Roger Backhouse

Biography

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. 

Interviews

Roger Backhouse On Robbins, Keynes, Samuelson, & The Relationship Between Economics And The Other Social Sciences. Septemeber 8, 2023.

Selected Publications

Books

Backhouse, R. 2024. The Penguin History of Economics. Penguin Books.

Backhouse, R. 2024. The Ordinary Business of Life: A History of Economics from the Ancient World to the Twenty-First Century - New Edition. Princeton University Press.

Backhouse, R, Baujard, A & Nishizawa, T (eds) 2021, Welfare Theory, Public Action, and Ethical Values: Revisiting the History of Welfare Economics. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108882507

Backhouse, R. 2017, Founder of Modern Economics, Paul A. Samuelson. Volume I: Becoming Samuelson, 1948-2009. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Journal Articles

Backhouse, 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

Backhouse, 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

Backhouse, 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

Book Chapter

Backhouse, 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/>

Book/Film/Article review

Backhouse, R 2022, 'Paul Collier, The Future of Capitalism: Facing the New Anxieties', Society. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12115-022-00753-5

Backhouse, 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

Education

PhD Economics, University of Birmingham

B.Sc. in Economics and Economic History, University of Bristol

Institutions

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

Fields

Economics

History of Economic Thought

Topics

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