Economic Sociology Reformulated

A bstract Previous theoretical and empirical research on economic sociology leaves much to be desired in terms of consistently defining the agenda and objectives of the discipline As a result, economic sociology often appears to lack a clearly defined mission and purpose This is epitomized by various failures to establish adequate epistemological relations of the proper realm of economic sociology with those of economics and sociology, and especially with the domain of rational choice theory This failure is compounded by a misplaced distinction between the subject matter of economic sociology and that of sociological economics, or socioeconomics And some recent works in the discipline (including the ambitious Handbook of Economic Sociology ) have not helped to remedy this situation In this paper, we try to address this situation by suggesting some reformulations of the subject matter of economic sociology in relation to those of related disciplines In addition, we attempt to redefine the field of the sociology of the market which is seen as the focal specialty of economic sociology     

Uncertainty and Economic Sociology:

A BSTRACT . The paper discusses the role of uncertainty in economic sociology, aiming to clarify some controversial issues in the related literature. Initially, some conceptual remarks are made about the relation between economic sociology, neoclassical economics, and rational choice theory. Next, in light of the existing literature on uncertainty and economic sociology, we distinguish between complexity and different types of uncertainty. We also identify different versions of the maximization hypothesis and examine their relations to the different types of uncertainty. Then we defend a concept of fundamental uncertainty that emphasizes the role of institutions. A theory that combines fundamental uncertainty and institutions should emphasize not only the existence of behavior in accordance with institutions, but also the possibility of creative, bold, unconventional behavior, discussed next, as people may use the knowledge provided by institutions to go against the tide. Finally, we suggest that the primary distinction should be that between approaches to economic issues, not between disciplines.     

Max Weber as an Economist and as a Sociologist

A bstract In this article I first give a picture of Weber as an economist, mainly by focussing on a text which he distributed to his students when he taught economics in the 1890s. From this text it is, for example, clear that Weber was positive to the use of marginal utility theory in theoretical economics, but also felt that this approach was insufficient, by itself, to analyze empirical phenomena. I then outline Weber's work in economic sociology, relying primarily on Economy and Society and its central Chapter 2 ("Sociological Categories of Economic Action"). The differences between the approaches of economic theory and economic sociology, as seen by Weber, are summarized, and an account is given of some of Weber's most suggestive concepts in economic sociology. In the concluding section the question is raised as to when the analyst, according to Weber, should use economic sociology rather than economic theory, and vice versa. Weber's ideas about a broad economic science–what he termed Sozialökonomik or social economics–are also presented.     

Max Weber

A bstract .   This paper argues that Weber's outline and research program is only of limited relevance for present-day economic sociology and heterodox economics because Weber had a rather narrow and static understanding of rationality and the economy. Uncertainty, both as a basic fact of economic life and in the interpretation of what rational action means in specific contexts, is missing in his approach. After a short discussion of the secondary literature on Weber's methodology, the paper focuses on the most important writings of Weber on methods and economics (e.g., his outline and some parts of Economy and Society ). The result of our investigation is that Weber shared a rather narrow, neoclassical understanding of the Austrian variant of economics. His important construction of goal-oriented behavior as the major methodological advice to analyze human action presupposes the idealized assumptions of perfect knowledge. His understanding of the market exchange process, price setting, and the functioning of full competition are rather conventional and elementary. Weber's genius did not materialize in the field of economics, but in his sociology of religion and law and in his sociology of domination.     

Interpenetration Versus Embeddedness

A bstract .   The economy and economics are important fields in Talcott Parsons's work. Parsons's contributions on this subject were, however, mostly critically received in the new economic sociology. In this article, main points of criticism of Parsons's economic sociology will be discussed and the question asked whether the importance of Parsons's works in economic sociology was adequately treated. It will be demonstrated that the critical assessments was based for the most part on theoretical conceptions Parsons developed during his structural-functionalist period. Hence the assessments neglected to discuss the theory of expressive-symbolic communication of affect that Parsons developed in his later systems-functionalist period. However, precisely these later theoretical developments correlate directly with the concept of social embeddedness as a key concept in the new economic sociology. A stronger linking with this development in Parsons's theory could bring economic sociology closer to finding a foundation in action theory, which has been missing up to the present.     

Franz Oppenheimer's (1864–1943) Social Economic Approach to Health

The idea of scholarly synthesis was central to the founders of the American Journal of Economics and Sociology. Franz Oppenheimer (1864–1943) in fact impersonated the idea of scholarly synthesis. Being the son of a Reformist rabbi—these religious roots provided the impulse for his work—he started out as a physician in the industrial suburbs of Berlin; his diagnosis was that he faced social and not medical disease, which consequently brought him to the study of economics. But unlike many mainstream economists today, he insisted on the necessary cooperation between economists and sociologists, ideally in one person. His chair in Frankfurt, showing his own handwriting, was denominated for economic theory and sociology. In this article, I show his contributions with respect to economic aspects of health. These are not well known. Part of the reason is that the field of health economics as it is taught now is very narrow. Therefore, Oppenheimer's health economic contributions tend to be overlooked.     

Economics, Sociology, and the "Professional Complex"

A bstract .   This article discusses the relationship between economics and sociology in the context of Parsons's analytical theory of action and systems and his criticisms of orthodox and institutional economics. The article also addresses his view of the importance of the professions to an understanding of the nature of advanced capitalism. The professions are discussed as both an illustration of his theoretical argument and a substantive problem that stimulated the development of his theory. The "professional complex" is an emergent phenomenon in capitalism that modifies its operation and points to the complexity of systems of social action that require to be analyzed without being reduced to one of their elements. This reductionism is evident in orthodox economic theory and also in the more sociologically-oriented approach of institutional economics. Parsons argues that each is a form of what, following Whitehead, he calls the "fallacy of misplaced concreteness." Although Parsons offers a significant critique of dominant approaches in economics, major flaws within his own theory create the appearance that he has simply carried over the deficiencies of orthodox theory into his own general statement of theory. These flaws contribute to major misunderstandings of Parsons's project and, therefore, indicate continuing problems in the relation between economics and sociology.     

Schumpeter's Challenge to Economists: History,Theory, and Statistics as Key Competencies and Sociology as a Vision for the Future

Schumpeter wrote that a “scientific” economist is competent in three “techniques”: economic theory, economic history, and statistics. In addition, he mentions economic sociology. The current interpretation is that theory, history, and statistics refer to aspects of research that can emerge in any field of science. Their content and relations can be clarified with Mach's writings. Economic sociology is not a technique within economics, but a part of general sociology. The rationale of economic and general sociology becomes clear by considering Schumpeter's interpretations of Marx's ideas. Schumpeter's ultimate ambition may have been a grand theory following Marx's vision.     

The Changing Relationship Between Economic Sociology and Institutional Economics

A bstract In his early work. Talcott Parsons severely criticized Old Institutional Economists like Thorstein Veblen and Clarence Ayres. Parsons'main objection was that institutional economics had a misconceived view on the scope of economics: institutions, being the embodiment of values, were the proper subject of sociology rather than economics. By arguing for a clear-cut division of labor between economics and sociology. Parsons legitimated the divide between the two disciplines that came into being in the years to follow. Recently however, the relationship between economic-sociology and institutional economics has changed dramatically. New Economic Sociology (advocated by scholars like Mark Granovetter and Richard Swedberig) rejects the division of labor proposed by Parsons. By-providing substitutes rather than just complements to economics, it tries to counter economic imperialism. This creates significant similarities between New Economic Sociology, Old Institutional Economics and the recent return of institutionalism in economic theory. However, the quest for a division of labor between economics and sociology remains unfinished.     

从交易费用和社会分工看物流外包

第三方物流的出现和存在必然有其合理性,文中从经济学和社会学两个方面,通过交易费用理论和社会分工理论解释第三方物流这一这会经济现象存在的合理性,从而说明了企业尽可能采用物流外包而放弃自营物流的必要性。     

集合竞价问题研究

20世纪中期以来,随着纳什均衡理论的提出和发展,博弈论(game theory)逐渐成为一门新兴的科学,它涉及了经济学、管理学、计算机科学、社会学等各个领域,对社会的发展起了极大的推动作用。本文侧重在博弈论中一些具体问题的优化算法的实现与比较,以及其在高性能平台下的并行度和改进情况的分析和研究。     

On the Economics of Moral Preferences

Abstract . The long‐standing critique of the “economic model of man” has gained new impetus, not least due to the broadening research in behavioral and experimental economics. Many of the critics have focused on the apparent difficulty of traditional rational choice theory to account for the role of moral or ethical concerns in human conduct, and a number of authors have suggested modifications in the standard model in response to such critique. This article takes issue with a quite commonly adopted “revisionist” strategy, namely, seeking to account for moral concerns by including them as additional preferences in an agent's utility function. It is argued that this strategy ignores the critical difference between preferences over outcomes and preferences over actions, and that it fails to recognize that “moral preferences” belong in the second category. Preferences over actions, however, cannot be consistently accounted for within a theoretical framework that focuses on the rationality of single actions. They require a shift of perspective, from a theory of rational choice to a theory of rule‐following behavior.     

Economic Sociology

A bstract . Economic sociology covers the gray area between the disciplines of economics and sociology brings scholars from both disciplines together to communicate over topics of interest. This communication provides debate that stimulates and strengthens social theory , which in turn, allows for better policy recommendations. A major area for concern in the development of economic sociology has been the presence of economic imperialism combined with economic bubris , the effects of which could suffocate economic sociology. These phenomena arc examined along with the trends over the past twenty years in the development of economic sociology and the relative impact that "economic sociologists" from both disciplines are having on their respective fields. Observing these trends will allow for an analysis of the developments in economic sociology and a assessment of where It is going in the future.     

Parsonian Economic Sociology

A bstract .   This article focuses on Parsonian economic sociology and its actual or potential bridges and contributions to contemporary economics. These bridges are methodological or epistemological and theoretical or substantive ones. A relevant instance of the methodological bridges is socioeconomic holism, epitomized in the systems approach to economy and society. An important case of the theoretical bridges is sociological institutionalism. The holistic systems approach is a pertinent methodological bridge in that it treats the economy as an integral element of society as a larger system, and consequently treats economics as part of the complex of social sciences. Sociological institutionalism is an important theoretical bridge to (especially institutional) economics by virtue of its emphasis on social institutions and their economic significance. Some other methodological and theoretical bridges of Parsonian economic sociology to contemporary economics are also identified and discussed.     

The New Economic Sociology of Prices: An Analysis Inspired by the Austrian School of Economics

The new economic sociology includes some reference studies on the sociology of prices. They have not until now been studied by economists, and this article attempts to fill that gap by offering a detailed analysis, inspired by the Austrian School of Economics, of their object and approach. We first show that, from a theoretical point of view, the explanations advanced by these sociologists are based implicitly on basic models of economics, such as the “law of supply and demand” and the “law of costs,” and that they cannot therefore replace economic explanations of prices. Secondly, from a methodological point of view, these studies are based on field surveys that provide concrete information on certain markets but they lose sight of an aspect that is fundamental to the Austrian School, the interdependence of prices in different markets. And when this interdependence is taken into account, namely, in the case of the relationship between cost and price, the causal link postulated by sociologists goes from cost to price when Austrian economists argue that it goes in the opposite direction.     

Behavioural Economics: A Virginia Political Economy Perspective

Behavioural economics offers a critique of modern neoclassical economics by providing empirical evidence that the model of rational choice does not accurately describe human decision‐making processes. The existence of cognitive biases, what we might term ‘agent failure’, becomes reason to doubt the efficacy of unhampered markets, and is seen by some as a sufficient condition for government intervention. This article offers a critique of this argument from an Austrian and public choice theory comparative institutions perspective. Agent failure arguments are analogous to market failure arguments of the mid‐twentieth century and the same kinds of responses made against the latter are applied to the former. Behavioural economics arguments for intervention ignore the cognitive biases of political actors, neglect the comparative perspective that results from such biases, and do not examine the ways in which markets are superior to politics in providing the information and incentives actors need to become aware of their errors and correct them. The existence of imperfectly rational agents, like the existence of imperfect markets, is therefore not a sufficient condition for government intervention into the market.     

Pareto, Parsons, and the Boundary Between Economics and Sociology

A bstract .   Recent discussions of the separation bUniversity of Bremenetween economics and sociology in the United States highlight the way Talcott Parsons used Vilfredo Pareto's Trattato di Sociologia Generale to propose that economics study logical actions and sociology study nonlogical actions. This article argues instead that in Pareto's treatise: (1) sociology is a synthetic discipline concerned with the study of human society in general; (2) human behavior is nearly always logical from a subjective point of view; and (3) sociology studies both logical and nonlogical behavior judged from an objective viewpoint. Thus, Pareto is an important intellectual ancestor for economic sociology.     

Max Weber and Economic Sociology

A bstract .   Peukert (2004 ) argues that Weber's work is only of limited relevance to present-day economic sociology because it incorporates "a rather narrow and static understanding of rationality and the economy." This article disputes that claim. It is argued that Weber differentiates between economic and sociological perspectives on the economy through incorporating uncertainty into the latter. Hence Weber's economic sociology develops the distinction between "before" and "after" perspectives on action, incorporates expectations, and defines capital with reference to time and uncertainty. Furthermore, Weber's analysis of formal rationality presupposes uncertainty. Weber's economic sociology thus assumes a dynamic economy, where uncertainty is prevalent, and formal rationality can reduce uncertainty. Peukert's analysis thus (a) fails to consider Weber's differentiation between economic and sociological investigations, and (b) does not engage with Weber's knowledge of Austrian economics.     

Sociology,Economics, and Gender

This article explores the profoundly gendered nature of the split between the disciplines of economics and sociology that took place in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, emphasizing implications for current efforts to bring the fields more closely together. Drawing on historical documents and feminist studies of science, it investigates the gendered processes underlying the divergence of the disciplines in definition, method, and degree of engagement with social problems. The recently developed field of economic sociology and other efforts to bridge the disciplinary gap have the potential to heal this disciplinary split, if they are broadened, deepened, and made wiser and more self-reflective through the use of feminist analysis.     

The Sociology of Knowledge as a Tool for Research Into the History of Economic Thought

A bstract . Hill and Rouse's formulation of Mannheim's framework for the sociology of knowledge as a means of examining the history of economic thought is rejected although it is held that they render an important service to economics by arguing the need for employment of the sociology of knowledge as a research tool. They have not appropriated Mannheim's categories authentically and they apply them in an overly simplified and undialectical manner. Even Mannheim's authentic formulation of the sociology of knowledge suffered limitations which more recent work enables us to overcome. What is believed to be a superior sociology of knowledge framework for investigating the evolution of economic thought is constructed by joining the Berger-Luckmann model of legitimation with Habermas's philosophical anthropology. Increasingly economists are recognizing that their discipline is in a state of crisis. The crucial issue is how we can better understand the sociological nature of economic thought—its social functioning—to enable us to formulate our own economic theory so as to maximize human welfare.