Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-4hhp2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-05-18T18:44:42.356Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Uncertainty, Risk, and the Financial Crisis of 2008

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 April 2014

Get access

Abstract

The distinction between uncertainty and risk, originally drawn by Frank Knight and John Maynard Keynes in the 1920s, remains fundamentally important today. In the presence of uncertainty, market actors and economic policy-makers substitute other methods of decision making for rational calculation—specifically, actors' decisions are rooted in social conventions. Drawing from innovations in financial markets and deliberations among top American monetary authorities in the years before the 2008 crisis, we show how economic actors and policy-makers live in worlds of risk and uncertainty. In that world social conventions deserve much greater attention than conventional IPE analyses accords them. Such conventions must be part of our toolkit as we seek to understand the preferences and strategies of economic and political actors.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The IO Foundation 2014 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Abbott, Andrew. 1988. The System of Professions: An Essay on the Division of Expert Labor. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Abdelal, Rawi, Blyth, Mark, and Parsons, Craig, eds. 2010. Constructing the International Economy. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Abolafia, Mitchel Y. 2004. Framing Moves: Interpretive Politics at the Federal Reserve. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory 14 (3):349–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Abolafia, Mitchel Y. 2010. Narrative Construction as Sensemaking: How a Central Bank Thinks. Organization Studies 31 (3):349–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Abolafia, Mitchel Y. 2012. Central Banking and the Triumph of Technical Rationality. In The Oxford Handbook of the Sociology of Finance, edited by Cetina, Katrin Knorr and Preda, Alex, 94114. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Acharya, Viral V., and Richardson, Matthew. 2009. Causes of the Financial Crisis. Critical Review 21 (2–3):195210.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ahlquist, John S. 2006. Economic Policy, Institutions, and Capital Flows: Portfolio and Direct Investment Flows in Developing Countries. International Studies Quarterly 50 (3):681704.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Akerlof, George, and Shiller, Robert. 2009. Animal Spirits: How Human Psychology Drives the Economy, and Why It Matters for Global Capitalism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Bailey, Andrew, and Schonhardt-Bailey, Cheryl. 2005. Central Bankers and Big Ideas: Independence, Credibility, Uncertainty, and Measurement in FOMC Transcripts. Unpublished manuscript, London School of Economics and Political Science, London.Google Scholar
Beckert, Jens. 1996. What Is Sociological About Economic Sociology? Uncertainty and the Embeddedness of Economic Action. Theory and Society 25 (6):803–40.Google Scholar
Beckert, Jens. 2002. Beyond the Market: Social Foundations of Economic Efficiency. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Beckert, Jens. 2009. The Social Order of Markets. Theory and Society 38 (3):245–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bernhard, William, Broz, J. Lawrence, and Clark, William Roberts. 2002. The Political Economy of Monetary Institutions. International Organization 56 (4):693723.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bernhard, William, and Leblang, David. 2006. Democratic Processes and Financial Markets: Pricing Politics. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Best, Jacqueline. 2010. The Limits of Financial Risk Management: Or What We Didn't Learn from the Asian Crisis. New Political Economy 15 (1):2949.Google Scholar
Best, Jacqueline, and Paterson, Matthew. 2010. Introduction: Understanding Cultural Political Economy. In Cultural Political Economy, edited by Best, Jacqueline and Paterson, Matthew, 125. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Beunza, Daniel, and Stark, David. 2012. From Dissonance to Resonance: Cognitive Interdependence in Quantitative Finance. Economy and Society 41 (3):383417.Google Scholar
Bhidé, Amar 2009. An Accident Waiting to Happen. Critical Review 21 (2–3):211–47.Google Scholar
Biggart, Nicole Woolsey, and Beamish, Thomas D.. 2003. The Economic Sociology of Conventions: Habit, Custom, Practice, and Routine in Market Order. Annual Review of Sociology 29:443–64.Google Scholar
Blinder, Alan S., and Reis, Ricardo. 2005. Understanding the Greenspan Standard. Paper prepared for the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City Symposium “The Greenspan Era: Lessons for the Future,” 25–27 August, Jackson Hole, WY.Google Scholar
Blyth, Mark. 2002. Great Transformations: Economic Ideas and Institutional Change in the Twentieth Century. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Blyth, Mark. 2003. The Political Power of Financial Ideas: Transparency, Risk, and Distribution in Global Finance. In Monetary Orders: Ambiguous Economics, Ubiquitous Politics, edited by Kirshner, Jonathan, 239–59. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Blyth, Mark. 2006. Great Punctuations: Prediction, Randomness, and the Evolution of Comparative Political Science. American Political Science Review 100 (4):493–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blyth, Mark. 2011. Ideas, Uncertainty, and Evolution. In Ideas and Politics in Social Science Research, edited by Béland, Daniel and Cox, Robert Henry, 83104. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Blyth, Mark. 2013. This Time It Really Is Different: Europe, the Financial Crisis, and “Staying on Top” in the Twenty-first Century. In The Third Globalization: Can Wealthy Nations Stay Rich in the Twenty-First Century?, edited by Breznitz, Dan and Zysman, John, 207–31. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bookstaber, Richard. 2007. A Demon of Our Own Design: Markets, Hedge Funds, and the Perils of Financial Innovation. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Sons.Google Scholar
Callon, Michel, and Muniesa, Fabian. 2005. Peripheral Vision: Economic Markets as Calculative Collective Devices. Organization Studies 26 (8):1229–50.Google Scholar
Camerer, Colin, and Weber, Martin. 1992. Recent Developments in Modeling Preferences: Uncertainty and Ambiguity. Journal of Risk and Uncertainty 5 (4):325–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carruthers, Bruce, and Stinchcombe, Arthur. 1999. The Social Structure of Liquidity: Flexibility, Markets, and States. Theory and Society 28 (3):353–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cassidy, John. 2009. How Markets Fail: The Logic of Economic Calamities. New York: Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux.Google Scholar
Checkel, Jeffrey T. 2001. Why Comply? Social Learning and European Identity Change. International Organization 55 (3):553–88.Google Scholar
Chinn, Menzie D., and Frieden, Jeffry A.. 2011. Lost Decades: The Making of America's Debt Crisis and the Long Recovery. New York: Norton.Google Scholar
Clark, Gordon L. 2011. Myopia and the Global Financial Crisis: Context-Specific Reasoning, Market Structure, and Institutional Governance. Dialogues in Human Geography 1 (1):425.Google Scholar
Coffee, John C. Jr. 2011. Ratings Reform: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. Harvard Business Law Review 1:231–78.Google Scholar
Cohen, Benjamin J. 2009. A Grave Case of Myopia. International Interactions 35 (4):436–44.Google Scholar
Cooper, George. 2008. The Origin of Financial Crises: Central Banks, Credit Bubbles and the Efficient Market Fallacy. New York: Vintage Books.Google Scholar
Danielsson, Jon. 2008. Blame the Models. Journal of Financial Stability 4 (4):321–28.Google Scholar
David, Paul A. 1994. Why Are Institutions the “Carriers of History?” Path Dependence and the Evolution of Conventions, Organizations, and Institutions. Structural Change and Economic Dynamics 5 (2):205–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
de Goede, Marieke. 2005. Virtue, Fortune, and Faith: A Genealogy of Finance. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Dequech, David. 2003. Uncertainty and Economic Sociology: A Preliminary Discussion. American Journal of Economics and Sociology 62 (3):509–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Derman, Emanuel. 2012. Models.Behaving.Badly: Why Confusing Illusion with Reality Can Lead to Disaster, on Wall Street and in Life. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar
Bank, Deutsche. 2012. LT Asset Return Study: A Journey into the Unknown. London: Deutsche Bank.Google Scholar
DiMaggio, Paul. 2003. Endogenizing “Animal Spirits”: Toward a Sociology of Collective Response to Uncertainty and Risk. In The New Economic Sociology: Developments in an Emerging Field, edited by Guillen, Mauro, Collins, Randall, England, Paula, and Meyers, Marshall, 79100. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.Google Scholar
Dobbin, Frank. 2004. The Sociological View of the Economy. In The New Economic Sociology: A Reader, edited by Dobbin, Frank, 146. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Ellsberg, Daniel. 1961. Risk, Ambiguity, and the Savage Axioms. Quarterly Journal of Economics 75 (4):643–69.Google Scholar
Engelen, Ewald. 2009. Learning to Cope with Uncertainty: On the Spatial Distributions of Financial Innovation and Its Fallout. In Managing Financial Risks: From Global to Local, edited by Clark, Gordon L., Dixon, Adam D., and Monk, Ashby H.B., 120–39. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Erel, Isil, Nadauld, Taylor, and Stulz, Rene. 2012. Why Did Holdings of Highly Rated Securitization Tranches Differ So Much Across Banks? Unpublished manuscript, Ohio State University, Columbus.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Falleti, Tulia G., and Lynch, Julia F.. 2009. Context and Causal Mechanisms in Political Analysis. Comparative Political Studies 42 (9):1143–66.Google Scholar
Fearon, James D. 1998. Bargaining, Enforcement, and International Cooperation. International Organization 52 (2):269305.Google Scholar
Fearon, James D., and Wendt, Alexander. 2002. Rationalism v. Constructivism: A Skeptical View. In Handbook of International Relations, edited by Carlsnaes, Walter, Risse, Thomas, and Simmons, Beth A., 5272. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission (FCIC). 2011. The Financial Crisis Inquiry Report. Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office.Google Scholar
Fligstein, Neil, and Goldstein, Adam. 2011. The Roots of the Great Recession. In The Great Recession, edited by Grusky, David, Western, Bruce, and Wimer, Christopher, 2156. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.Google Scholar
Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC). 2003a. Transcript of the Meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee on January 28–29. Washington, DC: US Federal Reserve.Google Scholar
Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC). 2003b. Transcript of the Meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee on March 18. Washington, DC: US Federal Reserve.Google Scholar
Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC). 2005a. Transcript of the Meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee on May 3. Washington, DC: US Federal Reserve.Google Scholar
Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC). 2005b. Transcript of the Meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee on June 29–30. Washington, DC: US Federal Reserve.Google Scholar
Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC). 2007a. Transcript of the Meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee on January 30–31. Washington, DC: US Federal Reserve.Google Scholar
Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC). 2007b. Transcript of the Meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee on May 9. Washington, DC: US Federal Reserve.Google Scholar
Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC). 2007c. Transcript of the Meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee on June 27–28. Washington, DC: US Federal Reserve.Google Scholar
Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC). 2007d. Transcript of the Meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee on September 18. Washington, DC: US Federal Reserve.Google Scholar
Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC). 2007e. Transcript of the Meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee on December 11. Washington, DC: US Federal Reserve.Google Scholar
Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC). 2007f. Transcript of the Conference Call of the Federal Open Market Committee, December 6. Washington, DC: US Federal Reserve.Google Scholar
Fox, Craig R., and Tversky, Amos. 1995. Ambiguity Aversion and Comparative Ignorance. Quarterly Journal of Economics 110 (3):585603.Google Scholar
Frieden, Jeffry A., Lake, David A., Nicholson, Michael, and Ranganath, Aditya. 2011. Uncertainty, Relative Prices, and Political Change. Unpublished manuscript, Harvard University/University of California San Diego, Cambridge, MA/San Diego. Available at <http://dss.ucsd.edu/~dlake/documents/FLNRCrisis2.4.pdf>. Accessed 4 November 2013..+Accessed+4+November+2013.>Google Scholar
Friedman, Jeffrey. 2009. Introduction: A Crisis of Politics, Not Economics: Complexity, Ignorance, and Policy Failure. Critical Review 21 (2–3):127–83.Google Scholar
Gerardi, Kristopher S., Lehnert, Andreas, Sherlund, Shane M., and Willen, Paul S.. 2008. Making Sense of the Subprime Crisis. Federal Reserve Bank of Boston Public Policy Discussion Paper No. 09-01. Boston: US Federal Reserve.Google Scholar
Gilboa, Itzhak, Postlewaite, Andrew, and Schmeidler, David. 2008. Probability and Uncertainty in Economic Modeling. Journal of Economic Perspectives 22 (3):173–88.Google Scholar
Gilboa, Itzhak, Postlewaite, Andrew, and Schmeidler, David 2009. Is It Always Rational to Satisfy Savage's Axioms? Economics and Philosophy 25 (3):285–96.Google Scholar
Gorton, Gary B. 2010. Slapped by the Invisible Hand: The Panic of 2007. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Granovetter, Mark. 1992. Economic Institutions as Social Constructions: A Framework for Analysis. Acta Sociologica 35 (1):311.Google Scholar
Greenspan, Alan. 2004. Risk and Uncertainty in Monetary Policy. American Economic Review 94 (2):3340.Google Scholar
Greenspan, Alan. 2005. “Economic Flexibility.” Remarks Before the National Italian-American Foundation, Washington, DC, 12 October.Google Scholar
Greenspan, Alan. 2010. The Crisis. Brookings Papers on Economic Activity (Spring):201–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hall, Rodney Bruce. 2008. Central Banking as Global Governance: Constructing Financial Credibility. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hall, Rodney Bruce. 2009. Intersubjective Expectations and Performativity in Global Financial Governance. International Political Sociology 3 (4):453–57.Google Scholar
Hansen, Lars Peter, and Sargent, Thomas. 2010. Wanting Robustness in Macroeconomics. Unpublished manuscript, New York University, New York.Google Scholar
Heath, Chip, and Tversky, Amos. 1991. Preferences and Belief: Ambiguity and Competence in Choice Under Uncertainty. Journal of Risk and Uncertainty 4 (1):528.Google Scholar
Helleiner, Eric. 2011. Understanding the 2007–2008 Global Financial Crisis: Lessons for Scholars of International Political Economy. Annual Review of Political Science 14:6787.Google Scholar
Herrigel, Gary. 2005. Institutionalists at the Limits of Institutionalism: A Constructivist Critique of Two Edited Volumes from Wolfgang Streeck and Kozo Yamamura. Socio-Economic Review 3 (3):559–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Herrigel, Gary. 2010. Manufacturing Possibilities: Creative Action and Industrial Recomposition in the United States, Germany, and Japan. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hirshleifer, David. 1997. Informational Cascades and Social Conventions. Working Paper No. 9705-10. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan.Google Scholar
Hirshleifer, Jack, and Riley, John G.. 1992. The Analytics of Uncertainty and Information. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hogarth, Robin M., and Kunreuther, Howard. 1995. Decision Making Under Ignorance: Arguing with Yourself. Journal of Risk and Uncertainty 10 (1):1536.Google Scholar
Holmes, Douglas R. 2009. Economy of Words. Cultural Anthropology 24 (3):381419.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Holmes, Douglas R. 2013. Economy of Words: Communicative Imperatives in Central Banks. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Kahneman, Daniel, and Tversky, Amos. 1984. Choices, Values, and Frames. American Psychologist 39 (4):341–50.Google Scholar
Katzenstein, Peter J., ed. 1996. The Culture of National Security: Norms and Identity in World Politics. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Katzenstein, Peter J., and Nelson, Stephen C.. 2013a. Worlds in Collision: Uncertainty and Risk in Hard Times. In Politics in the New Hard Times: The Great Recession in Comparative Perspective, edited by Kahler, Miles and Lake, David, 233–52. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Katzenstein, Peter J., and Nelson, Stephen C. 2013b. Reading the Right Signals and Reading the Signals Right: IPE and the Financial Crisis of 2008. Review of International Political Economy 20 (5):1101–31.Google Scholar
Keynes, John Maynard. 1937. The General Theory of Employment. Quarterly Journal of Economics 51 (2):209–23.Google Scholar
Keynes, John Maynard. 1948 [1921]. A Treatise on Probability. New York: MacMillan.Google Scholar
Keys, Benjamin, Mukherjee, Tanmoy, Seru, Amit, and Vig, Vikrant. 2010. Did Securitization Lead to Lax Screening? Evidence from Subprime Loans. Quarterly Journal of Economics 125 (1):307–62.Google Scholar
Knight, Frank. 1921. Risk, Uncertainty, and Profit. New York: Houghton Mifflin.Google Scholar
Koremenos, Barbara. 2005. Contracting Around International Uncertainty. American Political Science Review 99 (4):549–65.Google Scholar
Koremenos, Barbara, Lipson, Charles, and Snidal, Duncan. 2001. The Rational Design of International Institutions. International Organization 55 (4):761–99.Google Scholar
Koslowski, Rey, and Kratochwil, Friedrich V.. 1994. Understanding Change in International Politics: The Soviet Empire's Demise and the International System. International Organization 48 (2):215–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kratochwil, Friedrich. 1984. The Force of Prescriptions. International Organization 38 (4):685708.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kratochwil, Friedrich. 1989. Rules, Norms, and Decisions: On the Conditions of Practical and Legal Reasoning in International Relations and Domestic Affairs. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Kunreuther, Howard, Mezaros, Jacqueline, Hogarth, Robin M., and Spranca, Mark. 1995. Ambiguity and Underwriter Decision Processes. Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization 26 (3):337–52.Google Scholar
Lake, David A. 2009a. TRIPs Across the Atlantic: Theory and Epistemology in IPE. Review of International Political Economy 16 (1):4757.Google Scholar
Lake, David A. 2009b. Open Economy Politics: A Critical Review. Review of International Organizations 4 (3):219–44.Google Scholar
Langley, Paul. 2008. Sub-prime Mortgage Lending: A Cultural Economy. Economics and Society 37 (4):469–94.Google Scholar
Latsis, John, de Larquier, Guillemette, and Bessis, Franck. 2010. Are Conventions Solutions to Uncertainty? Contrasting Visions of Social Coordination. Journal of Post Keynesian Economics 32 (4):535–58.Google Scholar
Lawson, Tony. 1985. Uncertainty and Economic Analysis. Economic Journal 95 (December):909–27.Google Scholar
Leamer, Edward E. 2010. Tantalus on the Road to Asymptopia. Journal of Economic Perspectives 24 (2):3146.Google Scholar
Leibenstein, Harvey. 1984. On the Economics of Conventions and Institutions: An Exploratory Essay. Journal of Institutions and Theoretical Economics 140 (1):7486.Google Scholar
Lewis, David K. 1969. Convention: A Philosophical Study. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Lewis, Michael. 2010. The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine. New York: Norton.Google Scholar
Litzenberger, Robert, and Modest, David M.. 2010. Crisis and Non-Crisis Risk in Financial Markets: A Unified Approach to Risk Management. In The Known, the Unknown, and the Unknowable in Financial Risk Management: Measurement and Theory Advancing Practice, edited by Diebold, Francis X., Doherty, Neil A., and Herring, Richard J., 74102. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Lucas, Robert E. 1972. Expectations and the Neutrality of Money. Journal of Economic Theory 4 (2):103–24.Google Scholar
MacKenzie, Donald. 2006. An Engine, Not a Camera: How Financial Models Shape Markets. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
MacKenzie, Donald. 2011. The Credit Crisis as a Problem in the Sociology of Knowledge. American Journal of Sociology 116 (6):1778–841.Google Scholar
MacKenzie, Donald, Muniesa, Fabian, and Siu, Lucia. 2007. Introduction. In Do Economists Make Markets? On the Performativity of Economics, edited by MacKenzie, Donald, Muniesa, Fabian, and Siu, Lucia, 119. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Mandelbrot, Benoit, and Taleb, Nassim Nicholas. 2010. Mild vs. Wild Randomness: Focusing on Those Risks That Matter. In The Known, the Unknown, and the Unknowable in Financial Risk Management: Measurement and Theory Advancing Practice, edited by Diebold, Francis X., Doherty, Neil A., and Herring, Richard J., 4758. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Marmor, Andrei. 2009. Social Conventions: From Language to Law. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
McNamara, Kathleen. 2002. Rational Fictions: Central Bank Independence and the Social Logic of Delegation. West European Politics 25 (1):4776.Google Scholar
Meltzer, Allan H. 1982. Rational Expectations, Risk, Uncertainty, and Market Reactions. In Crises in Economic and Financial Structure, edited by Wachtel, Paul, 322. Lexington, MA: Lexington.Google Scholar
Meseguer, Covadonga. 2006. Learning and Economic Policy Choices. European Journal of Political Economy 22 (1):156–78.Google Scholar
Millo, Yuval, and MacKenzie, Donald. 2009. The Usefulness of Inaccurate Models: Towards an Understanding of the Emergence of Financial Risk Management. Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (5):638–53.Google Scholar
Mosley, Layna. 2006. Constraints, Opportunities, and Information: Financial Market—Government Relations around the World. In Globalization and Egalitarian Redistribution, edited by Bardhan, Pranab, Bowles, Samuel, and Wallerstein, Michael, 87119. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Muth, John F. 1961. Rational Expectations and the Theory of Price Movements. Econometrica 29 (3):315–35.Google Scholar
Partnoy, Frank. 2006. How and Why Credit Rating Agencies Are Not Like Other Gatekeepers. In Financial Gatekeepers: Can They Protect Investors, edited by Fuchita, Yasuyuki and Litan, Robert E., 59102. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press.Google Scholar
Partnoy, Frank. 2009. Overdependence on Credit Ratings as a Primary Cause of the Crisis. Research Paper No. 09-015 (July). San Diego, CA: University of San Diego.Google Scholar
Pauly, Louis W. 2011. The Political Economy of Global Financial Crises. In Global Political Economy, edited by Ravenhill, John, 244–72. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Perignon, Christophe, and Smith, Daniel R.. 2010. The Level and Quality of Value-at-Risk Disclosure by Commercial Banks. Journal of Banking and Finance 34 (2):362–77.Google Scholar
Posner, Richard A. 2009. A Failure of Capitalism: The Crisis of ’08 and the Descent into Depression. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Posner, Richard A. 2010. The Crisis of Capitalist Democracy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Power, Michael. 2005. Enterprise Risk Management and the Organization of Uncertainty in Financial Institutions. In The Sociology of Financial Markets, edited by Cetina, Karin Knorr and Preda, Alex, 250–68. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Rajan, Raghuram. 2010. Fault Lines: How Hidden Fractures Still Threaten the World Economy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Rathbun, Brian. 2007. Uncertainty About Uncertainty: Understanding the Multiple Meanings of a Crucial Concept in International Relations Theory. International Studies Quarterly 51 (3):533–57.Google Scholar
Rogoff, Kenneth S. 1985. The Optimal Degree of Commitment to an Intermediate Monetary Target. Quarterly Journal of Economics 100 (4):1169–89.Google Scholar
Romer, David H. 2010. A New Data Set on Monetary Policy: The Economic Forecasts of Individual Members of the FOMC. Journal of Money, Credit, and Banking 42 (5):951–57.Google Scholar
Rosendorff, B. Peter, and Milner, Helen V.. 2001. The Optimal Design of International Trade Institutions: Uncertainty and Escape. International Organization 55 (4):829–57.Google Scholar
Sargent, Thomas J., and Wallace, Neil. 1976. Rational Expectations and the Theory of Economic Policy. Journal of Monetary Economics 2 (2):169–83.Google Scholar
Schelling, Thomas. 1960. The Strategy of Conflict. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Schonhardt-Bailey, Cheryl. 2013. Deliberating American Monetary Policy: A Textual Analysis. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schotter, Andrew. 1981. The Economic Theory of Social Institutions. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Schwartz, Herman M. 2009. Subprime Nation: American Power, Global Capital, and the Housing Bubble. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Seabrooke, Leonard. 2006. The Social Sources of Financial Power: Domestic Legitimacy and International Financial Orders. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Sil, Rudra, and Katzenstein, Peter J.. 2010. Beyond Paradigms: Analytic Eclecticism in the Study of World Politics. London: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Silver, Nate. 2012. The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail—But Some Don't. New York: Penguin.Google Scholar
Simmons, Beth A., Dobbin, Frank, and Garrett, Geoffrey. 2006. Introduction: The International Diffusion of Liberalism. International Organization 60 (4):781810.Google Scholar
Sinclair, Timothy. 2005. The New Masters of Capital: American Bond Rating Agencies and the Politics of Creditworthiness. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Sinclair, Timothy. 2009. Let's Get It Right this Time! Why Regulation Will Not Solve or Prevent Global Financial Crises. International Political Sociology 3 (4):450–53.Google Scholar
Skidelsky, Robert. 2009. Keynes: The Return of the Master. New York: PublicAffairs.Google Scholar
Sobel, Andrew C. 1999. State Institutions, Private Incentives, Global Capital. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
Steinbruner, John D. 1974. The Cybernetic Theory of Decision: New Dimensions of Political Analysis. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Storper, Michael, and Salais, Robert. 1997. Worlds of Production: The Action Frameworks of the Economy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Sugden, Robert. 1989. Spontaneous Order. Journal of Economic Perspectives 3 (4):8597.Google Scholar
Swedberg, Richard. 2012. The Role of Confidence in Finance. In Oxford Handbook of the Sociology of Finance, edited by Cetina, Katrin Knorr and Preda, Alex, 529–45. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Tett, Gillian. 2009. Fool's Gold: How the Bold Dream of a Small Tribe at J.P. Morgan Was Corrupted by Wall Street Greed and Unleashed a Catastrophe. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar
Thévenot, Laurent. 2001. Organized Complexity: Conventions of Coordination and the Composition of Economic Arrangements. European Journal of Social Theory 4 (4):405–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Turner, Adair. 2009. The Turner Review: A Regulatory Response to the Global Banking Crisis. London: Financial Services Authority. Available at <http://www.fsa.gov.uk/pages/Library/Corporate/turner/index.shtml>. Accessed 10 January 2013..+Accessed+10+January+2013.>Google Scholar
Wagner, Peter. 1994. Dispute, Uncertainty, and Institution in Recent French Debates. Journal of Political Philosophy 2 (3):270–89.Google Scholar
Wendt, Alexander. 2001. Driving with the Rearview Mirror: On the Rational Science of Institutional Design. International Organization 55 (4):1019–49.Google Scholar
Widmaier, Wesley W., Blyth, Mark, and Seabrooke, Leonard. 2007. Exogenous Shocks or Endogenous Constructions? The Meanings of Wars and Crises. International Studies Quarterly 51 (4):747–59.Google Scholar
Woll, Cornelia. 2008. Firm Interests: How Governments Shape Business Lobbying on Global Trade. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Zeckhauser, Richard. 2010. Investing in the Unknown and Unknowable. In The Known, the Unknown, and the Unknowable in Financial Risk Management: Measurement and Theory Advancing Practice, edited by Diebold, Francis X., Doherty, Neil A., and Herring, Richard J., 304–46. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Zuckerman, Ezra W. 2012. Market Efficiency: A Sociological Perspective. In Oxford Handbook of the Sociology of Finance, edited by Cetina, Karin Knorr and Preda, Alex, 223–49. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar