Eric Lionel Jones (21 September 1936 - 1 March 2024) was a British-Australian economist and historian, known for his 1981 book The European Miracle.
Jones has also had visiting appointments at Yale, Manchester, Princeton, University of Berlin and the Center for Economic Studies at Munich.
His most notable work is The European Miracle: Environments, Economies and Geopolitics in the History of Europe and Asia book (published in 1981).
The work popularized the term European miracle, but it also proved controversial, with some scholars describing his interpretation as 'Eurocentric'.
[3] In Growth Recurring (1988) Jones focused on the states system theory as the decisive factor in the development of the West.