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The Limits of Financial Imagination: Free Investors, Efficient Markets, and Crisis

Author

Listed:
  • Horacio Ortiz

    (CSI i3 - Centre de Sociologie de l'Innovation i3 - Mines Paris - PSL (École nationale supérieure des mines de Paris) - PSL - Université Paris Sciences et Lettres - I3 - Institut interdisciplinaire de l’innovation - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique)

Abstract

Fieldwork with a team of investment managers investing in credit derivatives in Paris in 2004 shows how the concepts of "investor" and "market efficiency" are central in the technicalities of their procedures, in diverse and contradictory ways. The employees refer to their moral and political contents, as they are articulated in liberal philosophy and in financial regulation, to make sense of their careers and of the social role of finance. "Crisis" is then defined as a deviation from market efficiency, itself expected to lead to an optimal allocation of credit. These concepts thus constitute the limited repertoire of the meaning of practical rules followed by employees for a remuneration, within a bureaucratic commercial network, in a setting very different from the utopias from which the concepts stem. Therefore, anthropologists must not use them as analytic tools; rather, such concepts should be understood as part of the object of study.

Suggested Citation

  • Horacio Ortiz, 2014. "The Limits of Financial Imagination: Free Investors, Efficient Markets, and Crisis," Post-Print hal-00966544, HAL.
    • Handle: RePEc:hal:journl:hal-00966544
    DOI: 10.1111/aman.12071
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    1. repec:spo:wpmain:info:hdl:2441/4ff88coju39nk8b11b5ghfc1ff is not listed on IDEAS
    2. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/36r82bk74h9hiai5p7mros4j61 is not listed on IDEAS
    3. Olivier Godechot, 2019. "Conclusion: What finance manufactures," Post-Print hal-03393812, HAL.
    4. Tuckett, David & Holmes, Douglas & Pearson, Alice & Chaplin, Graeme, 2020. "Monetary policy and the management of uncertainty: a narrative approach," Bank of England working papers 870, Bank of England.
    5. Ipshita Ghosh, 2020. "Investment, value, and the making of entrepreneurship in India," Economic Anthropology, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 7(2), pages 190-202, June.
    6. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/4ff88coju39nk8b11b5ghfc1ff is not listed on IDEAS
    7. Olivier Godechot, 2016. "Back in the bazaar: taking Pierre Bourdieu to a trading room," Journal of Cultural Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 9(4), pages 410-429, August.
    8. Charron Jacques-Olivier, 2017. "Inefficient Debate. The EMH, the “Remarkable Error” and a Question of Point of View," Accounting, Economics, and Law: A Convivium, De Gruyter, vol. 7(3), pages 1-24, December.
    9. repec:spo:wpmain:info:hdl:2441/36r82bk74h9hiai5p7mros4j61 is not listed on IDEAS
    10. Horacio Ortiz, 2022. "Political Imaginaries of the Weighted Average Cost of Capital: A Conceptual Analysis," Post-Print halshs-03513082, HAL.
    11. Sean Field, 2022. "Risk and responsibility: Private equity financiers and the US shale revolution," Economic Anthropology, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 9(1), pages 47-59, January.

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