Title of the thesis: The gender of economic forecasting: uses, identities, models, metaphors
Supervisor: Fabian Muniesa
This thesis proposes to study the way in which economic forecasts are shaped by the gender system, by investigating the instruments and methods used by the economic and monetary institutions that produce these forecasts. This work falls within the field of the anthropology of science and technology and borrows analytical tools from gender studies. The thesis will focus specifically on macroeconomic modelling, which relies on extensive mathematical formalism and elaborate computer codes. It will explore the gendered nature of the conceptions of the economy that are conveyed by such tools, in particular by questioning the forms of masculinities that may structure good modelling practices and the economic models in force. This will involve looking at the metaphors frequently used in this context, as well as the gendered (often hierarchical) dichotomies encoded in the models. The empirical investigation will therefore focus on the economic forecasting production sites that rely most heavily on economic modeling and econometrics, adopting a qualitative approach during an ethnography of econometric forecasting offices and of laboratories developing economic modeling tools.