By the late 1960s, the descriptive, institutional study of finance had in the United States been eclipsed by the new, analytical, mathematical approaches discussed in this chapter. The financial markets had been captured for economics, so to speak. Other disciplines Dewing's invocations of history and psychology, "behavioral" studies of organizations in the tradition of Herbert Simon were left on the margins. Modigliani, Miller, and the authors of the Capital Asset Pricing Model and the efficient-market hypothesis shared the view that "securities prices are determined by the interaction of self-interested rational agents" (LeRoy 1989, p. 1613). They were, likewise, all convinced that the processes involved had to be analyzed, not simply described, and that the necessary analytical tools were those of economics, not those of other disciplines.

Donald MacKenzie, An Engine, Not a Camera, loc. 304