In recent years the metaphor of economy has proved to have an immense explanatory power in literary and cultural criticism. Everything can be expressed and analysed in terms borrowed from political economy. Language, texts, social structures, and cultural relationships can be construed in the dynamic terms made available by the metaphor of economy, and, more specifically, the economy of the metaphor. The metaphor of economy allows to show the dynamic processes of exchange, circulation and interested negotiation. The essays in this volume display approaches to cultural and discursive practices derived from the methods and texts of economics. They provide a body of literary and cultural criticism founded upon economic paradigms, which makes apparent the genealogy of our economic thought and the suggestion that looking at human exchange can enrich our understanding of culture. The interest of this volume is manifold: it gives a historical account of the development of economics, elucidates the emergence of theories governed by economic metaphors and clarifies the impact of the metaphor on theories of textuality. It also provides an exchange between economists and literary and cultural critics by combining literary and cultural criticism with economics and covers a wide range of topics which are of interest to scholars from various disciplines. This volume provides a critical exchange which hopes to enrich both economics and literature.

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 Stories people tell—about financial confidence or panic, housing booms, or Bitcoin—can go viral and powerfully affect economies, but such narratives have traditionally been ignored in economics and finance because they seem anecdotal and unscientific. In this groundbreaking book, Robert Shiller explains why we ignore these stories at our peril—and how we can begin to take them seriously. Using a rich array of examples and data, Shiller argues that studying popular stories that influence individual and collective economic behavior—what he calls "narrative economics"—may vastly improve our ability to predict, prepare for, and lessen the damage of financial crises and other major economic events. The result is nothing less than a new way to think about the economy, economic change, and economics. In a new preface, Shiller reflects on some of the challenges facing narrative economics, discusses the connection between disease epidemics and economic epidemics, and suggests why epidemiology may hold lessons for fighting economic contagions.

While the role of metaphor in economics and business has produced multiple research articles, no comprehensive book-length study has yet appeared. The present book is a timely attempt to fill this gap, giving a global coverage of the role of metaphor in business and economics. It spans time (from Classical Greece to the current business network meeting-room), space (from Europe through the Americas to Asia), cultures and languages (from continental European languages, Brazilian Portuguese to Chinese). The theoretical grounding of the book is the Conceptual Theory of Metaphor taken in a dynamic sense as evolving with on-going research. The theory is thus used, adapted and refined in accordance with the evidence provided. Metaphor is shown to be theory constitutive in the elaboration of economic thinking down through the ages while, at the same time, the emphasis on evidence open to historical, cross-cultural and cross-linguistic considerations align with the current notion of situatedness. The book is a rich source of information for researchers and students in the fields of Metaphor Studies, Economics, Discourse Analysis, and Communication Studies, among others.

In recent years the metaphor of economy has proved to have an immense explanatory power in literary and cultural criticism. Everything can be expressed and analysed in terms borrowed from political economy. Language, texts, social structures, and cultural relationships can be construed in the dynamic terms made available by the metaphor of economy, and, more specifically, the economy of the metaphor. The metaphor of economy allows to show the dynamic processes of exchange, circulation and interested negotiation. The essays in this volume display approaches to cultural and discursive practices derived from the methods and texts of economics. They provide a body of literary and cultural criticism founded upon economic paradigms, which makes apparent the genealogy of our economic thought and the suggestion that looking at human exchange can enrich our understanding of culture. The interest of this volume is manifold: it gives a historical account of the development of economics, elucidates the emergence of theories governed by economic metaphors and clarifies the impact of the metaphor on theories of textuality. It also provides an exchange between economists and literary and cultural critics by combining literary and cultural criticism with economics and covers a wide range of topics which are of interest to scholars from various disciplines. This volume provides a critical exchange which hopes to enrich both economics and literature.

This 1994 book was the first collection devoted to impact of natural sciences on content and form of economics in history.

Argues that the economic debate is often won with faulty messages and personification of the economy, leading to uncertainty as to what the economy actually is.

What was Adam Smith’s intellectual laboratory? How did his economic theory take shape? Were his metaphors of order only residual and ornamental expressions? This book answers these questions by analyzing the formation of the concepts of market and social order in Adam Smith’s work, by considering various aspects of his approach. It analyzes how metaphors and pre-analytical concepts influenced Smith’s theory. In line with studies that deal with the cognitive role of metaphors in science, this book suggests that in Smith’s work metaphors provided a framework, on which basis the theory subsequently developed. Therefore, as such they were part of that intellectual process which made possible the formation of structured concepts. The content and scope of the book permits a more comprehensive interpretation of Smith’s thought, in which many aspects of his work are taken into consideration in order to explain a crucial problem for Smith: the nature and causes of social and economic order. The book also shows that in general, formation of theories is a complex process that includes pre-analytical views as non-residual parts of inquiry.