000			01520pab a2200157 454500
008			180718b2003 xxu||||| |||| 00| 0 eng d
100			_aMackenzie, Donald
245			_aAn equation and its worlds: bricolage, exemplars, disunity and performativity in financial economics
260			_c2003
300			_ap.831-68.
362			_aDec
520			_aThis paper describes and analyses the history of the fundamental equation of modern financial economics: the Black-Scholes (or Black-Scholes-Merton) option pricing equation. In that history, several themes of potentially general importance are revealed. First, the key mathematical work was not rule-following but bricolage, creative tinkering. Second, it was, however, bricolage guided by the goal of finding a solution to the problem of option pricing analogous to existing exemplary solutions, notably the Capital Asset Pricing Model, which had successfully been applied to stock prices. Third, the central strands of work on option pricing, although all recognizably `orthodox' economics, were not unitary. There was significant theoretical disagreement amongst the pioneers of option pricing theory; this disagreement, paradoxically, turns out to be a strength of the theory. Fourth, option pricing theory has been performative. Rather than simply describing a pre-existing empirical state of affairs, it altered the world, in general in a way that made itself more true. Reproduced.
650			_aEconomics
773			_aSocial Studies of Science
909			_a59405
999			_c59405 _d59405