This work traces the relationship of individual persons to national economic phenomena associated with consumer finance. The work follows the assemblage of individual consumer credit/debt agents through credit reporting and credit scoring, through to the aggregation of these agents in student loan-backed securitization and credit ratings. The work focuses on the unique technico-cultural constructions produced when human subjects are operatively conjoined to other related discursive and material objects, including related legislation, private corporations, and governmental bodies. The work explores how these unique constructions form stable networks connecting individuals to larger socio-economic settings: networks at once revealing the profoundly distributed nature of both ‘agents’ and their ‘agency,’ and at the same time intimating alternative approaches to questions of individual and collective agency outside the agent/structure dichotomy. The work concludes by addressing the place of this research in consumer finance generally, and the role of consumer finance in contemporary US economics broadly.

This study highlights the structures and networks thatexist among financial analysts on the Swedish financial market. The study isbased on nine semi-structured interviews with buy- and sell-side analysts, anindependent analyst and an Investor Relations Manager. The theoretical framework of the study is based on acombination of the research fields Behavioral Finance and Social Studies ofFinance. These two research fields have proven to be a good basis for thequalitative approach used in the analysis. The study is divided into four thematic areas: Fundamentals / Psychology, Independence and consensus, Ranking and Social network. The results show that there are a large number offactors, structures and interpersonal relationships that affect how analystsmake their decisions and conduct their analysis. Among other things, theinterdependence between analysts and their counterparts prohibits the movetowards a more clear system for compensation. These structures can also have animpact on analysts' rationality from an individual perspective and a network perspective. Furthermore, we have found that technological developments willpose major challenges for the sell side's ability to generate revenues in the future. / Denna studie belyser de strukturer och nätverk som förekommer bland aktieanalytiker på den svenska finansmarknaden. Studien baseras på nio semi-strukturerade intervjuer av aktieanalytiker på köp- och säljsidan, en fristående analytiker samt en IR-ansvarig. Den teoretiska referensramen som studien baserar sig på är en kombination av forskningsfälten Behavioral Finance och Social Studies of Finance. Dessa två forskningsfält har visat sig utgöra en bra grund för den kvalitativa ansats som använts i analysen. Studien är uppdelad i fyra tematiska områden: Fundamenta/Psykologi, Självständighet under konsensus, Ranking och Nätverk. Resultaten visar att det finns ett stort antal faktorer, strukturer och interpersonella relationer som påverkar hur analytiker fattar sina beslut och genomför sina analyser. Bland annat innebär de ömsesidiga beroendena mellan analytikerna och deras motparter att en utveckling mot ett mer tydligt ersättningssystem förhindras. Dessa strukturer kan även ha en påverkan på analytikernas rationalitet ur ett individ- och nätverksperspektiv. Vidare har vi funnit att den tekniska utvecklingen kommer innebära stora utmaningar för säljsidans förmåga att generera intäkter i framtiden.