The demand for economic narratives

Sebastian Blesse, Klaus Gruendler, Philipp Heil and Henning Hermes

No 25-054, ZEW Discussion Papers from ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research

Abstract: Economic narratives are pervasive in the public discourse and can shape individual behavior. But so far we know very little about whether households actually demand and value narratives as information. We combine a comprehensive expert survey with a large-scale nationally representative household sample in the U.S. to examine the demand for economic narratives in a high-stakes environment of an unprecedentedly high recession probability. We document a substantial willingness to pay for economic narratives of more than 4 USD, which is higher than for numerical forecast information. The dominant motives for acquiring narratives are intrinsic, but a smaller share of participants also lists instrumental motives. Economic narratives improve respondents' understanding of recession drivers and shape beliefs about the economy and spending, but exert only a minor impact on quantitative expectations. Our findings underscore the potential of narratives as a tool to improve economic understanding and to foster more informed decisionmaking.

Keywords: Narratives; Experts; Information Acquisition; Willingness to Pay; Expectation Formation; Belief Formation; Spending Intentions; Recession (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D12 D83 D84 E32 E71 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dcm and nep-exp
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https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/330323/1/1939577527.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: The Demand for Economic Narratives (2025)
Working Paper: The Demand for Economic Narratives (2025)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:zewdip:330323

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