From Narrative Economics to Economists' Narratives[De l'économie narrative aux narrations des économistes]

In the last decade, there has been an increasing interest among economists, policy advisors and social scientists for narratives, and for their role in relation to consumers' and citizens' decision-making processes, public agenda-setting, policymaking as well as its explanation and justification to the general public. In particular, a growing body of literature shows that narratives related to socio-economic issues of collective interest, like inequality, play a concrete—if not crucial—role in the evolution of observed socio-economic phenomena and related policies. In this work, we review literature from economics and neighboring fields to identify key differences among alternative approaches to the study of narratives. Second, we highlight the strategic role of narratives and their ubiquity in relation to the different phases of agents' decisional processes. Finally, we discuss the relation between narratives by academic researchers and narratives that spread among the general public or on the media. This, to appraise the endogeneity of social and economic research activity in socio-economic narratives dynamics, and to better understand their role in governance systems. This work suggests that the power of narrative extends well beyond their observed virality in the news and in social media, and that narratives' impact is a foundational aspect of humans' way of making sense of their surrounding reality, also in the economic domain.