The Power of Narrative

Robert Shiller has long been among our favorite public intellectuals. Perhaps best known for Irrational Exuberance, published just prior to the bursting of the dotcom bubble, Shiller is a prolific author and lecturer. His latest book, Narrative Economics, describes the power of shared perceptions to shape economic events, not the other way around. As we like to put it, markets don’t move when facts change, they move when perceptions change.

Watch the video below as Robert Shiller himself explains the roles of such narratives.