We examine the implications of tokenization for the transformation of things into financial assets. Framed as the ‘democratization’ of financial investment by its advocates, tokenization is a process whereby asset ownership is fractionalized and represented by a digital token to be sold to potential investors on blockchain-based platforms. Tokenization can be seen as an extension of securitization to illiquid real-world assets or digital assets; as such, tokenization is often framed as a technique to isolate risks, reduce financing costs, and generate returns without selling the underlying assets. For example, real estate security tokens offer fractionalized ownership to smaller investors through digital means lowering entry barriers, though such investors still typically lack exposure to diversified real estate token portfolios. Through an analytical and empirical investigation, we argue the governance claims made about tokenization obscure a key contradiction: tokenization is touted as a way to democratize financial markets, but the necessary adaptation of tokenization to prevailing financial market infrastructures undermines this democratization promise. Engaging with this contradiction, we unpack the governance of financial markets and assets through the techno-financial transformation of things into digital tokens, focusing on the promise of tokenization to democratize finance.

Synthetic datasets, artificially generated to mimic real-world data while maintaining anonymization, have emerged as a promising technology in the financial sector, attracting support from regulators and market participants as a solution to data privacy and scarcity challenges limiting machine learning (ML) deployment. This article argues that synthetic data’s effects on financial markets depend critically on how these technologies are embedded within existing ML infrastructural ‘stacks’ rather than on their intrinsic properties. We identify three key tensions that will determine whether adoption proves beneficial or harmful: (1) data circulability versus opacity, particularly the ‘double opacity’ problem arising from stacked ML systems, (2) model-induced scattering versus model-induced herding in market participant behavior, and (3) flattening versus deepening of data platform power. These tensions directly correspond to core regulatory priorities around model risk management, systemic risk, and competition policy. Using financial audit as a case study, we demonstrate how these tensions interact in practice and propose governance frameworks, including a synthetic data labeling regime to preserve contextual information when datasets cross organizational boundaries.

This article examines the financial strategies employed by Genoese businessmen in Atlantic Castile during the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, focusing on the relative value of private enterprises. It reveals how the interplay between Castilian market characteristics and the unique financial culture of Genoese merchants predominantly supported short-term and transient economic ventures. These methods significantly reduced the need for centralised corporate structures and redundant accounting procedures, supported by a robust notarial system. Consequently, trading in securities and credit extensions became prominent features of this financial market. The research demonstrates that the widespread use of account money, credit and bills of exchange allowed Ligurians to engage in trade and access markets with flexibility and agility through quantitative and functional economic analyses. It also highlights the importance of various credit arrangements, such as loans, bills of trade, or IOUs, which extend beyond merely deferring payments.

Policies such as the SEC's Fair Disclosure Rule, and technologies such as SEC EDGAR, aim to disseminate corporate disclosures to a wider audience of investors in risky assets. In this study, we adopt an experimental approach to measure whether this wider disclosure is beneficial to these investors. Price-clearing equilibrium models based on utility maximization and non-revealing and fully-revealing prices predict that in a pure exchange economy, an arbitrary trader would prefer that no investors are informed rather than all are informed; non-revealing theory further predicts that an arbitrary trader would prefer a situation in which all traders are informed rather than half the traders are informed. These predictions can be summarized as “None > All > Half”. A laboratory study was conducted to test these predictions. Where previous studies have largely focused on information dissemination and its effects on equilibrium price and insider profits, we focus instead on traders’ expected utility, as measured by their preferences for markets in which none, half, or all traders are informed. Our experimental result contradicts the prediction and indicates “Half > None > All”, i.e. subjects favor a situation where a random half is informed. The implication is that in addition to testing predictions of price equilibrium, experiments should also be used to verify analytical welfare predictions of expected utility under different policy choices.

Quantitative easing (QE) has been a favourite tool of central banks in their post-financial crisis monetary policy apparatus. Social science literature has interpreted QE as a shift away from performative governance characterising pre-crisis monetary policy. With reference to the Bank of England’s experience, I offer a reinterpretation of QE as a performative intervention in the conditions of financial markets, as an attempt to alter the state of financial markets away from dysfunctionality and towards efficiency. I claim that, following the financial crisis, the model of complete and efficient markets – a mainstay in central banking prior to the crisis – was transformed from a real-world approximation to a ‘performative object’ to be achieved. In deploying the balance sheet, central banks attempt to performatively enact complete and efficient markets. The article rejects the claim of discontinuity between pre-crisis and post-crisis monetary policy, arguing that QE is a continuation of inflation targeting though with important innovations. While pre-crisis performativity relied on central bankers’ communicative framing of market expectations, QE is performative via the ontological shaping of financial markets, driven by epistemic models. The article relies on a set of 51 interviews with central bankers and financial market participants and a corpus of documents.

Since the Paris Agreement, interest in decarbonization and sustainable finance has grown rapidly. Within the prevalent derisking regime, investment for decarbonization must come predominantly from the private sector. However, growth in ‘sustainable finance’ assets is not necessarily causing more sustainability-advancing productive investment to drive the green transition. We thus argue that sustainable finance is not exclusively about investing or providing finance, but crucially also about changing corporate practices toward greater sustainability. To shed light on how private financial actors can influence sustainability in a derisking context and to facilitate this broader research perspective on sustainable finance, we introduce the conceptual framework of ‘channels of influence’. These channels are different strategies and mechanisms used by private actors that influence the behavior of financial and non-financial corporations to increase financial flows to sustainable productive investments. We identify ten channels of influence concerning sustainable finance: (1) initial financing; (2) refinancing; (3) (re)insurance; (4) ratings; (5) climate-litigation; (6) company engagement; (7) divestment; (8) reputation; (9) coalition-building; and (10) standard-setting. These are grouped according to the specificity and breadth of their sustainability impact. Using these channels enables private actors to advance sustainability within the status quo of state-market relations and regulation.

Sustainable finance is often discussed as a solution to the climate crisis, but its impacts are limited and its discourse focuses on mobilising private investments through public de-risking, without considering direct government action. We argue that this is due to an implicit reference to mainstream economic theory assuming that an active state leads to time inconsistency problems and crowding-out effects. However, these assumptions have been sufficiently refuted as public investments may actually crowd-in private capital. We therefore propose a paradigm shift towards what we call Public Sustainable Finance, aimed at empowering the role of the state in the green transition on the discursive, policy, and political economy levels. Studying the case of Germany, we show how Public Sustainable Finance can be introduced despite tight fiscal regimes. To this end, we propose that the Climate- and Transformation Fund be given its own borrowing powers. By borrowing an average of 23 billion euros annually from 2024 to 2030, the existing financing gap that has been exacerbated following the November 2023 constitutional court ruling can be closed, enabling a more rapid and effective green transition.

Political instability is commonly thought to discourage investment and reduce economic growth. We challenge this consensus by showing that instability does not systematically depress investment. Using an event study approach, we examine daily returns of national financial indices in every country that experienced an irregular regime change subject to data availability. Returns following resignations are large and positive (+4 percent), while those following assassinations are negative and smaller in magnitude (−2 percent). The impact of coups tends to be negative (−2 percent), but we show that a pro-business coup results in large positive returns (+10 percent). We also find evidence that authoritarian or anti-business regime changes are more likely to lead to capital flight than democratic or pro-business changes. The immediate impact of political instability on investment is therefore dependent on the type of regime change and its expected impact on future growth.

In this essay, I examine and discuss the relationship between the market and the masses in light of recent retail-driven surges in the stock prices of firms like GameStop and AMC. Using two historical snapshots, I draw out similarities and differences between the way the collective power and rationality (or lack thereof) of the masses was portrayed in late-nineteenth and early-twentieth-century market literature and in recent debates about retail investor inclusion and social media or social trading platform-driven market volatility. The main difference between the historical discourse and the present situation is that the new digital market-expanding technologies enable effective retail investor mobilization and thus, increase the retail swarms’ market-moving powers, which were previously less agile and forceful. However, eased and widened market access also transforms digital life into alternative data that is subjected to age-old strategies of market exploitation.

There is little research studying the effects of political violence on financial markets over decades, especially in an atmosphere where the violence manifested itself in heterogeneous and geographically widespread ways. This article examines the authoritarian edifice of Tsarist Russia in the nineteenth century to examine the way in which capital markets perceived political instability in a country which had paradoxically strong financial institutions but weak political ones. Using a novel database on political violence in Russia in the nineteenth century matched to monthly financial data from Russian equity markets, this article provides strong evidence that Russia's financial markets were negatively affected in the long run by political violence. Consistent with modern views of financial information, the effects of political violence were quickly incorporated into asset prices, but the specific magnitude of such violence was different depending on where the violence occurred and in what manner. Overall, it appeared that political violence was perceived very negatively by investors in Russian equity markets.

States require money to function and therefore every government has to continuously raise new funds. On the financial markets, governments cannot be sure that auctions of their debt will be sufficiently attractive to financial investors, which is why they usually enter into cooperative agreements with selected banks. The best known and most widespread form of cooperation is the primary dealer system. A primary dealer is a bank that commits to purchasing a certain percentage of government debt at each auction and to intervene as a formalized market maker in the debt market if necessary. Most of the primary dealer systems involve the banks being financially neither remunerated nor compensated for their activities, and if there is some kind of financial compensation, it is on a low level. The article analyses European primary dealer systems and asks why banks are willing to participate in these systems. I will show that both domestic and foreign banks use their status as primary dealers to build long-term relationships with one or more European governments and to gain an advantage on the global stage. In Bourdieu’s terms, primary dealer banks use their financial capital to accumulate social and symbolic capital.