Summary

Shiller explores how "economic narratives" spread like contagions through societies, ultimately creating real-world economic effects. Economic narratives recur and mutate over time, and spread in unpredictable ways. These can drive individual behaviour around where to invest, how much to save, etc., but also mass-scale attitudes and events, such as the idea that private enterprises provide a model for efficiency and should not be subject to government intervention.

Concepts

• consilience
• constellation
• flashbulb-memory

Notes

• economic-narratives-spread-like-diseases
• narrative-helps-the-human-mind-make-sense-of-events

Reference

Shiller, Robert J. Narrative Economics: How Stories Go Viral and Drive Major Economic Events. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2019.