Locating Hedge Funds in a Subjective and Political Economy Context

Karakilic, Emrah Ali and Clark, Ian (2021) Locating Hedge Funds in a Subjective and Political Economy Context. In: The Oxford Handbook of Hedge Funds. Oxford University Press, pp. 505-522. ISBN 9780198840954

Abstract

This chapter pursues a holistic inquiry into hedge fund business models. First, the authors ask what sort of political economy context has enabled the flourishing and astonishing expansion of hedge funds. Second, they ask how the individual bodies and collective bodies, such as hedge fund traders and hedge fund firms, form as particular economic subjects within this political economy context. How, in other words, might one think of the socioeconomic and subjective milieu that informs and vindicates the rise of hedge funds as well as their characteristic features? Third, they inquire into how the hedge fund business model survived largely unscathed after the global financial crisis of 2007–2008 whilst the literature acknowledges the former as a driver of the latter.