Introducing a cultural approach to technology in financial markets

Autor: Adam Richard Rottinghaus, Carolyn Hardin
Rok vydání: 2015
Předmět:
Zdroj: Journal of Cultural Economy. 8:547-563
ISSN: 1753-0369
1753-0350
DOI: 10.1080/17530350.2014.993683
Popis: This paper offers a cultural approach to technology as an alternative to what we see as a prevailing treatment of technology in social studies of finance. This latter treatment, which we refer to as the ‘tools of coordination’ approach, sees technologies as mediators of market behavior that promote standardization and coordination. While this may be one important function of some technologies, taking a cultural approach to studying financial technologies highlights other important aspects of financial activity – in particular profit making. Instead of focusing primarily on how technologies coordinate market behavior, we focus on how technologies enable profit-making practices, in particular arbitrage. In two different case studies, one examining arbitrage between stock exchanges during the late nineteenth century and the other focusing on contemporary high-frequency trading, we employ the cultural approach to technology. We find that while new technologies do eventually promote greater coordination in fin...
Databáze: OpenAIRE