Many Europeans, while admiring the strength and power of the American economy, undoubtedly feel that the system of social values which prevails in the United States, manifested in the acute problems evident in the inner cities and the level of violent crime, for example, leaves much to be desired.

Baseball players or cricketers do not need to be able to solve explicitly the non-linear differential equations which govern the flight of the ball. They just catch it.

The model of competitive equilibrium which has been discussed so far is set in a timeless environment. People and companies all operate in a world in which there is no future and hence no uncertainty.

At 2 per cent growth a year, an economy doubles in size in just thirty years.

The linear, mechanistic view of the world which pervades orthodox economics is simply not capable of capturing the richness and complexity of the rhythms and fluctuations of developed economies.

Once the true relationship between inflation and unemployment is understood, with luck and skill, a free lunch is possible.

But Adam Smith was a philosopher as well as well as an economist, famous in his time as much for his Theory of Moral Sentiments as for The Wealth of Nations. And as he understood so well, society is more than the sum of its individual parts.