Economists as Storytellers

By Donald J. Boudreaux. Excerpts:

"Paul Heyne (1931-2000), who taught for most of his career at the University of Washington, was one of the 20th century’s greatest teachers of economics. He excelled in the classroom, in popular writings, in public lectures, and in his indispensable textbook, The Economic Way of Thinking.

Paul made economics relevant and, hence, interesting. And perhaps the single best piece of advice that he offered to his fellow economists is to tell what he called “plausible stories.”

Far too many professional economists today ignore this advice, even when teaching an introductory class to freshmen. Indeed, wrongly thinking it to be hostile to scientific rigor, they hold this advice in contempt."

"My own take on economic methods is deeply influenced by Hayek. It is influenced also by Deirdre McCloskey who insists that whatever methods work to further our understanding are legitimate methods."

"Although verbal stories have nothing of the appearance of Science, they are a legitimate and scientific method of gaining – and of sharing – understanding. In fact, for some purposes, verbal stories are by far the method that works best. 

Consider Leonard Read’s famous story “I, Pencil.” In unassuming prose, Read revealed the surprising though indisputable truth that the amount of knowledge necessary to make an ordinary commercial-grade pencil is inconceivably greater than is the amount of knowledge that can be comprehended by a single individual or by a committee of even the most genius of individuals. (In 1776, Adam Smith told a similar, although much shorter, story about an ordinary woolen coat.)"

"Leonard Read’s long-time secretary, Jeanette Brown, told me that Read one day in 1958 squirreled himself away, alone in his office at the Foundation for Economic Education, and for hours did nothing but contemplate a pencil. This contemplation – combined with Read’s extensive reading of great economics texts – is what Jeanette believes to be the source of Read’s insight as told in “I Pencil.”  

If Jeanette is correct – as to me she seems to be – in what way is Read’s pondering a pencil and thereby discovering the insights that he shared in “I, Pencil” less deserving of the label “scientific inquiry” than is, say, an astronomer pondering the night sky through a telescope and thereby discovering a previously unknown star? 

Both inquiries uncover truths that are objective in the sense that they can be conveyed to other people, each of whom is free not only to challenge or to accept the claimed truths, but also to use those truths as tools in the search for other truths.

Economics, when done well, is the telling of such stories. The stories told are not fantasies or fictional. They are, a Paul Heyne said, plausible. And they are fascinating!"

See also Economists Love Fables And Parables (Or, What Is The Essence Of Economic Analysis?)

Economics resembles storytelling more than mathematics