Economics
Study Shows James Bond’s Salary Hasn’t Kept Up with French Restaurant Costs
- Haute cuisine costs more due to pound’s purchasing-power loss
- Bond novels offer details on restaurants, 007’s salary
A scene from the James Bond film 'Thunderball' with Sean Connery.
Photographer: MacGregor/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
James Bond’s “license to kill” is famous. His dining-account purchasing power less so, at least until a recent study released by the National Bureau of Economic Research.
“He dined often and very well,” as revealed in the series of novels and short stories launched by Ian Fleming and continued by a number of successors, economists Lee A. Craig, Julianne Treme and Thomas J. Weiss wrote in an NBER working paper.