I am a Ph.D. Candidate in Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley, finishing my dissertation on the rise of securitization in America.
My research primarily focuses on the intersection of markets, culture and politics. In practice, this means that I study institutions and organizations, field theory, historical sociology, political economy, morality, financial technologies, secondary markets, credit, risk management, and housing. I became interested in many of these topics when I was working in the credit department of a derivatives firm (see about me).
In the Fall I will join the Sociology Department of the University of Washington, in Seattle, as an Assistant Professor on leave. I will also be a Postdoctoral Fellow with the Michigan Society of Fellows.
My Dissertation
In the wake of a housing frenzy that has so devastated our economy, it is easy to forget that until the 1960s many investors were unwilling to invest in mortgages under any circumstances. Even in the early 1980s most investors would only purchase Mortgage-Backed Securities (MBS) if they carried a government guarantee. Before the race to the bottom of the subprime market could even begin, investors had to first learn to stop worrying and love MBS. My dissertation investigates how this happened. How and why did government officials and private entrepreneurs work together to establish a viable market for MBS, and through that, a private secondary mortgage market?
My previous research shows that institutions allowed a secondary market for life insurance to go from seeming suspect to seeming normal. With my dissertation, I have found that political institutions affected a similar transformation in the secondary market for mortgages, because they led the way in establishing MBS as something normal. Understanding how institutions transform suspect practices into legitimate ones is an interesting problem for sociologists, who have long known that seeming normal is the marrow of social life. These findings could also be useful to policymakers and regulators who want to promote good business practices and prevent bad ones from taking root.
