Avner Offer
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Avner Offer (born 1944) is an economic historian who held the Chichele Professorship 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 in ...
at the
University of Oxford The University of Oxford is a collegiate university, collegiate research university in Oxford, England. There is evidence of teaching as early as 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the List of oldest universit ...
,
England England is a Countries of the United Kingdom, 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 separa ...
. 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 ...
, 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 span ...
. 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 List of wars and anthropogenic disasters by death toll, one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, ...
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 (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 and ...
, and the University of Oxford, with research fellowships at the University of Southampton, the University of Cambridge,
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, the ...
. He was a Professorial Fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford, 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 Bounded rationality is the idea that rationality is limited when individuals make decisions, and under these limitations, rational individuals will select a decision that is satisfactory rather than optimal. Limitations include the difficulty of ...
, and
myopia Near-sightedness, also known as myopia and short-sightedness, is an eye disease where light focuses in front of, instead of on, the retina. As a result, distant objects appear blurry while close objects appear normal. Other symptoms may include ...
. In the 2016 ''The Nobel Factor: The Prize in Economics, Social Democracy, and the Market Turn'', he argues the
Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics The Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, officially the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel ( sv, Sveriges riksbanks pris i ekonomisk vetenskap till Alfred Nobels minne), is an economics award administered ...
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