Assemblage of a market mechanism

Abstract

In this paper, we address the mechanistic character of markets through an empirical investigation on the automation of a stock exchange: the Paris Bourse. In this market, open outcry was fully replaced by an automated trade execution system in the late 1980s: since then, the confrontation of buy and sell orders was to be performed by an algorithm. We show how the officials and engineers in charge of the innovation process where constantly combining technical and social elements in order to make the new market mechanism hold together. They had to carefully inscribe into the new market device the interests at stake in order to prevent the breakdown of the equilibrium existing between bankers and stockbrokers. This process of translation shows the socially situated nature of this market mechanism.