Economics is all around us, yet vast swathes of the population don’t really understand how it works and that’s a pretty fundamental problem given the situation our world is facing.

To try and rectify the problem that is the lack of economic understanding in our nation, two senior employees from the Bank of England (Rupal Patel and Jack Meaning) have written a book discussing the fundamentals of economics in an amusing and easy way across ten chapters.

Through simple metaphors such as the Bank of England canteen, the price of Freddos and where we get our clothes from the book explores the Tragedy of the Commons, how inflation works and David Ricardo’s idea of comparative advantage – all concepts most of the population wouldn’t think to research.

As the book progresses, the authors build on the knowledge you have gained to discuss slightly more advanced economic concepts including the joys (if you’re me) of quantitative easing (why we can’t just print more money) and how to predict (or not) economic crises.

I don’t think I’m a particularly great economist, I know a bit but not really enough to have a proper debate with someone about the economy so I was looking forward to reinforcing what I knew with an enlightening book from the Bank of England.

The introduction isn’t great as it mainly discusses the Bank’s objective to ‘promote the good of the United Kingdom’ and how the book fulfills this as it was distributed to every state school in the country to further economic education.

However, the content of the book is incredibly interesting as it allows you to ponder the great economic questions of the day without it being particularly complicated or hard to understand (there’s only one formula in the entire book) achieving its objective of giving people greater confidence.

As most of the nation have a limited understanding of economics I’d whole-heartedly recommend this book. It gives you the reasoning behind common scenarios which you can apply to other situations you might find yourself in without being bamboozled by fancy terminology (although there is some in there for those who want it).

In short, I suggest you go and read the thing!

Do comment your thoughts below.