Abstract
Robert W. Fogel’s career at the University of Chicago spanned the years from 1964 to his death in 2013, with an interruption for a stint at Harvard from 1975 to 1981. He had a great influence on the profession as a co-founder with Douglass North of cliometrics or new economic history, which was recognised in a Nobel Prize for Economics in 1993. Fogel’s research was heavily empirical, spanning topics such as railroads and American economic growth, to the economics of American slavery, technology and the great awakenings, and health and mortality in the US and Europe. He also influenced the profession through many students and the seminar in economic history. Fogel was president of the American Economic Association in 1998.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
For a summary of the debates around Time on the Cross, see the review by Thomas Weiss on EH.net at: https://eh.net/book_reviews/time-on-the-cross-the-economics-of-american-negro-slavery/.
References
Main Works by Robert W. Fogel
Floud, R., R.W. Fogel, B. Harris and S.C. Hong (2011). The Changing Body: Health, Nutrition, and Human Development in the Western World Since 1700. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Fogel, R.W. (1960). The Union Pacific Railroad: A Case in Premature Enterprise. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press.
Fogel, R.W. (1964). Railroads and American Economic Growth: Essays in Econometric History. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press.
Fogel, R.W. (1966). ‘The New Economic History: I. Its Findings and Methods’. Economic History Review, New Series, 19(3): 642–656.
Fogel, R.W. (1967). ‘The Specification Problem in Economic History’. Journal of Economic History, 27(3): 283–308.
Fogel, R.W. (1979). ‘Notes on the Social Saving Controversy’. Journal of Economic History, 39(1): 1–54.
Fogel, R.W. (1986). ‘Nutrition and the Decline in Mortality Since 1700: Some Preliminary Findings’. Chapter 9 in S.L. Engerman and R.E. Gallman (eds) Long-Term Factors in American Economic Growth. Chicago: National Bureau of Economic Research/University of Chicago Press: 439–555.
Fogel, R.W. (1989). Without Consent or Contract: The Rise and Fall of American Slavery. New York: Norton.
Fogel, R.W. (1991). ‘The Conquest of High Mortality and Hunger in Europe and America: Timing and Mechanisms’. Chapter 1 in P. Higgonet, D.S. Landes and H. Rosovsky (eds) Favorites of Fortune: Technology, Growth, and Economic Development Since the Industrial Revolution. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press: 33–71
Fogel, R.W. (1992). ‘Problems in Modeling Complex Dynamic Interactions: The Political Realignment of the 1850s’. Economics & Politics, 4(3): 215–254
Fogel, R.W. (1994). ‘Economic Growth, Population Theory, and Physiology: The Bearing of Long-Term Processes on the Making of Economic Policy’. American Economic Review, 84(3): 369–395.
Fogel, R.W. (1995). ‘History With Numbers: The American Experience’. In B. Etemad, J. Batou and T. David (eds) Pour Une Histoire Économique Et Sociale Internationale: Mélanges Offerts À Paul Bairoch. Geneva: Editions Passe Present: 47–56.
Fogel, R.W. (1997). ‘Douglass C North and Economic Theory’. Chapter 2 in J.N. Drobak and J.V.C. Nye (eds) The Frontiers of the New Institutional Economics. San Diego: Harcourt Brace Academic Press: 13–28.
Fogel, R.W. (1999). ‘Catching Up With the Economy’. American Economic Review, 89(1): 1–21.
Fogel, R.W. (2000a). ‘The Extension of Life in Developed Countries and Its Implications for Social Policy in the Twenty-First Century’. Population and Development Review, 26(Supplement): 291–317.
Fogel, R.W. (2000b). ‘Simon S. Kuznets: April 30, 1901–July 9, 1985’. NBER Working Paper No. 7787. Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research.
Fogel, R.W. (2001). The Fourth Great Awakening and the Future of Egalitarianism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Fogel, R.W. (2002). ‘Biotechnology and the Burden of Age-Related Diseases’. Chapter 3 in Biotechnology and Healthy Ageing. Paris: OECD: 25–36.
Fogel, R.W. (2003a). ‘Secular Trends in Physiological Capital: Implications for Equity in Health Care’. NBER Working Paper No. 9771. Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research.
Fogel, R.W. (2003b). ‘Forecasting the Demand for Health Care in OECD Nations and China’. Contemporary Economic Policy, 21(1): 1–10.
Fogel, R.W. (2003c). The Slavery Debates, 1952–1990: A Retrospective. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press.
Fogel, R.W. (2004d). The Escape from Hunger and Premature Death, 1700–2100: Europe, America, and the Third World. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press.
Fogel, R.W. (2004a). ‘Health, Nutrition, and Economic Growth’. Economic Development and Cultural Change, 52(3): 643–658.
Fogel, R.W. (2004b). ‘Changes in the Disparities in Chronic Disease During the Course of the Twentieth Century’. NBER Working Paper No. 10311. Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research.
Fogel, R.W. (2004c). ‘Technophysio Evolution and the Measurement of Economic Growth’. Journal of Evolutionary Economics, 14(2): 217–221.
Fogel, R.W. and D.L. Costa (1997). ‘A Theory of Technophysio Evolution, With Some Implications for Forecasting Population, Health Care Costs, and Pension Costs’. Demography, 34(1): 49–66.
Fogel, R.W. and G.R. Elton (1985). Which Road to the Past? Two Views of History. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Fogel, R.W. and S.L. Engerman (1969). ‘A Model for the Explanation of Industrial Expansion During the Nineteenth Century: With an Application to the American Iron Industry’. Journal of Political Economy, 77(3): 306–328.
Fogel, R.W. and S.L. Engerman (1971). ‘The Relative Efficiency of Slavery: A Comparison of Northern and Southern Agriculture in 1860’. Explorations in Economic History, 8(3): 353–367.
Fogel, R.W. and S.L. Engerman (1974a). Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery. New York: W.W. Norton.
Fogel, R.W. and S.L. Engerman (1974). ‘Philanthropy at Bargain Prices: Notes on the Economics of Gradual Emancipation’. Journal of Legal Studies, 3(2): 377–401.
Fogel, R.W. and S.L. Engerman (1980). ‘Explaining the Relative Efficiency of Slave Agriculture in the Antebellum South: Reply’. American Economic Review, 70(4): 672–690.
Fogel, R.W., S.L. Engerman, J. Trussell, R. Floud, C.L. Pope and L.T. Wimmer (1978). ‘The Economics of Mortality in North America, 1650–1910: A Description of a Research Project’. Historical Methods: A Journal of Quantitative and Interdisciplinary History, 11(2): 75–108.
Fogel, R.W. and L.A. Helmchen (2002). ‘Economic and Technological Development and Their Relationships to Body Size and Productivity’. Chapter 2 in B. Caballero and B.M. Popkin (eds) The Nutrition Transition: Diet and Disease in the Developing World. London: Academic Press: 9–24.
Fogel, R.W. and C. Lee (2003). ‘Who Gets Health Care?’. NBER Working Paper No. 9870. Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research.
Fogel, R.W. and J.L. Rutner (1972). ‘The Efficiency Effects of Federal Land Policy, 1850–1900: Some Provisional Findings’. Chapter IX in W.O. Aydelotte, A.G. Bogue and R.W. Fogel (eds) The Dimensions of Quantitative Research in History. Princeton: Princeton University Press: 390–418.
Other Works Referred To
Balmer, R.H. (2002). ‘Review of The Fourth Great Awakening and the Future of Egalitarianism, by R.W. Fogel’. Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 33(2): 322–325.
Barker, D.J.P. (1994). Mothers, Babies, and Disease in Later Life. London: BMJ Publishing Group.
Bogue, A.G. (1990). ‘Fogel’s Journey Through the Slave States’. Journal of Economic History, 50(3): 699–710.
Carstensen, F.V. and S.E. Goodman (1977). ‘Trouble on the Auction Block: Interregional Slave Sales and the Reliability of a Linear Equation’. Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 8(2): 315–318.
Conrad, A.H. and J.R. Meyer (1958). ‘The Economics of Slavery in the Ante Bellum South’. Journal of Political Economy, 66(2): 95–130.
David, P.A., H.G. Gutman, R. Sutch, P. Temin and G. Wright (1976). Reckoning with Slavery: A Critical Study in the Quantitative History of American Negro Slavery. New York: Oxford University Press.
David, P.A. and P. Temin (1979). ‘Explaining the Relative Efficiency of Slave Agriculture in the Antebellum South: Comment’. American Economic Review, 69(1): 213–218.
Deaton, A. (2006). ‘The Great Escape: A Review of Robert Fogel’s The Escape from Hunger and Premature Death, 1700–2100’. Journal of Economic Literature, 44(1): 106–114.
Easterlin, R.A. (2000). ‘Review of The Fourth Great Awakening and the Future of Egalitarianism, by R.W. Fogel’. Population and Development Review, 26(4): 829–831.
Genovese, E.D. (1990). ‘Can a Moral Evil Be an Economic Success?’. Los Angeles Times Book Review, 18 February: 2.
Goldin, C.D. and H. Rockoff (eds) (1992). Strategic Factors in Nineteenth Century American Economic History: A Volume to Honor Robert W. Fogel. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Gutman, H.G. (1975). Slavery and the Numbers Game: A Critique of Time on the Cross. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
Haskell, T.L. (1975). ‘The True & Tragical History of “Time on the Cross”’. The New York Review of Books, 2 October: 33–39.
Schaefer, D.F. and M.D. Schmitz (1979). ‘The Relative Efficiency of Slave Agriculture: A Comment’. American Economic Review, 69(1): 208–212.
Scrimshaw, N.S., C.E. Taylor and J.E. Gordon (1968). Interactions of Nutrition and Infection. Geneva: World Health Organization.
Steckel, R.H. (1986a). ‘A Dreadful Childhood: The Excess Mortality of American Slaves’. Social Science History, 10(4): 427–465.
Steckel, R.H. (1986b). ‘A Peculiar Population: The Nutrition, Health, and Mortality of American Slaves from Childhood to Maturity’. Journal of Economic History, 46(3): 721–741.
Steckel, R.H. and F. Engel (2019). ‘Climate and Health: Europe from the Pre-Middle Ages to the Nineteenth Century’. Chapter 12 in R.H. Steckel, C.S. Larsen, C.A. Roberts and J. Baten (eds) The Backbone of Europe: Health, Diet, Work, and Violence over Two Millennia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 352–380.
Waaler, H.T. (1984). ‘Height, Weight and Mortality: The Norwegian Experience’. Acta Medica Scandinavica: Supplementum, 215(S679): 1–56.
Walton, G.M. (1975). ‘Editorial Introduction’. Explorations in Economic History, 12(4): 333–334.
Wright, G. (1979). ‘The Efficiency of Slavery: Another Interpretation’. American Economic Review, 69(1): 219–226.
Zajac, E.E. (2000). ‘Review of The Fourth Great Awakening and the Future of Egalitarianism, by R.W. Fogel’. Journal of Economic History, 60(4): 1,171–1,172.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2022 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Steckel, R.H. (2022). Robert W. Fogel (1926–2013). In: Cord, R.A. (eds) The Palgrave Companion to Chicago Economics. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-01775-9_30
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-01775-9_30
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-031-01491-8
Online ISBN: 978-3-031-01775-9
eBook Packages: Economics and FinanceEconomics and Finance (R0)