Avner Offer (born 1944) is an economic historian who held the
Chichele Professorship
The Chichele Professorships are statutory professorships at the University of Oxford named in honour of Henry Chichele (also spelt Chicheley or Checheley, although the spelling of the academic position is consistently "Chichele"), an Archbishop of ...
in
Economic history
Economic history is the academic learning of economies or economic events of the past. Research is conducted using a combination of historical methods, statistical methods and the application of economic theory to historical situations and i ...
at the
University of Oxford
, mottoeng = The Lord is my light
, established =
, endowment = £6.1 billion (including colleges) (2019)
, budget = £2.145 billion (2019–20)
, chancellor ...
,
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...
. He is an Emeritus Fellow of
All Souls College
All Souls College (official name: College of the Souls of All the Faithful Departed) is a constituent college of the University of Oxford in England. Unique to All Souls, all of its members automatically become fellows (i.e., full members of t ...
, Oxford, and a fellow of the
British Academy
The British Academy is the United Kingdom's national academy for the humanities and the social sciences.
It was established in 1902 and received its royal charter in the same year. It is now a fellowship of more than 1,000 leading scholars spa ...
. He has published on
international political economy, law, the
First World War
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
and
land tenure
In common law systems, land tenure, from the French verb "tenir" means "to hold", is the legal regime in which land owned by an individual is possessed by someone else who is said to "hold" the land, based on an agreement between both individual ...
. During the 1990s and 2000s, Offer's main interest was in post-war economic growth, particularly in developed societies, and the challenges that affluence presents to well being. His most recent work is on the strife between neoclassical economics and social democracy, each of them vying to shape the post-war decades. Apart from his academic work, he has published a memoir of the Six Day War in Israel.
Biography
Avner Offer was born and raised in
Israel
Israel (; he, יִשְׂרָאֵל, ; ar, إِسْرَائِيل, ), officially the State of Israel ( he, מְדִינַת יִשְׂרָאֵל, label=none, translit=Medīnat Yīsrāʾēl; ), is a country in Western Asia. It is situated ...
. He was educated at the
Hebrew University of Jerusalem (B.A. 1973) and
Oxford University
Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to th ...
(D.Phil. 1979). He has worked at the
University of York, the
Australian National University
The Australian National University (ANU) is a public research university located in Canberra, the capital of Australia. Its main campus in Acton encompasses seven teaching and research colleges, in addition to several national academies an ...
, and the University of Oxford, with research fellowships at the
University of Southampton
, mottoeng = The Heights Yield to Endeavour
, type = Public research university
, established = 1862 – Hartley Institution1902 – Hartley University College1913 – Southampton University Coll ...
, the
University of Cambridge
The University of Cambridge is a public collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209 and granted a royal charter by Henry III in 1231, Cambridge is the world's third oldest surviving university and one of its most pr ...
,
Rutgers University
Rutgers University (; RU), officially Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, is a public land-grant research university consisting of four campuses in New Jersey. Chartered in 1766, Rutgers was originally called Queen's College, and was ...
and
New York University
New York University (NYU) is a private research university in New York City. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded by a group of New Yorkers led by then- Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin.
In 1832, th ...
. He was a Professorial Fellow at
Nuffield College, Oxford
Nuffield College () is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. It is a graduate college and specialises in the social sciences, particularly economics, politics and sociology. Nuffield is one of Oxford's newer c ...
, between 1992 and 2000. He is married with two children.
Offer's book of 2006, ''The Challenge of Affluence: Self-Control and Well-Being in the United States and Britain since 1950'', represents to some extent a challenge to
Neoclassical economics
Neoclassical economics is an approach to economics in which the production, consumption and valuation (pricing) of goods and services are observed as driven by the supply and demand model. According to this line of thought, the value of a good ...
. Through it he argues that "well-being" has in fact lagged behind the increasing affluence of western societies: that "affluence breeds impatience, and impatience undermines well-being...the paradox of affluence and its challenge is that the flow of new rewards can undermine the capacity to enjoy them."
[The Challenge of Affluence: Self-control and Well-being in the USA and Britain since 1950. (Oxford, 2006)] The central concepts are therefore future discount,
bounded rationality, and
myopia.
In the 2016 ''The Nobel Factor: The Prize in Economics, Social Democracy, and the Market Turn'', he argues the
Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics has disproportionately been awarded to proponents of the neoclassical school. According to the book's thesis, the Nobel Prize provides a halo of scientific authority but its committee has underrepresented social democracy as a school of economical thought.
Selected publications
* ''Property and Politics 1870–1914: Landownership, Law, Ideology and Urban Development in England''. (Cambridge, 1981, ) 464pp.
* ''The First World War: An Agrarian Interpretation''. (Oxford, 1990, ) 472pp.
* "The British empire, 1870–1914: a waste of money?", ''Economic History Review''. Vol 46, 2 (1992) pp. 215–238
* (with S. Bowden), "Household Appliances and the Use of Time in the U.S.A., and Britain since the 1920s", ''Economic History Review'', second series. Vol 47, 4 (1994)
* "Between the gift and the market: The economy of regard", ''
The Economic History Review
''The Economic History Review'' is a peer-reviewed history journal published quarterly by Wiley-Blackwell on behalf of the Economic History Society. It was established in 1927 by Eileen Power and is currently edited by Sara Horrell, Jaime Reis a ...
''. Vol 50, 3 (1997) pp. 450–476
* "Costs and Benefits, Prosperity and Security, 1870–1914" in ''Oxford History of the British Empire'', vol. 3, The Nineteenth Century (ed. A. Porter), (Oxford, 1999) pp. 690–711
* ''Why is the Public Sector so large in Market Societies? The Political Economy of Prudence in the UK, c. 1870–2000''. (Oxford, 2003, ) 46pp.
* ''The Challenge of Affluence: Self-control and Well-being in the USA and Britain since 1950''. (Oxford, 2006, ) 472pp.
* "Obesity Under Affluence varies by Welfare Regimes: The Effect of Fast Food, Insecurity and Inequality", ''Economics and Human Biology''. Vol. 8, (2010), pp. 297–308 (with Rachey Pechey and Stanley Ulijaszek)
* ''The Nobel Factor: The Prize in Economics, Social Democracy, and the Market Turn'' (Princeton, 2016, ), 323 pp. (with Gabriel Söderberg).
* ''Burn Mark: A Photographic Memoir of the Six-Day War'' (Oxford, 2014, ).
References
External links
*
Avner Offer's website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Offer, Avner
1944 births
Living people
British historians
Economic historians
Historians of World War I
Chichele Professors of Economic History
Fellows of All Souls College, Oxford
Fellows of the British Academy
Fellows of Nuffield College, Oxford