John Kay

We make the poor better off not by holding back technical and economic progress, but by accelerating it.

The measure of the productivity of an activity is the public and private benefit from a good or service that results from that activity.

Ideas – even those about business – often find their best expression in fiction.

Perceptions of inflation are formed, not by the ONS, but by the most salient prices.

The modern world of business and politics is plagued by spurious rationality and bogus quantification. The desire to do what is right is overtaken by the necessity to do what is easy to defend.

Do not tinker with the tax system for short-term political advantage. Tax is always more complicated than you think and the results come back to haunt you.

The notion that extending intellectual property rights in the music industry would provide pensions for ageing and impoverished crooners is an engaging fantasy.

There are historic lessons to be learnt from the recent high definition format war: the importance of the installed base and the unpredictability of consumer markets.

Mr Buffett’s success demonstrates the weakness of one economic theory, the efficient market hypothesis, and the strength of another – the central role that the pursuit and defence of economic rents plays in modern corporate life.

Scottish banknotes are not legal tender in England – or in Scotland. What matters is not what is legal tender, but what others will accept.