Fogel, Robert William (1926-2013), was an American economist who developed a new area of research, econometric history. In his research, Fogel applied statistical methods, coupled with economic theory, to economic history. This approach is called cliometrics. Fogel used these methods to analyze such subjects as railroads, slavery, and cycles (patterns) in economic history. For the development of historical research methods, Fogel shared the 1993 Nobel Prize for economic sciences with fellow American Douglass C. North.
Fogel was born on July 1, 1926, in New York City. He was educated at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, where his interest changed from physics and chemistry to economics and history. Fogel graduated in 1948. He then did professional training and research at Columbia University in New York City and Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. In his research, Fogel looked at how scientific innovation and government policies affect economic growth. He has also developed the use of mathematical models in the study of long-term economic processes. Some of Fogel’s work generated controversy. For example, his book Time on the Cross (1974) argued that slavery had been more profitable than previously thought. Fogel said that slavery collapsed for political and moral reasons rather than economic ones.
From 1979 to 1991, Fogel directed a project called the Program on the Development of the American Economy, sponsored by the National Bureau of Economic Research, a private organization that studies economic problems. This project studied various long-term macroeconomic (large-scale) aspects of the American economy. In 1981, Fogel became professor of American Institutions at the University of Chicago. He helped establish the university’s Center for Population Economics, which studies economic and demographic processes over generations. One of Fogel’s projects was to trace nearly 40,000 veterans of the Union Army during the American Civil War (1861-1865) from birth to death. Fogel died on June 11, 2013.
See also Econometrics; Demography.
