Professor of Sociology

Vice Dean for Faculty Affairs,

College of Liberal Arts

I am an economic sociologist and I tend to be interested in complex social and political issues that have a central economic component. So, for example, my first book was on the political bargaining in major Chapter 11 strategic bankruptcies. Then, I studied the political battles occurring in many US cities over the use of public tax money to build professional sports stadiums.

Currently, I am completing a book on how people in particular professions that have money as a central feature of their jobs (like hedge fund traders, fund raisers, debt counselors, poker players and religious clergy) learn to think about money within their professional training and day-to-day work lives.

Book publications

Money at Work: On the Job with Priests, Poker Players, and Hedge Fund Traders (NYU Press, 2012)

Public Dollars, Private Stadiums: The Battle over Building Sports Stadiums (Rutgers Univ. Press, 2003). 

Strategic Bankruptcy: How Corporations and Creditors Use Chapter 11 to Their Advantage (Univ. of California Press, 1992; 1999)

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