Uncertain Futures

Jens Beckert is director of the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies in Cologne. In 2018 he was awarded the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize for his work reinvigorating the social sciences with an interdisciplinary perspective, especially at the intersection of sociology and economics. His research focuses on the fields of economic sociology, sociology of inheritance, organization theory, and social theory. Richard Bronk is a Visiting Senior Fellow in the European Institute at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He spent seventeen years working in the City of London and the Bank of England before teaching political economy at LSE from 2000-2007. His research now focuses on the role of imagination and language in economics, the dangers of analytical and regulatory monocultures, and the epistemology of markets.

1: Jens Beckert and Richard Bronk: An Introduction to Uncertain Futures
Section I: The Nature of Expectations in Modern Political Economies
2: Robert Boyer: Expectations, Narratives, and Socio-Economic Regimes
3: David Tuckett: Conviction Narrative Theory and Understanding Decision-Making in Economics and Finance
4: Jenny Andersson: Arctic Futures: Expectations, Interests, Claims, and the Making of Arctic Territory
Section II: The Strange World of Economic Forecasting
5: Werner Reichmann: The Interactional Foundations of Economic Forecasting
6: Olivier Pilmis: Escaping the Reality Test: How Macroeconomic Forecasters Deal with 'Errors'
7: Andrew G. Haldane: Uncertainty in Macroeconomic Modelling
Section III: The Role of Narratives and Planning in Central Banking
8: Douglas R. Holmes: A Tractable Future: Central Banks in Conversation with their Publics
9: Benjamin Braun: Central Bank Planning? Unconventional Monetary Policy and the Price of Bending the Yield Curve
Section IV: Constructing Futures in Finance
10: Elena Esposito: Predicted Uncertainty: Volatility Calculus and the Indeterminacy of the Future
11: Natalia Besedovsky: Uncertain Meanings of Risk: Calculative Practices and Risk Conceptions in Credit Rating Agencies
Section V: Managing Expectations in Innovative Business
12: Martin Giraudeau: Processing the Future: Venture Project Evaluation at American Research and Development Corporation (1946-1973)
13: Liliana Doganova: Discounting and the Making of the Future: On Uncertainty in Forest Management and Drug Development
14: Timur Ergen: The Dilemma between Aligned Expectations and Diversity in Innovation: Evidence from Early Energy Technology Policies