John Komlos


John Komlos is an American economic historian of Hungarian descent and former holder of the Chair of Economic History at the University of Munich for eighteen years. In the 1980s, Komlos was instrumental in the emergence of anthropometric history, the study of the effect of economic development on human biological outcomes such as physical stature.

Career

Komlos received a PhD in history and a second PhD in economics from the University of Chicago, where he was influenced by the economic historian Robert Fogel to research the economic history of human physical stature. Komlos named this new discipline "anthropometric history" in 1989. He was a fellow at the Carolina Population Center of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill from 1984 to 1986. Komlos also taught at such institutions as Harvard University, Duke University, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, University of Vienna, and the Vienna University of Economics. He was professor of economics and of economic history at the University of Munich for eighteen years before his retirement. He is also the founding editor of Economics and Human Biology in 2003. Komlos was elected a Fellow of the Cliometric Society in 2013. Komlos also blogs for PBS on current economic affairs and more recently has written an economics textbook.