Robert Allen

Bob Allen retired from Oxford University in 2013. He is now Global Distinguished Professor of Economic History at New York University, Abu Dhabi. He has written extensively on English agricultural history. He has also studied international competition in the steel industry, the extinction of whales, and contemporary policies on education. His articles have won the Cole Prize, the Redlich Prize, and the Explorations Prize. His books include Enclosure and the Yeoman: The Agricultural Development of the South Midlands, 1450-1850, and Farm to Factory: A Re-interpretation of the Soviet Industrial Revolution, both of which won the Ranki Prize of the Economic History Association. Currently, he is studying the global history of wages and prices, pre-industrial living standards around the world, the economic history of the Middle East, and the causes of global inequality. Professor Allen is a Fellow of the British Academy and the Royal Society of Canada.