Emily Erikson

Emily Erikson is professor of sociology and the school of management (by courtesy) and the Joseph C. Fox Academic Director of the Fox International Fellowship at Yale University. She uses comparative historical and computational methods to study economic growth, institutional development, and social and economic coordination in global contexts. Her book Trade and Nation: How Companies and Politics Reshaped Economic Thought (Columbia University Press) argues that political discourse and the adoption of the company form actively encouraged the development of classical economic thought in the early modern era. Previously she worked on the emergence of early multi-national firms and the structure of early modern global trade. Between Monopoly and Free Trade: The English East India Company (Princeton University Press, 2014) shows how an informal social network linking autonomous employees fostered the Company’s long-term success, shedding light on the processes underpinning the emergence of early multi-national firms and the structure of early modern global trade.

Erikson is the former chair of the American Sociological Association’s economic sociology section and incoming chair of the Rationality and Society Section. She serves on the executive council for the Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics, the editorial board of the Socio-Economic Review, Sociological Theory, Oxford University Press Series on Social Network Mechanisms, and the Cambridge Studies in Historical Sociology, She is also co-editor of The Middle Range Series at Columbia University Press. Her work has appeared in the American Sociological Review, American Journal of Sociology, Annual Review of Sociology, Sociology Theory, The Journal of Economic History, and Social Science History, among others. She has received numerous book and article awards.