In this article I develop a proposal for the theoretical vantage point of the sociology of markets, focusing on the problem of the social order of markets. The initial premise is that markets are highly demanding arenas of social interaction, which can only operate if three inevitable...

Are newly established institutions capable of shaping actors' strategies and coordinating behavior on a single path? Contrary to punctuated equilibrium analyses, this paper suggests that the constraining capacity of a range of newly established institutions in new European capitalisms is weak...

The concept of trust has recently been rediscovered, especially in the fields of economic sociology and organization theory. Nevertheless, the actual functioning of trust in markets has only been understood incompletely up to now. As this paper argues, one reason for this is that...

This paper addresses the question of what role morally oriented behavior plays in the efficiency of market outcomes. This issue is as controversial in economics as it is in sociology. To get a better understanding of the problems and opportunities involved in morally oriented behavior in...

This article challenges the methodological nationalism of the convergence debate by arguing that multilevel governance destabilizes the coalitions thought to underpin liberal and coordinated varieties of capitalism. Existing efforts to explain how coherent production regimes emerge and persist...

This essay reviews the development of approaches within the comparative capitalisms (CC) literature and points to three theoretical innovations which, taken together, define and distinguish these approaches as a group. First, national economies are characterized by distinct institutional...