Good tweet on narratives and morality
"It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner"
– Adam Smith"Narratives compete with imperatives (general moral rules or precepts)…to persuade agents to behave in desirable ways."
– Jean Tirolehttps://t.co/YdVGjsh84U— Noah Smith (@Noahpinion) September 22, 2018
Make of this what you will. I think reading it as Smith underplaying morality is unfair – but reading it as economic language/narratives being used to underplay important moral arguments that may be necessary for important coordination games is fair.
When I was recently asked who my favourite economist was I named my partner, but pointed out Tirole was a close second. I also discovered my third fav, Dixon, is on twitter. Both Tirole and Dixon use standard economics models to explain things we observe while focusing on the types of assumptions we make and their credibility – they use models for clarity of exposition, and I love it.