Chains of Finance: How Investment Management is Shaped
Diane-Laure Arjaliès, Philip Grant, Iain Hardie, Donald MacKenzie, and Ekaterina Svetlova
Abstract
Investment is no longer a matter of individual savers directly choosing which shares or bonds to buy. Rather, most of their money flows through a ‘chain’: an often extended sequence of intermediaries. What goes on in that chain is of huge importance: the world’s investment managers, who are now almost as well paid as top bankers, control assets equivalent in value to around a year of total global economic output. In Chains of Finance, five social scientists (four of whom have worked in investment management) discuss the ways in which the intermediaries in the chain influence each other, channe ... More
Investment is no longer a matter of individual savers directly choosing which shares or bonds to buy. Rather, most of their money flows through a ‘chain’: an often extended sequence of intermediaries. What goes on in that chain is of huge importance: the world’s investment managers, who are now almost as well paid as top bankers, control assets equivalent in value to around a year of total global economic output. In Chains of Finance, five social scientists (four of whom have worked in investment management) discuss the ways in which the intermediaries in the chain influence each other, channel the flows of savers’ money, enhance investment decisions, and form audiences for each other’s performances of financially competent selves. The central argument of the book is that investment management is fashioned profoundly by the opportunities and constraints this chain creates. Whether chains constrain or enable, however, they always entangle, tying intermediaries to each other—silently and profoundly shaping the investment management industry. Chains of Finance is a novel analysis that will make students, social scientists, financial professionals and regulators look at the workings of financial markets in a new light. A must-read for anyone looking for insights into the decision-making processes of investment managers and those influenced by and working for them.
Keywords:
finance,
investment chain,
asset management,
financial intermediaries,
financial markets
Bibliographic Information
Print publication date: 2017 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780198802945 |
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: July 2017 |
DOI:10.1093/oso/9780198802945.001.0001 |
Authors
Affiliations are at time of print publication.
Diane-Laure Arjaliès, author
Assistant Professor, Ivey Business School, Western University
Philip Grant, author
Research Fellow in the Social Studies of Finance, School of Social and Political Science, University of Edinburgh
Iain Hardie, author
Senior Lecturer in International Relations, University of Edinburgh
Donald MacKenzie, author
Professor of Sociology, University of Edinburgh
Ekaterina Svetlova, author
Associate Professor, University of Leicester
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