Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/232294 
Year of Publication: 
2021
Series/Report no.: 
Research Note
Publisher: 
The Bichler and Nitzan Archives, Toronto
Abstract: 
Colin Harrison's novel The Finder (2008) uncovers the hidden hierarchy of differential information. We live in a knowledge economy, or so they say. And in the world of finance, knowledge is power: the power to buy assets before their price appreciates. This knowledge-as-power, though, is profitable only when exclusive. Common knowledge – no matter how sophisticated and complex – is never profitable. Only differential knowledge – i.e., knowledge that is unavailable to others or superior to what they have – can yield a ‘return’. This differential prerequisite explains why every entity in the pyramid of financial information – whether a person or an organization – has no more than a partial vista, with the remaining view blurred by enforced opaqueness and power-backed misinformation. The different vistas are also deeply formative. Individual ‘actors’ may feel empowered by what they know, but in practice, what they know serves to frame their thoughts and direct their actions – usually without them ever knowing it. Even those at the very top – indeed, especially those at the very top – are slaves to their knowledge, however superior.
Subjects: 
finance
differential information
literature
power
JEL: 
P16
D8
URL of the first edition: 
Creative Commons License: 
cc-by-nc-nd Logo
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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