List of figures .............................................. viii
List of tables ................................................. ix
Preface: understanding before regulating ........................ x
Introduction: finance as a working rich observatory ............. 1
The return of wage inequality ................................... 1
Technological change and executive power? ....................... 3
The working rich of finance ..................................... 4
Avoiding simple ideas, entering the bank ........................ 6
From haves to power ............................................. 8
Empirical materials ............................................. 9
PART I. Bonus practices ........................................ 17
1 The size of bonuses ......................................... 19
Finance's "working rich" .................................... 19
Pay structure at Jupiter Bank ............................... 31
Optimal incentives? ......................................... 36
2 The distribution of bonuses ................................. 46
Accounting, bonus pool formulas and appropriation of
created value ............................................... 47
The flow of arguments and the shaping of bonus
distribution ................................................ 49
Individual distribution, between justice and opportunism .... 55
PART II. Property rights and power ............................. 65
3 Property rights in the firm ................................. 67
Do we have the right to introduce rights? ................... 68
The financial firm allocates rights ......................... 70
Amount, strength and distribution of rights ................. 79
4 The sense of ownership of profit ............................ 88
Profit as a masterless thing ................................ 88
Basic forms of profit appropriation ......................... 92
Positions in the organisation of labour and appropriation
of profit .................................................. 110
5 Assets and power ........................................... 115
Redeployable assets and power .............................. 116
Salespeople, traders and redeployability of assets ......... 120
Research and trading: transfer and monopoly of knowledge ... 134
PART III. Hold-up and labour market ........................... 143
6 A hold-up case ............................................. 145
The bonus outrage .......................................... 145
The origin of the case ..................................... 149
The hold-up ................................................ 152
The aftermath of the hold-up ............................... 157
7 Towards a model of hold-up ................................. 164
The hold-up mechanism in finance ........................... 164
Protection limitations ..................................... 167
8 The labour market as asset transfer ........................ 180
Moving assets .............................................. 181
A Malthusian labour market ................................. 193
9 What do heads of trading room do? Divide and recombine ..... 208
Collective moves ........................................... 214
Conclusion: value creation for wage earners? ............... 226
The exemplarity of finance ................................. 228
Bonuses, inequalities and wage Utopia ...................... 229
Index ......................................................... 237
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