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It is fair to say that in the last three decades, the world has been run by economists. Their orthodoxy has dominated civil services, central banks and policy-making. But one might look at the world right now and say that economists have made a hash of things. The crash, the lack of growth since the crash and the failure of the economic system to deliver for everyone, all evidence that something is not working.

The last few decades have seen a huge reduction in human poverty in China and elsewhere, no mean achievement. But with everything that has gone wrong, you鈥檇 expect that economists would be rethinking their subject. And it turns out, they are.

In this episode we look at the role of business. Private companies are legally owned by the shareholder. For economists, a simple assumption of what business is for, is to make the shareholders as rich as possible.
But is that the right way of looking at it?

Tackling that question is Colin Mayer, from the Said Business School at Oxford University, and author of a recent book called Prosperity: Better Business Makes the Greater Good.

(Photo: Colin Mayer from the Said Business School, Oxford University
Credit: Getty Images)

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