Robert William Fogel

Stanley L. Engerman

Employs quantitative analyses to correct long-standing historical beliefs concerning the inefficiency of the slave system, the dispersion of Black families, and the material poverty of slaves

The Economics of American Negro Slavery

Time on the Cross

Europe, America, and the Third World (Cambridge Studies in Population, Economy and Society in Past Time)

The Escape from Hunger and Premature Death, 17002100

Evidence and Methods, a Supplement

Robert William Fogel was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economic Science in 1993. "To take a trip around the mind of Robert Fogel, one of the grand old men of American economic history, is a rare treat. At every turning, you come upon some shiny pearl of information."—The Economist In this broad-thinking and profound piece of history, Robert William Fogel synthesizes an amazing range of data into a bold and intriguing view of America's past and future—one in which the periodic Great Awakenings of religion bring about waves of social reform, the material lives of even the poorest Americans improve steadily, and the nation now stands poised for a renewed burst of egalitarian progress.

The Fourth Great Awakening and the Future of Egalitarianism

Enid M. Fogel

Mark Guglielmo

Nathaniel Grotte

We take for granted today that the assessments, measurements, and forecasts of economists are crucial to the decision-making of governments and businesses alike. But less than a century ago that wasn’t the case—economists simply didn’t have the necessary information or statistical tools to understand the ever more complicated modern economy. With Political Arithmetic, Nobel Prize–winning economist Robert Fogel and his collaborators tell the story of economist Simon Kuznets, the founding of the National Bureau of Economic Research, and the creation of the concept of GNP, which for the first time enabled us to measure the performance of entire economies. The book weaves together the many strands of political and economic thought and historical pressures that together created the demand for more detailed economic thinking—Progressive-era hopes for activist government, the production demands of World War I, Herbert Hoover’s interest in business cycles as President Harding’s commerce secretary, and the catastrophic economic failures of the Great Depression—and shows how, through trial and error, measurement and analysis, economists such as Kuznets rose to the occasion and in the process built a discipline whose knowledge could be put to practical use in everyday decision-making. The product of a lifetime of studying the workings of economies and skillfully employing the tools of economics, Political Arithmetic is simultaneously a history of a key period of economic thought and a testament to the power of applied ideas.

Simon Kuznets and the Empirical Tradition in Economics

Political Arithmetic

Europe, America, and the Third World

The Escape from Hunger and Premature Death, 1700-2100

Geoffrey Rudolph Elton

Compares statistical and traditional approaches to the study of history and discusses categories of evidence, standards of proof, and the proper subject matter for history.

Two Views of History

Which Road to the Past?

Norton paperback. Includes index. Bibliography: p. 487-523.

The Rise and Fall of American Slavery

Without Consent Or Contract

Sobre la esclavitud como institución y sistema económico ha llegado a acumularse una amplia literatura a lo largo del siglo transcurrido desde el fin de la guerra civil norteamericana que puso fin a su existencia en el sur de los Estados Unidos. Dentro de esta literatura, aunque subsistieran muchos desacuerdos, se fue imponiendo gradualmente una cierta interpretación que hacia mediados de nuestro siglo podía considerarse ya como visión dominante y establecida en la opinión general. Esta interpretación tradicional sería radicalmente puesta en duda con la aparición en 1974 de Tiempo en la cruz. A partir de la segunda guerra mundial se había venido gestando lo que se daría en llamar “nueva historia económica” o “cliometría”, una verdadera revolución historiográfica fruto de una serie de rápidos avances en economía, estadística y matemáticas aplicadas, así como del desarrollo de computadoras de alta velocidad. Estos cambios hicieron posible el procesamiento de grandes cantidades de datos numéricos, poniendo así a disposición de una nueva generación de investigadores la amplia información dispersa en numerosos y oscuros archivos. En este contexto surge la obra de Fogel y Engerman como síntesis de la nueva luz que la cliometría puede arrojar sobre el fenómeno de la esclavitud; pese a lo cual se trata de un libro carente de tecnicismos y fácilmente accesible. Se trata de una obra profundamente polémica, que dio origen a una fuerte discusión entre los historiadores norteamericanos, no sólo desde la perspectiva tradicional, sino también en el marco de la propia nueva historia económica. Por la sustancial renovación de la historiografía sobre la esclavitud que ha provocado, Tiempo en la cruz puede ser considerada una obra clásica sin dejar por ello de ser sumamente discutible.

Robert William Fogel

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