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Roger Backhouse

Economics & Finance

Roger Backhouse

Emeritus Professor of Economics, University of Birmingham

Roger Backhouse is Emeritus Professor of Economics at the University of Birmingham.

His recent research has been on the history of economics, focusing on twentieth-century economics and macroeconomics. For the past eight years he has been working on an intellectual biography of Paul A. Samuelson, the first volume of which was published in 2017, and which was awarded the Spengler Prize for the best book of the year, by the History of Economics Society.

Another book, co-authored with Mauro Boianovsky, Transforming Modern Macroeconomics; Exploring Disequilibrium Microfoundations, 1956-2003 was awarded the Blanqui Prize by the European Society of the History of Economic Thought.

His newest book is available for pre-order in the Americas as The Ordinary Business of Life: A History of Economics from the Ancient World to the Twenty-First Century - New Edition and in the rest of the world as The Penguin History of Economics.

His other interests include the history of welfare economics, the relationship between economics and other social sciences, and the history of empirical macroeconomics.

Education
PhD Economics, University of Birmingham · B.Sc. in Economics and Economic History, University of Bristol
Topics
Economics · History of Economic Thought · John Maynard Keynes & The Keynesian Revolution · Paul Samuelson · Applied Economics · History of Welfare Economics · History of Disequilibrium Macroeconomics · History of Ideas on Secular Stagnation · Historiography & History of the Social Sciences Since 1945

In the Encyclopedia1

Books4

Selected publications6

  1. 2022Backhouse, R 2022, 'Paul Collier, The Future of Capitalism: Facing the New Anxieties', Society. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12115-022-00753-5
  2. 2021Backhouse, R 2021, Post-Keynesian: a rare example of a post-concept in economics. in H Paul & A van Veldhuizen (eds), Post-Everything: An intellectual history of post-concepts. Manchester University Press, Manchester, pp. 99-115. <https://manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9781526148193/post-everything/>
  3. 2020Backhouse, R 2020, 'Economic theory in an imperfect world: Frank Hahn, general equilibrium and Keynesian economics', Oxford Economic Papers, vol. 72, no. 4, pp. 1091-1107. https://doi.org/10.1093/oep/gpaa005
  4. 2020Backhouse, R 2021, 'Thomas Piketty, Capital and Ideology: Translated by Arthur Goldhammer, Belknap Press at Harvard University Press, 2020. pp. ix + 1093. ISBN 9780674980,822', Society. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12115-021-00630-7
  5. 2019Backhouse, R & Cherrier, B 2019, 'Paul Samuelson, gender bias and discrimination', European Journal of the History of Economic Thought, vol. 26, no. 5, pp. 1053-1080. https://doi.org/10.1080/09672567.2019.1632366
  6. 1974Backhouse, R & Cherrier, B 2019, 'The ordinary business of macroeconometric modelling: working on the Fed-MIT-Penn model, 1964-1974', History of Political Economy, vol. 51, no. 3, pp. 425-447. https://doi.org/10.1215/00182702-7551852

Positions & affiliations8

  • University of Birmingham
  • Erasmus University Rotterdam
  • University of Oporto
  • École normale supérieure de Cachan
  • University of Paris I
  • University College London
  • University of Keele
  • University of Bristol

Honours & awards2

  • Leverhulme Trust Major Research Fellowship from 2011-14.
  • UK Fellow of The British Academy.