Handbook of Rational Choice Social Research

The Handbook of Rational Choice Social Research offers the first comprehensive overview of how the rational choice paradigm can inform empirical research within the social sciences. This landmark collection highlights successful empirical applications across a broad array of disciplines, including sociology, political science, economics, history, and psychology.

Taking on issues ranging from financial markets and terrorism to immigration, race relations, and emotions, and a huge variety of other phenomena, rational choice proves a useful tool for theory- driven social research. Each chapter uses a rational choice framework to elaborate on testable hypotheses and then apply this to empirical research, including experimental research, survey studies, ethnographies, and historical investigations. Useful to students and scholars across the social sciences, this handbook will reinvigorate discussions about the utility and versatility of the rational choice approach, its key assumptions, and tools.

Rafael Wittek is Professor of Theoretical Sociology at the University of Groningen. Tom A. B. Snijders is Professor of Statistics in the Social Sciences at the University of Oxford and the University of Groningen. Victor Nee is the Frank and Rosa Rhodes Professor in the Department of Sociology at Cornell University.