Research
You will find a complete range of our monographs, muti-authored and edited works including peer-reviewed, original scholarly research across the social sciences and aligned disciplines. We publish long and short form research and you can browse the complete Bristol University Press and Policy Press archive of over 1400 titles.
Policy Press also publishes policy reviews and polemic work which aim to challenge policy and practice in certain fields. These books have a practitioner in mind and are practical, accessible in style, as well as being academically sound and referenced.
Books: Research
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Theorists have argued that capital always seeks to break free from the circuits of production, and Chapter 13 shows how such a leap took place. It follows the transformation in finance as it moves to a fully electronic high-speed form of trading. It looks at the technological innovations and transformations to the architecture of markets that made this possible – London’s Tradepoint market and New York’s Island and the ‘SOES’ bandits – how these were mimicked and outcompeted by a fully automated system; and how these innovations made their way into the mainstream. It follows the final unsuccessful transformation of OFEX into a high-speed trading venue or dark pool.
What is the stock market, and why is it always on the news? Why is finance so important? How do stock markets work, and what do they really do? Financial markets are an inescapable part of the modern world but remain poorly understood. How to Build a Stock Exchange sets out to answer these questions by way of a journey through the histories and narratives of finance, combining meticulous historical-sociological research with anecdotes, reflections on the narratives and ideologies of finance and the author’s autobiographical reminiscences. The book takes the stock exchange both as an institution in its own right and as a rhetorical figure to explore finance more broadly. It focuses on the material and technological drivers of the markets, as well as the social relationships and rituals that keep markets functioning. It identifies exchanges as embedded in specific historical and political trajectories, showing the mutually constitutive relationship of modern nation states and financial markets. It shows how financial institutions are equally constituted by narratives, which work to set rules of participation, identity and conduct. Most of all, it makes the case that stock exchanges – and the other institutions of finance - are products of chance and circumstance. Finance, it argues, is a social technology, a reflection of its makers. While the stock exchange as we know it is central to so many contemporary global problems, it is not, the book suggests, entirely beyond change.
Setting out from Joseph Wright of Derby’s two paintings of scientific discovery (‘An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump’ and ‘The Alchemist, in Search of the Philosopher’s Stone’), Chapter 6 explores two rival conceptions of economic activity: discovering and making of prices. It sets out the proposition, drawn from science and technology studies, that financial facts are made through networks of experimentation and debate. These ideas are fleshed out using examples: the daily LIBOR (London Interbank Offered Rate) fixing, and then, in more detail, the development of the CBOE (Chicago Board Options Exchange) underpinned by new ideas in mathematical finance. The chapter concludes with the construction of the first mortgage-backed securities by Salomon Brothers in the 1980s, an example of ‘securitization’, a novel mode of financial operation.
Chapter 2 argues that financial markets are embedded in material structures with distinctive historical trajectories. It tells the story of the development of futures markets in Chicago as an example, before exploring how buildings and technologies (especially the ticker tape) constituted the market. It brings the trading pits up to date, noting some of the problems with their operation. The chapter mingles historical narrative (Sinclair’s The Jungle and Norris’ The Pit) with contemporary social science to show how these pre-digital markets produced prices: human powered computers combining cutting-edge technology with old fashioned pushing and shoving, dense social networks and long established interpersonal routines.
Chapter 5 tracks the political economic changes that transformed the London Stock Exchange – and the world of finance – in the 1980s. It begins with a short political-economic history of the period, before zooming in on the abolition of exchange controls and the Big Bang reforms of 27 October 1986. It shows how a string of privatizations helped inflate profits for jobbers, just as the firms became open to foreign ownership, and the takeover frenzy that resulted. It notes the changes that were wrought to the social structure of the City during that period, especially the end of the partnership structure.
What is the stock market, and why is it always on the news? Why is finance so important? How do stock markets work, and what do they really do? Financial markets are an inescapable part of the modern world but remain poorly understood. How to Build a Stock Exchange sets out to answer these questions by way of a journey through the histories and narratives of finance, combining meticulous historical-sociological research with anecdotes, reflections on the narratives and ideologies of finance and the author’s autobiographical reminiscences. The book takes the stock exchange both as an institution in its own right and as a rhetorical figure to explore finance more broadly. It focuses on the material and technological drivers of the markets, as well as the social relationships and rituals that keep markets functioning. It identifies exchanges as embedded in specific historical and political trajectories, showing the mutually constitutive relationship of modern nation states and financial markets. It shows how financial institutions are equally constituted by narratives, which work to set rules of participation, identity and conduct. Most of all, it makes the case that stock exchanges – and the other institutions of finance - are products of chance and circumstance. Finance, it argues, is a social technology, a reflection of its makers. While the stock exchange as we know it is central to so many contemporary global problems, it is not, the book suggests, entirely beyond change.
Why is finance so important? How do stock markets work and what do they really do? Most importantly, what might finance be and what could we expect from it?
Exploring contemporary finance via the development of stock exchanges, markets and the links with states, Roscoe mingles historical and technical detail with humorous anecdotes and lively portraits of market participants.
Deftly combining research and autobiographical vignettes, he offers a cautionary tale about the drive of financial markets towards expropriation, capture and exclusion. Positioning financial markets as central devices in the organisation of the global economy, he includes contemporary concerns over inequality, climate emergency and (de)colonialism and concludes by wondering, in the market’s own angst-filled voice, what the future for finance might be, and how we might get there.
The introduction discusses how freedom comes through social and material equality, and how this status can be achieved via ‘equally promoting approaches’. It also accounts for the role of contingency in forming social inequalities in the first place, as well as for the need to account for luck in redistributive justice. Luck is intimately related to how opportunities are structured and mystified in capitalism, and how this in turn affects well-being. Given this set of concerns, the introduction attends to debates involving a mode of reasoning called luck egalitarianism, which is firmly grounded in both the classical egalitarian aspirations of non-subordination and orthodox liberal conceptions of self-determination. This ‘equally promoting approach’ focuses on the totality of the production, circulation and consumption of goods as they can be leveraged to satisfy human needs. This broader view can help analyse durable and qualitatively and quantitatively demonstrable social inequalities as well as how these inequalities are sustained institutionally and reproduced ideologically.
Chapter 3 explores the historical interdependency of market and state, via the early history of London’s stock market. It shows how markets support states, taking the case of London. The London Stock Exchange developed as a mechanism for generating liquidity in the UK’s national debt, allowing the government to fund its colonialist activities. It examines how the occupation of stockjobber (the early market-makers) arose and the contestations, especially in terms of gender, that surrounded it. The chapter then looks at how states support markets, via the dispute between the Chicago Board of Trade and the city’s bucket shops, which eventually led to the legalization of options trading.
After initially reviewing then rejecting Gregory Mankiw’s, and Claudia Goldin and Lawrence Katz’s, explanations for inequality, this chapter turns to Thomas Piketty’s concern with inheritance and structural exploitation via investment instruments, showing that his thesis is more radical than critics acknowledge. Still, Piketty stops short of offering a critique of the contingency of inheritance itself and the institutional structure created to sustain its political potency.
