Investment is no longer a matter of individual savers directly choosing which shares or bonds to buy. Rather, most of their money flows through a 'chain': an often extended sequence of intermediaries. What goes on in that chain is of huge importance: The world's investment managers, who are now almost as well paid as top bankers, control assets equivalent in value to around a year of total global economic output.

In Chains of Finance, five social scientists discuss the ways in which the intermediaries in the chain influence each other, channel the flows of savers' money, enhance...