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

Nobel Prize–winning economist Robert J. Shiller explores how contagious stories influence spending, investing, business decisions, and public policy. Narratives about booms, crashes, technology, thrift, unemployment, or national decline can spread like epidemics, changing behavior in ways conventional economic models often miss. Shiller combines history, data, and cultural analysis to trace how memorable phrases and recurring plots accompany major events. He proposes narrative economics as a systematic field of study, arguing that forecasts and policy will remain incomplete unless economists track not only numbers and incentives but the stories people use to interpret them.

Publisher: Princeton University Press
Publication date: 2019
Format: Print edition
Pages: 400
ISBN: 9780691210261

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