Substantial differences in productivity, accompanied by growing social and political discontent, have widened across UK regions in the last 40 years, creating a dysfunctional spatial equilibrium; a coordination failure that has so far proved resistant to change. In this paper, we link such persistent regional disequilibria with current socio-psychological theories about the role of narrative in decision-making under radical uncertainty to explore how and why ideas held collectively within a social network can become the coordinating device for a range of decisions within networked communities that have extra-market effects (externalities), analogous to the role that prices play within markets. Drawing on findings from a pilot interview study in two UK regions, we show the potential for local leadership to use well-constructed narratives to coordinate fragmented agents to cooperate on a common purpose and more generally propose a framework to understand how low-income equilibria become stable but might be re-set. In this way we bring new insights into the need for an expanded economic theory of knowledge applicable to expectation and preference formation in conditions of radical uncertainty.

中文翻译：

---

叙事作为逆转区域不平衡的协调手段

在过去的40年中，英国各地区的生产力差异显着，并伴随着越来越多的社会和政治不满情绪，造成了空间失调。到目前为止，协调失败已被证明无法抵抗变化。在本文中，我们将这种持续存在的区域失衡与当前社会心理理论联系在一起，这些理论涉及叙事在极端不确定性中的决策制定作用，以探讨在社交网络中集体持有的观念如何以及为何能够成为一系列决策的协调工具。在具有额外市场效应（外部性）的网络社区中，类似于价格在市场中扮演的角色。借鉴英国两个地区的试点访谈研究结果，我们展示了地方领导者使用结构合理的叙述来协调零散的特工以实现共同目的进行合作的潜力，并且更普遍地提出了一个框架来理解低收入均衡如何稳定但可能会重新设置。通过这种方式，我们将新的见解带入了对在极端不确定性条件下适用于期望和偏好形成的知识的扩展经济学理论的需求。