The problem with economics: naturalism, critique and performativity

A critical review of debates on the performativity of economics from the vantage point of a general anthropology of modern economic reason.Performativity; Naturalism; Critique; Economics; Science Studies; Anthropology; Thought Experiments

At stake with implementation: trials of explicitness in the description of the state

We develop the notion of "trials of explicitness" as a conceptual instrument for the study of the state from a pragmatist, sociological angle. We present results from an empirical case study on how state practitioners (i.e. actors in charge of expressing, evaluating, executing or reforming the action of the state) confront the problem of the clarification of the agency of the state. We focus on the implementation, from the early 2000s onwards, of a reform of public management in France which called for a revision of the description of the perimeters and achievements of the action of the state. The reform targeted the rules governing the budgetary process and included, along with new accounting methods, new forms of reporting and assessment aiming at identifying the performance of governmental and administrative action. We consider the implementation process as a set of trials of explicitness in which a number of state practitioners struggled to elucidate the meaning of the reform and to flesh out its orientation. We analyze, using archival material, a number of such trials in the domain of national science and research policy.Science and technology studies; science and technology policy; political sociology; government; France; LOLF; performance; New Public Management; statistics

Responsibility in financial innovation: retooling New Product Committees

http://lse.ac.uk/riskAndRegulationMagazine http://www2.lse.ac.uk/researchAndExpertise/units/CARR/pdf/RR23_Summer-2012.pdfConsiders the potential contributions of New Product Committees to the development of responsible innovation in finance

Le marché comme solution informatique : le cas du Arizona Stock Exchange

http://www.csi.ensmp.fr/Items/WorkingPapers/Download/DLWP.php?wp=WP_CSI_008.pdfPropose une étude des effets de l'informatisation du marché sur sa définition, à partir du cas du Arizona Stock Exchange

The problem with economics: naturalism, critique and performativity

http://www.csi.ensmp.fr/Items/WorkingPapers/Download/DLWP.php?wp=WP_CSI_020.pdfA critical review of debates on the performativity of economics from the vantage point of a general anthropology of modern economic reason.Révision critique des débats sur la performativité de l'économie du point de vue d'une anthropologie générale de la raison économique moderne

Revaluation fantasy

Financial conspiracies today blend together antisemitic tropes and spiritual visions with ideals of political reform and economic salvation. It is tempting to locate such phenomena at the periphery of the financial order, situating them within a delusional space beyond judicious concepts of money, finance, wealth, and value. But is also possible to take paranoid finance as an extreme, radical appropriation of a logic inherent in finance

Le marché comme solution informatique : le cas du Arizona Stock Exchange

Propose une étude des effets de l'informatisation du marché sur sa définition, à partir du cas du Arizona Stock Exchange.Automatisation; marchés financiers; négociation électronique; régulation; algorithmes; , Arizona Stock Exchange

Economies through transparency

The notion of transparency is widely used as an analytical tool and as a guideline to propose and enforce new configurations of economic life. Focusing on several transparency-making devices, this paper tries to explore both the pervasiveness of this notion and its ambivalence in a number of relevant sites. We begin by exploring the deployment of transparency in the economic literature at large. We identify three thematic areas, namely, markets and price discovery, corporate management and institutional investors, and state regulations and economic policy. We then tackle these three areas of meaning through three brief case studies: (1) transparency and anonymity in the context of exchange automation, (2) ballot statement controversies in the light of corporate governance principles and (3) the use of transparency at state level in the context of the EU financial regulation. In the concluding section, we try to condense our findings into a tentative typology. We point to an important, yet not always explicit distinction between ‘literal' transparency and ‘abstract' transparency, and we observe combinations between ‘disciplinary' and ‘enabling' uses of transparency-making devices. These articulations of transparency, we suggest, are central to the development of new instruments of government.Transparency ; economic sociology ; governmentality ; stock exchange ; pension funds ; European Union

At stake with implementation: trials of explicitness in the description of the state

http://www.csi.ensmp.fr/Items/WorkingPapers/Download/DLWP.php?wp=WP_CSI_015.pdfWe develop the notion of "trials of explicitness" as a conceptual instrument for the study of the state from a pragmatist, sociological angle. We present results from an empirical case study on how state practitioners (i.e. actors in charge of expressing, evaluating, executing or reforming the action of the state) confront the problem of the clarification of the agency of the state. We focus on the implementation, from the early 2000s onwards, of a reform of public management in France which called for a revision of the description of the perimeters and achievements of the action of the state. The reform targeted the rules governing the budgetary process and included, along with new accounting methods, new forms of reporting and assessment aiming at identifying the performance of governmental and administrative action. We consider the implementation process as a set of trials of explicitness in which a number of state practitioners struggled to elucidate the meaning of the reform and to flesh out its orientation. We analyze, using archival material, a number of such trials in the domain of national science and research policy