In most Western economies, the general relationship is not in fact between the rate of inflation and the level of unemployment, but between the rate of change of inflation and the rate of change of unemployment.

The second part of the New Right's policy package has been the belief that free-market solutions are always best. It is this latter view which is profoundly mistaken. Markets and profits are crucial, but the pure free-market model itself is deeply flawed.

I am often asked by would-be entrepreneurs seeking escape from life within huge corporate structures, ‘How do I build a small firm for myself?’ The answer seems obvious: Buy a very large one and just wait.

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.

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.

Despite the high salaries involved, employing economists is a cost-effective way for banks, and stockbrokers to secure exposure in the media.

The reader might reflect that an awful lot of supposing has to take place in order for the quantity theory of money to be true.