phd in economic sociology

Best Economic Sociology Programs

Ranked in 2021, part of Best Social Sciences and Humanities Schools

This field combines analytical

This field combines analytical principles of economics and the social aspects of sociology to understand the behavior of markets, contracts, networks and firms. These are the top graduate schools for economic sociology. Read the methodology »

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Economic Sociology

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Sarah Quinn

Katherine Stovel

Latest news.

• Sarah Quinn Discusses Credit Markets in ASA Interview (July 17, 2019)
• Frahm Awarded Fulbright-Hays Dissertation Fellowship (October 6, 2014)
• Alexes Harris in the LA Times and on NPR (May 19, 2014)
• Sociology Colleagues Making News (April 10, 2014)
• Sociologist Curran Co-Director on $1.5 Million USAID Grant (April 10, 2014)

Related Research

• Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: EMNLP 2023
• Stephens, André. 2020. "Confidence Game: Fiscal Crisis, Market Confidence, and the Remaking of Jamaica’s Post-Recession Political Economy." Ph.D. Dissertation, Department of Sociology, University of Washington.
• Guler, Selen. 2019. "The Good, The Bad, and The Taxed: How Taxes Shape Morals in Markets." M.A. Thesis, Department of Sociology, University of Washington.
• Leibbrand, Christine. 2019. “Unequal Opportunity? Racial, Ethnic, and Gender Disparities in the Returns to Internal U.S. Migration.” Social Currents.
• Leibbrand, Christine Elizabeth. 2019 "Race, Ethnicity, Gender, and the Pursuit of Economic Opportunity in the Age of the Migration Decline." Ph.D. Dissertation, Department of Sociology, University of Washington.
• Cadigan, Michele. 2018. "Becoming an Expert Cannabis Connoisseur: Toward a Theory of Moralizing Labor." M.A. Thesis. Department of Sociology, University of Washington.
• Kim, Lanu. 2018. "The Impact of Technology on Work Practices." Ph.D. Dissertation, Department of Sociology, University of Washington.
• Wurpts, Bernd. 2018. "Networks into Institutions or Institutions into Networks? Evidence from the Medieval Hansa." Ph.D. Dissertation, Department of Sociology, University of Washington.
• Wurpts, Bernd, Katie E. Corcoran, and Steven Pfaff. 2018. “The Diffusion of Protestantism in Northern Europe: Historical Embeddedness and Complex Contagions in the Adoption of the Reformation.” Social Science History 42(2):213-244.
• Sarah Quinn. American Bonds:   How Credit Markets Shaped a Nation. Princeton University Press. Princeton Studies in American Politics: Historical, International, and Comparative Perspectives. 2019.
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Sociology at MIT

Search form, degree programs, economic sociology program (esp).

MIT Sloan's Economic Sociology (ESP) is a new PhD concentration aimed at training scholars who conduct leading-edge research that applies sociological tools and concepts to gain a deeper understanding of organizations and the economy. The program reflects the confluence of two trends that have gained increasing salience over the past twenty years:

• the increasing demand in business schools for faculty with sociological training; and
• the rapid growth of economic sociology as a sub discipline of sociology.

Each of these trends represents the growing recognition that the sociological conception of the economy sheds unique light on economic processes. And yet the increasing demand for economic sociology has not been met with a corresponding increase in supply. ESP is designed to help fill this gap.

Note to potential applicants: An excellent way of deciding whether to apply to the ESP is by reading articles in top sociology journals (e.g., American Sociological Review, American Journal of Sociology) and secondarily at top journals in organizations and management (e.g., Administrative Science Quarterly, Organization Science), especially those authored by ESP faculty, and deciding whether you want to write articles like these.

Visit the Economic Sociology homepage .

History, Anthropology, Science, Technology & Society Program (HASTS)

MITs Doctoral Program in History, Anthropology, and Science, Technology, and Society (HASTS) trains scholars to study science and technology as activities situated in social and cultural contexts. HASTS faculty examine expert as well as popular engagement with the processes and products of technological and scientific work, and conduct research across a spectrum of geographical areas and historical periods.

HASTS faculty and students employ historical, ethnographic, and sociological methods and theories to investigate a wide range of topics, including:

• cultures of engineering
• the making of scientific tools and theories
• conventions of laboratory practice
• science and technology in military enterprise
• the relation of technology to economic institutions
• the relation of science and law
• the politics of race and science
• knowledge-production in biomedicine and life sciences
• agricultural and environmental history
• science education

Visit the HASTS homepage .

Economic Sociology

David Sebastian Broska

Esha Chatterjee

Mark Granovetter

Barbara Kiviat

Sheridan Stewart

Xueguang Zhou

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Department of Sociology

• Economic Sociology and Organizations

The department continues a long history of studying economic and organizational phenomena from a sociological perspective. Research questions range from family decisions to immigrate to organizational strategies for profitability to national choices of welfare policies. The department sponsors the MIT-Harvard Economic Sociology Seminar , the Migration and Immigrant Incorporation Seminar , and the Work, Organizations, and Markets Seminar .

Affiliated Graduate Students

News related to Economic Sociology & Organizations

Faculty Spotlight: Considering the Impacts of COVID-19 on Higher Education Inequality in the United States

Amid the unprecedented disruption of COVID-19, the 2019-2020 academic year has come to a close for most college and university students in the United States. Yet many are asking: now what? Higher education leaders are offering some answers, speaking to immediate concerns like whether teaching and learning will take place on colleges campuses come the fall, how financial arrangements will be handled, and what scaled-up virtual learning might look like.

... Read more about Faculty Spotlight: Considering the Impacts of COVID-19 on Higher Education Inequality in the United States

David S. Pedulla to join Harvard Sociology

Mario Small selected as American Academy of Political and Social Science Fellow

The Confounding Island

Orlando Patterson 's new book, The Confounding Island: Jamaica and the Postcolonial Predicament , has received favorable notice and lively discussion,... Read more about The Confounding Island

TED talk on Economic Inequality

Jonathan Mijs , who returns to Harvard Sociology this year as Lecturer on Sociology, performed a TED talk in London on economic inequality.  See:...

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Associated Faculty

• Clem Aeppli
• Jason Beckfield
• Mary C. Brinton
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Related Publications

Winship, Christopher . 2018. “ Inchoate Situations and Extra-Rational Behavior ”. Pp. 223-243 in Rationality in the Social Sciences , edited by Helmut Staubmann and Victor Lidz . Springer International Publishing.

Small, Mario L. 2017. Someone to Talk To . New York: Oxford University Press.

Pernell, Kim, Jiwook Jung, and Frank Dobbin . 2017. “ The Hazards of Expert Control: Chief Risk Officers and Risky Derivatives ”. American Sociological Review 82 (3):511-541.

Graduate Program

Graduate program in sociology.

The Berkeley Sociology Graduate Program is the heart of our collective enterprise. Berkeley welcomes a wide diversity of students with far-ranging research interests and equips them with the sociological training, resources, and supportive community necessary to succeed in academia and beyond. Students who come here find a graduate program that has been carefully designed to offer them a rich and complete sociological education, while simultaneously allowing space and incentives to explore and develop their original ideas. 

Factors distinguishing our graduate program from others nationwide include: 1) our rigorous training in general social theory, 2) our emphasis on public sociology and social justice, and 3) our embeddedness in a vibrant interdisciplinary community. Our emphasis on social theory is demonstrated by our required graduate theory sequence, elective theory courses, qualifying examination in theory, and teaching opportunities within Berkeley’s undergraduate theory sequence. As a department, we also maintain an abiding focus on public sociology and offer a number of fellowships, grants, and awards for students pursuing research that advances social justice. Finally, beyond the department, many students and faculty engage with university-wide institutes and clusters including the Institute for the Study of Societal Issues, the Institute of Governmental Studies, the Institute for Research on Labor and Employment, the Latin America research cluster, and many others.

Students admitted to Berkeley sociology receive a competitive funding package which includes six years of full support (including tuition and a living stipend) through a combination of fellowships and teaching, with many opportunities to secure funding past year six. Additionally, students are mentored in the skills needed to secure nationally competitive fellowships. In the past dozen years, Berkeley graduate students were awarded nearly one-quarter of the National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowships in Sociology (53 of 226), almost double that of any other program. In addition, our students support their research with fellowships from the Ford Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, the Fulbright Graduate Student Program, and more.  They also receive funding for their dissertation research from the National Science Foundation, the Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation, the Charlotte Newcombe Foundation, the American-Scandinavian Foundation, the German Marshall Fund, and the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies.

Berkeley graduate students receive mentorship to publish widely and influence the field. In the 24 years that the American Sociological Association has awarded an annual prize for the best dissertation in sociology, Berkeley graduate students have won a quarter of the time (6), far more than any other department. The “News” section of this site details some recent graduate student publications. Following completion of their Ph.D.s, Berkeley graduate students frequently end up publishing their dissertations as books. For example, the students who finished from 2000 through 2007 currently have 34 books published or in press.

Training in our department has prepared many of our graduates to obtain research and teaching positions in research-oriented universities; recent graduates currently hold faculty positions at Harvard, Michigan, Stanford, Chicago, Northwestern, UCLA, Columbia, Cornell, UC Davis, UC Irvine, UCSF, UCSC, Syracuse, USC, Arizona, Washington, Illinois Urbana-Champaign, MIT, Georgetown, Boston U, SUNY Albany, UMass Amherst, William and Mary, Tufts and Oregon. Other students have taken jobs at more teaching-oriented schools, such as the Cal State campuses, Oberlin, Wellesley, Barnard, Boston College, Wesleyan and Sarah Lawrence.  Outside the US, students have taken jobs at McGill (Montreal), University College (Dublin), Universidad Carlos III (Madrid) and Tsinghua (Beijing).  A smaller but significant number have pursued careers in research institutes, business, government, and nonprofits.

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Dating back to the classic works of Marx, Weber and Durkheim, economic institutions and behavior have been issues of core sociological concern. In recent years, interest in this topic has surged and economic sociology has become one of the most rapidly growing areas of the discipline. Economic sociology is based on the idea that economic action is social action and economic institutions and behavior are socially constructed and culturally and historically specific. Economic sociologists study firms, production, labor and financial markets, the interaction between the economy and the state, and economic transformations, in both comparative and international perspective. Closely related to economic sociology is the field of the sociology of organizations. As with economic sociology, the sociology of organizations has deep classical roots and many of the foundational works in the modern period of American sociology were conducted within this field. The Economic Sociology & Organizations program at Michigan consists of a core course in economic sociology, a course in macro-organizational theory, a research seminar for advanced students and a series of changing topical courses and seminars. Faculty and courses in the program also link with the areas of Power, History, and Social Change; Culture and Knowledge; Race and Ethnicity, Gender and Sexuality; and Social Demography, as well as the Organizational Behavior program in the business school.

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PhD Programme

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 What we offer

Our research critically interrogates relationships between economic, political, social, spatial and cultural change

LSE is one of the world's leading social science universities. Students benefit from the interdisciplinary environment, an international student body and a global perspective. 

PhD students are very much part of the department's research culture. They are active members of our community and are involved with staff in relevant seminars and research workshops. 

Our Programmes 

• MPhil/PhD Sociology  
• MPhil/PhD Cities  

We also offer a  Visiting Research Student  programme which allows students pursuing research at other institutions to attend courses and benefit from the expertise of the LSE faculty, Library and academic support services. 

Funding  

Funding is available from a variety of School administered sources. For more information, please visit our  MPhil/PhD admissions frequently asked questions page. 

See our  MPhil / PhD admissions frequently asked questions . 

Contact Us 

Email:  [email protected]  

Meet Our Faculty Looking for a PhD supervisor? Find out more about our academics and their research

Research Find out about our innovative research and dynamic research culture

Virtual Graduate Open Events Online events taking place between 13-24 November 2023

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• ESOL Economic Sociology, Organization and Labour Studies
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Economic Sociology, Organization and Labour Studies

Unexpected pathways - ESOL

This is the video testimony of Toloue Miandar, former NASP PhD student...

ESOL IS - Christopher McCarty -- 12/02/2024

 ESOL Seminars Series   Using Network Science to Eval...

Hanne Gaukel won Fondazione Franceschi's research Grant for for MSc and PhD students

  We are pleased to annouce that our Ph.D Candidate in Economi...

Programme Aims & Structure

The Ph.D. in Economic Sociology, Organizations and Labour Studies (ESOL) is a joint programme of the Department of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Milan, the Department of Economics  at the University of Bergamo, and the Department of Economics and Management   at the University of Pavia. The Collegio Carlo Alberto (Turin) also contributes to the Programme with scholarships, training, and supervising faculty.

The Programme is based at the University of Milan .

The ESOL multidisciplinary Faculty Board includes professors from the Programme's four funding institutions (University of Milan, University of Bergamo, University of Pavia, and Collegio Carlo Alberto) as well as scholars from other Italian universities (University of Turin, University of Brescia, University of Bologna, University of Genova, University of Macerata, University of Valle D'Aosta, and University of Milan-Bicocca).

With several joint supervision and visiting programmes for both outgoing and incoming students, the ESOL Programme cooperates with prestigious Universities in other European countries, such as Linköping University (Sweden), Sorbonne Université (France), University of Groningen (the Netherlands), University of Agder (Norway), and Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (Spain).

Aims & Structure

The ESOL PhD Programme aims to train students in both substantive competencies and advanced methodological skills from different disciplines and fields, all critical to the study and regulation of economic phenomena, organizations, and labour. 

The duration of the Programme is four years . The Programme includes three main phases. 

First Phase: 1st year and part of the 2nd year

The 1st year and part of the 2nd are spent in activities at the NASP Graduate School in Social and Political Sciences . These are mostly based in Milan, but may partly occur in the cities where the other ESOL partner institutions are located (Bergamo, Pavia, Turin). In particular, some seminars and training activities are organized within the doctoral hub NASP-Collegio Carlo Alberto in Turin.

After admission, a study plan for each student is designed according to their interest in one (or more) of the 4 main research areas in the Programme. 

Students must earn at least 39 credits with compulsory coursework, exams, and class projects. They are also expected to participate in a series of international and peer seminars, conferences, and summer schools designed every year based on students' and faculty members' interests. 

At the beginning of the 2nd year, and of each subsequent academic year, students must present a research progress report and discuss it with the ESOL Faculty.

During the first year, students also select their main research area of interest from the 4 ESOL areas. Based on this selection, a supervising team of at least two Faculty members is composed. This may be a multidisciplinary team and may include faculty from multiple ESOL areas.

Second Phase: 2nd, 3rd and 4th year

Part of the 2nd and 3rd years is spent in other European or international universities for visiting periods. During this time students typically also attend in-depth courses, advanced seminars, and international academic conferences. Finally, a significant portion of students' work in this phase is devoted to completing their PhD research project, drafting their PhD thesis, and writing academic papers on related research. 

The 4th year is entirely devoted to thesis preparation. The final thesis is submitted to the Faculty Board at the end of the 4th year for admission to external review.

Third Phase: thesis review and VIVA

The third phase includes the thesis  review process, subsequent revision & completion and, ultimately, the VIVA . 

The dissertation is reviewed by two external referees who may:

i) admit the candidate to the VIVA; ii) require amendments and revisions. In the latter case, up to six months may be allowed to revise the thesis before admission to the VIVA. 

The examining committee is usually composed of three members.

The Programme's research areas

The ESOL PhD programme covers 4 main broad research areas :

Behavioural and Computational Sociology

The PHD faculty in this area focuses on the  understanding of socio-economic behaviour  following  experimental and computational methods . It is linked to the  BehaveLab , a new centre for research and training on behavioural sociology that includes laboratory facilities for performing behavioural research. It follows  quantitative methods  and uses  agent-based modelling  and  network analysis  to examine the interplay of individual behaviour and network dynamics in determining complex aggregate social patterns.

Research in Behavioural and Computational Sociology is particularly focused on three broad sub-areas :

(a) the behavioural foundations of socio-economic behaviour, often with a behavioural game theory approach; (b) the role of social networks and their formation and dynamics to explain aggregate social patterns; (c) the influence of social patterns on social behaviour.

Employment Relations & Labor Law

The PHD faculty in this area is a research group which explores  different aspects of labour markets, industrial relations  and  individual employment relationship dynamics  drawing upon diverse social sciences, mainly economic sociology and labour law, and employing an  interdisciplinary approach  and  comparative methodology .

Research in the Employment Relations and Labour Law area is particularly focused on the following broad sub-areas :

(a) the impact of labour market and industrial relations institutions and collective action on terms of employment and working conditions; (b) the developments in labour and employment relations at national, local and company levels, especially from a comparative perspective; (c) the impact of technology on employment and industrial relations and on individual and collective rights; (d) the protection of human and social rights in the (national and international) labour market and within the employment contractual relationship; (e) the supranational and national policies to increase the quantity and quality of jobs.

Organization Studies & Human Resource Management

The PHD faculty in this area is a  pluralistic research group  which explores  different aspects of organizational dynamics  drawing upon diverse social sciences (such as sociology, economy,  psychology,  management, and anthropology) and employing  both quantitative and qualitative methodologies . 

Research in the Organization and HR Management area is particularly focused on three broad sub-areas : 

(a) the complex interplay between organization, management,  HR,    and social and environmental sustainability; (b) the role of technology in today's workplaces; (c) the complementarities between collective and individual dimensions of employment relationships at the workplace level.

Exemplary topics belonging to one or more of such sub-areas include employee well-being, inequalities in and through workplaces, HRM and (economic, business, social and environmental) performance, job insecurity, organizational design in digitalized firms, HRM in hybrid work settings, technology and creative/craft work, human capital management, employee turnover, compensation policies, employee freedom and employee voice and silence.

Social Stratification, Occupations and Education

The PHD faculty in this area includes scholars interested in all aspects of  social stratification  and  socio-economic inequality , including the institutional as well as the socio-demographic dimensions. We work mostly, but not exclusively, with  quantitative methods , including the  statistical analysis  of both survey and administrative micro-data, and  experimental approaches  based on the counter-factual paradigm.

Research in the Social Stratification, Education and Occupations area is focused on the  empirical study  of the  distribution of resources  among individuals and social groups in contemporary societies,  its change over time and space , and  its intergenerational transmission . We are interested in the socio-economic mechanisms producing as well as reducing status inequality, including public policies and the welfare state; mating and family formation; group processes creating identities and discrimination; spatial patterns of diffusion and segregation; geographical mobility.

Exemplary topics  include concepts and theories of inequality; life-course analysis; poverty; gender and ethnic differences in stratification processes; changes in the occupational structure; social-demographic patterns of inequality; inequality of educational opportunities; vocational training and skill formation; the school-to-work transition; higher education; labour market and career processes; unemployment and active labour market policies; income and wealth inequality. A comparative perspective is welcome, as well as attention to the micro- and meso-mechanisms producing the macro phenomena.

The ESOL PhD Programme aims to train students in both substantive competences and advanced methodological skills from different disciplines and fields, all critical to the study and regulation of economic phenomena, organizations, and labour.

The duration of the Programme is four years . The Programme includes three main phases.

The 1 st year and part of the 2 nd are spent in activities at the NASP Graduate School in Social and Political Sciences . These are mostly based in Milan, but may partly occur in the cities where the other ESOL partner institutions are located (Bergamo, Pavia, Turin). In particular, several seminar and training activities are organized within the doctoral hub NASP-Collegio Carlo Alberto. [LP1]  

After admission, a study plan for each student is designed according to their interest in one (or more) of the 4 main research areas in the Programme.

Students must earn at least 39 credits with compulsory coursework, exams, and class projects . They are also expected to participate in a series of international and peer seminars, conferences, and summer schools designed every year based on students’ and faculty members’ interests.

At the beginning of the 2 nd year, and of each subsequent [LP2]   academic year, students must present a research progress report and discuss it with the ESOL Faculty to be admitted to the second year.

  [LP1] Può andare bene?

  [LP2] Forse meglio mettere così, perché questo paragrafo descrive cosa succede nel primo e secondo anno…. Se però pensate che sia troppo pesante, torniamo al più snello: At the beginning of each academic year

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MIT’s Master of Applied Science in Data, Economics, and Design of Policy program adds a public policy track

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MIT’s Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) and Department of Economics have announced an expansion of their jointly administered Master of Applied Science in Data, Economics, and Design of Policy (DEDP) program . This expansion adds a new public policy track to complement the existing international development track, opening up new avenues for student learning and research. 

Designed to tackle poverty alleviation and other pressing policy challenges in the United States and other high-income countries, the curriculum of the new track spans a diverse set of issues, from domestic concerns like minimum wage and consumer welfare to global matters including trade, climate change, and immigration. Applications for the public policy track will open this fall, with the inaugural cohort set to arrive on MIT’s campus in spring 2026.

The DEDP program, led by MIT professors and Nobel laureates Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo, along with professors Sara Fisher Ellison and Benjamin Olken, was established with the mission of equipping diverse cohorts of talented professionals with the knowledge and skills to tackle poverty using evidence-based approaches. The new master’s degree track will support this mission while also underscoring the program’s commitment to addressing a broad array of critical challenges in the fight against poverty worldwide.

"The DEDP program has proven successful on many dimensions, and we are enthusiastic about leveraging its successes to address a broader set of social challenges,” says Ellison, a faculty lead for the program. “The public policy track will enable us to apply evidence-based methodology to poverty alleviation and other related issues in the context of high-income countries, as well. Given increasing levels of wealth and income inequality in these countries, we feel that the timing is opportune and the need is great."

The DEDP program distinguishes itself with an innovative admissions model that prioritizes demonstrated ability and motivation over traditional credentials, such as standardized tests and recommendation letters. To be eligible to apply to the master’s program, candidates must have earned a DEDP MicroMasters credential by passing five of the DEDP online courses. The courses are completely free to audit. Those who wish to earn a course certificate can pay a fee, which varies by the learner’s ability to pay, to take the proctored exam. While applications are reviewed holistically, performance in these classes is the primary factor in admissions decisions.

This approach democratizes access to higher education, enabling students from typically underrepresented backgrounds to demonstrate their potential for success. Notably, the program has welcomed many students from nontraditional backgrounds, such as a student who enrolled directly from high school (and who is now a second-year PhD student in economics at MIT), reflecting the ambition of its faculty directors to make higher education more accessible.

Sofia Martinez, a graduate of the class of 2023 and now co-founder of Learning Alliance , says, "Without the MicroMasters paving the way, applying to MIT or any similar institution would have been unthinkable for us. Initially, my aim in taking the online courses wasn't to pursue the residential program; it was only after witnessing my own progress that I realized the possibility wasn't so distant after all. This sentiment resonates with many in our cohort, which is truly humbling.”

Since its launch in 2020, the DEDP master’s program has conferred degrees to 87 students from 44 countries, showcasing its global reach and the success of its admissions model. Upon arriving on campus, students embark on an accelerated master's program. They complete a full course load in the spring, followed by a capstone project in the summer, applying the theoretical knowledge and practical skills gained through the program at research and policy organizations.

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