Dr. Henry Farrell - Work on Trust and Cooperation


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  My Ph.D. Dissertation, entitled "The Political Economy of Trust: Exploration Cooperation between Mechanical Engineering Firms in Emilia-Romagna and Baden-Württemberg" was awarded by Georgetown University in 2000. It seeks to combine recent advances in the rational choice modelling of institutions with work on the so-called "encapsulated interest" account of trust. It then applies this theory to cooperation between firms in "industrial districts" - geographically dense areas of small-firm production. 

Much of my current work seeks to apply and expand the insights of my dissertation research. Some of this work has been carried out in collaboration with other scholars. Papers co-written with Jack Knight (on institutional change in industrial districts and social capital), and with Luigi Burroni (understanding the role of local government in providing or preventing change) are currently under preparation. Future work includes another paper being co-written with Jack Knight on the theoretical issues involved in institutions and trust, and a projected paper with Avner Greif on industrial districts and game theory.

The research for my Ph.D. was carried out in the context of a larger project co-directed by Colin Crouch, Patrick Le Galès, Carlo Trigilia and Helmut Voelzkow, on the "Governance of Local Economies." This project has published a first volume, "Local Production Systems in Europe: Rise or Demise?" published by Oxford University Press (2001), which includes a chapter on the UK economy co-written by Colin Crouch and I. Volume II, currently under preparation, includes a chapter co-written by Ann-Louise Lauridsen and I on the packaging machinery cluster in Bologna.

Four sample pieces are included here.

A comparative paper on trust and industrial districts, available on the ISNIE 2001 conference website

An article co-written with Jack Knight, forthcoming in Politics and Society.

Trust, Distrust and Power, submitted for publication in Russell Hardin ed., Distrust, to be published in the Russell Sage series on Trust

Henry Farrell and Ann-Louise Lauridsen, Collective Goods in the Local Economy: The Packaging Cluster in Bologna