Social Connectivities in Global Financial Markets

In this paper I discuss three notions of social connectivity—mutual susceptibility, imitation, and the hardening of social links by mobilization of nonbodily resources—and apply them to behavior in the financial markets. A spectrum of market forms is examined, from local, face-to-face, ‘open-outcry’ markets to markets with anonymous, automated trading. It is argued that social connectivities can be found in markets of all kinds, and that these connectivities are economically consequential.