The engineering of stock market indices: winners and losers

Tom Duterme

Journal of Cultural Economy, 2023, vol. 16, issue 1, 17-31

Abstract: Stock market indices are among the important figures that are followed in the trading rooms: on the movements of the Dow Jones or the S&P 500 depends the allocation of billions of dollars. At the same time, for the companies that produce and publish them, but also for those whose shares are included in them, they represent a significant source of visibility – and therefore of income. Based on an ethnographic survey at the Brussels stock exchange, this article documents how the different financial actors – aware of the performativity of stock market indices – try to impact their shape. The divergent opinions and interests of these actors are the source of methodological tensions at the heart of these numbers. Through the methods of calculation and selection chosen, the engineers of the indices make perilous trade-offs with far-reaching consequences. By exposing the cognitive and political debates that these indicators crystallise, this article also highlights the unequal representation of the various stakeholders within these statistics. This type of inequality, veiled by the numerical formatting, often goes under the radar of social scientists.

Date: 2023
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/17530350.2022.2098513 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:jculte:v:16:y:2023:i:1:p:17-31

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/RJCE20

DOI: 10.1080/17530350.2022.2098513

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Cultural Economy is currently edited by Michael Pryke, Joe Deville, Tony Bennett, Liz McFall and Melinda Cooper

More articles in Journal of Cultural Economy from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().