Making Markets

"In the wake of million-dollar scandals brought about by Michael Milken, Ivan Boesky, and their like, Wall Street seems like the province of rampant individualism operating at the outermost extremes of self-interest and greed. But this, Mitchel Abolafia suggests, would be a case of missing the real culture of the Street for the characters who dominate the financial news. Making Markets, an ethnography of Wall Street culture, offers a more complex picture of how the market and its denizens work. Not merely masses of individuals striving independently, markets appear here as socially constructed institutions in which the behavior of traders is suspended in a web of customs, norms, and structures of control. Within these structures we see the actions that led to the Drexel Burnham and Salomon Brothers debacles not as bizarre aberrations, but as mere exaggerations of behavior accepted on the Street. Abolafia looks at three subcultures that coexist in the world of Wall Street: the stock, bond, and futures markets. Through interviews, anecdotes, and the author’s skillful analysis, we see how traders and New York Stock Exchange “specialists” negotiate the perpetual tension between short-term self-interest and long-term self-restraint that marks their respective communities—and how the temptation toward excess spurs market activity. We also see the complex relationships among those market communities—why, for instance, NYSE specialists resent the freedoms permitted over-the-counter bond traders and futures traders. Making Markets shows us that what propels Wall Street is not a fundamental human drive or instinct, but strategies enacted in the context of social relationships, cultural idioms, and institutions—a cycle that moves between phases of unbridled self-interest and collective self-restraint."

Slicing through blunt theories of supply and demand, Callon presents a rigorously researched but counterintuitive model of how everyday market activity gets produced. If you’re convinced you know what a market is, think again. In his long-awaited study, French sociologist and engineer Michel Callon takes us to the heart of markets, to the unsung processes that allow innovations to become robust products and services. Markets in the Making begins with the observation that stable commercial transactions are more enigmatic, more elusive, and more involved than previously described by economic theory. Slicing through blunt theories of supply and demand, Callon presents a rigorously researched but counterintuitive model of market activity that emphasizes what people designing products or launching startups soon discover—the inherent difficulties of connecting individuals to things. Callon’s model is founded upon the notion of “singularization,” the premise that goods and services must adapt and be adapted to the local milieu of every individual whose life they enter. Person by person, thing by thing, Callon demonstrates that for ordinary economic transactions to emerge en masse, singular connections must be made. Pushing us to see markets as more than abstract interfaces where pools of anonymous buyers and sellers meet, Callon draws our attention to the exhaustively creative practices that market professionals continuously devise to entangle people and things. Markets in the Making exemplifies how prototypes, fragile curiosities that have only just been imagined, are gradually honed into predictable objects and practices. Once these are active enough to create a desired effect, yet passive enough to be transferred from one place to another without disruption, they will have successfully achieved the status of “goods” or “services.” The output of this more ample process of innovation, as redefined by Callon, is what we recognize as “the market”—commercial activity, at scale. The capstone of an influential research career at the forefront of science and technology studies, Markets in the Making coherently integrates the empirical perspective of product engineering with the values of the social sciences. After masterfully redescribing how markets are made, Callon culminates with a strong empirical argument for why markets can and should be harnessed to enact social change. His is a theory of markets that serves social critique.

Approaches trading from the viewpoint of market makers and the part they play in pricing, valuing and placing positions. Covers option volatility and pricing, risk analysis, spreads, strategies and tactics for the options trader, focusing on how to work successfully with market makers. Features a special section on synthetic options and the role of synthetic options market making (a role of increasing importance on the trading floor). Contains numerous graphs, charts and tables.

Over the past three decades, market reforms have transformed public services such as education, health, and care of the elderly. Whereas previous studies present markets as having similar and largely non-political effects, this book shows that political parties structure markets in diverse ways to achieve distinct political aims. Left-wing attempts to sustain the legitimacy of the welfare state are compared with right-wing wishes to limit the state and empower the private sector. Examining a broad range of countries, time periods, and policy areas, Jane R. Gingrich helps readers make sense of the complexity of market reforms in the industrialized world. The use of innovative multi-case studies and in-depth interviews with senior European policymakers enriches the debate and brings clarity to this multifaceted topic. Scholars and students working on the policymaking process in this central area will be interested in this new conceptualization of market reform.

This book examines place and place-making in London’s Borough Market. In particular, it uses topo/graphy (‘place-writing) to interrogate the ways in which Borough Market’s material, social-sensual and discursive relations assemble to reproduce Borough Market as a place, market and marketplace. Its central premise is that market-processes – the negotiation and exchange of commodities –are place-processes. This means that the often-abstract relationships that ultimately define what we think of as the economy are embedded in the rich and every materiality, sociality, sensuality and meanings associated with place. By tracing out these different elements, topo/graphy illustrates the ways in which economic reproduction is grounded in particular and often discrete practices. However, by assembling them together, this highlights the ways in which place and place-making are the driving force behind the economy at large.

Most studies of doing business at the "bottom of the economic pyramid" focus on viewing the poor as consumers, as micro-entrepreneurs, or as potential employees of local companies. Almost no analysis focuses on the poor as primary producers of agricultural commodities a striking omission given that primary producers are by far the largest segment of the working-age population in developing economies. Making Markets More Inclusive bridges the management literature with original research on agricultural value chains in developing and emerging economies. This exciting work is the first to delve into the skills, capabilities, strategies and approaches needed for inclusive value chain development. McKague shows how NGOs and companies can connect poor producers in developing economies with the right markets to better create social and economic impact. He also analyzes one of the leading agricultural value chain initiatives in the world, which is being replicated by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in several different value chains in Malawi, Tanzania, Ghana, India, and Mali. Want more? Check out these compelling videos, which provide a glimpse into the stories and examples used throughout the book. Video Trailer for Making Markets More Inclusive. Farmer Training. Kallani Rani increased the productivity of her cows, become a cattle feed seller in her village (Chapter 6), and opened a fresh milk canteen in her local market (Chapter 7). She now trains other women farmers and works to improve opportunities for women in her community (Chapter 5). Animal Health Care Services. Asma Husna trained to be an animal health worker with CARE to provide important animal health services and education to local farmers on a fee-for-service basis (Chapter 6). Cattle Feed Shops. Fulera Akter started a business as a cattle feed seller after demand for nutritional animal feed grew due to farmers' improved knowledge of nutrition (Chapter 6). Savings Groups. Coauthor Muhammad Siddiquee, the Coordinator of Agriculture and Value Chain Programs at CARE Bangladesh, discusses the value of farmer savings groups (Chapter 6). Milk Collection. Sarothi Rani became a milk collector to earn an improved income for her family and provide an important service to other dairy farmers in her community (Chapter 7). Digital Fat Testing. Introducing digital fat testing machines into the dairy value chain helped reward farmers for making investments in producing higher quality milk, as well as ensuring transparent and timely payments (Chapter 7). Microfranchising. Supporting agricultural input shop owners with training, relationships to suppliers, common branding, and standardized customer services improves the productivity of smallholder farmers and the profitability of shops (Chapter 12). Bangladesh Dairy Value Chain Learning. Reflections from some of the 40 CARE staff from 17 countries who came to Bangladesh to learn from the experience of the dairy value chain project (Chapter 15).

First studied by Swiss economist Jean-Charles Léonard Sismonde de Sismondi in 1819, Making Markets and Making Money: Strategy and Monetary Exchange examines the strategic aspects of monetary exchange--specifically, of making markets. Economist Bernard C. Beaudreau, author of Mass Production, the Stock Market Crash, and The Great Depression: The Macroeconomics of Electrification, examines the strategic aspects of making markets using basic game theory. Drawing from the archaeological and historical records, Beaudreau documents the prevalence of coordination failures in trade in general, and monetary exchange in particular. He argues, convincingly, that the ability to execute trades (make markets) has been, is, and will continue to be a more important economic problem that scarcity itself.

This book provides a genealogical study of Australian agricultural restructuring, focusing on the case study of wheat export market deregulation. This policy shift was implemented in 2008, ending 60 years of statutory wheat marketing. At the time, policy makers claimed that market liberalisation would empower individual growers, providing them with choice and freedom through uninhibited participation in markets. However, regional wheat markets have become concentrated, and are increasingly controlled by a small number of transnational agribusiness firms, which have been increasingly active in setting the policy agenda in Australian agriculture. The book delves into the discursive construction of policy truths such as efficiency, competition, and the consumer, to understand how this shift was made possible, whose interests have been served, and what the implications of this shift have been. This book focuses on the machinations which contributed to this shift by examining the construction of knowledge, values and identities, which have helped to make the transition from the public to the private appear as a logical, common sense solution to the challenges facing Australian agriculture. The author shows how governmental technologies such as audit, cost-benefit analysis, performance objectives and the consumer were used to make this reality operable. In doing so, he argues that this shift should be viewed as part of the broader restructuring of Australian society, which has facilitated the transference of economic and policy making power from the public to the private.