214 research outputs found
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Lord Lonsdale and his proteges: William Wordsworth and John Hardie
No full textBuilding blocks: a historical sociology of the innovation and regulation of exchange traded funds in the United States, 1970-2000
No full textBetween 1993 and 2016, the U.S. exchange traded fund (ETF) market has proliferated
from one product worth 2 trillion USD. Despite
its dramatic growth, the ETF market has yet to be the subject of sociological inquiry even though
fields such as the social studies of finance have begun examining the origins of index derivatives
(Millo 2007), options (MacKenzie 2006), hedge funds (Hardie and MacKenzie 2007), and
foreign exchange markets (Knorr Cetina and Bruegger 2002). Thus, the purpose of this
dissertation is to provide the first historical sociology of ETF innovation in the United States,
using an approach inspired by the social studies of finance.
This project empirically traces the emergence of the ETF by compiling an account of
precursory strategies, concept development, regulatory negotiations, and early product
marketing. The concept of agencement is used to frame the historical narrative of the ETF as a
product of two distinct assemblages that formed in the U.S. between 1970 and 2000: first, the
socio-technical integration between humans and their technologies that affected trading
strategies, and second, the collaborative relationships that were formed between innovators and
regulators. The mixed qualitative research consists of 36 interviews triangulated with archival
records, documents sourced through Freedom of Information Act requests, private collections,
and government files. Concluding analysis suggests that strategies foreshadowing the ETF began
to emerge as early as the 1970s, and innovator-regulator collaborations were integral to early
product qualification - a process not yet explored in literature on financial regulation
Critique of Justice Hardie Boys' Paper
No full textThis article is a critique of Justice Hardie Boys' paper presented in the symposium on Family Property, Law and Policy found in this issue of the Victoria University of Wellington Law Review (Rt Hon Justice Hardie Boys "Judicial attitudes to family property" (1995) 25 VUWLR 31). The author, being a Barrister and Solicitor of the High Court of New Zealand, discusses the paper from the perspective of a customer or client of the Court of Appeal. The article explores three issues. First, the issue of certainty of clients is discussed. Secondly, the issues which permeate into the Court of Appeal are identified. The author notes that there was a trend towards fewer cases ending up in the Court of Appeal. Finally, the position of children in relation to property matters is considered. It is concluded that, although there has been a successful narrowing of the gap, the Matrimonial Property Act was not yet socially acceptable in 1995
Bibliography of aeronautics
No full textThe pages excerpted here list works by Glenn Hammond Curtiss, one of the most famous aviators and aircraft designers of all time, and works by Alfred W. Lawson, an eccentric aviation pioneer from Wisconsin.
"Aeronautics was passing through a transition period from 1909 to 1916, and these years were important, as aircraft of the heavier-than-air types were just emerging from obscurity and ridicule in 1909." - from the Introduction.
Arranged by subject and author in a single alphabetical list, this bibliography indexes international literature on aeronautics.Early bibliographiesCompiler: Paul Brockett
Book review: Market-based banking and the international financial crisis, edited by Iain Hardie and David Howarth
No full text"Market-Based Banking and the International Financial Crisis." Iain Hardie and David Howarth (eds.). Oxford University Press. August 2013. --- Economics and political economy lack the analytical tools to explain the differing impact of the recent international financial crisis that erupted in 2007 on developed economies. The principal aim of this edited volume is to offer a ‘market-based banking’ framework which transcends the dominant dichotomous understanding of financial systems in terms of credit-based and capital-based. Market-Based Banking attempts to provide a framework that is more reflective of banking in modern financial systems; one that provides a more successful explanation of the differential impact of the recent financial crisis. Reviewed by Roger McCormick
Illustration Today
No full textHardie was invited to speak and to design a poster for ‘Illustration Today: A Symposium on the State of the Art’, hosted by Parson’s School of Design in New York. The discussion entitled ‘On Designer or Illustrator? Rules and Games? Noticing things and getting things noticed? in conversation’ with Christoph Niemann, the New Yorker illustrator can be seen at http://fora.tv/2006/11/11/Illustration_Today. Hardie approached this project by considering whether it was possible to begin a dialogue within the poster announcing the event. He chose to design and ‘author’ a poster that undertook to open and encourage discussion and to set up the rules for a conversation with invented and illustrated opposites. These he then discussed as a part of his dialogue within the symposium at which he was a key presenter and described as: ‘the legendary British conceptual illustrator behind such icons as Pink Floyd‘s Dark side of the Moon’. The poster has since been published in: Creativity, New York, December 2006. A review of the Symposium by Terry Kattleman; Executive editor, p 10. 'Another conference highlight was a fascinating mini career retrospective, conducted by illustrator Christoph Niemann, with British legend George Hardie who doesn’t mind "being called a designer, an illustrator or both" ... practically everything the dryly witty Hardie said sounded like a quote from Bartlett’s [famous quotations]. "I’m quite content to do pictures that people don’t actually get". "I love limitations". You need rules to fight against." "With a fading memory, it’s very important to keep a notebook. I don’t, actually, but I feel very strongly that everyone else should."' Also published in: Designer Portraits by Melchior Imboden Hedesign Berlin. 2007 ISBN 978-3-9810544-8-4), pp 180-83. Designer Portraits exhibition: Kunstzone 04, Luzern. 8.9.07-31.12.07 Exhibited by invitation in the National Cultural Festival in Tokushima, 27 October 2007
Understanding and governing complex financial instruments: A 'Social Studies of Finance' investigation of multi-name credit derivatives
No full textThe project will research two closely related issues. The first is how the properties of the particular complex financial instruments on which it will focus (which are known as "multi-name credit derivatives") were and are understood. Even the most experienced market participant cannot value such an instrument simply by reading its prospectus. We will examine questions such as how mathematical modelling has developed and how it has been and is used, eg by banks, hedge funds, and the agencies that give multi-name derivatives credit ratings.
The second issue to be researched is how these complex financial instruments were and are governed: for example, to what extent has this market developed outwith the control of banking supervisors and other regulators, and to what extent has it been a response to such regulation?
The main source will be around eighty semi-structured interviews with traders, managers, modellers, regulators, accountants/auditors, rating agency staff.
The research will be a contribution to the emerging field of social studies of finance, in which instead of applying economics to financial markets (the dominant approach), other areas of the social sciences are drawn upon: in this case science and technology studies and politics (especially comparative and international political economy)
The impact of Universal Credit rollout on homelessness assistance need in Scottish local authorities
No full textSince 2013, the Universal Credit (UC) welfare reform has been rolling out gradually to overhaul the means-tested social security system for working-age people in low-income households in the United Kingdom. Existing research suggests that UC has had a detrimental impact on the housing security of claimants, with evidence of increases in rent arrears and landlord repossession actions as the reform has been rolled out. However, there is currently a lack of evidence on the impact of UC rollout on the most extreme form of housing insecurity—homelessness. This article addresses this gap in knowledge, using Scottish local authority level data obtained from the Scottish Government on monthly rates of Housing Options approaches and statutory homelessness claims, which is linked to data on the timing of UC rollout within local authorities. The staggered nature of UC rollout (i.e., the fact that it rolled out in different local authorities at different times) is exploited in order to measure its impact within 29 Scottish local authorities using fixed effects regression modelling. The results suggest that UC ‘Full Service’ rollout, up to March 2019, was associated with increases in Housing Options approach rates, but there was not clear evidence of an increase in rates of working-age statutory homelessness claims. Redesigning UC to increase its standard allowance and address its long wait periods and harsh sanctions would likely help to protect the housing security of claimants
How Much Can Governments Borrow?:Financialization and Emerging Markets Government Borrowing Capacity
No full textThis article considers the varied borrowing capacity of emerging market governments, a key component of the impact on governments of financial globalization. It focuses on the link between the financialization – defined here as the ability to trade risk – and borrowing capacity, analyzing three case study countries: Brazil, Lebanon and Turkey. Both domestic and international bond markets are considered and differences in the ownership of government bonds in the three countries are highlighted. The financialization of different financial market actors is analyzed, concentrating on two of the most important, domestic commercial banks and individual investors, and the financialization of the structure of each market. It is argued that the greater the financialization, the greater the ability to exit or short. This increases the cost of borrowing and increases the likelihood, and severity, of crisis, thereby reducing government borrowing capacity. Comparative event studies from the three countries demonstrate the influence of financialization in crisis, or potential crisis, situations.<br/
Dealing with uncertainty: a historical sociology of evaluation practices in UK life insurance, 1971-present
No full textThis dissertation examines the evolution of UK life insurance arrangements by investigating how the ways in which life insurers evaluate the economic worth of insurance contracts have changed since the early 1970s. It draws on a set of 44 oral-history interviews, supplemented by an extensive set of documents, to describe how, in addition to traditional forms of ‘diversifiable’ insurance risk, insurers have increasingly sought to quantify forms of ‘non-diversifiable’ risk such as financial market risk. The central question is how changes in insurers’ evaluation practices shaped and were shaped by broader developments in UK life insurance.
In addressing this question, the dissertation combines insights from field-theoretical perspectives in ‘conventional’ economic sociology, the recent literature on the performativity of economics, the sociology of insurance and the sociology of scientific knowledge. Field theory is a useful tool for understanding how meso-level social orders emerge as a function of the strategic behaviour of actors in social domains such as markets. The assumption of ‘technological determinism’ prevalent in field-theoretical perspectives, however, conflicts with insights from the sociology of scientific knowledge and recent literature on the performativity of economics. This tension may be alleviated, I argue, by conceptualising both the market for life insurance and actuarial science as fields (a ‘market field’ and an ‘epistemic field’) and by investigating the interrelations between the two.
In deploying this field-theoretical perspective, the dissertation finds, on the one hand, that developments in the market field may lead to new opportunities and challenges in the epistemic field. Particularly important in the epistemic field, for instance, was the ascendancy of modern finance theory’s no-arbitrage models as key exemplars for the modelling of insurance liabilities in actuarial science. However, only when the jurisdictional claims of the actuarial profession were threatened and when supervisors required insurers to evaluate their liabilities using techniques already used in banking did these models become dominant in the actuarial field.
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On the other hand, I argue that the ways in which life insurers evaluate the economic worth of insurance contracts matters for what life insurance is and does. Evaluations of ‘value’ and ‘risk’ inform decision making about the distribution of financial surplus and risk across different groups of policyholders and shareholders, the types of products that life insurers choose to underwrite, and the way in which they invest their assets in capital markets. Since the 1970s, the emergence of novel evaluation practices has contributed to the individualisation of financial risk in insurance arrangements, a shift in insurers’ asset allocations from equities to fixed-income investments, and a declining willingness from insurers to underwrite traditional mortality-related risks. The business of life insurance, in other words, increasingly revolves around investment intermediation rather than protection.
The findings of this dissertation draw attention to the politics of seemingly technical issues such as the discounting of future cash flows to present values. Overall, I suggest that the evolution of UK life insurance can be fully understood only by paying attention to tensions and conflicts in the epistemic field of actuarial science, attempts to influence the ‘rules of the game’ in the market field and the interrelations between the two
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