We will discuss Chapter 1-10 of Narrative Economics: How Stories Go Viral and Drive Major Economic Events by Robert J. Shiller.
Robert Shiller’s Narrative Economics is about how economic narratives form, spread, and fade. The book describes how contagious narratives that people told one another influenced human behavior in ways that altered the course of economic events. The book argues that economists should integrate narratives into their models and theories of human behavior, making the case that our brains are hardwired to respond to stories. He presents a list of popular narratives that have affected economic attitudes, behaviors, and outcomes through history. He shows that narratives tend to recur, albeit with mutations that fit each historical era. The book explains how economic fluctuations are substantially driven by contagion of oversimplified and easily transmitted variants of economic narratives.