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Crawford Spence

@profcrawfordspence.bsky.social
98 followers 88 following 38 posts

Professor at King's College London: accounting, financial markets, economic sociology, financial expertise

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Crawford Spence @profcrawfordspence.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
Abolish all taxes immediately to halt the freefall!
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Crawford Spence @profcrawfordspence.bsky.social · 17/08/2026
I’ll teach the civil service how NOT to rely on EY and KMPG for half that price!
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Crawford Spence @profcrawfordspence.bsky.social · 22/06/2026
My research on fund managers, recently published in the journal of cultural economy was picked up this morning in The Times. If only today was a slow news cycle day! www.thetimes.com/money/saving...
thetimes.com
Blind faith is the only thing keeping fund managers rich
They fall short of their target at a rate of 90 per cent or more but the men paid to manage your money are holding on to their self-belief and their customers
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Crawford Spence @profcrawfordspence.bsky.social · 19/06/2026
Sounds like a very SASE problem
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Crawford Spence @profcrawfordspence.bsky.social · 09/06/2026
This is excellent, both in terms of historical emergence of mutual funds and private equity in the US and in highlighting the political faultlines that each is aligned with today
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Crawford Spence @profcrawfordspence.bsky.social · 06/06/2026
Having just marked 170 exam scripts I can confirm that very few students read anything on the reading list at all. Almost 80% of essay answers were regurgitations of lecture slides.
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Crawford Spence @profcrawfordspence.bsky.social · 07/05/2026
To what extent do financial markets rely on 'faith' to sustain them? Some thoughts from me here in an article recently accepted at the Journal of Cultural Economy. Perhaps we should start thinking of active fund management as a religious community? www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
tandfonline.com
Trading in the end times: keeping faith in financial markets
Literature on economic theology highlights the importance of myths and imaginaries to the shaping of economic action. Faith in the workings of contemporary capitalism often presupposes belief in dy...
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Crawford Spence @profcrawfordspence.bsky.social · 19/03/2026
Calling all scholars of the professions. The next Professions Fest workshop will take place on 11th June at King's College London. (PhD workshop on the 10th) www.kcl.ac.uk/events/profe...
kcl.ac.uk
Professions Fest 2026 | King's College London
This one-day workshop, which is being held this year at Kings College London, is devoted to scholarship on the professions.
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Crawford Spence @profcrawfordspence.bsky.social · 30/01/2026
yes, thanks
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Crawford Spence @profcrawfordspence.bsky.social · 30/01/2026
Link to the paper is not working. Neither is linkedin version. Can you refresh/send another way? I'd love to read it
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Crawford Spence @profcrawfordspence.bsky.social · 07/01/2026
Nice piece
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Crawford Spence @profcrawfordspence.bsky.social · 05/01/2026
Couldn't have said it better myself!
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Crawford Spence @profcrawfordspence.bsky.social · 17/12/2025
Very interesting. I've observed that ignorance is a key feature of many different fields within finance, and indeed of financial markets per se. So there is applicability beyond political economy. Quite like the idea of relating 'varieties of ignorance' to different 'varieties of capitalism' too
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Crawford Spence @profcrawfordspence.bsky.social · 03/12/2025
The crypto libertarian posse will be angry about this……good!
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Crawford Spence @profcrawfordspence.bsky.social · 12/09/2025
Surely all good research is 'hobbyist' in some way. The attack on research per se, with constantly repurposed justifications, across UK universities just now is extremely disconcerting.
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Len Seabrooke @lenseabrooke.bsky.social · 06/09/2025
I'm hiring two Post-Doctoral Fellows in International Political Economy/Economic Sociology as part of the ADD project funded by the Velux Foundation. The posts are linked to an AI Sustainability package led by Christina Lioma at KU and me at CBS, drawing insights from comp sci & political economy.
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Reposted by Crawford Spence
Economic Sociology & Political Economy @econsociology.bsky.social · 06/09/2025
Beyond Irrationality. @yuvalmillo.bsky.social @profcrawfordspence.bsky.social & James J. Valentine astutely show in their new excellent book how exactly social networks and structures shape financial markets and asset management. economicsociology.org/2025/09/06/b...
economicsociology.org
Beyond Irrationality: How Social Networks and Structures Shape Financial Markets
by Crawford Spence* There is plenty of work out there on financial intermediaries. Most of this can be found in finance or economics journals and displays little evidence of its authors having spen…
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Crawford Spence @profcrawfordspence.bsky.social · 12/05/2025
Hmmm, I think we always expected the international student bubble to burst because of demand side factors, not because the govt started making it nigh impossible for them to come here.
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Crawford Spence @profcrawfordspence.bsky.social · 10/05/2025
Even the Mexican option sounds expensive
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Crawford Spence @profcrawfordspence.bsky.social · 17/03/2025
Fantastic 1-day workshop at King's College London on 6th June on 'Algorithmic Cultures'. Talks by Neil Pollock, Alex Preda, David Chen, Stella Pachidi, Louise Amoore, Christian Borch, Anne Krüger, Gerry McGivern, Yuval Millo and Prikanya Pandey. Sign up here. www.kcl.ac.uk/events/algor...
kcl.ac.uk
Algorithmic Cultures
In person event hosted by King's Business School
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Crawford Spence @profcrawfordspence.bsky.social · 05/03/2025
Our new book, Inertia: Purposeful Inefficiencies in Financial Markets will be launched at the LSE 5-7pm, Wed 26th March. Our discussants will be: Ken Lee, Loughborough University Michael Power, London School of Economics If you wish to attend, sign up here - lnkd.in/eBVc47kZ
lnkd.in
LinkedIn
This link will take you to a page that’s not on LinkedIn
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Crawford Spence @profcrawfordspence.bsky.social · 04/02/2025
Calling all professions scholars! We are running a one day conference on 'Professions and Professionals During Times of Disruption' at Bath University on 20th May. There will also be a PhD workshop on the 19th. The event is free so early registration is advised. www.bath.ac.uk/events/profe...
bath.ac.uk
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Crawford Spence @profcrawfordspence.bsky.social · 31/01/2025
This just landed! Get 30% off with discount code CUP30 at this link: cup.columbia.edu/book/inertia...
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Crawford Spence @profcrawfordspence.bsky.social · 28/01/2025
Great review of our new Book Inertia here. Robin Powell captures the essence of the book very well and super concisely. Somehow wish I had thought of putting a snail on the front cover now... www.evidenceinvestor.com/post/the-pur...
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Crawford Spence @profcrawfordspence.bsky.social · 24/01/2025
That is one hell of a juxtaposition
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Crawford Spence @profcrawfordspence.bsky.social · 20/01/2025
The financial sector benefits those who work in finance primarily. What this article doesn’t show is that asset managers make money even when they don’t realise investment gains, which makes the system even more perverse
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Crawford Spence @profcrawfordspence.bsky.social · 17/01/2025
Newsflash: universities slowly start to realise that buying their own research from publishers might not make economic sense
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Crawford Spence @profcrawfordspence.bsky.social · 15/01/2025
"True price" has always been a fantasy pushed by financial economics. "Intrinsic value" and "fundamental value" are others
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Crawford Spence @profcrawfordspence.bsky.social · 13/01/2025
Underlying this story is that hoary old canard of 'fundamental' value. As if there was an accurate price of a stock to be uncovered somehow. The retreat from pricey equities is interesting but caveat emptor to those who might follow the mass rush of fund managers into the bond markets
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Crawford Spence @profcrawfordspence.bsky.social · 13/01/2025
Inertia is out! The culmination of work with Yuval Millo and Jim Valentine since 2019 where we have explored the ways in which actors in financial markets tend to get stuck into habitual, routinized patterns that undermine that sacred cow of market efficiency. cup.columbia.edu/book/a/97802...
cup.columbia.edu
Inertia | Columbia University Press
Financial professionals are paid as if they were capable of “beating the market” on a regular basis. In fact, active fund managers routinely underperform... | CUP
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Crawford Spence @profcrawfordspence.bsky.social · 09/01/2025
Note to self: start submitting papers to IPE journals
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Crawford Spence @profcrawfordspence.bsky.social · 06/01/2025
Away days and field trips
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Crawford Spence @profcrawfordspence.bsky.social · 06/01/2025
New article with co-authors Erica Pimentel and Emilio Boulianne where we explore what happens when audit (traditional profession) confronts blockchain (fintech disruptors). 2 very different world views come to the fore which makes for an interesting epistemic clash. www.emerald.com/insight/cont...
emerald.com
When audit confronts blockchain | Emerald Insight
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Crawford Spence @profcrawfordspence.bsky.social · 20/12/2024
A further reminder of how pointless, mercenary and warped the academic publishing business is, where universities have to spend enormous amounts of money buying their own research back from big publishing houses
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Crawford Spence @profcrawfordspence.bsky.social · 16/12/2024
Does Copenhagen have the best business school in Europe? Constantly impressed by the vibrant atmosphere in both the accounting and the organization departments here
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Crawford Spence @profcrawfordspence.bsky.social · 16/12/2024
Just received the fabulous news that I won a fully funded PhD studentship from LISS in partnership with the ICAEW to look at the collapse of public sector financial reporting and audit in the UK. Just need to find a student now to take it up starting Oct 2025
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Crawford Spence @profcrawfordspence.bsky.social · 12/12/2024
“Varieties of ‘Varieties of…’: a meta analysis”, by Rasmus Corlin Christensen, Socio-Economic Review, forthcoming, 2026
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Crawford Spence @profcrawfordspence.bsky.social · 11/12/2024
Just when I was losing faith in the bbc for the 1000th time, their foreign correspondent Lyse Doucet pulls the ultimate Gramsci quote out of the bag to describe Syria: “the old is dying but the new is struggling to be born. Now is the time of monsters”
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Crawford Spence @profcrawfordspence.bsky.social · 09/12/2024
Fabulous day at NEOMA business school in Paris today talking about AI and the future of audit. Nice community of scholars and great insights from Pierre Lescoat, Mariann Gyorke, Elise Berlinski and Marc Lenglet among others.
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Crawford Spence @profcrawfordspence.bsky.social · 05/12/2024
I thought this was supposed to be better than Twitter. Within a minute of signing up I was already being followed by a porn bot!
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