Social scientists have long recognized that macro-level factors have the potential to shape the health of populations and individuals. Along these lines, they have theorized about the role of the welfare state in creating more equal opportunities and outcomes and how this intervention may...

Bringing transactions to an end constitutes a crucial stage of market activity: the detachment between the counterparties engaged in a trade must be guaranteed. In financial markets, this operation relies on organisational technologies, such as clearinghouses, that can reach a high degree of...

Is the growth of modern financial risk management a result of the accuracy and reliability of risk models? In this paper we argue that the remarkable success of today's financial risk management methods should be attributed primarily to their communicative and organizational usefulness and less...

This paper discusses the recent phenomenon of activist investors in UK quoted companies in the context of recent developments in UK corporate governance. We present three case studies of recent activist investor intervention and discuss the implications for corporate governance regulation, that...

The paper traces the intertwined evolution of financial risk management and the financial derivatives markets. Spanning from the late 1960s to the early 1990s, this paper reveals the social, political and organizational factors that underpinned the exponential success of one of today's leading...

This analysis of the origins and development of a key financial derivatives market, the Chicago Board Options Exchange, suggests that social interaction in such markets generates trust, permits solution of collective action problems, and affects pricing. The growing cognitive complexity of...

Is the growth of modern financial risk management a result of the accuracy and reliability of risk models? This paper argues that the remarkable success of today's financial risk management methods should be attributed primarily to their communicative and organizational usefulness and less to...

The introduction of index-based derivatives is one of the most important developments in post-war financial markets; today these contracts are amongst the most commonly traded financial instruments. Yet, no sociological accounts based on empirical material have focused on the creation of...

The financialised character of contemporary rationalities of public governance has been the subject of increased attention within a range of disciplinary and interdisciplinary fields. With this paper we propose a particular analytical framework, focused on the notion of ‘governance devices’,...