This is a podcast from the archives of the BBC Reith Lectures. This lecture in the series

Innocence and Design, given by David Henderson, was originally broadcast in 1985.

I've described how my own experience, while I was working many years ago as a British civil

servant, led me to make a distinction between economic ideas in general and the ideas of

economists in particular.

Economist's ideas are only a part of economic ideas in general, which include beliefs and

perceptions that are unrelated to the characteristic ways of thought of trained economists.

These are not supported by any reference to published work

or to the results such as these may be a professional economic inquiry. They have a life

of their own. Because of this autonomy and the informality and lack of system which go with it,

I've termed this collection of beliefs and perceptions, do-it-yourself economics,

D-I-Y-E.

In this week's lecture, and in the two which will follow it, I'll sketch out the leading

elements of D-I-E.

I'll show how they differ from ideas that are widely accepted by trained economists

and consider the

implications of these differences for economic policy. I'm not trying to suggest that the

economists' ideas as I present them, which can broadly be described as orthodox, are shared by

everyone in our profession. For the time being, professional opinion is represented only by my fictional

colleague Mr. McQuedy, who's a strict champion of orthodoxy, and with whom, on these

issues at any rate, I'm happy to associate myself. As I outline these two approaches,

the amateur and the professional, I'll be drawing on real-life examples,

...