Conventions and the performativity of economics: beyond Lewis

Since the early discussions on the performativity of economics, conventions have been important, but no concept of convention was initially adopted. More recently, Brisset (Citation2016, Citation2019) and Guala (Citation2016) contributed significantly to the theory of the performativity of economics by adopting Lewis’s (Citation1969) approach to conventions. However, this paper argues that the Lewis-based theory of the performativity of economics is too narrow. It cannot fully account for what leads economic agents to follow conventions created by economics, how the latter influence the former, and the relationship between those conventions and self-fulfilling prophecies. In light of this, the paper proposes an alternative conventionalist theory of the performativity of economics that is broader in these respects. The advantages of our proposed theory are illustrated with a paradigmatic example in the performativity of economics literature. Even a broader conventionalist theory, however, has limitations and cannot fully account for how economics is performative.