This topic came to my mind quite unexpectedly one quiet evening at home. I turned to my wife and said, 'Shall we watch an English movie tonight?' She smiled and asked, 'Which one?' 'The Bank,' I replied, searching for it on YouTube. As the story unfolded, I found myself thinking less about the bank itself and more about the remarkable relationship between economics and literature.
It was no longer merely a film about finance. It became a reminder that behind every loan, every investment, every financial decision, and every balance sheet lies a human story waiting to be told. When the movie ended, one question remained with me: Why do we teach economics and literature as separate worlds when, in reality, they have always belonged to each other?
Economics begins with a question: How should scarce resources be used? Literature begins with another: How should human beings live? At first, these questions appear to belong to different worlds. One seeks answers through graphs, statistics, and markets; the other through poetry, imagination, and stories. Yet both disciplines ultimately pursue the same destination—the understanding of humanity. One measures the movement of wealth; the other measures the movement of the heart.
Perhaps that is why every civilisation that prospered economically also produced remarkable literature. A nation may build skyscrapers, stock exchanges, and industries, but without stories, poems, and plays, its prosperity remains incomplete. Wealth may build a city, but literature gives the city a soul.
Economists often speak about productivity, inflation, interest rates, labour markets, and economic growth. Writers speak about love, ambition, betrayal, hope, poverty, and justice.
Every economic decision begins inside a human mind before it appears in a market. Every purchase reflects a desire. Every investment reflects hope. Every financial crisis reflects fear. In that sense, economics is not merely the science of money; it is the science of human choices. Literature simply tells the stories behind those choices.
William Shakespeare understood this truth long before economics emerged as a formal academic discipline. Although he never used words such as inflation, GDP, or behavioural economics, his plays remain among the finest studies of economic behaviour ever written. He understood that money is never simply about money. It is about power, trust, fear, ambition and morality.
In The Merchant of Venice (I read it two decades ago), Shakespeare transformed a financial contract into one of history's greatest moral debates. The agreement between Antonio and Shylock is more than a commercial transaction.
It asks timeless questions that continue to challenge bankers, lawyers, and economists alike. What is the value of justice without mercy? Can a contract be economically correct but morally wrong? Can markets survive without trust? Modern finance continues to wrestle with the same questions.
In King Lear, Shakespeare explored another economic lesson. Wealth distributed without wisdom becomes a source of destruction rather than prosperity. King Lear divided his kingdom based on pleasing words instead of competence, creating instability, conflict, and eventual collapse.
Today's economists would describe the episode as a failure of governance and resource allocation. Shakespeare simply allowed tragedy to teach what theory later explained.
The father of modern economics, Adam Smith, understood this better than many remember. Before writing The Wealth of Nations, he wrote The Theory of Moral Sentiments, arguing that markets function best when supported by trust, sympathy, and ethical behaviour. Smith never imagined economics as a cold science detached from humanity. He believed that prosperous societies depend as much upon moral character as they do upon competitive markets.
Karl Marx approached the relationship differently but reached a similar appreciation for literature. He frequently drew upon novels and classical writers because stories often revealed inequalities more vividly than statistics. Charles Dickens exposed the hardships of the Industrial Revolution not through economic models but through unforgettable characters whose struggles reflected the realities of poverty, exploitation, and social injustice. Sometimes a single novel teaches more about inequality than an entire collection of statistical reports.
John Maynard Keynes once observed that the ideas of economists and political philosophers govern the world more than people realise. Yet ideas influence society only when they are understood. Literature performs that remarkable task. An economic report may calculate unemployment, but only a novel can reveal what unemployment feels like around a dinner table.
Perhaps Shakespeare never calculated national income, measured inflation, or analysed stock markets. Yet he understood the invisible economy that lives within every human being—the economy of trust, ambition, generosity, fear, love, and conscience.
Mohammed Anwar Al Balushi
The author works at UTAS
Oman Observer is now on the WhatsApp channel. Click here
