Avner Offer

Avner Offer is an Economic historian who held the Chichele Professorship in Economic history at the University of Oxford, England. He is an Emeritus Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, and a fellow of the British Academy. He specializes in international political economy, law, the First World War and land tenure. Over the past decade Professor Offer's main interest has been in post-war economic growth, particularly in affluent societies, and the challenges that this affluence presents to well being.

Avner Offer was born and raised in Israel. He was educated at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Oxford University. He has worked at the Universities of York, UK, the Australian National University, and the University of Oxford, with research fellowships at the University of Southampton, University of Cambridge (both UK), Rutgers University and New York University (both in the USA). He is married with two children.

Offer's most recent work, 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. 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 central concepts are therefore future discount, bounded rationality, and myopia.