Methodology of the narrative analysis in economics: The case of the entrepreneurial networks

Abstract

The  purpose  of  the  article is to provide   theoretical and  empirical evidence  that narrative analysis  in economics  is not an integral part of qualitative research  and  is quite compatible with  the  methodology of quantitative research. The development of methods for collecting and  processing data is one of the significant directions in the development of both  empirical and theoretical research  in economics. Of  particular importance to this  direction is the  consistent expansion of the  consideration of social  factors in the  study of decision-making  processes, both  at the micro  and  macro  levels. Narrative economics, which  has  emerged  and  developed in  the  last decade, is an  integral part of this  trend. The article proposes  and  substantiates a methodology for empirical analysis  of narratives considered as sources  of quantitative information used in decision  making. This  distinguishes it from  the  methods of narrative analysis used in qualitative research  in the  social  sciences, although they  are not always distinguished in the literature. The technique combines  the search  for the frequency  of occurrence of various  phrases  on the Internet with  interview analysis, which  significantly reduces  the  time and  effort required to search  and  analyze the necessary  information about social  factors. The  effectiveness of the  proposed  methodology is tested on the  example  of the  analysis  of narratives that characterize personal entrepreneurial networks, no statistical information about which  is collected, although the  networks  themselves play  an important role in the  formation of new small  businesses. The presented results of the  analysis show that the  technique makes it possible  to obtain useful  quantitative data on such objects of economic  research.