Robert Fogel

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Robert William Fogel

Robert William Fogel (born July 1, 1926 in New York City , † June 11, 2013 in Oak Lawn , Illinois ) was an American economist and economic historian and professor at the University of Chicago . In 1993, Fogel and Douglass Cecil North received the Nobel Prize in Economics for their renewal of economic history research based on "counterfactual analysis" ("What if ...?" Had happened and thus history had turned out differently) Applying economic theory and quantitative methods to explain economic and institutional change .

Career

Fogel is the son of Russian-Jewish immigrants. He graduated from Stuyvesant High School in New York and then majored in history with an economics minor at Cornell University . There he was president of the communist youth organization American Youth for Democracy .

After graduating with a bachelor's degree in 1948, he worked for the Communist Party of the USA , from which he later turned away. He went on to study, graduating from Columbia University with a master's degree in 1960 and graduating from Johns Hopkins University in 1963 . He taught there from 1958 to 1959, 1960 to 1965 and 1968 to 1975 at the University of Rochester , 1964 to 1975 at the University of Chicago , 1975 to 1981 at Harvard University and from 1981 again in Chicago.

In 1972 Fogel was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences , 1973 to the National Academy of Sciences and 2000 to the American Philosophical Society . Since 1991 he has been a corresponding member of the British Academy . In 1998, he was President-Elect of the American Economic Association .

research

Robert Fogel was one of the main exponents of cliometry , the statistics-based economic history . His main work is Time on the Cross , co-authored with Stanley Engerman , an analysis of the economy of slave society in the American southern states . In it he argued that slavery was by no means uneconomical, as has often been argued with the argument that the prices of slaves rose faster than the prices of the products they made. He also argued that slaves on the plantations were treated better on average than workers in the factories in the north. Although the methodological intelligence of the investigation was always recognized, Fogel and Engerman were sharply attacked (as by Herbert Gutman ). Shortly after the publication of Time on the Cross , a book by Paul David and others appeared to refute their theses in detail. Above all, they were accused of having worked from too narrow a statistical basis and, all in all, of having drawn a clearly too well-meaning picture of the living conditions of the colored slaves . Fogel himself was never an apologist for slavery and always emphasized his rejection of slavery on moral grounds.

Fogel also subjected other common theses to a critical review. So he came to the conclusion that the railroad in the USA in the period around 1890 only led to savings of a maximum of three percent (and closer to one percent) in the transport costs for agricultural products. Compared to a hypothetical economy without a railroad (which should be based mainly on canal transport) the savings were very small. This thesis triggered a broad debate in historical studies that continues to the present day. It has now been rejected by many historians.

Fonts

  • with Stanley Engerman Time on the Cross. The economics of american negro slavery , two volumes, Boston, Toronto 1974
  • Railroads and the American Economic Growth. Essays in econometric history , Baltimore 1964
  • The Union Pacific Railroad: A Case in Premature Enterprise , 1960.
  • Without Consent or Contract: The Rise and Fall of American Slavery , 2 volumes, 1989.
  • Economic Growth, Population Theory and Physiology: The Bearings of Long-Term Processes on the Making of Economic Policy , 1994.
  • The Slavery Debates, 1952-1990: A Retrospective . Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2003. 106 pp. ISBN 0-8071-2881-3 .
  • The Fourth Great Awakening and the Future of Egalitarianism Chicago: University of Chicago, 2002
  • The Escape from Hunger and Premature Death, 1700-2100: Europe, America, and the Third World . New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004. 189pp. ISBN 0-521-80878-2
  • with Roderick Floud, Bernard Harris and Sok Chul Hong: The Changing Body. Health, Nutrition and Human Development in the Western World since 1700 , Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, England 2011 ISBN 978-0-521-87975-0
  • Edited with Ralph A. Galantine, and Richard L. Manning, Nicholas Scott Cardell: Without Consent or Contract: The Rise and Fall of American Slavery: Evidence and Methods , Norton, 1992

Web links

Commons : Robert Fogel  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Obituary for Robert Fogel in: Chicago Booth
  2. ^ Member History: Robert W. Fogel. American Philosophical Society, accessed August 8, 2018 .
  3. ^ Deceased Fellows. British Academy, accessed May 28, 2020 .
  4. ^ Past and Present Officers. aeaweb.org ( American Economic Association ), accessed October 27, 2015 .
  5. ↑ z. B. Ulrich Bonnell Phillips Life and Labor in the old South 1929
  6. ^ Paul David, Herbert Gutman, Richard Sutch, Peter Temin, Gavin Wright "Reckoning with slavery: a critical study in the quantitative history of american negro slavery", Oxford University Press 1976
  7. ↑ See e.g. B. Verena Winiwarter, Martin Knoll: Environmental history. An introduction Stuttgart 2007, 230ff.
  8. ↑ Larger and bolder in: Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung April 17, 2011, page 34
personal data
SURNAME Fogel, Robert
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Fogel, Robert William
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American economist and Nobel Prize winner
DATE OF BIRTH July 1, 1926
PLACE OF BIRTH New York City
DATE OF DEATH 11th of June 2013
Place of death Oak Lawn (Illinois)