Gradually, too, the financial markets changed in a way that made the BlackScholes-Merton model's assumptions, which at first were grossly at variance with market conditions, more realistic. In part, this was a result of technological improvements to price dissemination and transaction processing. It was also a result of the general liberalizing influence of free market economics. At least a small part of the process, however, was the way in which, by making options trading seem legitimate, option theory contributing to the emergence of the high-volume, efficient, low-transaction-cost liquid market the theory posited.

Donald MacKenzie, An Engine, Not a Camera, loc. 1155