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Narrative Economics: How Stories Go Viral and Drive Major Economic Events - Paperback | Diverse Reads

Narrative Economics: How Stories Go Viral and Drive Major Economic Events

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From Nobel Prize–winning economist and New York Times bestselling author Robert Shiller, a groundbreaking account of how stories help drive economic events—and why financial panics can spread like epidemic viruses

Stories people tell—about financial confidence or panic, housing booms, or Bitcoin—can go viral and powerfully affect economies, but such narratives have traditionally been ignored in economics and finance because they seem anecdotal and unscientific. In this groundbreaking book, Robert Shiller explains why we ignore these stories at our peril—and how we can begin to take them seriously. Using a rich array of examples and data, Shiller argues that studying popular stories that influence individual and collective economic behavior—what he calls "narrative economics"—may vastly improve our ability to predict, prepare for, and lessen the damage of financial crises and other major economic events. The result is nothing less than a new way to think about the economy, economic change, and economics. In a new preface, Shiller reflects on some of the challenges facing narrative economics, discusses the connection between disease epidemics and economic epidemics, and suggests why epidemiology may hold lessons for fighting economic contagions.

ISBN-13: 9780691210261

Media Type: Paperback

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Publication Date: 09-01-2020

Pages: 408

Product Dimensions: 5.25(w) x 8.00(h) x (d)

Robert J. Shiller is a Nobel Prize–winning economist and the author of the New York Times bestseller Irrational Exuberance (Princeton), among many other books. He is Sterling Professor of Economics at Yale University and a regular contributor to the New York Times. Twitter @RobertJShiller

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From the Publisher

“A wonderfully enjoyable ride…. Shiller’s book is filled with bite-size nuggets . . . that are easily digested and provide illuminating parallels between the virality of diseases and fads and bubbles in asset prices.”—Mihir Desai, Times Higher Education

Table of Contents

List of Figures vii

Preface: What Is Narrative Economics? ix

Acknowledgments xxi

Part I The Beginnings of Narrative Economics

1 The Bitcoin Narratives 3

2 An Adventure in Consilience 12

3 Contagion, Constellations, and Confluence 18

4 Why Do Some Narratives Go Viral? 31

5 The Laffer Curve and Rubiks Cube Go Viral 41

6 Diverse Evidence on the Virality of Economic Narratives 53

Part II The Foundations of Narrative Economics

7 Causality and Constellations 71

8 Seven Propositions of Narrative Economics 87

Part III Perennial Economic Narratives

9 Recurrence and Mutation 107

10 Panic versus Confidence 114

11 Frugality versus Conspicuous Consumption 136

12 The Gold Standard versus Bimetallism 156

13 Labor-Saving Machines Replace Many Jobs 174

14 Automation and Artificial Intelligence Replace Almost All Jobs 196

15 Real Estate Booms and Busts 212

16 Stock Market Bubbles 228

17 Boycotts, Profiteers, and Evil Business 239

18 The Wage-Price Spiral and Evil Labor Unions 258

Part IV Advancing Narrative Economics

19 Future Narratives, Future Research 271

Appendix: Applying Epidemic Models to Economic Narratives 289

Notes 301

References 325

Index 351