The welfare state is often portrayed as provider of insurance against ‘uncertainties’, in Knight's (1921) sense of the term, which would be refused or underinsured on private markets. This image conflicts with the standard economic model of risk exchange founded on the subjective...

This paper addresses the problem of the conceptualization of social structure and its relationship to human agency in economic sociology. The background is provided by John Maynard Keynes's observations on the effects of uncertainty and conventional behavior on the stock market; the analysis...

We extend the transformational model of social activity proposed in recent realist social theory by importing into it a theory of technological objects and technological change. The paper begins with an account of the transformational model, focusing particularly on the relationship between...

This paper addresses the problem of the conceptualization of social structure and its relationship to human agency in economic sociology. The background is provided by John Maynard Keynes's observations on the effects of uncertainty and conventional behavior on the stock market; the analysis...

Recent years have witnessed a growing interest in causal realism in the methodology of economics. Some of this literature reflects a strong skepticism about the existence of sharp event-regularities or 'laws' in the economic realm and, accordingly, about the prospects for the covering-law...