Great individuals are assumed to cause the success of radical innovations--thus Henry Ford is depicted as the one who established the automobile industry in America. Hayagreeva Rao tells a different story, one that will change the way you think about markets forever. He explains how "market...

The authors examine the popularity of boys' given names in Beijing before and after the onset of the Cultural Revolution to clarify how exogenous and endogenous factors interact to shape fashion. Whereas recent work in the sociology of culture emphasizes the importance of endogenous processes in...

Research demonstrates a marked tendency towards “acculturative conservatism,” whereby immigrants select given names for their children that are “established” -- i.e., popular in an earlier generation of the native population. Two explanations for this tendency are: (a) Immigrants lack...

Whereas recent research has demonstrated how disinterested social validation may skew valuation in meritocratic domains, interested promotion may be at least as important a factor. As suggested by research on reputational entrepreneurship, a producer's death shifts promotion opportunities in two...

We show that if actors are defined as more knowledgeable when they possess more information, and if actors are defined as more powerful when they can extract greater surplus while exchanging resources, there is a fundamental trade-off in the social structural foundations of power and knowledge....