Ben Fine

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Ben Fine (born 1948) is Professor of Economics at the University of London's School of Oriental and African Studies.

Contents

Background

Fine was born in Coventry in 1948. One of six brothers, he and all but one other followed their father and studied mathematics at the University of Oxford. Fine graduated at the age of 20, and then was recruited by Sir James Mirrlees, completing an economics degree. He took his doctorate in economics at the London School of Economics, under the supervision of Amartya Sen, in 1974. [1] He moved to the newly established economics department at Birkbeck, University of London, later working part-time as an industrial economist at the Greater London Council prior to its abolition. He was a member of the Social Science Research Committee of the UK’s Food Standards Agency, that met until 2016. [2] Currently, Ben Fine is emeritus professor of economics at the Department of Economics at SOAS, University of London. He is on the Economists' Oversight Group of the Citizens' Economic Council of the Royal Society of Arts, Commerce and Manufacturing (RSA).

Contributions

Fine initially worked on social choice theory, which later informed several studies of consumer choice and consumption patterns. He developed the 'systems of production' framework to understand the ways in which goods are produced and consumed, working with E. Leopold. [3] Latterly he turned to understanding labour economics and inequalities in South Africa's extractives sector, based on some earlier work on the British coal industry, which was in decline.

He is the author of a number of works in the broad tradition of Marxist economics, and has made contributions on economic imperialism and critiques of the concept of social capital. Perhaps his most significant book to date is Marx's 'Capital' (6th ed. 2016, first ed. 1975), with Alfredo Saad-Filho. His work is cited over 39,000 times (Google Scholar, 2018) and his books have been translated into thirteen languages.

He has advised UNCTAD, UNDESA, UNDP, UNRISD, and Oxfam and served as an expert advisor on President Nelson Mandela's 1995-1996 South African Labour Market Commission.

Recognition

Selected bibliography

Edited Books

Related Research Articles

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Keynesian economics Group of macroeconomic theories

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Macroeconomics Study of an economy as a whole

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<i>Monopoly Capital</i>

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References

  1. Fine, B. 2000. Fine, Ben. In Philip Arestis, Malcolm C. Sawyer (eds.) A Biographical Dictionary of Dissenting Economists. Edward Elgar.
  2. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 12 February 2018. Retrieved 11 February 2018.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  3. http://eprints.soas.ac.uk/15968/7/13-2fine.pdf | Fine, B. 2013. Consumption matters. Ephemera 13(2): 217-248.