An Economics Tutorial for non-believers

By Ileana von Hirsch, June 17th 2010

June 17th

My presence at Economics tutorials at Oxford was as much a trial to my poor tutor as it was to me – My delivery of a meager essay on some topic such as the laws of Money Supply, that I never really believed in, would be followed by a 30 minute silence where we would stare at each other glumly, until she would sigh deeply and give me the topic for next week’s torture.
I mention this because the only thing that ever made complete sense to me in Economics was something called a Giffen Good – Caviar is one, and so are Chanel handbags and Phillip Treacy hats – The idea of a Giffen Good is that, unlike other goods such as milk and eggs and train fares,  as price rises, so does demand. This may seem boringly obvious to  you and me, but Mr Giffen took a long time to come up with the concept……

I had a graphic confirmation of this today when a client asked for the best properties we had. I sent our totally over-the-top, stellar Five Star Greece VIP villas, only to be told that the client wouldn’t even look at them as they were not expensive enough.
Professor Theo Cooper, I may even start believing in those old Money Supply laws after all……

About the author

Ileana von Hirsch

Ileana lives in London, is married to a Bavarian, and comes from an old shipping family from the Greek island of Ithaca. ileana@fivestargreece.com

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