Andrew Schrank

Olive C. Watson Professor of Sociology and International and Public Affairs

Areas of Interest: Latin America, globalization, supply chains, labor standards, regulation.

Biography

Andrew Schrank received his PhD from the University of Wisconsin in 2000 and is currently the Olive Watson Professor of Sociology and International & Public Affairs at Brown University. He has previously held positions in political science and sociology at the University of New Mexico, Yale University, and the University of Miami.

Research

Schrank studies the organization, regulation, and performance of industry--especially in Latin America. He is particularly interested in the design and construction of “high road” institutions that reconcile the allegedly competing goals of regulatory compliance and economic competitiveness at the firm and regional levels, and toward that end has paid a good deal of attention to both the merits of meritocracy and the downside of the division of labor: special-purpose human and physical resources that are costly to produce and hard to reallocate when rendered anachronistic by political and economic change; managerial hierarchies that impede communication and collaboration among team members; confidence and competency gaps that pose a threat to decentralized production networks; and jurisdictional boundaries that make sense to their architects but are almost inevitably outgrown over time.

Schrank has also worked on the conceptualization, measurement, and evaluation of public sector performance more generally. He has received grants and fellowships from the Ford Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, Russell Sage Foundation, National Science Foundation, and Social Science Research Council; served as a consulting editor or board member at the American Journal of Sociology, Politics and Society, and Latin American Politics and Society; and consulted for the World Bank, Inter-American Development Bank, United States Department of Labor, and various United Nations agencies.  

Publications 

“Toward a New Economic Sociology of Development,” Sociology of Development 1 (2) 2015.

“Latin American Political Economy: Making Sense of a New Reality.” Latin American Politics & Society.  56 (1) 2014.  Co-authored with Juan Pablo Luna, Catholic University of Chile and M. Victoria Murillo, Columbia University.

“From disguised protectionism to rewarding regulation: The impact of trade-related labor standards in the Dominican Republic.”  Regulation & Governance.  7 (3) 2013. Winner of the Regulation & Governance Prize for best article in Vol. 7 of the journal.

“Quantitative Cross-National Sociology and the Methodological Abyss: Comment on Alcacer and Ingram.” American Journal of Sociology 118 (4) 2013.

“Anatomy of Network Failure.” Sociological Theory 29 (3) 2011.  Co-authored with Josh Whitford, Columbia University.  

“Co-producing Workplace Transformation: The Dominican Republic in Comparative Perspective.” Socio-Economic Review 9 (2) 2011. Also included in the Socio-Economic Review’s “virtual special issue” on labor markets (2012) http://www.oxfordjournals.org/our_journals/soceco/labour_markets.html.

“Incubating Innovation or Cultivating Corruption? The Developmental State and the Life Sciences in Asia.” Social Forces 88 (3) 2010.  Co-authored with Cheol-Sung Lee, University of Chicago

Teaching 

Sociology 0010:
Social Problems

Sociology 1600:
Comparative Development

Sociology 2430:
Fields and Methods of Social Research