“There is a complete failure of modern economics to have any value at all,” said Lord Lawson, former UK chancellor of the exchequer. Unfortunately, with the global economy staring into the abyss, there has never been a more pressing time for a practitioner of economics – “the dismal science” – to come up with a viable solution.

At present, policy-makers are crowding into Davos peddling a mishmash of economic theories; from the government stimulus packages expounded by John Maynard Keynes, through to Friedrich Hayek's take on fiscal austerity and Milton Friedman's modern monetary theory.