Rea A. and Lela G. Axline Professor of Business Economics and History, Emeritus
A.B., Harvard College, 1969; M.A., University of California, 1971; Ph.D., Yale University, 1979.
Lecturer in History, Caltech, 1980-81; Instructor, 1981-82; Assistant Professor, 1982-84; Associate
Professor of History and Social Science, 1984-95; Professor, 1995-2003; Richard and Barbara
Rosenberg Professor of History and Social Science, 2003-08; Axline Professor, 2008-22; Axline Professor Emeritus, 2023-. Executive Officer for the Humanities, 1995-2000.
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.
Research Summary
Economic History; Social Science History; Economic Growth; Institutional Change
Growth in a Traditional Society Princeton University Press, 1996 Gyorgy Ranki Prize, Economic History Association, 1997 Allan Sharlin Prize, Social Science History Association, 1997
Articles
Hoffman, Philip T. (2015) What Do States Do? Politics and Economic History. Journal of Economic History, 75 (2). pp. 303-332. ISSN 0022-0507. Download
Hoffman, Philip T. and Postel-Vinay, Gilles and Rosenthal, Jean-Laurent (2015) Entry, information, and financial development: A century of competition between French banks and notaries. Explorations in Economic History, 55 . pp. 39-57. ISSN 0014-4983. Download
Hoffman, Philip T. (2012) Why Was It Europeans Who Conquered the World? Journal of Economic History, 72 (3). pp. 601-633. ISSN 0022-0507. Download
Hoffman, Philip T. (2011) Prices, the military revolution, and western Europe's comparative advantage in violence. Economic History Review, 64 (S1). pp. 39-59. ISSN 0013-0117. Download
Working Papers
Click here to view Professor Hoffman's working papers.
Curriculum Vitae