Background
Avner Offer was born and raised in Israel.
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Avner Offer
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Education
He was educated at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Oxford University.
Career
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.
He has worked at the University of York, the Australian National University, and the University of Oxford, with research fellowships at the University of Southampton, the University of Cambridge, Rutgers University and New York University.
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.
Politics
Property and Politics 1870-1914: Landownership, Law, Ideology and Urban Development in England.
