ABSTRACT
I examine in this essay a series of intellectual practices by which economic phenomena are modelled linguistically. I draw on examples that range from my research in the Friuli region of north-east Italy in the 1980s to my present work in five central banks. I argue that this kind of linguistic modelling is not merely about providing depictions or accounts of economic phenomena, rather it is about making the economy a communicative field and an empirical fact. This constitutes an elaboration of the ‘performative hypothesis’, delineated by Michel Callon. The chapter examines a series of classic examples of economic performativity, concluding with a brief examination of the performative nature of an emerging monetary regime: a public currency. A key feature of this monetary regime is its reliance on the continuous generation of analytical and interpretative insights on the state of the economy and the financial system.
