The networks of connections to personally known others on which the economic sociologist Mark Granovetter (1973, 1985) has focused are also in evidence in respect to the legitimatory role of economics in facilitating the emergence of derivatives markets. The persuasive power of economics did not on its own create the Chicago Board Options Exchange and the Merc's International Monetary Market. That persuasive power flowed through a network of interpersonal connections: in the case of the Options Exchange, from Baumol, Malkiel, and Quandt, via Edmund O'Connor and Nathan Associates, to Milton Cohen, and, crucially, to William Casey; in the case of the Mere, from Milton Friedman to Arthur Burns, George Shultz, Bill Simon, and others in Washington.

Donald MacKenzie, An Engine, Not a Camera, loc. 1192