Thread by @DavidPerrott_

Telling Stories. @RobertJShiller on his new book: Narrative Economics.
(Thread) #BX2019

Narrative Economics:
The digitization of human text, and the ability to track this data and make sense of human behaviour using it as an lens.
#BX2019

Why is this important?
People change their minds. This is largely driven by human speech, and speech involves narratives at its core.
#BX2019

Narrative: Meaning the telling of a story. An invisible script that is worth following in some situations.
#BX2019

Medical epidemiology (e.g virus outbreak/contagion) as a good way to understand economic epidemics.
Example: The Bitcoin epidemic
#BX2019

Don’t think about a single narrative. What moves people are constellations of co-dependent narratives, mutating and evolving together.
#BX2019

The narrative doesn’t have to be true. It just has to be contagious and the counter-narrative must be non-contagious. #BX2019

Is the ‘inverted yield curve’ narrative a good signal of a coming depression (I mean recession) simply because it has the characteristics of a good self-fulfilling prophecy.
#BX2019

Going forward: We need to collect data more systematically. E.g Church sermon texts.

What other sources might be interesting to study, as potential entry points for contagious narratives?
#BX2019

The social function of narratives.
A conversational mechanism that was adaptively necessary within tribes during our early evolution.
#BX2019

Does our need for narrative doom us to a dangerous oversimplification of the modern world? #BX2019

Prescription: Encourage narratives that are as truthful and honest as possible. #BX2019

Prominent contemporary theme: Nostalgic narratives. What is driving this theme? Identifying with the narrative seems important (identity economics). Identity is contracting in ways instead of expanding.
#BX2019