James Bond: Expensive Tastes to Die For?

Even as movie buffs continue to speculate on the future of the James Bond franchise based on Ian Fleming’s spy novels, one prominent KU economist has continued to have fun by applying his estimable skill set to questions involving how the counterfactual history of 007 would have intersected with actual economic realities.  Former KU Economics Department Chair Tom Weiss in January published an article in Applied Economics (“The Spy Who Dined Well: James Bond and the Real Cost of Fine Dining” – with Lee A. Craig & Julianne Treme) that explores how realistic it would have been for 007, famous for his eclectic and high-brow tastes, to have been able to afford to live as high on the hog as depicted in the novels. 

After constructing a time series of menu prices for the identifiable restaurants at which Bond dined in France (producing one of the few international price series representing luxury services), the authors also compiled a time series on salaries of British Civil Service Grade 7, like Bond from 1953 through 2019.  The findings indicated that French restaurant prices over that span increased faster than Grade 7 salaries.  Moreover, changes in the British exchange rate also would not have been helpful for Bond.  During the 1950s and 1960s, Bond would have spent 18 percent of his salary to have dined weekly in France; whereas he would have had to have spent 26 percent of his salary to do the same during the Euro era. 

In a previous article from 2015 (“No, Mr. Bond, I Expect You to Dine!”) that appeared in Lucky Peach magazine, Dr. Weiss, a renowned economic historian, explained that he got the idea for this particular line of research after dining in the 1990s at a famous French restaurant mentioned by 007 in Goldfinger. 

“Having confirmed the quality of his taste in restaurants,” Dr. Weiss wrote, “I wanted to know: where else did Bond dine? How many places were real; how many only a figment of the authors’ imaginations? How many of them were as nice as L’Oustau de Baumanière? And foremost: Can you and I dine like Bond?” 

The fun and interesting research may well have inspired a somewhat less methodologically rigorous two-part series by longtime food-wine critic John Mariani in Forbes in 2021 on the history of 007’s tastes in food and drink. 

Dr. Weiss is a widely published authority on colonial economic growth and development and on the rise of service industries.