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How To Conduct Economic Activity When Radical Uncertainty Prevails?

Economic activity is by nature directed towards the future and, for a long time, both economists and economic actors have been building models to predict the future and guide their action. The recurrent failure of these models to accurately predict the course of the economy points to an urgent need to change perspective and attempt to understand how, in practice, “economic actors visualize the future and decide how to act in conditions of radical uncertainty” [vii]. In other words, the challenge is to understand the social construction of expectations. In Uncertain Futures. Imaginaries, Narratives, and Calculation in the Economy, Jens Beckert and Richard Bronk provide a collection of 13 case-studies that are focused on economic action oriented towards the future. According to them, the central question addressed in this volume is: “if the expectations of those operating in innovative markets cannot be based on the rational calculation of probabilities based on past data, how do they form the expectations and beliefs on which their consequential decisions depend?” [9]. Both editors are now recognized for their important theoretical contribution to the role of imagination in economics. This volume provides an opportunity to demonstrate the role of imaginaries, narratives and calculation in capitalist economies through a variety of empirical case studies. Uncertain Futures is organized around a rich introduction that puts in perspective five sections dealing with the nature of expectations, economic forecasting, central banking, finance, and innovative businesses. The authors—eleven men and four women—come from a range of disciplines including economic sociology, political economy, anthropology and psychology. The richness of the book stems from the diversity of the perspectives mobilized and the multiplicity of its entry points—the scientific perspective of the authors, methodology and rule of evidence, theoretical questions, areas of inquiry. 1 Jens Beckert, 2016. Imagined Futures: Fictional Expectations and Capitalist Dynamics (Cambridge, Harvard University Press); Richard Bronk, 2009. The Romantic Economist: Imagination in Economics (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press).