This paper examines the theory and evidence in support of entrepreneurial leaning (EL). Under this theory entrepreneurial performance is argued to be enhanced by EL which itself is enhanced by business experience. However, if business performance is strongly influenced by chance then evidence of EL will be difficult to identify. We test for EL using a large scale data set comprising 6671 new firms. We choose business survival over three years as our performance measure and then formulate three tests for EL. None of the three tests provide compelling evidence in support of EL.

Drawing on documentary sources and 114 interviews with market participants, this and a companion article discuss the development and use in finance of the Gaussian copula family of models, which are employed to estimate the probability distribution of losses on a pool of loans or bonds, and which were centrally involved in the credit crisis. This article, which explores how and why the Gaussian copula family developed in the way it did, employs the concept of 'evaluation culture', a set of practices, preferences and beliefs concerning how to determine the economic value of financial instruments that is shared by members of multiple organizations. We identify an evaluation culture, dominant within the derivatives departments of investment banks, which we call the 'culture of no-arbitrage modelling', and explore its relation to the development of Gaussian copula models. The article suggests that two themes from the science and technology studies literature on models (modelling as 'impure' bricolage, and modelling as articulating with heterogeneous objectives and constraints) help elucidate the history of Gaussian copula models in finance.

This article, the second of two articles on the Gaussian copula family of models, discusses the attitude of 'quants' (modellers) to these models, showing that contrary to some accounts, those quants were not 'model dopes' who uncritically accepted the outputs of the models. Although sometimes highly critical of Gaussian copulas - even 'othering' them as not really being models --they nevertheless nearly all kept using them, an outcome we explain with reference to the embedding of these models in inter- and intra-organizational processes: communication, risk control and especially the setting of bonuses. The article also examines the role of Gaussian copula models in the 2007-2008 global crisis and in a 2005 episode known as 'the correlation crisis'. We end with the speculation that all widely used derivatives models (and indeed the evaluation culture in which they are embedded) help generate inter-organizational co-ordination, and all that is special in this respect about the Gaussian copula is that its status as 'other' makes this role evident.

Serving as a pledge against a future promise, collateral has traditionally been understood as a 'back office' technicality that reduces the risk of default. Yet in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis and the erosion of faith among market participants in the credit quality of large banks, collateral is playing an increasingly important epistemic role within finance, as an anchor that underpins the valuation of a growing number of financial instruments. This paper explores the increasing importance of collateral to the modelling practices used by 'quants' to value 'over-the-counter' interest rate derivatives since the 2008 financial crisis, and how the inclusion of collateral expertise into quants' own modelling practices has affected these markets. This historical episode suggests that while the inclusion of collateral expertise into banks' front office modelling practices has made banks' pricing models less abstract and more aligned to the traditionally overlooked legal practices that underpin derivatives trading, it has also led to an explosion of complexity in the valuation of these instruments that now threatens the future existence of these markets.

How did the adoption of fair value accounting by the FASB shape the financial modelling practices used by market practitioners? Drawing on documentary sources, ethnographic fieldwork, and 52 interviews with financial economists and market participants, this article addresses this question by tracing the development and adoption of the mathematical models and associated infrastructures that derivatives ‘dealer’ banks use to assign value to the counterparty risk embedded in the ‘over-the-counter’ derivatives contracts they trade. Rather than reflecting a pre-existing consensus on the part of financial market participants in favour of valuation practices drawn from financial economics, this article suggests that the switch to fair value actively shaped the financial modelling and risk management practices used by dealers to value and manage this risk. While a number of material and institutional factors shaped the adoption of these practices, the switch to fair value ultimately ‘tipped the balance’ in favor of a particular set of practices that were preferred by a minority of investment banks. In explaining the development and adoption of banks’ counterparty risk modelling practices, this paper develops a hybrid theoretical approach that combines organisational institutionalism’s focus on meso-level field dynamics and the social studies of finance’s focus on materiality.