Use of technology gives rise to impersonal relations in financial markets. Personal interaction is replaced by the cold rationality of algorithms. While working in financial markets, employees aim at being rational maximizers. This competition is balanced with a co-operative dimension. The market depends on, and is thus embedded in non-contractual elements such as morality and social capital. Custom creates the basis upon which exchange may take place and facilitates the organisation of economic activities. Trust enables us to engage in economic action. With a similar background, education, and by means of being part of one and the same culture, investors have similar values and beliefs. Actors use norms and habits that reduce the complexity of their work. Resources embedded in social relations and networks are accessed for utilitarian purposes.

Financial markets are disembedded while local contexts are replaced by a world-wide scope. Financial capitalism nonetheless becomes increasingly integrated in society, as eighty percent of the Swedish population own shares either directly or through funds. Media takes an increased interest for securities markets. The exclusivity of financial markets decreases.

Download Info

To download:

If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. Information about this may be contained in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.

Publisher Info

Paper provided by Stockholm School of Economics in its series Working Paper Series in Business Administration with number 2004:6.

Download reference. The following formats are available: HTML (with abstract), plain text (with abstract), BibTeX, RIS (EndNote, RefMan, ProCite), ReDIF
Length: 21 pages
Date of creation: 01 Jun 2004
Date of revision: 19 Jan 2005
Handle: RePEc:hhb:hastba:2004_006

Contact details of provider:
Postal: The Economic Research Institute, Stockholm School of Economics, P.O. Box 6501, SE 113 83 Stockholm, Sweden
Phone: +46-(0)8-736 90 00
Fax: +46-(0)8-31 01 57
Email:
Web page: http://www.hhs.se/
More information through EDIRC

For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its listing, contact: (Helena Lundin).

Related research

Keywords: financial market; brokers; embeddedness; networks;

Statistics

Access and download statistics

Did you know? IDEAS indexes over 800000 items of research in Economics alone.

This page was last updated on 2010-1-3.