Dr Nicholas Pang

Nicholas Pang is an Assistant Professor of Sociology. His research examines how state and market institutions classify individuals and determine who gets access to economic resources. He studies these processes across credit and labour markets and shows how individual outcomes are shaped by racial and class hierarchies.

Key expertise: Credit and Debt, Entrepreneurship, Racial Inequality, Quantitative Methods

Nicholas is interested in the construction of markets and how spatial and institutional variation shapes individuals’ socio-economic outcomes. His research focuses on credit and debt, labour markets, and racial inequality.

His book project examines how personal bankruptcy became an accepted part of the American political economy in the early twentieth century. This study probes how social actors interpreted which lenders were "fair" and which borrowers were "creditworthy" and "deserving" of debt relief. He argues that the rationalization of credit markets for deserving white men contributed to the political acceptance of bankruptcy. African Americans remained less likely to obtain credit and, ultimately debt relief, than their white peers. Beyond debating the economic rationality of bankruptcy, social actors envisioned how it could serve as a form of private welfare for white men.

Nicholas also researches how community contexts shape labour market outcomes. Ongoing research examines how entrepreneurship is shaped by neighbourhood characteristics, such as community organisations, credit access, and the built environment.

Finally, he studies how immigration shapes the social inclusion of racially subordinate groups. Focusing on the early twentieth-century United States, he examines how European immigration shaped African American men’s racial classification as "mulatto" versus as "black".

Nicholas’ research employs quantitative and qualitative methods using administrative, survey, and text datasets.

Nicholas contributes to teaching in the MSc Economy and Society programme and quantitative research methods. He convenes courses on Economic Sociology, Risk and Governance, and Data in Society.