“An economist is someone who knows the price of everything,” Oscar Wilde is reputed to have said, “but the value of nothing.” It perhaps spoils the party a bit to learn that Oscar Wilde never said that. Instead, the words he put into Lord Henry in The Picture of Dorian Gray were that “nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing”. Nonetheless, the accusation has stuck – in part because those economists often seen on TV are typically heard talking about prices and quantities and far less so about quality. Those who have studied macroeconomics to…

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