[go: up one dir, main page]
IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/jinter/v31y2019i2p165-182.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Against Financial Derivatives: Towards an Ethics of Representation

Author

Listed:
  • David Hawkes
Abstract
Financial derivatives dominate the twenty-first century economy. Such instruments are performative signs, in the sense that they do not refer to any substantial use-value but rather carry their value within themselves. Financial derivatives thus represent a movement towards the autonomy of representation in the economic sphere, which parallels the rise of performative representation in linguistics and philosophy. The independent power of signs has historically been subjected to severe ethical criticism. To imagine that signs can do things has always been denounced as magic, idolatry and fetishism. In the economic sphere the autonomous reproduction of financial signs has been criticized as ‘usury.’ In order to achieve an ethical perspective on the rise to power of financial derivatives, and also on the wider power of signs in postmodernity, we would do well to revive such forms of moral semiotics, and to apply them to the autonomous representations of our own era. JEL: A12, A13, B14, E44, Z13

Suggested Citation

  • David Hawkes, 2019. "Against Financial Derivatives: Towards an Ethics of Representation," Journal of Interdisciplinary Economics, , vol. 31(2), pages 165-182, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:jinter:v:31:y:2019:i:2:p:165-182
    DOI: 10.1177/0260107918812535
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0260107918812535
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/0260107918812535?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Geoffrey Poitras, 2000. "The Early History of Financial Economics, 1478–1776," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 2151.
    2. Robert J. Shiller, 2014. "Speculative Asset Prices," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 104(6), pages 1486-1517, June.
    3. repec:ucp:bkecon:9780226752136 is not listed on IDEAS
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Souza, Thiago de Oliveira, 2020. "Dollar carry timing," Discussion Papers on Economics 10/2020, University of Southern Denmark, Department of Economics.
    2. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/74362fq3f99s299n07e84dlcib is not listed on IDEAS
    3. Timothy Johnson, 2015. "Reciprocity as a Foundation of Financial Economics," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 131(1), pages 43-67, September.
    4. An-Ming Wang, 2016. "Agglomeration and simplified housing boom," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 53(5), pages 936-956, April.
    5. Zhou, Liyun & Huang, Jialiang, 2020. "Contagion of future-level sentiment in Chinese Agricultural Futures Markets," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 61(C).
    6. Yongheng Deng & Eric Girardin & Roselyne Joyeux & Shuping Shi, 2017. "Did bubbles migrate from the stock to the housing market in China between 2005 and 2010?," Pacific Economic Review, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 22(3), pages 276-292, August.
    7. Deeksha Gupta, 2018. "Too Much Skin-in-the-Game? The Effect of Mortgage Market Concentration on Credit and House Prices," 2018 Meeting Papers 512, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    8. Christian A. L. Hilber, 2019. "Immobilienpreise und Immobilienzyklen und die Rolle von Angebotsbeschränkungen [The impact of local supply constraints on house prices and price dynamics]," Zeitschrift für Immobilienökonomie (German Journal of Real Estate Research), Springer;Gesellschaft für Immobilienwirtschaftliche Forschung e. V., vol. 5(1), pages 37-65, November.
    9. Fu, Qi & So, Jacky Yuk-Chow & Li, Xiaotong, 2024. "Stable paretian distribution, return generating processes and habit formation—The implication for equity premium puzzle," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 70(C).
    10. Carina Burs, 2023. "A Model of Cycles and Bubbles under Heterogeneous Beliefs in Financial Markets," Working Papers CIE 154, Paderborn University, CIE Center for International Economics.
    11. Maria Eug?nia Mata & Jos? Rodrigues da Costa & David Justino, 2018. "Finance, a New Old Science," HISTORY OF ECONOMIC THOUGHT AND POLICY, FrancoAngeli Editore, vol. 2018(2), pages 75-93.
    12. Booth, G. Geoffrey & Gurun, Umit G., 2008. "Volatility clustering and the bid-ask spread: Exchange rate behavior in early Renaissance Florence," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 15(1), pages 131-144, January.
    13. Pierre-Charles Pradier, 2016. "The debt of the Hôtel-Dieu de Paris from 1660 to 1690: a testbed for sovereign default," Documents de travail du Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne 16057, Université Panthéon-Sorbonne (Paris 1), Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne.
    14. John H. Cochrane, 2017. "Macro-Finance," Review of Finance, European Finance Association, vol. 21(3), pages 945-985.
    15. Laimutė Urbšienė & Andrius Bugajevas & Marekas Pipiras, 2016. "The Impact Of Investment Horizon On The Return And Risk Of Investments In Securities In Lithuania," Organizations and Markets in Emerging Economies, Faculty of Economics, Vilnius University, vol. 7(2).
    16. Nikolaos Antonakakis & Ioannis Chatziantoniou & David Gabauer, 2021. "A regional decomposition of US housing prices and volume: market dynamics and Portfolio diversification," The Annals of Regional Science, Springer;Western Regional Science Association, vol. 66(2), pages 279-307, April.
    17. Luyao Zhang & Fan Zhang, 2023. "Understand Waiting Time in Transaction Fee Mechanism: An Interdisciplinary Perspective," Papers 2305.02552, arXiv.org.
    18. Espinoza-Licona, David R. & Pérez-Sosa, Felipe A., 2019. "El bitcoin, ¿una burbuja especulativa? Análisis de la estabilidad paramétrica de series de tiempo para el periodo 2009-2018," eseconomía, Escuela Superior de Economía, Instituto Politécnico Nacional, vol. 14(51), pages 45-60, Segundo s.
    19. Schinckus, Christophe, 2018. "Pataphysics of finance: An essay of visual epistemology," CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING, Elsevier, vol. 52(C), pages 57-68.
    20. Zhou, Liyun & Yang, Chunpeng, 2019. "Stochastic investor sentiment, crowdedness and deviation of asset prices from fundamentals," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 79(C), pages 130-140.
    21. Romain Bocher, 2022. "The Intersubjective Markets Hypothesis," Journal of Interdisciplinary Economics, , vol. 34(1), pages 35-50, January.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Derivatives; semiotics; usury; ethics; money; usury;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • A12 - General Economics and Teaching - - General Economics - - - Relation of Economics to Other Disciplines
    • A13 - General Economics and Teaching - - General Economics - - - Relation of Economics to Social Values
    • B14 - Schools of Economic Thought and Methodology - - History of Economic Thought through 1925 - - - Socialist; Marxist
    • E44 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates - - - Financial Markets and the Macroeconomy
    • Z13 - Other Special Topics - - Cultural Economics - - - Economic Sociology; Economic Anthropology; Language; Social and Economic Stratification

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:jinter:v:31:y:2019:i:2:p:165-182. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.