CV & Bio

Philip T. Hoffman combines economic theory and historical evidence to explain long-term changes in politics, society, and the economy—in particular, economic growth and political development. He has worked on why the West grew rich before other parts of the world, why it became a dominant military power, how financial and political institutions develop, and how to establish causality with historical data.

Hoffman was president of the Economic History Association in 2013–2014 and president of the Social Science History Association in 2019-2020. He has been a visiting professor at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in France, a visiting researcher at the Paris School of Economics (2011), and a visiting professor at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (2013). In addition to numerous articles, he has written six books, edited two, and won numerous prizes for his publications.