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2019ECO006
Doctoral thesis

Three essays on social mechanism in financial markets

  • 2019

PhD: Università della Svizzera italiana

Financial markets
Interorganizational exchange
Organizational networks
Reciprocity
Relational event models (rems)
English A major line of network research depicts financial markets as sets of interdependent trading relations connecting buyers and sellers of financial resources over time. Even if the view of financial markets, and indeed of markets in general, as complex relational systems is not new, what has been missing so far is a principled analytical framework to connect this view to the relational structure of financial markets that emerges from observed trading behavior. Building on this view, this thesis shows how an observed sequence of time-ordered transactions may be described and ultimately modeled as an outcome of micro-mechanisms embodying basic principles of social bonding. Examples of these social mechanisms can be defined in terms of network-like dependencies and referred, for instance, to preferential attachment, inertia, reciprocity, and transitivity of exchange relations. Throughout the three essays that make up this dissertation, the focus is kept on reciprocity and transitive closure, two emergent social mechanisms that are usually seen as fundamental in the building of social structure and norms of collective action. All the three essays in this dissertation contribute to shed new light on a recent line of network research that emphasizes the role of social mechanisms in shaping the evolutionary dynamics of interorganizational networks. Even if these three essays represent a single empirical case, they all suggest a new theoretical interpretation of network structure as contingent and time-dependent. In doing so, this dissertation encourages future research to a more abstract reflection on network structure, which can be ultimately conceived of and understood only in terms of the network times that define the dynamics of its constitutive social mechanisms.
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Language
  • English
Classification
Economics
License
License undefined
Open access status
green
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Persistent URL
https://n2t.net/ark:/12658/srd1331802
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