Narrative Inference with and without Statistics
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 7448280 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Michael S Morgan (0000-0003-3471-2180, corresponding author), Mary S Morgan |
| Year | 2021 |
| Volume | 53 |
| Issue | S1 |
| Pages | 113-138 |
| Publication date | 2021-09-08 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | History of Political Economy (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0018-2702 • E-ISSN: 1527-1919 |
| Publisher | Duke University Press (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1215/00182702-9414803 |
| OpenAlex | W3196762414 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 13 |
This article investigates the role played by narrative in drawing inferences from statistics before the adoption of formal inference regimes in economics. Two well-known, and exemplary, cases of informal inference provide the materials. Nikolai Kondratiev’s struggles to make inferences about the existence of his “long waves” from heaps of statistics in the 1920s contrast sharply with Thomas Robert Malthus’s confident account of demographic-economic oscillations made on the basis of the limited numbers available in the late eighteenth century. Comparison of their inferential reasoning, using detailed textual analysis, casts attention on the important role of narrative. These cases prompt the notion of “narrative inference”: where informal statistical inference depends on narrative accounts—used to make sense of the numbers by Malthus or to add sense onto the numbers by Kondratiev
Economics · Epistemology · Inference · Linguistics · Narrative · Narrative inquiry · Positive economics · Sociology · Statistical inference · Statistics · Economic Theory and Institutions · Historical Economic and Social Studies · Mathematics · Philosophy · Philosophy and History of Science
The History of Econometric Ideas
Classical Probability in the Enlightenment
The World in the Model
Interactions between the Multiplier Analysis and the Principle of Acceleration
Statistical Testing of Business-Cycle Theories
The Long Waves in Economic Life
The Rise of Statistical Thinking, 1820–1900
A long wave goodbye
Narrative science and narrative knowing. Introduction to special issue on narrative science
Narrative ordering and explanation
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |