The focus as well as the methodology of finance scholarship had shifted: from the corporation, as in Dewing's classic focus on the Financial Policy of Corporations (Dewing 1953), to the rational investor, the market, and the way in which "an individual's optimal behavior is strongly constrained by the competitive efforts of others" (Cootner 1977, p. 553). Take the Modigliani-Miller propositions, discussed in chapter 2. They concerned matters about which firms made decisions (capital structure and dividend policy); however, instead of looking inside the firm for the determinants of these decisions, Modigliani and Miller looked at the firm from the outside: from the viewpoint of investors and the financial markets.

Donald MacKenzie, An Engine, Not a Camera, loc. 328