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Narrative Economics

Written by: Robert J. Shiller
Narrated by: Susan Osman, Robert J. Shiller - introduction
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Publisher's Summary

From Nobel Prize-winning economist and New York Times best-selling author Robert Shiller, a new way to think about how popular stories help drive economic events

In a world in which internet troll farms attempt to influence foreign elections, can we afford to ignore the power of viral stories to affect economies? In this groundbreaking book, Nobel Prize-winning economist and New York Times best-selling author Robert Shiller offers a new way to think about the economy and economic change. Using a rich array of historical examples and data, Shiller argues that studying popular stories that affect individual and collective economic behavior - what he calls "narrative economics" - has the potential to vastly improve our ability to predict, prepare for, and lessen the damage of financial crises, recessions, depressions, and other major economic events.

Spread through the public in the form of popular stories, ideas can go viral and move markets - whether it's the belief that tech stocks can only go up, that housing prices never fall, or that some firms are too big to fail. Whether true or false, stories like these - transmitted by word of mouth, by the news media, and increasingly by social media - drive the economy by driving our decisions about how and where to invest, how much to spend and save, and more. But despite the obvious importance of such stories, most economists have paid little attention to them. Narrative Economics sets out to change that by laying the foundation for a way of understanding how stories help propel economic events that have had led to war, mass unemployment, and increased inequality.

The stories people tell - about economic confidence or panic, housing booms, the American dream, or Bitcoin - affect economic outcomes. Narrative Economics explains how we can begin to take these stories seriously. It may be Robert Shiller's most important book to date.

©2019 Robert J. Shiller (P)2019 Princeton University Press

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skip the first third

listen to the forward then skip the first third. the first 3 hours are spent defining and giving examples of a fad. only picks up and raises some interesting points in the second half

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Shiller doesn’t get it

The book spends a lot of time talking about the bitcoin (and gold) narratives. I am not defending bitcoin nor do I think it will go to $1,000,000. I find the bitcoiners like Tulip bubble on steroids. But Shiller gets ALL of the bitcoin narrative wrong! He shows he is an old Boomer who never logged on Fintwit, never listened to a Pomp podcast, never heard the BTC bugs’ and Hodlers’ real narrative. Their (and gold bugs) narrative is a libertarian/Austrian one that Central Banks are inflating asset prices and causing bubbles and malinvestment, causing inequality with low interest rates, QE, etc. and eventually this central bank funny money will find its way into the real (not financial) economy and all fiat currencies will become worthless, and the 100T market cap of fiat will eventually be 100T of BTC when society moves to crypto. HE DOES NOT MENTION THIS IN THE BOOK! Robert Shiller needs to get on FinTwit to understand how bitcoiners and Hodlers actually think before giving a strawman argument about “feeling part of a community”. Boomer Shiller gets the gold bug narrative 100% wrong too.

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