Chris Clarke is Reader in Political Economy at the University of Warwick. He is the author of Ethics and Economic Governance: Using Adam Smith to Understand the Global Financial Crisis.


Ben Clift is Professor of Political Economy and Director of Research at the University of Warwick. His most recent book is The Office for Budget Responsibility and the Politics of Technocratic Economic Governance (2023).

Foreword by Katie Lavelle


1. Introduction: Timothy Sinclair’s social foundations approach to global finance

Chris Clarke and Ben Clift


2. CRAs and the idea of history: the role of synchronic and diachronic mental frameworks in the work of Timothy J. Sinclair

Randall Germain


3. Tim Sinclair’s iconoclastic relationship with Marxism

Magnus Ryner


4. Disintermediated knowledge industries: thinking about academic knowledge production with Timothy J. Sinclair

Aida Hozic


5. From ratings to infrastructures: uncovering the micro-foundations and global politics of finance

Johannes Petry


6. The political economy of credit rating agencies: American short-termist universalism, Europe’s acquiescence, and East Asia’s resistance

Fumihito Gotoh, Norbert Gaillard and Rick Michalek


7. Managing multiple audiences: the importance of legitimacy for bond index providers and the politics of bond indexing

Dan Wood


8. The social foundations of finance in an era of fintech

Chris Clarke


9. The queen and the perfect bicycle

Timothy Sinclair


10. Of markets and models: the extended realm of the mundane in the social foundations of finance approach

Matthew Watson