Derivatives trading of $273 trillion notional would be inconceivable without pricing theory.

Evidence

Finance theory has become incorporated into the infrastructures of financial markets first in the United States, and increasingly worldwide as well in at least three ways: technical, linguistic, and legitimatory. All three are most evident in the case of financial derivatives, the emergence and development of which have been perhaps the most dramatic change in global finance since the start of the 1970s. The huge derivatives-market trading volume mentioned in chapter I -a total of $273 trillion in notional amounts of outstanding contracts in June 2004 would effectively be inconceivable without a guide to the pricing and hedging of such derivatives, and that is surely a case of theory’s technical incorporation into market infrastructure. — Donald MacKenzie, An Engine, Not a Camera, 1125

Categorization

• XREF: This is the book’s central performativity claim — theory incorporated into market infrastructure — with a concrete scale figure (273 trillion) that grounds it.
• QUESTION: Worth pinning down: what exactly does ‘inconceivable’ mean here — is it a counterfactual claim or a constitutive one? The performativity thesis rests on this distinction.