“Constructing Mid-Range Theories of Trust: The Role of Institutions” in Whom Can We Trust? How Groups, Networks, and Institutions Make Trust Possible (the Capstone volume of the Russell Sage Foundation project on Trust) – eds. Karen Cook, Russell Hardin and Margaret Levi

The last fifteen years have seen an explosion in research on trust, but there are still important gaps in our understanding of its sources and consequences.1 In particular, we know relatively little about the relationship between trust and the other sources of cooperation that social scientists have identified, most prominently institutions, sets of rules that shape the behavior of communities of actors through providing individuals with information about the likely social consequences of their action. How may we map out the relationship between midlevel phenomena, such as institutional rules, and micro-level expectations, such as those involved in trust? It is hard to answer these questions because debates about trust have emerged in partial isolation from broader social science debates about the respective roles of institutions (Knight 1998) and other mid-level social phenomena in supporting cooperation. The result is that even though scholars of trust are surely interested in the empirical question of how trust operates within environments shaped by institutions they lack intellectual tools that would help them investigate this, and related questions, easily.

Henry Farrell, “Constructing Mid-Range Theories of Trust: The Role ofInstitutions,” Whom Can We Trust? How Groups, Networks, and Institutions Make Trust Possible (the Capstone volume of the Russell Sage Foundation project on Trust) eds. Karen Cook, Russell Hardin and Margaret Levi, Russell Sage Foundation: 2009).

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Other Writing:

Chapter in an Edited Volume

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While an economy is always ‘embedded’ in society, the relationship between the two is undergoing profound changes in Europe, resulting in widespread instability which is emphasised by the current crisis. This book analyses these changes, and in particular pressures of intensifying international competition, globalization and financialization within Europe. Henry Farrell, “Social Institutions among Economists in ...
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Behold the AI shoggoth – with Cosma Shalizi

Artificial intelligence is a familiar-looking monster The academics argue that large language models have much older cousins in markets and bureaucracies An internet meme keeps on turning up in debates about the large language models (llms) that power services such Openai’s Chatgptand the newest version of Microsoft’s Bing search engine. It’s the “shoggoth”: an amorphous monster ...
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