James D. Montgomery (economist)

James D. Montgomery (born 1963) is professor of sociology and economics at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He received his Ph.D. in economics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He has applied game-theoretic models and non-monotonic logic to present formal analysis and description of social theories and sociological phenomena. He was the recipient of James Coleman Award(1999) for his paper “Toward a Role-Theoretic Conception of Embeddedness”. His paper is a major contribution towards formalization of social theories and sociological interpretation of game theories since he presents a repeated-game model in which the players are not individuals (as traditionally conceived in economic models) but assume social roles such as a profit-maximizing "businessperson" and nonstrategic "friend" (Montgomery, 1999).

In the early 1990s, Montgomery contributed to economic theories of network structures in labor market. In 1991, Montgomery incorporated network structures in an adverse selection model to analyze the effects of social networks on labor market outcomes.[1] In 1992, Montgomery explored the role of “weak ties”, which he defined as non-frequent and transitory social relations, in labor market.[2][3] He demonstrates that weak ties are positively related to higher wages and higher aggregate employment rates.

He is currently working on integrating non-monotonic logic with social network analysis in the context of sociological theories.

Selected works

References

  1. Montgomery, J.D. (1991). “Social Networks and Labor-Market Outcomes: Toward an Economic Analysis”, American Economic Review, 81 (Dec.): 1408-18.
  2. Montgomery, J.D. (1992). “Job Search and Network Composition: Implications of the Strength-of-Weak-Ties Hypothesis”, American Sociological Review, 57 (Oct.): 586-96.
  3. Montgomery, J.D. (1994). “Weak Ties, Employment, and Inequality: An Equilibrium Analysis”, American Journal of Sociology, 99 (Mar.): 1212-36.

External links

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Friday, August 14, 2015. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.