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An Engine, Not a Camera: How Financial Models Shape Markets (Inside Technology)

An Engine, Not a Camera: How Financial Models Shape Markets (Inside Technology)

An Engine, Not a Camera: How Financial Models Shape Markets (Inside Technology)
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An Engine, Not a Camera: How Financial Models Shape Markets (Inside Technology) Paperback - 2008

by MacKenzie, Donald

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This seller has earned a 4.29 of 5 Stars rating from internet customers.
4.29 / 5 (161 total reviews)
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  • Title An Engine, Not a Camera: How Financial Models Shape Markets (Inside Technology)
  • Author MacKenzie, Donald
  • Binding Paperback
  • Edition First Edition 3r
  • Condition Used - Good
  • Pages 392
  • Volumes 1
  • Language ENG
  • Publisher MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, and London, England
  • Publication date 2008-08
  • Illustrated Yes
  • Features Bibliography, Glossary, Illustrated, Index, Table of Contents
  • Bookseller's Inventory # 0262633671.G
  • ISBN 9780262633673 / 0262633671
  • Weight 1.15 lbs (0.52 kg)
  • Dimensions 8.8 x 5.9 x 0.9 in (22.35 x 14.99 x 2.29 cm)
  • Age range 18 to UP years
  • Grade levels 13 - UP
  • Category Technology & Industrial Arts
  • Dewey Decimal Code 332.015
  • Quantity available 1

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Reader reviews for An Engine, Not a Camera: How Financial Models Shape Markets (Inside Technology)

Review summary

This seller has earned a 4.29 of 5 Stars rating from internet customers.
4.29 / 5 (161 total reviews)

Readers widely praise this as a rigorous yet accessible study of how financial models shape markets rather than merely describe them. They commend its clear history of ideas, rich interviews, and influential performativity thesis, calling it essential for finance and economic sociology. Some note dry or dense stretches in technical and historical sections, but the consensus is that it’s highly informative, thought-provoking, and strongly recommended, with curiosity about its implications after the 2008 crisis.

Readers say this book is:
insightfulrigorousfascinatingthought-provokinginformativewell-researchedcanonicalacademic but readabledense at timesdry in parts

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From the publisher

In An Engine, Not a Camera, Donald MacKenzie argues that the emergence of modern economic theories of finance affected financial markets in fundamental ways. These new, Nobel Prize-winning theories, based on elegant mathematical models of markets, were not simply external analyses but intrinsic parts of economic processes.

Paraphrasing Milton Friedman, MacKenzie says that economic models are an engine of inquiry rather than a camera to reproduce empirical facts. More than that, the emergence of an authoritative theory of financial markets altered those markets fundamentally. For example, in 1970, there was almost no trading in financial derivatives such as "futures." By June of 2004, derivatives contracts totaling $273 trillion were outstanding worldwide. MacKenzie suggests that this growth could never have happened without the development of theories that gave derivatives legitimacy and explained their complexities.

MacKenzie examines the role played by finance theory in the two most serious crises to hit the world's financial markets in recent years: the stock market crash of 1987 and the market turmoil that engulfed the hedge fund Long-Term Capital Management in 1998. He also looks at finance theory that is somewhat beyond the mainstream--chaos theorist Benoit Mandelbrot's model of "wild" randomness. MacKenzie's pioneering work in the social studies of finance will interest anyone who wants to understand how America's financial markets have grown into their current form.

About the author

Donald MacKenzie is Professor of Sociology (Personal Chair) at the University of Edinburgh. His books include Inventing Accuracy (1990), Knowing Machines (1996), and Mechanizing Proof (2001), all published by the MIT Press. Portions of An Engine, not a Camera won the Viviana A. Zelizer Prize in economic sociology from the American Sociological Association.

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