scholarly journals ON PERFORMATIVITY: OPTION THEORY AND THE RESISTANCE OF FINANCIAL PHENOMENA

2017 ◽  
Vol 39 (4) ◽  
pp. 549-569 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicolas Brisset

The issue of performativity concerns the claim that economics shape rather than merely describe the social world. This idea took hold following a paper by Donald MacKenzie and Yuval Millo entitled “Constructing a Market, Performing Theory: The Historical Sociology of a Financial Derivatives Exchange” (2003). That paper constitutes an important contribution to the history of economic thought, since it provides an original way to focus on the scientific construction of the real economy. The authors discuss the empirical success of the Black–Scholes–Merton (BSM) model on the Chicago Board Options Exchange during the period from 1973 to 1987. They explain this success in part as instead of discovering pre-existing price regularities, the model was used by traders to anticipate option prices in their arbitrages. As a result, option prices came to correspond to the theoretical prices derived from the BSM model. In the present article I show that this is not a completely correct conclusion, since the BSM model never became a self-fulfilling model. I would claim that the October 1987 stock market crash is empirical proof that the financial world never fit with the economic theory underpinning the BSM.

1982 ◽  
Vol 19 ◽  
pp. 165-189 ◽  
Author(s):  
John V. Pickstone

I know the historical sociology of religion only as an outsider; as an historian of medicine helped by that literature to a better understanding of early industrial society and perhaps to a clearer vision of what the social history of medicine ought to be. To read a recent review of the social history of religion, such as A. D. Gilbert’s Religion and Society in Industrial England, Church, Chapel and Social Change, 1740-1914, is to recognise how underdeveloped by comparison is the social history of medicine. Historians of medicine have the equivalent of church histories, of histories of theology and, of course, biographies of divines, but we lack the quantitative and comprehensive surveys of the chronological and geographical patterns in lay attendance and membership, and in professional recruitment and modes of work. For as long as medicine was generally only a transaction between an individual and his medical attendant, few statistics were produced and there is little national data. Yet there are very few local studies of how diseases were handled and how the various kinds of practitioner interacted with each other and with their various publics, so it will be some time before we shall be able to generalise on such matters.


2012 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 81-96 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ben Fine ◽  
Dimitris Milonakis

AbstractIn this response to the symposium on our two books we try to deal as fully as possible in the brief space available with most of the major issues raised by our distinguished commentators. Although at least three of them are in agreement with the main thrust of the arguments put forward in our books, they all raise important issues relating to methodology, the history of economic thought (including omissions), and a number of more specific issues. Our answer is based on the restatement of the chief purpose of our two books, describing the intellectual history of the evolution of economic science emphasising the role of the excision of the social and the historical from economic theorising in the transition from (classical) political economy to (neoclassical) economics, only for the two to be reunited through the vulgar form of economics imperialism following the monolithic dominance of neoclassical economics at the expense of pluralism after the Second World War. The importance of political economy for the future of economic science is vigorously argued for.


2017 ◽  
Vol Humanities and social... (Articles) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ivan Ermakoff

International audience Außergewöhnliche Situationen werden meist als untypisch, komisch und selten dargestellt. Womit lässt sich dann aber ihre systematische Untersuchung rechtfertigen? Ausgehend von der Differenzierung zwischen Abweichungen, Ausnahmen und Sonderfällen, hebt dieser Beitrag drei epistemische Beiträge außergewöhnlicher Fälle hervor. Erstens verdeutlichen außergewöhnliche Fälle die Grenzen von Kategorien und Klassifizierungen. Ihr Beitrag ist kritisch. Zweitens verweisen außergewöhnliche Fälle auf neue Gegenstandsmodelle. Sie erhalten einen paradigmatischen Rang durch das Aufzeigen spezifischer Charakteristika dieser neuen Modelle. Drittens verdeutlichen außergewöhnliche Fälle Beziehungsmodelle, die in gewöhnlicheren Zusammenhängen unsichtbar bleiben. Ihr Beitrag ist hier heuristisch. Diese drei Beiträge sind möglich, wenn wir unsere normativen Verhaltensweisen bezüglich des Vorhersehbaren aufheben und die Fälle in Beziehung zu einem analytischen Raum konstitutiver Dimensionen setzen. Der Beitrag fußt hauptsächlich auf Beispielen aus den Sozialwissenschaften: Organisationssoziologie, Ethnomethodologie, vergleichende Geschichtssoziologie und Wissenschaftsgeschichte Exceptional cases are at odds with the typical : they stand out as bizarre and rare. What then could justify their systematic analysis? Elaborating the analytical distinction between anomalies, exceptions and outliers, this paper outlines three potential epistemic contributions of exceptional cases. First, exceptional cases reveal the limits of standard classification categories. In so doing, they problematize usual classificatory grids. Their input is critical. Second, exceptional cases point to new classes of objects. They acquire paradigmatic status when they exemplify the characteristic features of these new classes with utmost clarity. Third, exceptional cases magnify relational patterns that in more mundane contexts lack visibility. Here their contribution is heuristic. These three contributions become possible when we put at bay normative expectations of what should happen, and specify cases by reference to an analytical space of constitutive dimensions. To underscore the general significance of these observations, I draw on examples borrowed from different quarters of the social sciences: the sociology of organizations, ethnomethodology, comparative historical sociology and the history of science Cet article éclaire trois contributions possibles du cas d’exception défini comme tout objet de considération qui se démarque et se distingue d’un cadre normatif, d’une thèse explicative ou d’une distribution fréquentielle. La contribution est critique lorsque le cas met en doute les fondements d’une taxonomie, le bien-fondé d’un énoncé prédictif ou celui d’une modélisation. Elle est paradigmatique dès lors que le cas exemplifie un ensemble de propriétés caractéristiques d’une classe empirique. Elle devient heuristique à partir du moment où le cas rend visible la logique de rapports restés jusqu’alors non documentés


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sergey Nevskiy ◽  
Aleksandr Hudokormov ◽  
Mihail Pokidchenko ◽  
Irina Chaplygina ◽  
Al'fred Shyuller ◽  
...  

The monograph traces the history of the development of German neoliberal economic thought from the origins of the Freiburg School in the 1930s to the first results of the practical implementation of the concept of a social market economy in West Germany in the late 1940s-early 1960s. The author demonstrates the broad historical context of the development of German ideas about the theory and practice of the policy of order (Ordnungstheorie und Ordnungspolitik), shows the features of the formation and spread of the scientific and intellectual economic tradition in Germany, as well as beyond its borders, starting with the birth of the German historical school and the perception of its heritage by Russian socio-economic thought in the second half of the XIX — early XX century and ending with the practical implementation of the concept of order of the Freiburg school and the correlation of its ideological and spiritual and moral foundations with the social teaching of Catholicism and liberalism of Friedrich von Hayek. Special attention is paid to some controversial issues of the formation of the theory of ordoliberalism during the period of national socialism and the problems of the social market economy in modern Germany. The book is intended to fill the shortage of specialized scientific literature on relevant issues and to acquaint the Russian reader, primarily students, teachers and researchers, with the variety of ideological and scientific-theoretical foundations of the socio-economic system of the post-war Germany.


2019 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-53
Author(s):  
Maik Huettinger ◽  
Jonathan Andrew Boyd

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to approach the issue of taxation of robotic process automation (RPA) through an interpretive lens provided by both Adam Smith and Karl Marx. Both scholars have affected the understanding and attitudes of generations of economists, and their ideas have considerable influenced modern economic policy. It will be argued that Smith and Marx have much to offer to help contemporary economists understand the taxation of RPA, and their writings on machines, automation, and their impact on the human labor force will be discussed from their primary texts. Design/methodology/approach The paper interprets the works of Marx and Smith in relation to contemporary debates on automation, particularly, proposals to tax technological innovations to offset the social costs of automation’s displacement effects. Findings In the case of Adam Smith, there is not enough evidence to suggest that he would support a specific taxation of RPA; however, he very well might agree with a modest taxation of capital goods. Marx would very likely support a taxation in the short-run, however, would be inclined to caution that the ownership of robots should in the long run be transferred to society. Originality/value This paper uses primary texts from the discipline of history of economic thought to spark a discussion about compensating the externalities of technological innovation.


Author(s):  
Constantinos Repapis

In this paper we investigate Werner Stark’s sociology of knowledge approach in the history of economic thought. This paper explores: 1) the strengths and weaknesses of Stark’s approach to historiography, 2) how this can frame an understanding of mercantilist writings, and 3) the development of a link between a pluralist understanding of economics and the sociology of knowledge approach. The reason for developing this link is to extend the sociology of knowledge approach to encompass a pluralist understanding of economic theorizing and, at the same time, clarify the link between context and economic theory. John Maynard Keynes’s practice of building narratives of intellectual traditions as evidenced in The General Theory is used to develop a position between an understanding of history of economic thought as the evolution of abstract and decontextualized economic theorizing and the view of economic theory as relevant only within the social conditions from which it arose.


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