internationalization process

embeddedness in the making of financial capital how social relations and networks benefit firms seeking financing i investigate how social embeddedness affects an organization s acquisition and cost of financial capital in middle market banking a lucrative but understudied financial sector using existing theory and original fieldwork i develop a framework to explain how embeddedness can influence which firms get capital and at what cost i then statistically examine my claims using national data on small business lending at the level of dyadic ties i find that firms that embed their commercial transactions with their lender in social attachments receive lower interest rates on loans at the network level firms are more likely to get loans and to receive lower interest rates on loans if their network of bank ties has a mix of embedded ties and arm s length ties these network effects arise because embedded ties motivate network partners to share private resources while arm s length ties facilitate access to public information on market prices and loan opportunities so that the benefits of different types of ties are optimized within one network i conclude with a discussion of how the value produced by a network is at a premium when it creates a bridge that links the public information of markets with the private resources of relationships

different markets for different folks exploring the challenges of mainstreaming responsible investment practices the link between corporate social responsibility csr and financial performance has continued to generate mixed and inconclusive results most studies in this area seem to assume that corporate social and financial performance share the same underpinning logic drawing from a qualitative analysis of practitioners accounts of the challenges of mainstreaming the market for responsible investments as part of the broader csr agenda this article re examines this taken for granted assumption in the extant literature and reaches the conclusion that csr as a complex private governance of externalities does not easily lend itself to measurability and profitability in other words not everything about csr is measurable and profitable as much as the financial markets would expect comparing what is rendered measurable and profitable on one hand and what is yet to fully lend itself to measurability and profitability on the other is identified as one of the fundamental flaws of this literature as such csr and financial performance will continue to run on competing logics until their different markets are distinctively articulated and or aligned

effects of social capital and power on surviving transformational change the case of initial public offerings we examined how social capital and the power of venture capitalists and founderceos affect ipo firm survival using data from 218 u s initial public offerings conducted in 1992 we found that average management team tenure and an ipo deal s network embeddedness decreased the likelihood of failure during a firm s first five years as a public entity founder ceo presence at the time of an ipo interacted with ceo ownership to decrease the likelihood of failure and ceo ownership and venture capitalist ownership concentration also decreased that likelihood evolutionary perspectives on organizations are often accompanied by the presumption that organizations face an increased risk of failure early in their lives owing to liabilities of newness aldrich 1999 stinchcombe 1965 as organizational goals and patterns of activity become routinized over time increased reliability in performance and accountability for actions taken enhance a firm s survival chances hannan freeman 1984 this process however also generates strong inertial pressures that not only discourage organizational change but also because of the potential for disruption to existing internal and external routines make change hazardous research findings suggest that even in older better established firms significant transformational events during their life cycles can effectively reset the clock and reintroduce risks associated with the liability of newness as firms struggle to adapt strategies internal operational and administrative processes and or external ties and relationships amburgey kelly barnett 1993 thus transformational change in organizational operations decreases efficiency and increases failure rates at least in the short term as resources and attention are diverted from normal routinized operating functions to processes involving adaptation and reorientation haveman 1992

the social organization of conspiracy illegal networks in the heavy electrical equipment industry we analyze the social organization of three well known price fixing conspiracies in the heavy electrical equipment industry although aspects of collusion have been studied by industrial organization economists and organizational criminologists the organization of conspiracies has remained virtually unexplored using archival data we reconstruct the actual communication networks involved in conspiracies in switchgear transformers and turbines we find that the structure of illegal networks is driven primarily by the need to maximize concealment rather than the need to maximize efficiency however network structure is also contingent on information processing requirements imposed by product and market characteristics our individual level model predicts verdict guilt or innocence sentence and fine as functions of personal centrality in the illegal network network structure management level and company size people of the same trade seldom meet together but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public or in some diversion to raise prices

foreignness and exit over the life cycle of firms received wisdom indicates that owing to a liability of foreignness foreign firms exit with greater likelihood than do comparable domestic firms and that the difference attenuates as firms age and overcome the liability we posit that foreign firms are also intrinsically more volatile and footloose than domestic ones and that this leads to an increasing divergence between the exit rates of foreign and domestic firms empirically we find that the difference between exit rates of foreign firms and domestic firms increases with age as exit of foreign firms increases with age while that of purely domestic firms decreases exit rates of domestic based multinationals do not change significantly with age they are between those of foreign and purely domestic firms but are closer to the latter this suggests that the footlooseness observed for foreign firms is due to foreignness more than to multinationality

liability of foreignness natural disasters and corporate philanthropy this study examines how philanthropy can mitigate liability of foreignness lof in the aftermath of a national disaster a major disaster restructures the social landscape creating an avenue for corporate contributions to play a role in recovery and relief efforts this social restructuring offers a valuable opportunity for multinational enterprises mnes to establish strong local ties in turn mne contributions at such times have a stronger impact on their local acceptance thus mnes can use these events to strengthen their position in the community and mitigate lof using the context of a national disaster in india i test these arguments with a sample of 190 mnes and 660 domestic firms i found that in the aftermath of the disaster the increase in mne contributions was much larger and less strongly tied to promotional activities than the increase in contributions from domestic firms and this difference persisted over time moreover the performance implication of post disaster philanthropy was stronger for mnes than for domestic firms these findings suggest that philanthropy plays a more strategic role for mnes in the aftermath of a disaster and it has a pronounced effect on mitigating lof

an institutional logics approach to liability of foreignness the case of mining mnes in sub saharan africa prior research on firms liability of foreignness lof has emphasized the role of isomorphic behavior in overcoming lof however the literature has not adequately considered how firms can overcome lof under conditions of institutional complexity when fundamental differences in firms home and host country values beliefs and rules may make isomorphic behaviors impossible or undesirable in this article we use the emerging research on institutional logics and institutional entrepreneurship to address this important issue by examining case studies of eight foreign mining mnes experiencing lof in sub saharan africa based upon our qualitative analysis we find that mnes can overcome lof by co creating new institutional logics rather than conforming to existing ones yet our data show that this is a difficult process one that may not be capable of being done unilaterally by the mne instead we find that local employees embedded in both sets of competing institutional logics acted as key intermediaries who facilitated institutional entrepreneurship moreover we found that firms implementation strategy matters as well in some cases institutional entrepreneurship mitigated lof in others friction returned to varying degrees

rational expectations equilibrium with conditioning on past prices a mean variance example abstract the paper uses an intertemporal mean variance model of the market for a dividend paying risky asset to analyse rational expectations equilibria when all agents condition their expectations on past rather than current prices the main result shows that if the time span between successive market periods is short the market will approximate full informational efficiency arbitrarily closely yet the returns to being informed are bounded away from zero this contrasts with the grossman stiglitz proposition that markets cannot come close to informational efficiency if the acquisition of information is costly

constructing a market performing theory the historical sociology of a financial derivatives exchange this analysis of the history of the chicago board options exchange explores the performativity of economics a theme in economic sociology recently developed by callon economics was crucial to the creation of financial derivatives exchanges it helped remedy the drastic loss of legitimacy suffered by derivatives in the first half of the 20th century option pricing theory a crown jewel of neoclassical economics succeeded empirically not because it discovered preexisting price patterns but because markets changed in ways that made its assumptions more accurate and because the theory was used in arbitrage the performativity of economics however has limits and an emphasis on it needs to be combined with classic themes in economic sociology such as granovetterian embedding and the way in which exchanges can be cultures and moral communities in which collective action problems can be solved

the approach of institutional economics this paper assesses the old institutional economics it emphasizes the importance of key old institutionalist themes concerning the necessity of habits and rules and the role of institutions a problem in the alternative theoretical program of the new institutionalism is the untenability of its assumption of an original institution free market or state of nature even optimizing behavior requires the prior existence of habits and rules although it still lacks a complete and systematic theory the evolutionary approach of the old institutionalists tackles the problem of the interactive relationship of actor to structure without analytical reduction to one or the other

global cities and multinational enterprise location strategy we combine the concept of location derived by economic geographers with theories of the multinational enterprise mne and the liability of foreignness developed by international business scholars to examine the factors that propel mnes toward or away from global cities we argue that three distinctive characteristics of global cities global interconnectedness cosmopolitanism and abundance of advanced producer services help mnes overcome the costs of doing business abroad and we identify the contingencies under which these characteristics combine with firm attributes to exert their strongest influence consistent with these arguments our analysis of a large sample of mne location decisions using a multilevel multinomial model suggests not only that mnes have a strong propensity to locate within global cities but also that these choices are associated with a nuanced interplay of firm and subsidiary level factors including investment motives proprietary capabilities and business strategy our study provides important insights for international business scholars by shedding new light on mne location choices and also contributes to our understanding of economic geography by examining the heterogeneous strategies and capabilities of mnes the primary agents of economic globalization that shape the nature of global cities

real options and foreign affiliate divestments a portfolio perspective this paper develops a real options portfolio perspective on foreign affiliate divestments affiliates are less likely to be divested in response to adverse environmental change if they represent growth or switch option value to the multinational firm under conditions of macroeconomic uncertainty however the affiliate is partially redundant to the option value of the multinational firm s affiliate portfolio if the affiliate shares the manufacturing platform role in the host country with other affiliates or if macroeconomic conditions of the host country are highly correlated with those of other countries in which the multinational firm operates affiliates we find strong support for these arguments in tests on a comprehensive sample of 1078 asian manufacturing affiliates of japanese electronics multinationals

embeddedness and price formation in the corporate law market the determination of prices is a key function of markets yet sociologists are just beginning to study it most theorists view prices as a consequence of economic processes by contrast we consider how social structure shapes prices building on embeddedness arguments and original fieldwork at large law firms we propose that a firm s embedded relationships influence prices by prompting private information flows and informal governance arrangements that add unique value to goods and services we test our arguments with a separate longitudinal dataset on the pricing of legal services by law firms that represent corporate america we find that embeddedness can significantly increase and decrease prices net of standard variables and in markets for both complex and routine legal services moreover results show that three forms of embeddedness embedded ties board memberships and status affect prices in different directions and have different magnitudes of effects that depend on the complexity of the legal

stock market participation and endogenous boom bust dynamics abstract we develop a model in which stock market participation depends on current market movements and on the fundamental state of the market our model explains empirical and experimental evidence according to which increasing decreasing stock market participation amplifies bubbles crashes

short term projects and emergent careers evidence from hollywood the hollywood film industry is considered as a system of recurrent ties among the various major participants who usually work under short term contracts for single films this form of project based organization in seen as a response to uncertainty and risk in the film industry the paper examines the ways in which independent contractors producers directors cinematographers and actors organize and operate to reduce uncertainty and risk and to increase profits the analysis of data from 2 430 films made in the period 1965 80 establishes patterns of recurrent ties among participants who are at comparable levels of cumulative productivity with respect to earnings oscars oscar nominations and number of previous films the paper also considers the degree to which film earnings are influenced by the past productivity of the major participants

deconstructing the liability of foreignness regulatory enforcement actions against foreign banks it is widely acknowledged that foreign firms are at an institutional disadvantage relative to domestic firms operating in the local market this liability of foreignness typically manifests as inferior performance for foreign firms relative to domestic competitors although myriad studies document the liability of foreignness few demonstrate how individual host country institutions generate specific liabilities in this study we explore the regulatory liabilities that foreign firms face using a sample of 189 foreign banks operating in the united states we find that regulators initiate more enforcement actions on average against foreign banks than they do against domestic banks the effects however vary by regulation type and firm characteristics for example foreign banks are no more likely to receive risk related sanctions but far more likely to receive stakeholder related sanctions foreign banks with higher quality of human capital and more host country experience are less likely to run afoul of all regulations foreign banks with more third country experience are less likely to receive risk related sanctions but more likely to receive stakeholder related sanctions the results highlight the contingent nature of regulatory liabilities the role of information asymmetry versus regulatory bias in enforcement outcomes and the liability reducing effects of resources and capabilities

an idea in good currency and how it grew the informal sector abstract the informal sector is an exceedingly fuzzy concept which has come into wide use because it seemed to address the interests of a number of very diverse groups those interested in growth planning those interested in alleviating poverty marxist structuralists and those interested in economic accounting the use of the concept has been helpful in directing attention to phenomena previously ignored but adopting the term obscures analysis of central issues and is counterproductive we should rather specify critical policy issues and design field research around these

the impact of social structure on economic outcomes s ocial structure especially in the form of social networks affects economic outcomes for three main reasons first social networks affect the flow and the quality of information much information is subtle nuanced and difficult to verify so actors do not believe impersonal sources and instead rely on people they know second social networks are an important source of reward and punishment since these are often magnified in their impact when coming from others personally known third trust by which i mean the confidence that others will do the right thing despite a clear balance of incentives to the contrary emerges if it does in the context of a social network economists have recently devoted considerable attention to the impact of social structure and networks on the economy for example see the economists chapters in rauch and casella 2001 and the illuminating review essay of this volume by zuckerman 2003 as well as dutta and jackson 2003 and calvoarmengol 2004 however i focus here on sociologists contributions sociologists have developed core principles about the interactions of social structure information ability to punish or reward and trust that frequently recur in their analyses of political economic and other institutions i begin by reviewing some of these principles building on these i then discuss how social structures and social networks can affect economic outcomes like hiring price productivity and innovation