Emotions in finance: new book

14 December 2004

A new book by Jocelyn Pixley of the School of Sociology and Anthropology titled Emotions of Finance was launched this week at UNSW.

Emotions in Finance - Distrust and Uncertainty in Global Markets looks at the influence of emotion and speculation on the world's increasingly volatile financial sector by examining the views of experienced elites within it.

Dr Pixley's research shows how emotions are intrinsic to the hardheaded world of money and argues that distrust is uppermost in every new strategy, as the financial sector assumes opportunism and greed in its calculations of the unknowable future.

"For 20 years, banks have sold money as a commodity, though centuries of economic history shows that nothing is more uncertain or fragile than money," she says. "Likewise, investment firms constantly seek new strategies to try and control the future, but events are not predictable."

Dr Pixley draws three main propositions from her research: the finance world can never find certainty, emotions can not be isolated, and therefore caution is the requisite emotion.

"No one in the financial heartland knows the future, emotions are the sole support to watching 'indicators' and reducing uncertainty to mere risk," she says.

Emotions in Finance was launched by journalist Richard Ackland at the Society for Heterodox Economists Conference
by the UNSW Bookshop on Monday 13 December.