Bread and Bullets

George Akerlof and Dennis J. Snower ()
Additional contact information
Dennis J. Snower: Hertie School of Governance

No 9701, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: Standard economics omits the role of narratives (the stories that people tell themselves and others) when they make all kinds of decisions. Narratives play a role in understanding the environment; focusing attention; predicting events; motivating action; assigning social roles and identities; defining power relations; and establishing and conveying social norms. This paper describes the role narratives play in decision making, as it also juxtaposes this description against the backdrop of the Bolshevik-spawned narrative that played a critical role in the history of Russia and the Soviet Union in the 20th Century.

Keywords: motivation; attention; prediction; identity; social assignment; narrative (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A12 A13 A14 D03 D04 D20 D23 D30 D62 D71 D72 D74 E02 E03 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 31 pages
Date: 2016-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm, nep-cis, nep-his, nep-hpe, nep-mic, nep-pke and nep-soc
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (37)

Published - published in: Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 2016, 126 (Part B), 58-71

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp9701.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Bread and bullets (2016)
Working Paper: Bread and Bullets (2016)
Working Paper: Bread and bullets (2016)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iza:izadps:dp9701

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().