Understanding Economic Narratives

Tasks

The project aims to understand the origins and implications of economic narratives. Economic narratives (i.e. stories about cause-and-effect relations in economic matters) and their instrumentalization of politicians are key factors in shaping the political debate and support for relevant economic policies. However, despite previous work from Nobel price laureate of Robert Shiller on "Narrative Economics" not much is known on how these narratives develop or what their actual implications are for policy making. This is the gap that this project wants to fill. Our research agenda is pursued by studying three related sub-projects.

Methods

First, we want to map and compare economic narratives across different economic systems (social market economy, socialist market economy, capitalist market economy) by fielding large-scale surveys in several European countries, China, as well as the US. Second, we want to measure how different fundamental economic misconceptions predict economic narratives on an individual level. Third, we want to analyze how specific economic narratives change over time and whether economic shocks change these narratives.

This project has direct relevance for the policy debate since we measure and map narratives in real-life, answer how specific political debates and narratives come about, how they can be changed and what their implications are.