A S Hayes
Biographic Data
| ID | 5877 |
|---|---|
| NAME | A S Hayes |
| GIVEN NAMES | A S |
| FAMILY NAME | Hayes |
| SIGNATURE | HAYES A S |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Wisconsin–Madison |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-5481-8906 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 20 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 107 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 20 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2019 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
Risk, return, and resonance: Symbolic considerations in everyday stock selection
How do retail investors choose which stocks to own? While finance models assume investors maximize risk-adjusted returns, and economic sociology has long argued that markets are culturally embedded, we lack systematic quantitative evidence on how symbolic considerations--values alignment, identity expression, and social ties--shape ordinary stock selection. Drawing on two original studies of U.S. retail investors, we estimate the relative importa…
The algorithmic principal: Agencement, infrastructure, and the material construction of AI economic sovereignty
Cultural dispositions and economic choice: How field-specific logics shape ‘rational’ economic behaviour
Why do some individuals make economic choices aligning with rational choice principles while others regularly deviate from such norms? This paper addresses this question by applying Bourdieu's field theory to economic cognition, arguing that economic and cultural fields cultivate opposing dispositions through fundamentally inverse logics of accumulation. Drawing on three original studies with U.S. adults, I demonstrate that capital composition an…
Neither gift nor loan: The strategic use of pseudo-formality at the nexus of intimacy and economy
In this paper, I introduce the concept of pseudo-formality as a novel form of relational work in economic sociology. Pseudo-formality refers to the performative use of formal aesthetics, such as contracts and repayment plans, in financial exchanges between close ties—as both parties tacitly understand that the agreement is flexible and not legally binding. I argue that pseudo-formality works by leveraging the signaling function of formal market e…
Conversing' With Qualitative Data: Enhancing Qualitative Research Through Large Language Models (LLMs)
Large Language Models (LLMs) are revolutionizing how qualitative researchers can work with textual data. Rather than relying only on codebooks or manual line-by-line analysis, scholars can 'converse' with their materials by asking targeted questions, probing for contextual insights, and refining theoretical connections. This dialogue-like process speeds up traditional tasks-transcription, coding, theme identification-while sparking broader possib…
Rethinking economic socialization: The Intersection of Culture, Gender and Economic Life in a Religious Enclave
This article explores how economic socialization serves as a bridge between individual economic behaviors and the broader social and cultural contexts that shape them. Drawing on a post-functionalist approach to socialization, the study examines the ultra-Orthodox Jewish (Haredi) community in Israel, where distinct gender roles, cultural norms and patterns of economic participation create a unique context for investigating divergent economic soci…
The Gendered Language of Financial Advice: Finfluencers, Framing, and Subconscious Preferences
As financial advice migrates online, 'finfluencers' are democratizing access to financial knowledge, challenging the historically male-dominated advisory landscape. This mixed-methods study explores how gender shapes the creation and consumption of finfluencer content. Qualitative analysis reveals gendered advice patterns: Men emphasize quantitative aspects, whereas women incorporate narratives and personal stories. Experimental surveys uncover s…
Under the finfluence: Financial influencers, economic meaning-making and the financialization of digital life
Time, ties, transactions: Temporality and Relational Work in Economic Exchange
This paper explores the intersection of time and relational economic sociology. Building on Viviana Zelizer's relational framework, I argue that analyzing the temporal dimensions of exchange provides insight into how social ties gain meaning through economic practices. The paper shows time's dual role as both an organizing structure bounding action, and a dynamic element that actors leverage to shape transactional contexts. As structure, time off…
Earmarking space: Relationality, Economic Judgments and Housing Wealth
Housing wealth is the single largest portion of household wealth in most Western societies today, yet little research has examined how individuals make decisions regarding the use of the housing wealth that they possess. In this article, we leverage insights from relational economic sociology to understand how individuals' subjective valuations and other economic judgments are influenced when space in a home is relationally earmarked. Using a ser…
Competing imaginaries: Crypto-utopianism and the material forces of Bitcoin mining
Drawing on Marx's theory of history, this article argues that the competition and capital accumulation inherent in the production of Bitcoin (i.e. 'mining') are at odds with the narrative discourses that position Bitcoin as a revolutionary technology capable of subverting traditional power structures. Through an analysis of the evolution of Bitcoin mining, the article demonstrates how the material conditions of its production have shifted over ti…
Deciding between Domains: How Borrowers Weigh Market and Interpersonal Options
Individuals routinely satisfy borrowing needs by transacting in the market or by relying on social relations. In the market domain, price logic leads borrowers to choose the cheaper option; in the interpersonal domain, role-matching logic leads borrowers to choose the relation best matched to the act. But how do individuals choose when faced with options from each domain? Drawing on theories in economic sociology that assert the economic and the …
After the boom: Finance and society studies in the 2020s and beyond
The crisis of 2008 was a watershed event for the study of finance and society. There was the boom in financial markets that came to a head with the collapse of Lehman Brothers, and there was the boom in financial scholarship that followed in its wake. But what comes after this second boom? After more than a decade of rapid expansion under the shadow of 2008, what comes next for the new finance studies? What are the emerging debates that matter mo…
World monies or money-worlds: A new perspective on cryptocurrencies and their moneyness
This essay makes the case that current debates about the 'moneyness' of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are occurring at the incorrect scale. Rather than being some form of transnational digital money to be used alongside or compete with national fiat currencies, I argue that, instead, each cryptocurrency represents its own self-contained 'money-world'. Put differently, a cryptocurrency is the uniquely specified unit of account and medium of e…
The active construction of passive investors: Roboadvisors and Algorithmic 'Low-Finance
How does algorithmic finance operate in society as it crosses the threshold into the hands of lay investors? This article builds on original ethnographic research into a new class of algorithmic trading programs known as 'roboadvisors'-inexpensive, automated, digital financial platforms that enable ordinary people to invest very small minimum amounts and that rely to a large extent on passive, index strategies that follow the prescripts of Modern…
Earmarking Risk: Relational Investing and Portfolio Choice
Ordinary individuals are increasingly charged with making investment decisions not only for themselves but also for close others. A child’s college savings account and a spouse’s retirement savings are instances where investing has become unmistakably relational. In this paper, we posit a theory of relational investing that extends Zelizer’s relational perspective from the domain of transactions to that of financial risk-taking. Through two origi…
The Behavioral Economics of Pierre Bourdieu
This article builds the argument that Bourdieu's dispositional theory of practice can help integrate the sociological tradition with three prominent strands of behavioral economics: bounded rationality, prospect theory, and time inconsistency. I make the case that the habitus provides an alternative framework to show how social and mental structure constitute one another, where cognitive tendencies toward irrationality can be either curtailed or …
Enacting a rational actor: Roboadvisors and the algorithmic performance of ideal types
Weber famously invoked 'ideal types' as an analytic device with which to measure empirical reality against some hyper-rational fabrication. Case in point: non-professional (lay) investors appear to be the antithesis of rational economic man. They have been cast as less-informed, less-skilled, and less-knowledgeable than professional market practitioners, and with ample evidence that they tend to lose money in the market as a result. This study bu…
The social meaning of financial wealth: Relational accounting in the context of 401(k) retirement accounts
Behavioral economics has become a dominant set of theories in explaining economic behavior, yet such behavior remains under the limited purview of psychological, cognitive, or neural approaches. This article draws on and extends Viviana Zelizer's social meaning of money framework in conjunction with new work in 'relational accounting' to suggest a sociological counterpoint, focusing in particular on the social and symbolic meaning attached to ind…
The Socio-Technological Lives of Bitcoin
Bitcoin, cryptocurrencies, and blockchains have become buzzwords in the media and are attracting increasing academic interest, mainly from the fields of computer science and financial economics. In this essay, I argue that cryptocurrencies and blockchains are important objects of general social science research and thought, but not for their 'moneyness' per se. Through a historical sociology of the antecedents and discourse leading up to Bitcoin,…
The Socio-Technological Lives of Bitcoin
Bitcoin, cryptocurrencies, and blockchains have become buzzwords in the media and are attracting increasing academic interest, mainly from the fields of computer science and financial economics. In this essay, I argue that cryptocurrencies and blockchains are important objects of general social science research and thought, but not for their 'moneyness' per se. Through a historical sociology of the antecedents and discourse leading up to Bitcoin,…
The Behavioral Economics of Pierre Bourdieu
This article builds the argument that Bourdieu's dispositional theory of practice can help integrate the sociological tradition with three prominent strands of behavioral economics: bounded rationality, prospect theory, and time inconsistency. I make the case that the habitus provides an alternative framework to show how social and mental structure constitute one another, where cognitive tendencies toward irrationality can be either curtailed or …
Conversing' With Qualitative Data: Enhancing Qualitative Research Through Large Language Models (LLMs)
Large Language Models (LLMs) are revolutionizing how qualitative researchers can work with textual data. Rather than relying only on codebooks or manual line-by-line analysis, scholars can 'converse' with their materials by asking targeted questions, probing for contextual insights, and refining theoretical connections. This dialogue-like process speeds up traditional tasks-transcription, coding, theme identification-while sparking broader possib…
The active construction of passive investors: Roboadvisors and Algorithmic 'Low-Finance
How does algorithmic finance operate in society as it crosses the threshold into the hands of lay investors? This article builds on original ethnographic research into a new class of algorithmic trading programs known as 'roboadvisors'-inexpensive, automated, digital financial platforms that enable ordinary people to invest very small minimum amounts and that rely to a large extent on passive, index strategies that follow the prescripts of Modern…
Deciding between Domains: How Borrowers Weigh Market and Interpersonal Options
Individuals routinely satisfy borrowing needs by transacting in the market or by relying on social relations. In the market domain, price logic leads borrowers to choose the cheaper option; in the interpersonal domain, role-matching logic leads borrowers to choose the relation best matched to the act. But how do individuals choose when faced with options from each domain? Drawing on theories in economic sociology that assert the economic and the …
The social meaning of financial wealth: Relational accounting in the context of 401(k) retirement accounts
Behavioral economics has become a dominant set of theories in explaining economic behavior, yet such behavior remains under the limited purview of psychological, cognitive, or neural approaches. This article draws on and extends Viviana Zelizer's social meaning of money framework in conjunction with new work in 'relational accounting' to suggest a sociological counterpoint, focusing in particular on the social and symbolic meaning attached to ind…
Under the finfluence: Financial influencers, economic meaning-making and the financialization of digital life
After the boom: Finance and society studies in the 2020s and beyond
The crisis of 2008 was a watershed event for the study of finance and society. There was the boom in financial markets that came to a head with the collapse of Lehman Brothers, and there was the boom in financial scholarship that followed in its wake. But what comes after this second boom? After more than a decade of rapid expansion under the shadow of 2008, what comes next for the new finance studies? What are the emerging debates that matter mo…
Enacting a rational actor: Roboadvisors and the algorithmic performance of ideal types
Weber famously invoked 'ideal types' as an analytic device with which to measure empirical reality against some hyper-rational fabrication. Case in point: non-professional (lay) investors appear to be the antithesis of rational economic man. They have been cast as less-informed, less-skilled, and less-knowledgeable than professional market practitioners, and with ample evidence that they tend to lose money in the market as a result. This study bu…
The Gendered Language of Financial Advice: Finfluencers, Framing, and Subconscious Preferences
As financial advice migrates online, 'finfluencers' are democratizing access to financial knowledge, challenging the historically male-dominated advisory landscape. This mixed-methods study explores how gender shapes the creation and consumption of finfluencer content. Qualitative analysis reveals gendered advice patterns: Men emphasize quantitative aspects, whereas women incorporate narratives and personal stories. Experimental surveys uncover s…
Time, ties, transactions: Temporality and Relational Work in Economic Exchange
This paper explores the intersection of time and relational economic sociology. Building on Viviana Zelizer's relational framework, I argue that analyzing the temporal dimensions of exchange provides insight into how social ties gain meaning through economic practices. The paper shows time's dual role as both an organizing structure bounding action, and a dynamic element that actors leverage to shape transactional contexts. As structure, time off…
Competing imaginaries: Crypto-utopianism and the material forces of Bitcoin mining
Drawing on Marx's theory of history, this article argues that the competition and capital accumulation inherent in the production of Bitcoin (i.e. 'mining') are at odds with the narrative discourses that position Bitcoin as a revolutionary technology capable of subverting traditional power structures. Through an analysis of the evolution of Bitcoin mining, the article demonstrates how the material conditions of its production have shifted over ti…
Rethinking economic socialization: The Intersection of Culture, Gender and Economic Life in a Religious Enclave
This article explores how economic socialization serves as a bridge between individual economic behaviors and the broader social and cultural contexts that shape them. Drawing on a post-functionalist approach to socialization, the study examines the ultra-Orthodox Jewish (Haredi) community in Israel, where distinct gender roles, cultural norms and patterns of economic participation create a unique context for investigating divergent economic soci…
Earmarking space: Relationality, Economic Judgments and Housing Wealth
Housing wealth is the single largest portion of household wealth in most Western societies today, yet little research has examined how individuals make decisions regarding the use of the housing wealth that they possess. In this article, we leverage insights from relational economic sociology to understand how individuals' subjective valuations and other economic judgments are influenced when space in a home is relationally earmarked. Using a ser…
World monies or money-worlds: A new perspective on cryptocurrencies and their moneyness
This essay makes the case that current debates about the 'moneyness' of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are occurring at the incorrect scale. Rather than being some form of transnational digital money to be used alongside or compete with national fiat currencies, I argue that, instead, each cryptocurrency represents its own self-contained 'money-world'. Put differently, a cryptocurrency is the uniquely specified unit of account and medium of e…
The social meaning of financial wealth: Relational accounting in the context of 401(k) retirement accounts
Behavioral economics has become a dominant set of theories in explaining economic behavior, yet such behavior remains under the limited purview of psychological, cognitive, or neural approaches. This article draws on and extends Viviana Zelizer's social meaning of money framework in conjunction with new work in 'relational accounting' to suggest a sociological counterpoint, focusing in particular on the social and symbolic meaning attached to ind…
The Socio-Technological Lives of Bitcoin
Bitcoin, cryptocurrencies, and blockchains have become buzzwords in the media and are attracting increasing academic interest, mainly from the fields of computer science and financial economics. In this essay, I argue that cryptocurrencies and blockchains are important objects of general social science research and thought, but not for their 'moneyness' per se. Through a historical sociology of the antecedents and discourse leading up to Bitcoin,…
Earmarking Risk: Relational Investing and Portfolio Choice
Ordinary individuals are increasingly charged with making investment decisions not only for themselves but also for close others. A child’s college savings account and a spouse’s retirement savings are instances where investing has become unmistakably relational. In this paper, we posit a theory of relational investing that extends Zelizer’s relational perspective from the domain of transactions to that of financial risk-taking. Through two origi…
The Behavioral Economics of Pierre Bourdieu
This article builds the argument that Bourdieu's dispositional theory of practice can help integrate the sociological tradition with three prominent strands of behavioral economics: bounded rationality, prospect theory, and time inconsistency. I make the case that the habitus provides an alternative framework to show how social and mental structure constitute one another, where cognitive tendencies toward irrationality can be either curtailed or …
Enacting a rational actor: Roboadvisors and the algorithmic performance of ideal types
Weber famously invoked 'ideal types' as an analytic device with which to measure empirical reality against some hyper-rational fabrication. Case in point: non-professional (lay) investors appear to be the antithesis of rational economic man. They have been cast as less-informed, less-skilled, and less-knowledgeable than professional market practitioners, and with ample evidence that they tend to lose money in the market as a result. This study bu…
World monies or money-worlds: A new perspective on cryptocurrencies and their moneyness
This essay makes the case that current debates about the 'moneyness' of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are occurring at the incorrect scale. Rather than being some form of transnational digital money to be used alongside or compete with national fiat currencies, I argue that, instead, each cryptocurrency represents its own self-contained 'money-world'. Put differently, a cryptocurrency is the uniquely specified unit of account and medium of e…
The active construction of passive investors: Roboadvisors and Algorithmic 'Low-Finance
How does algorithmic finance operate in society as it crosses the threshold into the hands of lay investors? This article builds on original ethnographic research into a new class of algorithmic trading programs known as 'roboadvisors'-inexpensive, automated, digital financial platforms that enable ordinary people to invest very small minimum amounts and that rely to a large extent on passive, index strategies that follow the prescripts of Modern…
Deciding between Domains: How Borrowers Weigh Market and Interpersonal Options
Individuals routinely satisfy borrowing needs by transacting in the market or by relying on social relations. In the market domain, price logic leads borrowers to choose the cheaper option; in the interpersonal domain, role-matching logic leads borrowers to choose the relation best matched to the act. But how do individuals choose when faced with options from each domain? Drawing on theories in economic sociology that assert the economic and the …
After the boom: Finance and society studies in the 2020s and beyond
The crisis of 2008 was a watershed event for the study of finance and society. There was the boom in financial markets that came to a head with the collapse of Lehman Brothers, and there was the boom in financial scholarship that followed in its wake. But what comes after this second boom? After more than a decade of rapid expansion under the shadow of 2008, what comes next for the new finance studies? What are the emerging debates that matter mo…
Earmarking space: Relationality, Economic Judgments and Housing Wealth
Housing wealth is the single largest portion of household wealth in most Western societies today, yet little research has examined how individuals make decisions regarding the use of the housing wealth that they possess. In this article, we leverage insights from relational economic sociology to understand how individuals' subjective valuations and other economic judgments are influenced when space in a home is relationally earmarked. Using a ser…
Competing imaginaries: Crypto-utopianism and the material forces of Bitcoin mining
Drawing on Marx's theory of history, this article argues that the competition and capital accumulation inherent in the production of Bitcoin (i.e. 'mining') are at odds with the narrative discourses that position Bitcoin as a revolutionary technology capable of subverting traditional power structures. Through an analysis of the evolution of Bitcoin mining, the article demonstrates how the material conditions of its production have shifted over ti…
Rethinking economic socialization: The Intersection of Culture, Gender and Economic Life in a Religious Enclave
This article explores how economic socialization serves as a bridge between individual economic behaviors and the broader social and cultural contexts that shape them. Drawing on a post-functionalist approach to socialization, the study examines the ultra-Orthodox Jewish (Haredi) community in Israel, where distinct gender roles, cultural norms and patterns of economic participation create a unique context for investigating divergent economic soci…
The Gendered Language of Financial Advice: Finfluencers, Framing, and Subconscious Preferences
As financial advice migrates online, 'finfluencers' are democratizing access to financial knowledge, challenging the historically male-dominated advisory landscape. This mixed-methods study explores how gender shapes the creation and consumption of finfluencer content. Qualitative analysis reveals gendered advice patterns: Men emphasize quantitative aspects, whereas women incorporate narratives and personal stories. Experimental surveys uncover s…
Under the finfluence: Financial influencers, economic meaning-making and the financialization of digital life
Time, ties, transactions: Temporality and Relational Work in Economic Exchange
This paper explores the intersection of time and relational economic sociology. Building on Viviana Zelizer's relational framework, I argue that analyzing the temporal dimensions of exchange provides insight into how social ties gain meaning through economic practices. The paper shows time's dual role as both an organizing structure bounding action, and a dynamic element that actors leverage to shape transactional contexts. As structure, time off…
Neither gift nor loan: The strategic use of pseudo-formality at the nexus of intimacy and economy
In this paper, I introduce the concept of pseudo-formality as a novel form of relational work in economic sociology. Pseudo-formality refers to the performative use of formal aesthetics, such as contracts and repayment plans, in financial exchanges between close ties—as both parties tacitly understand that the agreement is flexible and not legally binding. I argue that pseudo-formality works by leveraging the signaling function of formal market e…
Conversing' With Qualitative Data: Enhancing Qualitative Research Through Large Language Models (LLMs)
Large Language Models (LLMs) are revolutionizing how qualitative researchers can work with textual data. Rather than relying only on codebooks or manual line-by-line analysis, scholars can 'converse' with their materials by asking targeted questions, probing for contextual insights, and refining theoretical connections. This dialogue-like process speeds up traditional tasks-transcription, coding, theme identification-while sparking broader possib…
Risk, return, and resonance: Symbolic considerations in everyday stock selection
How do retail investors choose which stocks to own? While finance models assume investors maximize risk-adjusted returns, and economic sociology has long argued that markets are culturally embedded, we lack systematic quantitative evidence on how symbolic considerations--values alignment, identity expression, and social ties--shape ordinary stock selection. Drawing on two original studies of U.S. retail investors, we estimate the relative importa…
The algorithmic principal: Agencement, infrastructure, and the material construction of AI economic sovereignty
Cultural dispositions and economic choice: How field-specific logics shape ‘rational’ economic behaviour
Why do some individuals make economic choices aligning with rational choice principles while others regularly deviate from such norms? This paper addresses this question by applying Bourdieu's field theory to economic cognition, arguing that economic and cultural fields cultivate opposing dispositions through fundamentally inverse logics of accumulation. Drawing on three original studies with U.S. adults, I demonstrate that capital composition an…
Sociology (12 works) · Economics (11 works) · Political science (11 works) · Law (8 works) · Computer Science (7 works) · Psychology (7 works) · Business (6 works) · Social science (6 works) · FinTech, Crowdfunding, Digital Finance (5 works) · Social Psychology (5 works)