ABSTRACT

This chapter uses materials gathered from 1999 to 2002 on exchange automation in financial markets, already exploited in a few publications on the case of the Arizona Stock Exchange and on the case of the Paris Bourse. As the chapter looks, apart from reiterating the fact that prices are performed, there again exist quite interesting elements that can facilitate refinement of the problems of performativity. The Arizona Corporation Commission had approached Smith’s laboratory at the University of Arizona to seek electronic inspiration for the establishment of a local stock exchange, and was redirected by the scientist to Wunsch’s commercial version of the mechanism that they were demonstrating in the experimental setting. The idea of a continuous double auction began to populate the specialized literature. And this literature soon began to cite numerous field examples. The promise of transparency is deeply connected to the problem of embeddedness that economic sociologists have emphasized in their understanding of the formation of markets.