ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a study in which a situation where a regulator proposes a change in the commensuration system traditionally used to set prices on a market and meets resistance from market actors. More precisely, the study is based on a qualitative study of the proposed changes to over-the-counter (OTC) financial markets resulting from the regulatory reform currently in progress in Europe. Financial markets seem to be the realm of commensurative practices, where prices are the intensely institutionalised result of commensuration and contribute to constituting what they aim to measure. The chapter provides the understanding of commensuration contests where there are no obvious moral or existential identity conflicts. It focuses on the change in the pricing mechanism involved in a regulation project concerning financial OTC markets in Europe. The chapter envisages the pricing mechanism that existed in the markets before reform as a specific commensuration system and represents the proposed change as a change in commensuration form.
