Akos Rona-Tas

Akos Rona-Tas received his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan. He is the author of the books Plastic Money, Constructing Markets for Credit Cards in Eight Postcommunist Countries (with Alya Guseva), and Great Surprise of the Small Transformation: Demise of Communism and Rise of the Private Sector in Hungary. He published articles in the American Journal of Sociology, American Sociological Review, Sociological Methods and Research, Theory and Society, Social Science Research, East European Politics and Societies, Socio-Economic Review, Journal of Comparative Economics, Research in the Sociology of Organizations, Historical Sociological Research and in various edited volumes. His general areas of interest include economic sociology, risk and uncertainty, rational choice theory, and statistical and survey methodology. Currently, he is working on credit card markets and consumer credit in emerging economies, and the role of algorithmic and expert predictions in society. He is Chief Editor of the Socio-Economic Review.

Selected recent publications:

Rona-Tas, Akos. (2020). "Predicting the future: Art and algorithms." Socio-Economic Review 18/3: 893-911.

Rona-Tas, Akos, Cornuéjols, Antoine, Blanchemanche, Sandrine, Duroy, Antonin, & Martin, Christine (2019): “Enlisting supervised machine learning in mapping scientific uncertainty expressed in food risk analysis.” Sociological Methods & Research, 48(3), 608-641.

Rona-Tas, Akos and Guseva, Alya (2019). ”Consumer Credit Surveillance.” Pp. 343-357 in Frederick F. Wherry and Ian Woodward eds. The Oxford Handbook of Consumption, Oxford University Press

Rona-Tas, Akos and Guseva, Alya (2018). “Consumer credit in comparative perspective.” Annual Review of Sociology, 44, pp.55-75

Rona-Tas, Akos and Guseva, Alya. (2017). “Plastic Money Tattles: The New Sociability of Money”. Pp. 201-214 in Nina Bandelj, Frederick Wherry and Viviana Zelizer, Money Talks, Princeton: Princeton University Press

Rona-Tas, Akos (2017): “Off-label Use of Consumer Credit Ratings”, Historical Social Research, pp.52-76

Rona-Tas, Akos and Guseva, Alya. (2014)  Plastic Money. Constructing Markets for Credit Cards in Eight Postcommunist Societies.  Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press

Rona-Tas, Akos and Guseva, Alya. 2013. “Information and Consumer Credit in Central and Eastern Europe.” Journal of Comparative Economics, 2013, 41/2, pp. 420-435

Dhanjal, Charanpal,  Blanchemanche, Sandrine, Clémençon, Stephan, Rona-Tas, Akos and Rossi, Fabrice. (2012). “Dissemination of Heath Information within Social Networks.”  Pp. 15-46 in Balazs Vedres and Marco Scotti (eds.), Networks in Social Problems, Oxford University Press

Rona-Tas, Akos and Hiss, Stefanie (2011): “Forecasting as Valuation: The Role of Ratings and Predictions in the Subprime Mortgage Crisis in the US.” Pp. 223-246 in Beckert, Jens and Aspers, Patrik eds. The Worth of Goods. Valuation and Pricing in the Economy. Oxford, Oxford University Press.

Rona-Tas, Akos and Hiss, Stefanie (2010): “The Role of Ratings in the Subprime Mortgage Crisis: The Art of Corporate and the Science of Consumer Credit Rating.” Research in the Sociology of Organizations, Vol. 30A: 115-155. 

My Personal Web Page

Socio-Economic Review

The Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics