Emily Erikson is an associate professor of sociology at Yale University working on social networks and the development of the institutions of capitalism and democracy. Her award-winning book, Between Monopoly and Free Trade: The English East India Company (Princeton University Press, 2014) shows how an informal social network linking autonomous employees fostered the Company’s long-term success, shedding light on the processes underpinning the emergence of early multi-national firms and the structure of early modern global trade. Her forthcoming book, New Knowledge: The Rise of Economics and Development of the Public Sphere, identifies the forces that stimulated the development of pre-classical economic thought in the seventeenth century. Her work has appeared in the American Journal of Sociology, the Annual Review of Sociology, Sociology Theory, and Social Science History, among others.