“I know that this sounds like a bit of a cliché, but really, it’s not you…” His torturer was funny, talented, and unbearably beautiful. His mother had said she wanted him to marry her. And he had lost her in a personal best time of six weeks.

It was when he found himself being dumped like this yet again that William Nicolson decided something had to be done. William is an economist, which means he is good at reducing an infinitely complex world into a set of clear, rational principles about the way people and markets behave. Unfortunately, he has never been able to replicate this in the world of romance. Girls confuse him.

In this book, he sets out to apply the rules of economics to his floundering love life. For a time, everything seems to be clearer. Want to play hard to get? Reduce your supply. Want a girlfriend? Find an undervalued asset. Why are all the good ones taken? That’ll be the Efficient Market Hypothesis. But things don’t work out quite as he’d hoped. In fact, he finds himself more isolated than ever. It looks like economics doesn’t have all the answers after all. Not, that is, until John Maynard Keynes comes along…