"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 the major challenges facing narrative economics"--.

• Cover
• narrative economics
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures
• Preface to the 2020 Paperback Edition
• Preface: What Is Narrative Economics?
• Acknowledgments
• Part I The Beginnings of Narrative Economics
  • 1 The Bitcoin Narratives
  • 2 An Adventure in Consilience
  • 3 Contagion, Constellations, and Confluence
  • 4 Why Do Some Narratives Go Viral?
  • 5 The Laffer Curve and Rubik’s Cube Go Viral
  • 6 Diverse Evidence on the Virality of Economic Narratives
• Part II The Foundations of Narrative Economics
  • 7 Causality and Constellations
  • 8 Seven Propositions of Narrative Economics
• Part III Perennial Economic Narratives
  • 9 Recurrence and Mutation
  • 10 Panic versus Confidence
  • 11 Frugality versus Conspicuous Consumption
  • 12 The Gold Standard versus Bimetallism
  • 13 Labor-Saving Machines Replace Many Jobs
  • 14 Automation and Artificial Intelligence Replace Almost All Jobs
  • 15 Real Estate Booms and Busts
  • 16 Stock Market Bubbles
  • 17 Boycotts, Profiteers, and Evil Business
  • 18 The Wage-Price Spiral and Evil Labor Unions
• Part IV Advancing Narrative Economics
  • 19 Future Narratives, Future Research
• Appendix: Applying Epidemic Models to Economic Narratives
• Notes
• References
• Index