Current Project
Chicago Board of Trade, 1993
BOOK IN PROGRESS
Floor Rules: Insider Culture in Financial Markets.
To be published by Yale University Press in 2024.
Floor Rules is about the business culture of financial insiders, the group people have in mind when they speak of ‘Wall Street’ or ‘the City.’ These are money specialists who work with other money specialists, and who have little contact with customers or other outsiders. This is an enclosed, inward-focused world, with norms and rules of conduct that differ significantly from mainstream norms. The book explores the historical roots of the culture and its carriers, the insider group, the group’s role in present-day high finance, and its future direction. The book presents research results from case studies and a from a longitudinal network analysis of the members of the Chicago Board of Trade.
Research for this project has been supported by fellowships from the Center for Economic History at UCLA, the United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney, and the John W. Kluge Center at the Library of Congress.