This is a book serving the second of these two kinds of knowledge, a book
that I have intended that the reader should be able to dip into from time to
time. I hope it may also serve that other thing with which knowledge is so
often mistaken: understanding. If one’s appetite is whetted, as I hope may
occasionally be the case, there are loads of decent texts that provide solid
main courses and desserts. The Dictionary is not intended to compete with
them. My main hope is that it may be of use to the reader in a hurry
(whether a beginning economist or someone who needs to understand what
economists go on about), who wants a reminder about a topic or who wants
a quick and relatively painless introduction to it. It would be great if, to
borrow from Sir Topham Hat (the Fat Controller in Thomas the Tank Engine),
the Dictionary were to be a ‘really useful engine’.