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Narrative Economics: How Stories Go Viral and Drive Major Economic Events
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
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 bestselling 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.
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 bestselling 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.
400 pages, Hardcover
First published October 1, 2019
About the author
Robert J. Shiller
45 books732 followersRobert James "Bob" Shiller (born Detroit, Michigan, March 29, 1946) is an American economist, academic, and best-selling author. He currently serves as the Arthur M. Okun Professor of Economics at Yale University and is a Fellow at the Yale International Center for Finance, Yale School of Management. Shiller has been a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) since 1980, was Vice President of the American Economic Association in 2005, and President of the Eastern Economic Association for 2006-2007. He is also the co-founder and chief economist of the investment management firm MacroMarkets LLC.
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October 7, 2019
The author claims there is a need on economic theory to understand not only metrics, but narratives that create reality and affect economic decisions. I think this is the only point where we agree.
The first red flag for me is lack of references for Dawkins’ Memetics, nor Network and Web Science literature. Yes, epidemiology has been working on this for a long time, but there are at many other disciplines that have made important contributions to similar problems. The dismissal of those areas (intentional or not) is problematic.
The second red flag is the reliance on ProQuest search (even worse, absolute numbers!) as the evidence offered. A few examples:
I don’t think we can measure the impact of RSA economically, but I’m pretty sure it has been much larger than Bitcoin. The fact that one is more popular than the other on some newspapers doesn’t reflect anything. In fact, this is in direct contradiction of the author’s Proposal #2 (more on that later).
So basically the search of ONE PARTICULAR SUBSTRING should be evidence enough? Even assuming that it is valid evidence, are absolute numbers from the 50s comparable with the ones in the 80s? Why not at least (at least!) normalize them by some metric? I’m pretty sure there are other factors related to media publishing in those 30 years that one may want to consider when comparing citation numbers.
Next issue are the proposition offered “about economic narratives that we can use to understand historically important narratives and to identify new narratives as they develop.”
Proposition 1: Epidemics Can Be Fast or Slow, Big or Small. So basically they can be anything. This isn’t very useful.
Proposition 2: Important Economic Narratives May Comprise a Very Small Percentage of Popular Talk. I think this is something valuable, which as I mentioned before, contradicts the claim about RSA/Bitcoin.
Proposition 3: Narrative Constellations Have More Impact Than Any One Narrative, Sure, most likely, but since there is no formal definition of a narrative constellation….
Proposition 4: The Economic Impact of Narratives May Change Through Time. Most likely, sure, I wouldn’t expect something different I guess.
Proposition 5: Truth Is Not Enough to Stop False Narratives. Probably, “never let truth get in the way of a good story” is an old saying.
Proposition 6: Contagion of Economic Narratives Builds on Opportunities for Repetition. Again, the author may be up to something interesting here, but he doesn’t elaborate.
Proposition 7: Narratives Thrive on Attachment: Human Interest, Identity, and Patriotism. Probably, but this may apply to (almost?) any narrative, not economic ones
Finally the proposals of adding a bunch of focus groups (including a database of sermons!) sounds a bit weird, but it may be the closest you can get of real evidence and maybe get some predicting power, but it seems a bit unrealistic (e.g., just consider privacy issues and its corresponding biases on sampling) .
Overall this is a book with a good intention, lots of cherry-picked anecdotes, dubious data and without a proposal of how to actually tackle this analysis so much needed.
The first red flag for me is lack of references for Dawkins’ Memetics, nor Network and Web Science literature. Yes, epidemiology has been working on this for a long time, but there are at many other disciplines that have made important contributions to similar problems. The dismissal of those areas (intentional or not) is problematic.
The second red flag is the reliance on ProQuest search (even worse, absolute numbers!) as the evidence offered. A few examples:
The RSA algorithm, the original cryptography algorithm that may have started the Bitcoin revolution, dates back to 1977. ProQuest lists twenty-six articles that mention the RSA algorithm. But that number doesn’t begin to compare with the fifteen thousand–plus articles that mention the word Bitcoin.
I don’t think we can measure the impact of RSA economically, but I’m pretty sure it has been much larger than Bitcoin. The fact that one is more popular than the other on some newspapers doesn’t reflect anything. In fact, this is in direct contradiction of the author’s Proposal #2 (more on that later).
In the 1950s, even though the highest US income tax bracket was extremely high, ranging from 84% to 92%, ProQuest News & Newspapers produces only 33 stories with this phrase. In the decade of the 1980s, even though the highest income tax bracket was gradually being reduced from 70% to 28%, there were 520 ProQuest stories featuring the term. Since the 1980s, the epidemic of stories about the highest tax bracket has continued to grow.
So basically the search of ONE PARTICULAR SUBSTRING should be evidence enough? Even assuming that it is valid evidence, are absolute numbers from the 50s comparable with the ones in the 80s? Why not at least (at least!) normalize them by some metric? I’m pretty sure there are other factors related to media publishing in those 30 years that one may want to consider when comparing citation numbers.
Next issue are the proposition offered “about economic narratives that we can use to understand historically important narratives and to identify new narratives as they develop.”
Proposition 1: Epidemics Can Be Fast or Slow, Big or Small. So basically they can be anything. This isn’t very useful.
Proposition 2: Important Economic Narratives May Comprise a Very Small Percentage of Popular Talk. I think this is something valuable, which as I mentioned before, contradicts the claim about RSA/Bitcoin.
Proposition 3: Narrative Constellations Have More Impact Than Any One Narrative, Sure, most likely, but since there is no formal definition of a narrative constellation….
Proposition 4: The Economic Impact of Narratives May Change Through Time. Most likely, sure, I wouldn’t expect something different I guess.
Proposition 5: Truth Is Not Enough to Stop False Narratives. Probably, “never let truth get in the way of a good story” is an old saying.
Proposition 6: Contagion of Economic Narratives Builds on Opportunities for Repetition. Again, the author may be up to something interesting here, but he doesn’t elaborate.
Proposition 7: Narratives Thrive on Attachment: Human Interest, Identity, and Patriotism. Probably, but this may apply to (almost?) any narrative, not economic ones
Finally the proposals of adding a bunch of focus groups (including a database of sermons!) sounds a bit weird, but it may be the closest you can get of real evidence and maybe get some predicting power, but it seems a bit unrealistic (e.g., just consider privacy issues and its corresponding biases on sampling) .
Overall this is a book with a good intention, lots of cherry-picked anecdotes, dubious data and without a proposal of how to actually tackle this analysis so much needed.
April 23, 2021
ایده کتاب اینه که میگه روایت هایی که بین عامه مردم پخش میشه روی روند های اقتصادی تاثیر میذاره و تقریبا کل کتاب مثال هایی برای اثبات اونها میاره ، در اقتصاد کشور خودمون هم شاهد این نظریه به وضوح هستیم ، مثل هجوم به بورس، هجوم به ارزهای دیجیتال ، و روایت هایی مادام العمری مثل ارزش سرمایه گذاری روی خونه و زمین و غیره .
به صورت مختصر میشه فقط بخش اول و دوم کتاب رو خوند و البته پیوستش رو.
کتاب پیشنهادهایی هم برای انجام پژوهش هایی در این مضمون میده که به نظرم تا سالیان دراز انجام همچین پژوهش هایی در کشور ما انجام نخواهد شد
به صورت مختصر میشه فقط بخش اول و دوم کتاب رو خوند و البته پیوستش رو.
کتاب پیشنهادهایی هم برای انجام پژوهش هایی در این مضمون میده که به نظرم تا سالیان دراز انجام همچین پژوهش هایی در کشور ما انجام نخواهد شد
January 12, 2020
Not bad, although I was hoping for a bit more of how economists (should?) study narratives, rather than a description of the narratives themselves. While it is interesting (and surprising!) to hear how ideas like anti-technological sentiment, the idea of basic income, anti-business and anti-labor sentiment have waxed, waned, and interacted over the years, this reads more like an economic history than the "new thing" in economics.
My favorite parts were the first part, where the author made connections to epidemiology, and the last part, where the author outlined how narratives could be incorporated into the broader study of economics.
My favorite parts were the first part, where the author made connections to epidemiology, and the last part, where the author outlined how narratives could be incorporated into the broader study of economics.
October 13, 2019
Good if you haven't already read Shiller's many other books, such as Irrational Exuberance, where this information is already covered. Needs to take the next step and ground this hypothesis in some empirical testing. But as someone who has studied BOTH linguistics AND economics in grad school, I find the premise intriguing and well worth further research.
June 30, 2021
Definitely a 'fun' topic, an incredible reservoir of anecdotes, incredible occurrences, and catchy stories. In 10-15% I was fully convinced that it will be my favorite book of the year. But it will be not.
The potential was definitely there, but Shiller (apart from his undisputed genius) is not a great storyteller himself. The book lacked proper structure, crispy mental models. He even wasn't click-bait-ish enough (didn't "sell" his narratives well enough). As early as 40% (at most) the book became very repetitive and simply boring. With some notable exceptions, like the etymology of the word "boycott" (incredible story, indeed).
I still think that the topic is incredible: the humanity is sometimes so irrational in picking directions and simply following some dumb narration. But it seemed like Shiller had no clue what to do with that - slice and dissect? simply point out the greatest failures? evangelize about how to avoid it? prophesy a bit? So in the end he simply did ... nothing memorable.
It's not I didn't enjoy it at all. Quite the contrary - I'm really hooked on - but the topic, definitely not the book.
The potential was definitely there, but Shiller (apart from his undisputed genius) is not a great storyteller himself. The book lacked proper structure, crispy mental models. He even wasn't click-bait-ish enough (didn't "sell" his narratives well enough). As early as 40% (at most) the book became very repetitive and simply boring. With some notable exceptions, like the etymology of the word "boycott" (incredible story, indeed).
I still think that the topic is incredible: the humanity is sometimes so irrational in picking directions and simply following some dumb narration. But it seemed like Shiller had no clue what to do with that - slice and dissect? simply point out the greatest failures? evangelize about how to avoid it? prophesy a bit? So in the end he simply did ... nothing memorable.
It's not I didn't enjoy it at all. Quite the contrary - I'm really hooked on - but the topic, definitely not the book.
December 23, 2023
اعداد و ارقام همیشه درست نمیگن..!
"خلاصه خوانی"
۱۴ مهر۱۴۰۱
آیا این درست است که بگوییم "واقعیتها راه خودشان را میروند و کاری به احساسات ما ندارند؟ "
یعنی این امکان ندارد که روایتهایی که در جامعه تحت تاثیر احساسات مردم همهگیر میشوند، بتوانند باعث شکل گرفتن یک واقعیت جدید بشوند؟
رابرت شیلر نوبلیست اقتصاد و یکی از بزرگترین اقتصاددانهای معاصر، معتقد است که حداقل در زمینههای اقتصادی چنین چیزی کاملا محتمل است.
ایشان در کتاب "اقتصاد روایی" میگوید وقتی روایتهای متأثر از احساسات آدمها، بین مردم مثل ویروس مسری میشوند، میتوانند روی اقتصاد اثرگذار باشند.
دوباره خوانی
دی۱۴۰۲
"خلاصه خوانی"
۱۴ مهر۱۴۰۱
آیا این درست است که بگوییم "واقعیتها راه خودشان را میروند و کاری به احساسات ما ندارند؟ "
یعنی این امکان ندارد که روایتهایی که در جامعه تحت تاثیر احساسات مردم همهگیر میشوند، بتوانند باعث شکل گرفتن یک واقعیت جدید بشوند؟
رابرت شیلر نوبلیست اقتصاد و یکی از بزرگترین اقتصاددانهای معاصر، معتقد است که حداقل در زمینههای اقتصادی چنین چیزی کاملا محتمل است.
ایشان در کتاب "اقتصاد روایی" میگوید وقتی روایتهای متأثر از احساسات آدمها، بین مردم مثل ویروس مسری میشوند، میتوانند روی اقتصاد اثرگذار باشند.
دوباره خوانی
دی۱۴۰۲
July 12, 2023
Bob Shiller is a smart guy, and I came to this book already persuaded by the basic premise that stories can have material influence on economic events. Stories are fundamental to the way that we understand the world and are important in many fields of study, particularly the social sciences, but also even in hard sciences. The impact and importance of stories needs further study. Sadly, this book did little to advance the study of stories in economics beyond stating the theory. There is next to no credible evidence presented here. You need more than stories to support the importance of stories. Where are the double blind studies? How do we tease out the different causative factors? Do stories actually drive major economic events or do they only amplify the effects of fundamental economic forces? Or do they have no actual effect but are just echoes of the fundamentals? I share Mr. Shiller's intuition that stories are important and that they can sometimes be primary drivers of economic behavior, but this book gave me almost nothing of value to reinforce my belief.
April 4, 2020
You can’t time/call booms/recessions of economies, or tops/bottoms in the stock market. Most economists, including Bob Shiller, would agree with this statement. Yet, ironically, it is exactly Bob Shiller who in the past 3 major recessions, including the forthcoming recession of 2020, who has presaged each recession either by releasing a book that anticipated trouble, and explained the cause of that trouble (“Irrational Exuberance” published in 2000), or was actively on news media warning of troubling signs of a future event (Shiller’s frequent appearance on CNBC and other pop-news channels, often put opposite with lesser real-estate economist, and often used as a comical punching bag of doom-and-gloom from 2005 - 2007). Now, through sheer luck, he has done a third time, with the book “Narrative Economics”.
To be clear, like Shiller’s other bestseller, “Irrational Exuberance”, “Narrative Economics” is not technically profound. In fact, on first reading, no one would be blamed on thinking that the whole premise of Shiller’s notions is supremely trivial. Yet, like with his previous book became profound when looked from the vantage of the 2001 dot-com bubble, this book put in context with what has now occurred at the time of writing this review (April 2020), with the Covid-19 pandemic, which has prefaced a larger economic downturn in the United States, and globally - perhaps a recession, possibly depression, Shiller’s choice of topic, and the manner in which he has characterized this topic, narratives as viral thought-memes has again made his writing seem preternaturally relevant and even elegant.
The notion to study ideas as “thought-memes” is not new. Dawkins and his students studied this idea several decades ago, and several books were published outlining their program. More recently, data scientists have spent the past decade mining social media data streams to analyze sentiment, and model human-interactions on the web, as well as to understand the broader sociology of individuals both on and off the digital platforms.
Shiller’s take thus can seem trivial or derivative in this respect. One almost gets a feel of “Grandpa discovering the computer” or H.W Bush discovering the barcode scanner for the first time in 1991 when Shiller discusses the mining of propublica to do counts on n-grams. Yet, whether this activity has been replicated by 1001 data scientists before him, what Shiller has brought to the table is an attempt to put formal structure on the investigation of these phenomena, and with the explicit intent of studying it for it’s own sake, as opposed to profit. Social scientists have derided data scientists for their cavalier methodology for close to a decade, ever since the field emerged as a nascent subject-matter in it’s own right. In this light, Shiller’s is one of the early cohorts of traditional social scientist attempting to bridge the y” two domains and extend the field of accepted academic economics into a domain that is totally foreign to it’s practitioners.
Shiller does not talk of utility curves or of price in this book. One could argue it is not a book about “economics” by the strictest formal definition. In a way, it could be thought of as a “meta-study” of economics, in that what Shiller suggest is that the key to understanding major events in an economy, so-called exogenous shocks from the parlance of traditional macroeconomics, one has to understand how it was that a large group of people (or a small group of very influential people) got into their mind the notion to do *something* that caused that shock. This is where the notion of the narrative comes into play. He takes a about a dozen cases in economic history, from classical to modern, from the notion of the “Laffer Curve” and “supply side economics”, the notion of the gold-standard, to the concept of AI-automation replacing labor, and shows in each case how the narrative seemed to have formed, and how this narrative seems to have impacted the real economy. This later part is achieved through the selective mining of the google n-grams in digital book facsimile records, where Shiller can mine at will all of the digitized content of the collective libraries of modern humanity.
If this activity seems trivial to modern eyes, it is only because anyone can conceivably do it. Yet most will never attempt to put much rigor in their approach with the tool or the content that Shiller has here. To be sure, he has not outlined any formal axiomatic system, nothing that would convince mathematical economists, much of this work can be described as a well-defined hunch on his part. Yet, the hunches, though apparently simple or manifestly trivial, have not been elucidated in a systematized way that I am familiar with prior to this writing. Though I will caveat this that I have not yet read the work of Dawkins et al on memes, so it is possible that a strain of research stemming from that germ may have outlined at least part of what Shiller has attempted here.
Instead of axioms, Shiller has forwarded 7 propositions on his narrative economics, which are heavily inspired on the science of epidemics. The first is that epidemics (and thus narratives) can be big or small, important narratives need not be known by the all (or most) people, and need only be known/accepted by a small number of important people well positioned to “move” the society (and thus the economy or vice-versa), a collection (or constellation) of narratives is more “robust” than a singleton narrative, the economic impact of narratives is not constant, objective truth is irrelevant with respect to narratives, contagion of narratives is dependent on the ability to repeat the narrative within the social medium, and finally, narratives thrive on human attachments, like human interests, nationalism etc.
Whether this set of propositions is what pans out in the end is not relevant, only that Shiller has “got the ball rolling” so to speak. However, because of the nature of this work, many will consider it nebulous. Yet, for those who are a bit more objective they will view this book for what it is, as a start of a new program of research in the field of economics. Just as formal economics did not start as what it eventually became (a sort of applied mathematical analysis of mostly non-pathological curves), narrative economics should be granted some leeway at it’s birth.
As an added bonus, anyone currently stuck quarantined and wanting to understand the nature of viral spread, can get a nice little bonus in the appendix of Shiller’s book where he outlines and defines clearly the SIR model, the most basic (and widely used) epidemiological model of viral spread. It can be directly applied to understanding (as a start at least) the nature of the Covid19-pandemic and the motivations for certain policies taken by most governments to impede that pandemics societal impact.
Shiller’s book is worth the read. Professional economists and investors will probably find little here to sate their expectations on a book written by a 2015 Nobel prize winner. Data Scientist might find it interesting, and may mistakenly view it as an old hat, if they don’t pay attention to the setup of the program Shiller is clearly trying to accomplish. For anyone else, who do not have the baggage of either the academy this book is a great organization of thoughts, and a interesting overview of economic history with respect to narratives and the events they influenced. Highly recommended.
To be clear, like Shiller’s other bestseller, “Irrational Exuberance”, “Narrative Economics” is not technically profound. In fact, on first reading, no one would be blamed on thinking that the whole premise of Shiller’s notions is supremely trivial. Yet, like with his previous book became profound when looked from the vantage of the 2001 dot-com bubble, this book put in context with what has now occurred at the time of writing this review (April 2020), with the Covid-19 pandemic, which has prefaced a larger economic downturn in the United States, and globally - perhaps a recession, possibly depression, Shiller’s choice of topic, and the manner in which he has characterized this topic, narratives as viral thought-memes has again made his writing seem preternaturally relevant and even elegant.
The notion to study ideas as “thought-memes” is not new. Dawkins and his students studied this idea several decades ago, and several books were published outlining their program. More recently, data scientists have spent the past decade mining social media data streams to analyze sentiment, and model human-interactions on the web, as well as to understand the broader sociology of individuals both on and off the digital platforms.
Shiller’s take thus can seem trivial or derivative in this respect. One almost gets a feel of “Grandpa discovering the computer” or H.W Bush discovering the barcode scanner for the first time in 1991 when Shiller discusses the mining of propublica to do counts on n-grams. Yet, whether this activity has been replicated by 1001 data scientists before him, what Shiller has brought to the table is an attempt to put formal structure on the investigation of these phenomena, and with the explicit intent of studying it for it’s own sake, as opposed to profit. Social scientists have derided data scientists for their cavalier methodology for close to a decade, ever since the field emerged as a nascent subject-matter in it’s own right. In this light, Shiller’s is one of the early cohorts of traditional social scientist attempting to bridge the y” two domains and extend the field of accepted academic economics into a domain that is totally foreign to it’s practitioners.
Shiller does not talk of utility curves or of price in this book. One could argue it is not a book about “economics” by the strictest formal definition. In a way, it could be thought of as a “meta-study” of economics, in that what Shiller suggest is that the key to understanding major events in an economy, so-called exogenous shocks from the parlance of traditional macroeconomics, one has to understand how it was that a large group of people (or a small group of very influential people) got into their mind the notion to do *something* that caused that shock. This is where the notion of the narrative comes into play. He takes a about a dozen cases in economic history, from classical to modern, from the notion of the “Laffer Curve” and “supply side economics”, the notion of the gold-standard, to the concept of AI-automation replacing labor, and shows in each case how the narrative seemed to have formed, and how this narrative seems to have impacted the real economy. This later part is achieved through the selective mining of the google n-grams in digital book facsimile records, where Shiller can mine at will all of the digitized content of the collective libraries of modern humanity.
If this activity seems trivial to modern eyes, it is only because anyone can conceivably do it. Yet most will never attempt to put much rigor in their approach with the tool or the content that Shiller has here. To be sure, he has not outlined any formal axiomatic system, nothing that would convince mathematical economists, much of this work can be described as a well-defined hunch on his part. Yet, the hunches, though apparently simple or manifestly trivial, have not been elucidated in a systematized way that I am familiar with prior to this writing. Though I will caveat this that I have not yet read the work of Dawkins et al on memes, so it is possible that a strain of research stemming from that germ may have outlined at least part of what Shiller has attempted here.
Instead of axioms, Shiller has forwarded 7 propositions on his narrative economics, which are heavily inspired on the science of epidemics. The first is that epidemics (and thus narratives) can be big or small, important narratives need not be known by the all (or most) people, and need only be known/accepted by a small number of important people well positioned to “move” the society (and thus the economy or vice-versa), a collection (or constellation) of narratives is more “robust” than a singleton narrative, the economic impact of narratives is not constant, objective truth is irrelevant with respect to narratives, contagion of narratives is dependent on the ability to repeat the narrative within the social medium, and finally, narratives thrive on human attachments, like human interests, nationalism etc.
Whether this set of propositions is what pans out in the end is not relevant, only that Shiller has “got the ball rolling” so to speak. However, because of the nature of this work, many will consider it nebulous. Yet, for those who are a bit more objective they will view this book for what it is, as a start of a new program of research in the field of economics. Just as formal economics did not start as what it eventually became (a sort of applied mathematical analysis of mostly non-pathological curves), narrative economics should be granted some leeway at it’s birth.
As an added bonus, anyone currently stuck quarantined and wanting to understand the nature of viral spread, can get a nice little bonus in the appendix of Shiller’s book where he outlines and defines clearly the SIR model, the most basic (and widely used) epidemiological model of viral spread. It can be directly applied to understanding (as a start at least) the nature of the Covid19-pandemic and the motivations for certain policies taken by most governments to impede that pandemics societal impact.
Shiller’s book is worth the read. Professional economists and investors will probably find little here to sate their expectations on a book written by a 2015 Nobel prize winner. Data Scientist might find it interesting, and may mistakenly view it as an old hat, if they don’t pay attention to the setup of the program Shiller is clearly trying to accomplish. For anyone else, who do not have the baggage of either the academy this book is a great organization of thoughts, and a interesting overview of economic history with respect to narratives and the events they influenced. Highly recommended.
February 26, 2022
What happened to Robert Shiller? He's famous for trying to provide perspective on finances by looking at objective numbers like the ratio of house prices to incomes. I agree that classical economics is silly, but I did not find the arguments in here for the power of narratives very convincing. One major story he uses, for example, is that the Laffer Curve took off because of an apocryphal anecdote about Laffer drawing it on a napkin. What?? I remember when the Laffer Curve was all over the media; I don't remember ever hearing the napkin story. I would like to know what surveys or other studies were done to measure how widespread awareness of the Laffer napkin meme was at the time. ??? The hypothesis that makes much more sense to me is that the Laffer Curve spread because it was in the interest of the rich and powerful to have it spread. It was used as a justification for lowering taxes on the wealthy. What kind of economic analysis of how/why this notion spread doesn't start there?
Shiller makes a big deal at the beginning of the book about trying to make economics be more like epidemiology, but I found it hard to frame what he was talking about as a simple 2x2 table let alone a more complex adjustment for potential confounders.
For a better understanding of how certain economic ideas spread:
Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right
Shiller makes a big deal at the beginning of the book about trying to make economics be more like epidemiology, but I found it hard to frame what he was talking about as a simple 2x2 table let alone a more complex adjustment for potential confounders.
For a better understanding of how certain economic ideas spread:
Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right
October 27, 2019
The author invites us to look at major US economic events from the past two centuries not just as a simple mix of economic policies and indicators, but also in the light of prevailing economic narratives that spread virally throughout the population. The author establishes a link between the spread of economic narratives and epidemiology – the science of how diseases spread –, and a significant part of the book is dedicated to the historical analysis of the spread and various mutations of popular economic narratives. The book concludes with excellent suggestions for future narrative economics research methods and the types of long-term data we should be gathering to advance a scientific approach to the subject. Overall, the book offers an intriguing new perspective for economics that finally acknowledges the complexity of humans as social beings that are shaped by the stories we tell each other.
Want to read
September 19, 2019"I don’t know how he takes bad news; I think he denies it, he claims it’s a lie. I don’t know what he’ll do if the stock market were to crash now. What could he do? He would blame the Federal Reserve, that’s for sure.”
https://www.fnlondon.com/articles/rob...
https://news.yahoo.com/economist-robe...
https://www.fnlondon.com/articles/rob...
https://news.yahoo.com/economist-robe...
November 25, 2019
Shiller is a Nobel Prize winning economist who is known for “behavioral economics”, an area of study that emphasizes the aspects of economics that have steered away from the much more common emphases of the field on high levels of focused goal directed optimizing behavior by smart decision makers with lots of information and knowledge of how to process that information.
The idea here is that economic decisions are not the result of human computers but more the result of more limited (bounded rational?) individuals seeking to make sense of their world and make decisions on the basis of what they see and hear around them, even though that may be imperfect. Part of this involves various stories (most of an apocryphal nature) that individuals hear from others and pass on that have a bearing of decisions they wish to make. So far, so good. Everyone knows about different economic stories and it is intuitively clear that these bear some role in economic decisions.
But what role do they play? Cause? Effect? Correlate? Even the most connected of us encounter a limited number of people telling and listening to economic stories. How do I come to any conclusions about the importance of stories/narratives across an economic landscape with hundreds of millions of potential actors? How do I even come up with propositions about economic stories to test someday?
This is where Shiller’s wonderful new book comes in. He sets the stage by discussing various types of stories and the effects that they might have. But he is making use of data. Using data sets and apps like Proquest and Google Trends, Shiller provides and analysis of various stories that have gone viral/ trended since the late 1800s, making use of newspapers listings and other sources in the data set. Then he can match the trends he identifies with various important economic events (depressions, wars, changes in government policies, etc.) to suggest some conclusions that can be drawn about stories on the basis of this data base analysis. In the process, he identifies various patterns by which stories, drawing analogies to human epidemics.
The result is marvelous. For a variety of trends, for example concerning stories that technology will eliminate jobs, he identifies when such stories have appeared in the popular press and when they have not. You think that increased unemployment due to innovation is a new concern? Guess again. He does this for a wide range of various business and economic narratives. These results tie together a number of conclusions that many people may well have formed but did not how how to make us of. For example, I had a summer job during college (long ago) where I was cleaning the offices of an oil company regional HQ (long since moved). For breaks, I found myself reading very old copies of Oil and Gas Journal and found to my amazement that concerns over energy shortages were not new to the 1970s and the Mideast oil embargoes, but had a healthy history going back to when the oil industry as we came to know it was just getting established. Shiller does not discuss energy in detail, but this is the sort of conclusion that is present throughout the book on lots of subjects that people believe they are well informed about.
I rated this book highly because it lit up many more lights for me than I am used to in trade books in business and economics. I highly recommend it. It is very well written and not weighted down with the technical analysis one finds in many Economics books. In addition, Shiller’s discussion of methods, data, and analytic strategies is really sharp and worth examining in much more detail.
The idea here is that economic decisions are not the result of human computers but more the result of more limited (bounded rational?) individuals seeking to make sense of their world and make decisions on the basis of what they see and hear around them, even though that may be imperfect. Part of this involves various stories (most of an apocryphal nature) that individuals hear from others and pass on that have a bearing of decisions they wish to make. So far, so good. Everyone knows about different economic stories and it is intuitively clear that these bear some role in economic decisions.
But what role do they play? Cause? Effect? Correlate? Even the most connected of us encounter a limited number of people telling and listening to economic stories. How do I come to any conclusions about the importance of stories/narratives across an economic landscape with hundreds of millions of potential actors? How do I even come up with propositions about economic stories to test someday?
This is where Shiller’s wonderful new book comes in. He sets the stage by discussing various types of stories and the effects that they might have. But he is making use of data. Using data sets and apps like Proquest and Google Trends, Shiller provides and analysis of various stories that have gone viral/ trended since the late 1800s, making use of newspapers listings and other sources in the data set. Then he can match the trends he identifies with various important economic events (depressions, wars, changes in government policies, etc.) to suggest some conclusions that can be drawn about stories on the basis of this data base analysis. In the process, he identifies various patterns by which stories, drawing analogies to human epidemics.
The result is marvelous. For a variety of trends, for example concerning stories that technology will eliminate jobs, he identifies when such stories have appeared in the popular press and when they have not. You think that increased unemployment due to innovation is a new concern? Guess again. He does this for a wide range of various business and economic narratives. These results tie together a number of conclusions that many people may well have formed but did not how how to make us of. For example, I had a summer job during college (long ago) where I was cleaning the offices of an oil company regional HQ (long since moved). For breaks, I found myself reading very old copies of Oil and Gas Journal and found to my amazement that concerns over energy shortages were not new to the 1970s and the Mideast oil embargoes, but had a healthy history going back to when the oil industry as we came to know it was just getting established. Shiller does not discuss energy in detail, but this is the sort of conclusion that is present throughout the book on lots of subjects that people believe they are well informed about.
I rated this book highly because it lit up many more lights for me than I am used to in trade books in business and economics. I highly recommend it. It is very well written and not weighted down with the technical analysis one finds in many Economics books. In addition, Shiller’s discussion of methods, data, and analytic strategies is really sharp and worth examining in much more detail.
December 8, 2019
Shiller's take on economics intrigues me and he greatly informed my views on finance/debt in The Subprime Solution: How Today's Global Financial Crisis Happened, and What to Do about It and Finance and the Good Society.
In his latest book, he takes behavioral economics into the realm of the society's behavior and the stories we tell ourselves about economics. This book is more of an outline of a theory that needs data and exploration, but the biggest takeaway I gained wasn't one that was explicitly outlined in the book: our economic system is a societal creation and it is what we make of it. While it may be a marvelously complex system, it is still a system informed and perpetuated by human behavior and beliefs and as such, a system we shape by the stories we tell ourselves.
The ability to control the narrative is as heady as it is humbling.
In his latest book, he takes behavioral economics into the realm of the society's behavior and the stories we tell ourselves about economics. This book is more of an outline of a theory that needs data and exploration, but the biggest takeaway I gained wasn't one that was explicitly outlined in the book: our economic system is a societal creation and it is what we make of it. While it may be a marvelously complex system, it is still a system informed and perpetuated by human behavior and beliefs and as such, a system we shape by the stories we tell ourselves.
The ability to control the narrative is as heady as it is humbling.
April 6, 2020
Honestly, I couldn’t finish it. The overall premise is so clear, intuitive and easy to understand. Why Shiller spends 300 pages trying to make it seem like a novel idea, makes no sense to me. I’ve been a big follower of Shiller ever since I read Animal Spirits in college. He’s one of the most relevant economists of our time. Maybe that’s why such a clear idea would seem so mind blowing to him, as it stands out from mainstream economic models. But at the same time he’s been all about behavioral economics for years...he should know this by now.
I understand that he is trying to develop a new model, however, as he makes it clear in the book - narratives matter but they are essentially impossible to model, soooo how exactly are we supposed to use it?
Instead of wasting time on the book, I recommend reading the academic paper of the same name that covers the theme much more succinctly.
UPDATE: I went back and finished it... still stand by my comments. The last chapter is probably the most specific one, but doesn’t justify 150 pages of historic rambling. Sticking to the grad school trick should do it for this one - read the first and last chapter, and a random one in the middle, and you should get about 90% of the ideas.
I understand that he is trying to develop a new model, however, as he makes it clear in the book - narratives matter but they are essentially impossible to model, soooo how exactly are we supposed to use it?
Instead of wasting time on the book, I recommend reading the academic paper of the same name that covers the theme much more succinctly.
UPDATE: I went back and finished it... still stand by my comments. The last chapter is probably the most specific one, but doesn’t justify 150 pages of historic rambling. Sticking to the grad school trick should do it for this one - read the first and last chapter, and a random one in the middle, and you should get about 90% of the ideas.
July 21, 2021
چند سال پیش یک درس آنلاین رو با شیلر و دانشگاه ییل گذارنده بودم، این خاطره خوب و برنده شدن جایزه نوبل باعث شد این کتاب ترجمه شده را نیز بخوانم، ولی حقیقتا کتاب با اینکه ایده خوبی دارد ولی دچار درازگویی شده است و اساسا فکر میکنم میبایست در حد و حدود یک مقاله میبود نه کتا��.
ترجمه هم بعضی جا ها گوگل ترنزلیتی به نظر میرسید!
ترجمه هم بعضی جا ها گوگل ترنزلیتی به نظر میرسید!
February 9, 2021
Extremely interesting book, Narrative Economics studies how the viral spread of popular narratives affects economic behavior. Important book to understand the power of narratives, how narrative diffusion works and how incorporating popular narratives in the explanation of economic events can help policymakers to better forecast the future.
April 2, 2020
Zaujímavý rámec, aj premýšlanie o ekonomike - naratívy, príbehy ovplyvnia správanie ľudí a nie naopak. No strašne dlho to trvá, kým sa dostane ku pointe a celkovo zlý editing.
July 5, 2023
Rating: 8/10
Duration: 7-8 days
Review:
In his book Narrative Economics, Shiller argues that narratives largely affect economic activities and should therefore be considered in economic theory and forecasts.
Likes:
1. Intertwining disciplines: At the beginning of the book, Shiller draws the connection between narrative economics and Epidemiology, which is the study of the occurrence and contagion of diseases. Similar to diseases, narratives are contagious, spreading fast and/or slowly over a short and/or long period of time. Also, similar to diseases, new narratives can emerge, and old ones can reoccur. This connection made it easier to understand narrative economics.
2. Incorporating Behavioural Economics: I'm a major fan of behavioral economics, which studies the link between psychology and economics, and how consumers behave when making decisions. Like narrative economics, behavioral economics challenges traditional economic theory, arguing that humans are largely irrational when making decisions. Factors like environment, society, culture, and emotions all play a large role in one's economic decisions, potentially affecting the economy as a whole. I really enjoyed reading the bits about behavioral econ and its relation to narrative economics.
3. Encourages out-of-the-box-thinking: Overall, Narrative Economics offers a unique approach to economic forecasting, which I really value. Shiller encourages readers to not be rigid when analyzing the economy or making important economic decisions but instead, focus on the whole picture. He does this by introducing the concept of narrative constellations and narrative confluence. Narrative constellations are multiple similar narratives that work together to produce the same economic outcome. On the other hand, a narrative confluence is unseemingly related narratives working together to produce the same economic outcome.
Dislikes:
1. Writing: Shiller is a boring writer and a poor explainer, which is such a shame since his ideas are unique and interesting. Putting his ideas into my own words helped me understand his ideas and concepts better, otherwise, I would've probably remained confused.
2. Part 3: The book was going well up until Part 3, which explores long-lasting narratives (ex. fear of technology taking over jobs).
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Things to note:
> The book is divided into four parts:
1. Basic concepts (explores bitcoin narrative and Laffer curve narrative, super interesting)
2. Foundations of economic narratives
3. 9 perennial narratives (lasting narratives, ex. advanced technology will take our jobs)
4. Future of narrative economics
> In his book Narrative Economics, Shiller examines how narratives affect economic events, focusing on two elements (pg. xvii):
1. Word-of-mouth contagion in the form of stories
and 2. the efforts made by people to either create new contagious stories or make current stories more contagious
> Quote: "Narrative economics demonstrates how popular stories change through time to affect economic outcomes, including not only recessions and depressions but also other important economic phenomena."
> Quote: "Traditional economic approaches fail to examine the role of public beliefs in major economic events"
Duration: 7-8 days
Review:
In his book Narrative Economics, Shiller argues that narratives largely affect economic activities and should therefore be considered in economic theory and forecasts.
Likes:
1. Intertwining disciplines: At the beginning of the book, Shiller draws the connection between narrative economics and Epidemiology, which is the study of the occurrence and contagion of diseases. Similar to diseases, narratives are contagious, spreading fast and/or slowly over a short and/or long period of time. Also, similar to diseases, new narratives can emerge, and old ones can reoccur. This connection made it easier to understand narrative economics.
2. Incorporating Behavioural Economics: I'm a major fan of behavioral economics, which studies the link between psychology and economics, and how consumers behave when making decisions. Like narrative economics, behavioral economics challenges traditional economic theory, arguing that humans are largely irrational when making decisions. Factors like environment, society, culture, and emotions all play a large role in one's economic decisions, potentially affecting the economy as a whole. I really enjoyed reading the bits about behavioral econ and its relation to narrative economics.
3. Encourages out-of-the-box-thinking: Overall, Narrative Economics offers a unique approach to economic forecasting, which I really value. Shiller encourages readers to not be rigid when analyzing the economy or making important economic decisions but instead, focus on the whole picture. He does this by introducing the concept of narrative constellations and narrative confluence. Narrative constellations are multiple similar narratives that work together to produce the same economic outcome. On the other hand, a narrative confluence is unseemingly related narratives working together to produce the same economic outcome.
Dislikes:
1. Writing: Shiller is a boring writer and a poor explainer, which is such a shame since his ideas are unique and interesting. Putting his ideas into my own words helped me understand his ideas and concepts better, otherwise, I would've probably remained confused.
2. Part 3: The book was going well up until Part 3, which explores long-lasting narratives (ex. fear of technology taking over jobs).
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Things to note:
> The book is divided into four parts:
1. Basic concepts (explores bitcoin narrative and Laffer curve narrative, super interesting)
2. Foundations of economic narratives
3. 9 perennial narratives (lasting narratives, ex. advanced technology will take our jobs)
4. Future of narrative economics
> In his book Narrative Economics, Shiller examines how narratives affect economic events, focusing on two elements (pg. xvii):
1. Word-of-mouth contagion in the form of stories
and 2. the efforts made by people to either create new contagious stories or make current stories more contagious
> Quote: "Narrative economics demonstrates how popular stories change through time to affect economic outcomes, including not only recessions and depressions but also other important economic phenomena."
> Quote: "Traditional economic approaches fail to examine the role of public beliefs in major economic events"
April 25, 2020
Robert Shiller is a first rate economist and writer. His Irrational Exuberance at the start of the 2000s was a landmark. His latest book argues that in order to understand what is going on in the economy one needs to understand the underlying narratives that we use to explain complex events. He suggests that these narratives ebb and flow over time and he tries to explain why some narratives become prominent and then disappear. He also suggests that competing narratives may become more prominent at the expense of competing counter-narratives. One of the things he does very well is to give some of the history of the issue - I did not know where the term Boycott comes from (hint it is a reference to a specific person). Those details improve the readability of the book.
He then uses a series of these stories to explain the concept - a prominent one is conspicuous consumption versus frugality. At times in our history we are exhorted to be happy about either frugality or consumption. He relies on a series of techniques including Google and ProQuest searches to understand how prominent a particular meme or narrative is at various times in our history.
At the end of the book, he presents a list of next projects, assuming that the field should grow. Some of his suggestions are a bit outside reality - but at least the founder of a new branch of economics can hope.
I had one minor quibble with his examples. He spends part of one chapter on the development of supply side theory in the 1970s and 1980s. The Laffer curve, which started the revolution is simple. It postulates that tax rates are on a rough upside down curve - and that at two points on the curve - taxes raised will be about the same. For example, a zero tax rate and 100% rate will raise the same amount of money. But Shiller then conflates that concept with one of the most extreme proponents of Laffer's ideas (Jude Wanninski) with the serious work done on the theory. To understand the power of the theory base one needs to look at documents like the Economic Report of the President early in the Reagan Administration which made much more defensible claims about what the tax cuts would accomplish. Based on books from authors like Larry Lindsay, a good deal of the original theory was confirmed in practice.
Even if Narrative Economics does not break out into a separate subfield of Economics - Shiller presents some interesting ideas to consider in explaining economic behavior.
He then uses a series of these stories to explain the concept - a prominent one is conspicuous consumption versus frugality. At times in our history we are exhorted to be happy about either frugality or consumption. He relies on a series of techniques including Google and ProQuest searches to understand how prominent a particular meme or narrative is at various times in our history.
At the end of the book, he presents a list of next projects, assuming that the field should grow. Some of his suggestions are a bit outside reality - but at least the founder of a new branch of economics can hope.
I had one minor quibble with his examples. He spends part of one chapter on the development of supply side theory in the 1970s and 1980s. The Laffer curve, which started the revolution is simple. It postulates that tax rates are on a rough upside down curve - and that at two points on the curve - taxes raised will be about the same. For example, a zero tax rate and 100% rate will raise the same amount of money. But Shiller then conflates that concept with one of the most extreme proponents of Laffer's ideas (Jude Wanninski) with the serious work done on the theory. To understand the power of the theory base one needs to look at documents like the Economic Report of the President early in the Reagan Administration which made much more defensible claims about what the tax cuts would accomplish. Based on books from authors like Larry Lindsay, a good deal of the original theory was confirmed in practice.
Even if Narrative Economics does not break out into a separate subfield of Economics - Shiller presents some interesting ideas to consider in explaining economic behavior.
February 16, 2020
I became more and more unhappy and impatient with this book as I read it, and I looked up what I wrote about Shiller's book Phishing for Phools. I said there that the authors came across rather as old fuddy duddies. I think that may be true here also.
He has a rather good metaphor here and some good food for thought for economists.
There is enough for a long article or VERY short book , but the presentation is overdone, drawn out, and repetitive. There were some interesting factoids, like the fact that the person Ludd as in Luddite was mythical, but not enough to sustain my interest. He also seems surprisingly obtuse on some subjects. For example, in the chapter on home ownership and what made people decide to buy a home all he talked about was people's feelings about the house value as an investment and seemed to ignore completely being attracted to an area because of good amenities like schools or libraries or being close to your employment, etc. These elements also significantly affect economic decisions. Nor did he consider that many people buy a home when younger so that when they retire they will have a paid-off home after their income goes down, NOT in order to sell it for a profit. His concept of narratives was extremely narrow.
If it were not a book for my book group I think I would have skimmed it very fast or maybe just skipped to the end to see if he has any good conclusions. He does not, but he deserves credit for his insight, which is nicely compatible with behavioral economics. As it is, I must admit that some parts I scanned quickly.
He has a rather good metaphor here and some good food for thought for economists.
There is enough for a long article or VERY short book , but the presentation is overdone, drawn out, and repetitive. There were some interesting factoids, like the fact that the person Ludd as in Luddite was mythical, but not enough to sustain my interest. He also seems surprisingly obtuse on some subjects. For example, in the chapter on home ownership and what made people decide to buy a home all he talked about was people's feelings about the house value as an investment and seemed to ignore completely being attracted to an area because of good amenities like schools or libraries or being close to your employment, etc. These elements also significantly affect economic decisions. Nor did he consider that many people buy a home when younger so that when they retire they will have a paid-off home after their income goes down, NOT in order to sell it for a profit. His concept of narratives was extremely narrow.
If it were not a book for my book group I think I would have skimmed it very fast or maybe just skipped to the end to see if he has any good conclusions. He does not, but he deserves credit for his insight, which is nicely compatible with behavioral economics. As it is, I must admit that some parts I scanned quickly.
December 31, 2021
This book was a fitting final read for 2021 for me: the book covered a surprisingly long list of very different and seemingly unrelated topics that captured my attention over the past year, particularly in terms of the books I chose to read. These include (but aren’t limited to): cryptocurrencies; the Populist era at the turn of the 20th century and the establishment of the Federal Reserve Bank (Poison Squad, America’s Bank); the Great Depression (The Grapes of Wrath, The Four Winds); epidemiology (Shape); the intersection of literature/culture/neurology (Wonderworks); the impact of automation (The Future Is Faster Than You Think); labor unions (The Box); how economics and culture have shaped land use and the housing market (Golden Gates, Brave New Home, The Big Sort); and a reference to Yuval Noah Harare’s Sapiens. The book also covered the concept of consilience, which is a word I had never heard before that references the overlap among diverse topics - something that I have found to perfectly describe what happens the more I read. While the title of this book makes it sound like a real snooze-fest, it came about as close to describing a theory of everything, at least when it comes to the diversity of my 2021 reading selection.
October 23, 2019
An exploration of how common narratives relate to economic events and trends.
The book reviews narratives that coincided with economic upturns, downturns, wars, and hyperinflation. Several of the insights are quite interesting and show some of the differences between what we hear after the fact and what people were thinking at the time. As logical as these insights are they tend to be a little anticlimactic.
The book is intended to promote the idea of further study into connections between popular narratives and economic trends. The last chapter basically listed ideas for interesting future studies. This is fair but for me, the result was the book ended on a bit of a flat note.
Shiller is very smart and has a knack for quantitative insights into developments that are hard to quantify. This is a quiet but well-supported contribution to knowledge.
The book reviews narratives that coincided with economic upturns, downturns, wars, and hyperinflation. Several of the insights are quite interesting and show some of the differences between what we hear after the fact and what people were thinking at the time. As logical as these insights are they tend to be a little anticlimactic.
The book is intended to promote the idea of further study into connections between popular narratives and economic trends. The last chapter basically listed ideas for interesting future studies. This is fair but for me, the result was the book ended on a bit of a flat note.
Shiller is very smart and has a knack for quantitative insights into developments that are hard to quantify. This is a quiet but well-supported contribution to knowledge.
October 1, 2019
This book is an important addition to the literature of behavorial economics.
We all remember our parents telling us, "that may have not been what you intended, but ultimately, 'perception becomes reality'". The seeds of a story (impression, interpretation, speculation, etc.) can metastasize into Shiller's "narratives" and influence or even drive macroeconomic events. Likening the spread of economic narratives to medical contagion, Dr. Shiller helps us understand better their transmission, recovery and slippage into obscurity, and hence elucidate the rise and fall of "conventional wisdom" and the actions of economic agents.
We all remember our parents telling us, "that may have not been what you intended, but ultimately, 'perception becomes reality'". The seeds of a story (impression, interpretation, speculation, etc.) can metastasize into Shiller's "narratives" and influence or even drive macroeconomic events. Likening the spread of economic narratives to medical contagion, Dr. Shiller helps us understand better their transmission, recovery and slippage into obscurity, and hence elucidate the rise and fall of "conventional wisdom" and the actions of economic agents.
February 5, 2021
اول از همه اگر خلاصه کتاب رو گوش ندادید از بی پلاس گوش بدید.
کتاب دید جدیدی درباره اتفاقات اقتصادی میده، تمرکز کتاب بیشتر روی اتفاقات 1920 به بعد آمریکا که رکود بزرگ و ماجراهای بعد از جنگ جهانی اول اتفاق میفته هست. گریزی هم به وایرال شدن رمزارز ها و مخصوصا بیتکوین هم میزنه که قابل بحثه.
در کل به نظرم کتاب ارزش یک بار خوندن رو داره و برای مخاطبی که خیلی هم از اقتصاد نمیدونه کاملا روان هست.
ترجمه سعید زرگریان از نشر آموخته رو خوندم که خیلی روون بود.
اقتصاد روایی، چگونه داستان های ویروسی رخداد های بزرگ اقتصادی را می سازند.
17.11.1399
کتاب دید جدیدی درباره اتفاقات اقتصادی میده، تمرکز کتاب بیشتر روی اتفاقات 1920 به بعد آمریکا که رکود بزرگ و ماجراهای بعد از جنگ جهانی اول اتفاق میفته هست. گریزی هم به وایرال شدن رمزارز ها و مخصوصا بیتکوین هم میزنه که قابل بحثه.
در کل به نظرم کتاب ارزش یک بار خوندن رو داره و برای مخاطبی که خیلی هم از اقتصاد نمیدونه کاملا روان هست.
ترجمه سعید زرگریان از نشر آموخته رو خوندم که خیلی روون بود.
اقتصاد روایی، چگونه داستان های ویروسی رخداد های بزرگ اقتصادی را می سازند.
17.11.1399
October 15, 2019
Falls short of expectations considering all the hype it received before it was released.
It is good, but its is behind Irrational Exuberance and probably on par with Animal Spirits
It is good, but its is behind Irrational Exuberance and probably on par with Animal Spirits
February 29, 2020
Economist justifies a vague concept using google ngrams.
May 30, 2020
The Narrative Turn in Economics: A review of Robert J. Shiller, Narrative Economics: How Stories Go Viral & Drive Major Economic Events, Princeton University Press, 2019.
Scholars used to start their books or dissertations with definitions of key concepts taken from the dictionary. Now they use the Internet to provide trends in word patterns. Some words or expressions suddenly appear on social media or search engines and spread like wildfire. By going back in time into the print archive, it is now easy to track the appearance, diffusion, and eventual demise of popular expressions. It is also possible to do the same for stories that circulate on the Internet. Economic expressions like “recession” or “irrational exuberance” correlate with economic events: they are embedded in a context that they both reflect and contribute to shape. The diffusion of these stories or word combinations follows a hump-shaped curve. They appear rather anonymously and grow in the margin until a random event or fortuitous circumstances cause them to spread exponentially. Their moment of fame is short-lived, however. Soon they fall back into oblivion and remain marginal, until a new event or a deliberate attempt gives them a new lease of life.
How stories go viral
The natural metaphor that comes to mind to describe the diffusion of these narratives or word patterns is taken from the medical science: stories are like contagious epidemics or infectious diseases, and spread in the social body like germs or viruses. The expression “to go viral” has itself gone viral to describe a piece of information that spreads rapidly through a population by being frequently shared with a number of individuals. The path of epidemics follows a curve that can be modeled with relatively few parameters. The target population can be divided into three compartments: disease-carriers or infectives, people who haven’t had the disease and are susceptible of getting it, and people who have recovered from the disease and have acquired immunity. The speed of the contagion depends on two parameters: the contagion rate, or the risk of infection each time a susceptible person meets an infective person, and the recovery rate for infected persons who get cured from the disease. With some adjustments, this epidemiology model (known in the medical literature as the Kermack-McKendrick model) can be applied to economic narratives. It provides a workhorse model that Robert Shiller uses in his book to delineate a new domain in the discipline: narrative economics.
Should economists be concerned about these circulating narratives? Economics deals with measurable variables and objective phenomena, not opinions and discourse. For standard economics, what matters is how people respond to incentives, not the arguments with which their frame their decisions. They may invoke sentimental attachments or moral reasons, but the economist is well justified to consider only their material interest or the profit motive. Stories are fickle and spread randomly; they may distract the researcher from identifying underlying trends and causal chains. Or do they? Robert Shiller strongly disagrees with these arguments. For this Nobel Prize winner best known from his analysis of the U.S. housing market bubble, narratives matter, popular stories have economic consequences, and background conversations can have an impact on macroeconomic trends. He gives many examples of contagious stories that may have affected the behavior of economic agents and the business cycle. Financial crises spread alongside headline stories and wild rumors that have a strong psychological component, inducing panic or renewed confidence. Expectations about falling prices and the moral stigma attached to war profiteers may have engineered the 1920-21 economic depression by encouraging households to delay purchases and companies to postpone profits. Franklin Roosevelt’s “Buy Now Campaign” in 1933 convinced Americans that raising consumption was a patriotic thing to do. Inflation in the 1970s did not only increase the cost of living: it made people angry and willing to put the blame on some segment of society, either labor unions or businesses.
“Shouting fire in a crowded theater” and “fire sales”
The focus of narrative economics is much broader than economic narratives. Robert Shiller gives many definitions of the word “narrative”, and illustrates it with many different examples. Sometimes a narrative is only a quote (the phrase: “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself” was made famous by Roosevelt’s inaugural address, although he wasn’t the first to pronounce it), other times it is a book or a movie (The Grapes of Wrath), yet other times a picture (Dorothea Lange’s photographs of the Great Depression) or charts and indexes (the unemployment rate; the Laffer curve). The author is able to track the origin of particular stories that have become standard expressions. The “man shouting fire in a crowded theater” narrative, used to illustrate the contagious effect of bank runs, goes back to a real news story that later was picked up by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes in a Supreme Court decision. Similarly, the term “fire sale” has been around since the nineteenth century to describe firms selling smoke-damaged merchandise at cut-rate prices in the aftermath of a fire. Beyond these particular tidbit stories, Shiller identifies perennial economic narratives that recur through time in various mutated forms. These narratives form constellations of stories that illustrate a same basic point or idea and that reinforce one another’s contagion. Nine of these recurring narrative constellations are analyzed in separate chapters of the book, with illustrations taken from the United States’ economic and financial history: “Panic vs Confidence”, “Frugality vs Conspicuous Consumption”, “Labor-Saving Machines Replace Many Jobs”, etc.
As an economist, the author is himself a provider of narratives. Robert Shiller opens his book with the stories revolving around Bitcoins, and he clearly wants his book to be reminded for having forecasted the burst of the Bitcoin bubble— his first book Irrational Exuberance, published at the height of the dot-com boom, predicted imminent collapse, and he also announced the collapse in the U.S. housing market well before the 2008 crisis. He doesn’t hide his Keynesian leanings—he identifies John Maynard Keynes as the first narrative economist—and wants to turn the Reagan era of supply-side economics into a story of “voodoo economics”, with the Laffer curve as the egregious poster child of snake-oil theorizing. Although he calls for interdisciplinarity and “consilience” (the straddling of academic disciplines), he remains firmly grounded in quantitative economics, and his borrowing of epidemiology models mostly serves his ambition to provide a measurement of the narrative landscape akin to the consumer confidence index. His random walk through U.S. economic history lacks the rigor and methodology of the professional historian, and his use of literary tools such as narrative analysis or semiotics is suggestive at best.
Gold bugs are not dead
Narratives are contagious, and Shiller’s economic narratives encourage the reader to think about his or her own stories. In particular, there are many narratives around money, perhaps because the nature of money itself is difficult to grasp. Shiller comes up with his own stories: the narrative of Bitcoin, with the advanced math algorithms and the mysterious figure of Satoshi Nakamoto, but also the nineteenth-century debate between the Gold Standard and bimetallism, mostly remembered through the “Cross of Gold” speech by presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan. We are reminded that President Donald Trump has repeatedly advocated a return to the gold standard, which places him among the “gold bugs” that still dwell in the dark corners of financial markets and are fond of conspiracy theories—one such story identifies the Federal Reserve System with “the creature from Jekyll Island,” after a secret meeting of bankers off the coast of Georgia to write a plan to reform the nation’s banking system in 1910. Indeed, the author could have paid more attention to the conspiracy theories and cabalistic tales that are proliferating on the dark side of the Internet and that provide a backdrop for recent economic events. The European Union, and the euro in particular, have often been the victims of such pernicious attacks: it is no wonder that President Trump, himself a frequent carrier of conspiracy narratives, has been acting as the relay of such criticisms.
Shiller’s list of narrative constellations do not cover the full landscape of economic narratives. In particular, he neglects the ongoing narrative of climate change and ecological shift. It is a narrative with considerable economic consequences: indeed, it may be the defining story of our times, or even the master narrative of the whole of human history, summarized by the word “anthropocene”. I suspect Shiller’s reluctance to address the issue has to do with the controversial nature of climate policy in American circles, where many disparage scientific evidence as, simply, “narratives” or made-up stories. Also lacking in his presentation of narrative economics is the consideration of countries other than the United States. Economic debates are often framed by stories about particular countries, from the “growth miracles” of East Asia to the failed states of the developing world. Recently, Dani Rodrik has tried to put some rigor on these “growth narratives”, shedding light on some of the growth puzzles of the past few decades—from the meteoric rise of China to the exceptionalism of African star performers such as Botswana and Mauritius. Success stories or tales of persistent failure circulate and inspire reformers around the world: the narrative of Singapore’s stellar growth path has inspired countries as diverse as China and Rwanda. By contrast, narratives originating in the United States are losing traction: they do not dominate global conversations the way they used to do during what has been labelled as the American Century.
Tell-tale tails
Can we speak of a narrative turn in economics? Robert Shiller presents the emerging subdiscipline of narrative economics as the new frontier in economics. He gives hints for future research, identifying data collection and analysis as a key challenge. As he advocates, “We need to incorporate the contagion of narratives into economic theory. Otherwise, we remain blind to a very real, very palpable, very important mechanism for economic change, as well as a crucial element for economic forecasting.” The methodology of narrative economics remains fraught with difficulties—the epidemiology models provide only a crude approximation of social contagion—, but in the age of big data and machine learning, new methods may be developed to make sense of the huge mass of information that is accumulating on social media and the Internet. Economics theory itself is making heavy use of narratives: economic models are really stories, and good economists have always understood this. Keynes put it very eloquently: “Economics is a science of thinking in terms of models joined to the art of choosing models which are relevant.” Ultimately, economic models gain acceptance more through plausibility and persuasion than through falsification or empirical testing. Narrative Economics tells a compelling story of what the future of economics should be like.
Scholars used to start their books or dissertations with definitions of key concepts taken from the dictionary. Now they use the Internet to provide trends in word patterns. Some words or expressions suddenly appear on social media or search engines and spread like wildfire. By going back in time into the print archive, it is now easy to track the appearance, diffusion, and eventual demise of popular expressions. It is also possible to do the same for stories that circulate on the Internet. Economic expressions like “recession” or “irrational exuberance” correlate with economic events: they are embedded in a context that they both reflect and contribute to shape. The diffusion of these stories or word combinations follows a hump-shaped curve. They appear rather anonymously and grow in the margin until a random event or fortuitous circumstances cause them to spread exponentially. Their moment of fame is short-lived, however. Soon they fall back into oblivion and remain marginal, until a new event or a deliberate attempt gives them a new lease of life.
How stories go viral
The natural metaphor that comes to mind to describe the diffusion of these narratives or word patterns is taken from the medical science: stories are like contagious epidemics or infectious diseases, and spread in the social body like germs or viruses. The expression “to go viral” has itself gone viral to describe a piece of information that spreads rapidly through a population by being frequently shared with a number of individuals. The path of epidemics follows a curve that can be modeled with relatively few parameters. The target population can be divided into three compartments: disease-carriers or infectives, people who haven’t had the disease and are susceptible of getting it, and people who have recovered from the disease and have acquired immunity. The speed of the contagion depends on two parameters: the contagion rate, or the risk of infection each time a susceptible person meets an infective person, and the recovery rate for infected persons who get cured from the disease. With some adjustments, this epidemiology model (known in the medical literature as the Kermack-McKendrick model) can be applied to economic narratives. It provides a workhorse model that Robert Shiller uses in his book to delineate a new domain in the discipline: narrative economics.
Should economists be concerned about these circulating narratives? Economics deals with measurable variables and objective phenomena, not opinions and discourse. For standard economics, what matters is how people respond to incentives, not the arguments with which their frame their decisions. They may invoke sentimental attachments or moral reasons, but the economist is well justified to consider only their material interest or the profit motive. Stories are fickle and spread randomly; they may distract the researcher from identifying underlying trends and causal chains. Or do they? Robert Shiller strongly disagrees with these arguments. For this Nobel Prize winner best known from his analysis of the U.S. housing market bubble, narratives matter, popular stories have economic consequences, and background conversations can have an impact on macroeconomic trends. He gives many examples of contagious stories that may have affected the behavior of economic agents and the business cycle. Financial crises spread alongside headline stories and wild rumors that have a strong psychological component, inducing panic or renewed confidence. Expectations about falling prices and the moral stigma attached to war profiteers may have engineered the 1920-21 economic depression by encouraging households to delay purchases and companies to postpone profits. Franklin Roosevelt’s “Buy Now Campaign” in 1933 convinced Americans that raising consumption was a patriotic thing to do. Inflation in the 1970s did not only increase the cost of living: it made people angry and willing to put the blame on some segment of society, either labor unions or businesses.
“Shouting fire in a crowded theater” and “fire sales”
The focus of narrative economics is much broader than economic narratives. Robert Shiller gives many definitions of the word “narrative”, and illustrates it with many different examples. Sometimes a narrative is only a quote (the phrase: “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself” was made famous by Roosevelt’s inaugural address, although he wasn’t the first to pronounce it), other times it is a book or a movie (The Grapes of Wrath), yet other times a picture (Dorothea Lange’s photographs of the Great Depression) or charts and indexes (the unemployment rate; the Laffer curve). The author is able to track the origin of particular stories that have become standard expressions. The “man shouting fire in a crowded theater” narrative, used to illustrate the contagious effect of bank runs, goes back to a real news story that later was picked up by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes in a Supreme Court decision. Similarly, the term “fire sale” has been around since the nineteenth century to describe firms selling smoke-damaged merchandise at cut-rate prices in the aftermath of a fire. Beyond these particular tidbit stories, Shiller identifies perennial economic narratives that recur through time in various mutated forms. These narratives form constellations of stories that illustrate a same basic point or idea and that reinforce one another’s contagion. Nine of these recurring narrative constellations are analyzed in separate chapters of the book, with illustrations taken from the United States’ economic and financial history: “Panic vs Confidence”, “Frugality vs Conspicuous Consumption”, “Labor-Saving Machines Replace Many Jobs”, etc.
As an economist, the author is himself a provider of narratives. Robert Shiller opens his book with the stories revolving around Bitcoins, and he clearly wants his book to be reminded for having forecasted the burst of the Bitcoin bubble— his first book Irrational Exuberance, published at the height of the dot-com boom, predicted imminent collapse, and he also announced the collapse in the U.S. housing market well before the 2008 crisis. He doesn’t hide his Keynesian leanings—he identifies John Maynard Keynes as the first narrative economist—and wants to turn the Reagan era of supply-side economics into a story of “voodoo economics”, with the Laffer curve as the egregious poster child of snake-oil theorizing. Although he calls for interdisciplinarity and “consilience” (the straddling of academic disciplines), he remains firmly grounded in quantitative economics, and his borrowing of epidemiology models mostly serves his ambition to provide a measurement of the narrative landscape akin to the consumer confidence index. His random walk through U.S. economic history lacks the rigor and methodology of the professional historian, and his use of literary tools such as narrative analysis or semiotics is suggestive at best.
Gold bugs are not dead
Narratives are contagious, and Shiller’s economic narratives encourage the reader to think about his or her own stories. In particular, there are many narratives around money, perhaps because the nature of money itself is difficult to grasp. Shiller comes up with his own stories: the narrative of Bitcoin, with the advanced math algorithms and the mysterious figure of Satoshi Nakamoto, but also the nineteenth-century debate between the Gold Standard and bimetallism, mostly remembered through the “Cross of Gold” speech by presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan. We are reminded that President Donald Trump has repeatedly advocated a return to the gold standard, which places him among the “gold bugs” that still dwell in the dark corners of financial markets and are fond of conspiracy theories—one such story identifies the Federal Reserve System with “the creature from Jekyll Island,” after a secret meeting of bankers off the coast of Georgia to write a plan to reform the nation’s banking system in 1910. Indeed, the author could have paid more attention to the conspiracy theories and cabalistic tales that are proliferating on the dark side of the Internet and that provide a backdrop for recent economic events. The European Union, and the euro in particular, have often been the victims of such pernicious attacks: it is no wonder that President Trump, himself a frequent carrier of conspiracy narratives, has been acting as the relay of such criticisms.
Shiller’s list of narrative constellations do not cover the full landscape of economic narratives. In particular, he neglects the ongoing narrative of climate change and ecological shift. It is a narrative with considerable economic consequences: indeed, it may be the defining story of our times, or even the master narrative of the whole of human history, summarized by the word “anthropocene”. I suspect Shiller’s reluctance to address the issue has to do with the controversial nature of climate policy in American circles, where many disparage scientific evidence as, simply, “narratives” or made-up stories. Also lacking in his presentation of narrative economics is the consideration of countries other than the United States. Economic debates are often framed by stories about particular countries, from the “growth miracles” of East Asia to the failed states of the developing world. Recently, Dani Rodrik has tried to put some rigor on these “growth narratives”, shedding light on some of the growth puzzles of the past few decades—from the meteoric rise of China to the exceptionalism of African star performers such as Botswana and Mauritius. Success stories or tales of persistent failure circulate and inspire reformers around the world: the narrative of Singapore’s stellar growth path has inspired countries as diverse as China and Rwanda. By contrast, narratives originating in the United States are losing traction: they do not dominate global conversations the way they used to do during what has been labelled as the American Century.
Tell-tale tails
Can we speak of a narrative turn in economics? Robert Shiller presents the emerging subdiscipline of narrative economics as the new frontier in economics. He gives hints for future research, identifying data collection and analysis as a key challenge. As he advocates, “We need to incorporate the contagion of narratives into economic theory. Otherwise, we remain blind to a very real, very palpable, very important mechanism for economic change, as well as a crucial element for economic forecasting.” The methodology of narrative economics remains fraught with difficulties—the epidemiology models provide only a crude approximation of social contagion—, but in the age of big data and machine learning, new methods may be developed to make sense of the huge mass of information that is accumulating on social media and the Internet. Economics theory itself is making heavy use of narratives: economic models are really stories, and good economists have always understood this. Keynes put it very eloquently: “Economics is a science of thinking in terms of models joined to the art of choosing models which are relevant.” Ultimately, economic models gain acceptance more through plausibility and persuasion than through falsification or empirical testing. Narrative Economics tells a compelling story of what the future of economics should be like.
May 6, 2020
This is a story about how viral stories change economic behaviour and therefore economies. Viral stories behave like actual viruses leading to ‘economic epidemics’, something we are all too familiar with during this Covid-19 period.
Anyways stories can be long or short, can be only discussed in certain circles, they need vivid images and a celebrity endorsement. Truth is not as viral as fake news.
So if everyone thinks Bitcoin will only go up, it will go up indeed. If everyone wants to save, the economy tanks.
Major recurring narratives:
1. Panic vs confidence: lead to market crash vs irrational exuberance
2. Frugality vs consumption: lead to economic depression and boom.
3. Gold standard vs fiat money: Silverists wanted dual metal standard; Bitcoin supporters want freedom from government control. Gold standard supporters love the good old days.
4. Robots taking our jobs: from Luddites until now, we always expect no jobs for humans
5. Real estate: if you own a house/flat you have arrived; patriotic even
6. Evil businesses or unions
So to make any economic prediction, we need to know what is the current stories being told, or the Narratives. Shiller did not state any narrative to be absolutely true or false, because, well, things change.
A very important book for people interested in economics.
Anyways stories can be long or short, can be only discussed in certain circles, they need vivid images and a celebrity endorsement. Truth is not as viral as fake news.
So if everyone thinks Bitcoin will only go up, it will go up indeed. If everyone wants to save, the economy tanks.
Major recurring narratives:
1. Panic vs confidence: lead to market crash vs irrational exuberance
2. Frugality vs consumption: lead to economic depression and boom.
3. Gold standard vs fiat money: Silverists wanted dual metal standard; Bitcoin supporters want freedom from government control. Gold standard supporters love the good old days.
4. Robots taking our jobs: from Luddites until now, we always expect no jobs for humans
5. Real estate: if you own a house/flat you have arrived; patriotic even
6. Evil businesses or unions
So to make any economic prediction, we need to know what is the current stories being told, or the Narratives. Shiller did not state any narrative to be absolutely true or false, because, well, things change.
A very important book for people interested in economics.
January 28, 2022
I was in the crowd when Shiller gave his speech at the AEA that introduced the idea of narrative economics. I was excited and bought the book when it first came out and then it sat on my shelf for some reason.
A couple thoughts:
He speaks of the need to cross disciplines, and this is an attempt at that. But weirdly there’s no coauthors here. It’s just him which feels like peak economics – we need collaboration, just not yet. (Compare to Cents and Sensibility: What Economics Can Learn from the Humanities by Gary Saul Morson and Morton Schapiro for an interesting crossover).
He writes of crypto but pins it on the anarchists. Seems the crypto-bros to me are more libertarian, less mutual aid and more knowing the age of consent in every state.
He looks at the arc of popularity of several economic ideas. However, it really feels the subtitle is wrong. It’s not really HOW stories go viral but THAT some do. There’s no model for which ones will go viral or how to make an idea go viral. It’s like he takes this interesting qualities idea and then lays the epidemic model over top of it to look at quantities. Again, very economic brained here. That said, I’m happy that someone of Shiller’s stature is looking at things from a different angle. This is at best a first step, though.
A couple thoughts:
He speaks of the need to cross disciplines, and this is an attempt at that. But weirdly there’s no coauthors here. It’s just him which feels like peak economics – we need collaboration, just not yet. (Compare to Cents and Sensibility: What Economics Can Learn from the Humanities by Gary Saul Morson and Morton Schapiro for an interesting crossover).
He writes of crypto but pins it on the anarchists. Seems the crypto-bros to me are more libertarian, less mutual aid and more knowing the age of consent in every state.
He looks at the arc of popularity of several economic ideas. However, it really feels the subtitle is wrong. It’s not really HOW stories go viral but THAT some do. There’s no model for which ones will go viral or how to make an idea go viral. It’s like he takes this interesting qualities idea and then lays the epidemic model over top of it to look at quantities. Again, very economic brained here. That said, I’m happy that someone of Shiller’s stature is looking at things from a different angle. This is at best a first step, though.
August 26, 2020
He may be a winner of a Nobel Prize, but I’m sure he got that before writing this book. If he hadn’t, then he would’ve been laughed not just out of the contention for the prize, but off the entire Scandinavian peninsula where the Swedes decide who wins these things.
If you want to read the same sentence, in approximately 5740 different ways across 247 pages, then this is the book for you.
I found the appendix more diverse and informative than the actual content
Imagine if you will, two cavemen independently attempting to discover fire. One, competent and intelligent, lights the smallest of sparks by rubbing two sticks together and, in his glee, excitedly retries his attempt using the same sticks with gusto and enthusiasm until A FLASH! A fire is born!
The other, an idiot, let’s call him Robert J. Shiller for sake of the example, gets the same initial spark but, in his stupidity, tries to replicate the same thing not with the same two sticks, but one stone and a leaf, then a deer carcass and his forearm, etc etc. getting further and further away from expanding or restarting his initial spark. He dies alone, cold and naked next to 2 sticks, a stone, a leaf and a deer carcass, amongst other things.
That’s this book.
If you want to read the same sentence, in approximately 5740 different ways across 247 pages, then this is the book for you.
I found the appendix more diverse and informative than the actual content
Imagine if you will, two cavemen independently attempting to discover fire. One, competent and intelligent, lights the smallest of sparks by rubbing two sticks together and, in his glee, excitedly retries his attempt using the same sticks with gusto and enthusiasm until A FLASH! A fire is born!
The other, an idiot, let’s call him Robert J. Shiller for sake of the example, gets the same initial spark but, in his stupidity, tries to replicate the same thing not with the same two sticks, but one stone and a leaf, then a deer carcass and his forearm, etc etc. getting further and further away from expanding or restarting his initial spark. He dies alone, cold and naked next to 2 sticks, a stone, a leaf and a deer carcass, amongst other things.
That’s this book.
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