I am a marketing economist who has worked in 38 countries at all levels from small farmers in poor countries to supermarkets in Europe. For example, I have doubled the net cash income of a million small farmers in one country in a four-month consultancy. I have improved marketing systems so that more money reached the farmers, and so that food for the poor was cheaper. I have prevented a famine. In a one-month consultancy I found a $96 million per year ‘leakage’ in a firm that was audited by one of the big four accountancy firms. My work has been hands-on: I have worked as a civil servant in some countries, and as an adviser for the World Bank, FAO, EC, UNDP etc.

I also have the theory needed. I have written a lot of academic books and papers producing theory that works in the real world – on marketing economics, quality, prices, statistics, famine, etc. – mostly under the name Peter Bowbrick. I have a PhD in the economics of quality (Henley), MA Human Relations (Nottingham), Postgraduate Diploma in Agricultural Economics (Oxford), BSc Economics (London). I have worked in Cambridge, been a Research Associate, and a visiting academic in Oxford, a research fellow in Henley, and have been a Senior Research Officer in an Irish agriculture and food research institute.

I have written a lot of refutations. Most of these are on postgraduate reading lists in universities around the world, so even 38- to 45-year-old refutations are constantly accessed. They save economists from wasting years writing PhDs using refuted theory, analysis or evidence, or, worse still, using rubbish economics in their real-world work.