
Narrative Economics - dredmorbius
http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2896857
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dredmorbius
I'd stumbled across this by way of the LSE podcast which is _excellent_ if you
can't get your fill of meaty academic economics, social, and policy
discussions and (almost always) solid Q&A.

Shiller is eminently credible in the economics field, and was awarded the
Nobel in economics in 2013. He's the co-creator of the Case-Shiller housing
index (particularly commented on about a decade ago).

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_J._Shiller](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_J._Shiller)

For well over a century, the trend in economics has been toward mathematical
and quantitative models. Shiller's focus here on narratives is in sharp
counterpoint to the mainstream viewpoint. His focus on epidemiological
characteristics of narratives is straight-up brain-candy to me.

For those interested in the audio:

Narrative Economics [Audio] LSE: Public lectures and events Duration: 1:17:55
Published: Tue, 10 Sep 2019 18:30:00 GMT Episode:
[http://www.lse.ac.uk/newsAndMedia/videoAndAudio/channels/pub...](http://www.lse.ac.uk/newsAndMedia/videoAndAudio/channels/publicLecturesAndEvents/player.aspx?id=4730)

Media:
[https://media.rawvoice.com/lse_publiclecturesandevents/richm...](https://media.rawvoice.com/lse_publiclecturesandevents/richmedia.lse.ac.uk/publiclecturesandevents/20190906_1830_robertSchiller.mp3)

Podcast:
[https://www.podcastrepublic.net/podcast/279428154](https://www.podcastrepublic.net/podcast/279428154)

Speaker(s): Professor Robert Shiller | Join us to hear from Nobel Prize
winning economist and New York Times bestselling author Robert Shiller who
will in this lecture talk about his new book which ar...

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_edo
Looks really interesting, but in the first paragraph of the introduction:

> A recession, for example, is a time when many people have decided
> to........express support for fiscally conservative government.

What? I'm not sure how this sentence is showing up below words like Yale and
NBER at the top of this paper.

The overall idea that stories can drive recessions has clearly happened: a
population buys in to the story that profits are derived from exploitation,
they abolish profits, then a major recession hits as the economy ceases
functioning.

He does touch upon the "profiteer" narrative as a possible source of the 1920
recession, but skips how that same basic narrative would play a major role in
shaping the USSR.

He speaks of the narratives of the 2008 financial collapse, but only in terms
of how people referenced The Great Depression. What about the narrative that
everybody should be able to buy a house, which led to lower lending standards,
which led to horrible practices on the back end to try and salvage the the bad
loans being written, which led to a global recession.

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ryacko
This is an interesting microeconomics paper about a new field or theory of
economics, unsure which. Naming itself is probably the first step in
successful application towards propagating itself. Doesn’t mention within the
paper anything about memetics.

On a minor note, minds in general seem better geared to remembering stories,
e.g. mnemonics.

