Towards a unified theory of market prices: turning to pricing in practice

Abstract

Prices and pricing are central to markets and market-making, while granted sparse attention in economic sociology. In this paper, I approach prices and pricing as market knowledge: the practical, everyday knowledge used by market actors. First, the two dominant sociological conceptualizations of market knowledge are outlined: (1) market knowledge as a coded interface, making prices outcomes of structurally installed pricing scripts, and (2) market knowledge as a reconfiguring force where prices are means, or devices, of marketization. Second, I use empirical cases of pricing to investigate if both conceptualizations hold explanatory value, and if they can be considered antithetical. The analysis finds that the episteme performed in pricing-practices concerns and reproduces structures. Consequently, I suggest a synthetic definition of market knowledge as a ‘structural episteme’.

Why Economic Management Models Do Not Foster Morals

“…By joining morals and models in the management of quantitative finance, Taking the Floor points to an existing issue in economic sociology: the dynamics of the performativity of economic knowledge and the social and moral orders embedding markets, including but not limited to financial ones (see also Bååth 2020). Beunza's argument presents some important, first steps toward unifying these perspectives on economy in society.…”