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[...] Nor do we for a moment intend that investigation of the performativity or counterperformativity of mathematical models should displace other forms of analysis of finance. For instance, the rise of options and other forms of derivatives cannot be understood in isolation from broader processes …

He was fond of an autobiographical synecdoche: when interviewed, he said that an important thread running through his work began with a book review he found in his uncle Szolem’s wastepaper basket

In a stimulating contribution to the literature on performativity in economic life, Elena Esposito points to the pervasiveness of what, drawing upon the social theory of Niklas Luhmann, she calls ‘second-order observation’. Translated into our terms, it is not simply that mathematical models in fin…

[...] our argument—our claim of counterperformativity—is that those assumptions made possible, via their gaming by market participants, the construction of securities that radically undermined them.

Options had been traded for centuries, but typically in only an informal, semi-organized way—in the interstices or on the peripheries of mainstream financial markets