Do Economists Make Markets?

This excellent collection gathers the very best work on the fascinating topic of performativity in economics. The book offers articulate presentations of a wide range of different views--not only pro and con, but various pros and cons. It is as important as it is likely to be controversial. -- Wade Hands, University of Puget Sound Do Economists Make Markets? contains a number of truly excellent and thought-provoking studies, including the most important statement in English on economic performativity by the theory's inventor, Michel Callon. -- Richard Swedberg, Cornell University This is an absolutely terrific volume. Built on a rich and varied set of empirical studies of how economic technologies 'perform the world,' Do Economists Make Markets? establishes the 'science studies' approach to markets as a valid alternative, and in some cases as a complement, to more conventional approaches in economic sociology. It breathes new life into the study of economics by offering a stimulating account of the complex ways in which economists, economic machines, and society co-constitute one another. -- Marion Fourcade, University of California, Berkeley

Dedicated to the controversial question of whether economics is performative - of whether, in some cases, economics actually produces the phenomena it analyzes, this book features case studies that intend to offer substance to the notion of the performativity of economics in an accessible, nontechnical way.Around the globe, economists affect markets by saying what markets are doing, what they should do, and what they will do. Increasingly, experimental economists are even designing real-world markets. But, despite these facts, economists are still largely thought of as scientists who merely observe markets from the outside, like astronomers look at the stars. Do Economists Make Markets? boldly challenges this view. It is the first book dedicated to the controversial question of whether economics is performative--of whether, in some cases, economics actually produces the phenomena it analyzes. The book's case studies--including financial derivatives markets, telecommunications-frequency auctions, and individual transferable quotas in fisheries--give substance to the notion of the performativity of economics in an accessible, nontechnical way. Some chapters defend the notion; others attack it vigorously. The book ends with an extended chapter in which Michel Callon, the idea's main formulator, reflects upon the debate and asks what it means to say economics is performative. The book's insights and strong claims about the ways economics is entangled with the markets it studies should interest--and provoke--economic sociologists, economists, and other social scientists. In addition to the editors and Callon, the contributors include Marie-France Garcia-Parpet, Francesco Guala, Emmanuel Didier, Philip Mirowski, Edward Nik-Khah, Petter Holm, Vincent-Antonin Lepinay, and Timothy Mitchell.