Ben Fine


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

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. A gifted student, Fine graduated at the age of 20, and then was recruited by SirJames 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. 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. Currently, Ben Fine is 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.

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. Latterly he turned to understanding labor 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'. His work is cited over 39,000 times.
He has also advised UNCTAD, UNDESA, UNDP, UNRISD, and Oxfam and served as an expert advisor on President Mandela's 1995-6 South African Labour Market Commission.

Recognition

Edited Books