Who is Robert William Fogel?

A Study of Slavery in the United States and the Role Railroads Played in the Development Economy

Background

Robert William Fogel was born on July 1, 1926, in New York City, United States. He was the son of Russian Jewish immigrants who had settled in the United States. His father, Isaac Fogel, was a businessman, and his mother, Bella Fogel, was a homemaker. Growing up in a household that valued education, Fogel developed a strong interest in mathematics and sciences. He was a student at Stuyvesant High School, a prestigious public school in New York City that is renowned for its emphasis on mathematics and science. His academic excellence led him to Cornell University, where he initially pursued a degree in physics before switching to economics. After graduating, he pursued his economics degree at Columbia University, where he earned his M.A. (Master of Arts). He then continued his studies at Johns Hopkins University, where he earned his Ph.D. in economics. Furthermore, he switched his scientific interests from physics and chemistry to economics and history.

Robert’s shift in focus towards economics and history was precipitated by the widespread pessimism about the economy’s future during the late 1940s, when forecasts about the imminent return to the mass unemployment levels of the Great Depression were rampant. He began his graduate studies with the naive belief that by combining history and economics, he would quickly discover the fundamental forces determining technological and institutional changes throughout and that such knowledge would point to solutions to the contemporary problems of economic instability and inequality. As he became aware of how little was actually known about these large processes and their interconnections, he began to focus on more issues such as what did we truly understand about the impact of the theory system on economic and institutional transformations in the nineteenth century? What was the nature and the magnitude of the contribution of particular new technologies, namely railroads or steel mills, to economic growth? He also concluded that to answer such questions, much greater use had to be made of quantitative evidence, so he set out to learn the most sophisticated analytical and statistical techniques available in the economics department at that time. Eventually, he realized that the training program he had worked out for himself was unorthodox for an economic historian.

The two teachers who influenced him the most during his year at Columbia were George J. Stigler, who taught the graduate microeconomics sequence, and Carter Goodrich, who taught the sequence in American economic history. Stigler made microeconomic theory come alive. He emphasized not only its elegance but also its applicability to a wide range of issues in economic policy. He continually moved between theory and evidence, carefully considering the empirical validity of the assumptions that theorists made about the slope or other aspects of the shape of key functions. He often considered when, with what model, and under what implicit assumptions one could draw a particular inference from a given body of data. Robert W. Fogel was a visionary economic historian whose works and lectures incited for more than half a century, and whose writings will continue to do so for decades to come. He died on June 11, 2013, in his eighty-sixth year.

Career Path

Robert W. Fogel was an American economic historian and the creator of the Fogel Research System. In the first instance, the Fogel Research System is characterized by a question of contemporary relevance that requires the long lens of history. The issues examined are big and that have engaged generations of scholars. The Fogel system constructs a “counterfactual” because there are already a host of potential answers to the question, with one typically dominating the literature. If the answer proposed to question Y is X (Y = things that cause economic growth and X = railroads), then the Fogel system must prove that if not for X (railroads), the premise of question Y would not have occurred (there would have been far less economic growth). 

Finally, the Fogel system takes what appears to be an intractable problem and simplifies the answer into a single number. Although the counterfactual is most associated with Fogel’s work on the railroads, it is also embedded in his other work. Much of the work on slavery addressed the counterfactual: “If slavery had not existed in the United States, the South would have been a wealthier region”. That was the claim of many whose writings preceded “Time on the Cross”. In his work on standards of living, the implicit counterfactual was: “If  incomes had not risen in eighteenth-century Europe, mortality and morbidity would have been markedly worse.” In this case, the counterfactual was shown to have been true. Moreover, using counterfactuals is inescapable. As Fogel believed, if the long lens of history is needed to inform the present, one must ask what the present would look like without some of the long lens. This fundamental methodological point is highlighted in every major research project he has undertaken throughout his career.

Fogel’s reputation was largely made by his Ph.D. dissertation on the railroads. He estimated that the social savings of the railroad, including both the interregional and intraregional portions, was between 6 and 7 percent of 1890 GNP. It’s up to the beholder to determine whether that number is large or small. Many believe the number was small compared to previous claims that the railroad was essential to American economic growth. The estimate is not larger because there were various substitutes for the railroad in the United States, including water transportation. In countries like Mexico, social savings were significantly higher due to the existence of cheaper alternatives to the railroad. However, railroads and American economic growth went far beyond measuring the aggregate “treatment effect” of the Iron Horse. The idea of jump-starting economic growth was a popular notion in the 1950s and big infrastructure projects were a potential lever for developing nations. As a graduate student at Johns Hopkins, Fogel had actively debated the work of Walt Rostow with his classmate, Stan Engerman. According to Rostow, an economy could take off because of a single innovation and America did take off in the 1840s through the railroad’s many backward linkages. On the contrary, Fogel believed that there was no take-off and backward linkages were neither extensive nor critical to growth in other sectors. The railroads were not magic bullets for economic growth because there was no magic bullet.  His work on slaves’ living standards suggested that adult height could be used as an indicator of health and well-being. Then Fogel conducted a “preliminary research”, completed in 1978 with numerous co-authors, that showed deterioration in the heights and life expectancy of whites in the mid-nineteenth century. These findings led to an exploration of archival data that could help improve our understanding of health and mortality changes from 1650 to 1910. That search unearthed the military records in the U.S. National Archives and Bob’s realization that longitudinal data for the first cohort to reach age 65 in the twentieth century could be created by combining wartime service, pension, and census records of Union Army soldiers. 

The Union Army project illustrates Bob’s dictum is “If something is worth doing, then it is worth spending ten years doing it right”. A project to collect the records of Union Army soldiers to study the effects of wartime and early life stress on older age mortality and morbidity, as well as the determinants of retirement, was proposed in 1986. Funded in 1991 by the National Institute on Aging as Early Indicators of Later Work Levels, Disease, and Death, the project was renewed many times and was ongoing at the time of Fogel’s death. Until this time, the project has made available the life histories of 39,000 white Union Army soldiers, 6,000 black Union Army soldiers, and detailed ward maps and ward statistics for selected cities. The project is currently collecting the records of an additional 15,000 black Union Army soldiers and Union Army soldiers who grew up in the large and unhealthy cities at the time and those who lived for at least 95 years. 

Robert Fogel always made time in his full and demanding life for meaningful hobbies in woodworking and photography, both of which were pursued at highly skilled levels. His pastimes and scholarship shared an essential feature. An artful table has pleasing proportions, intricate detail, and functionality. A masterful photograph is a thoughtful, well-composed window into a larger world. Robert Fogel’s outstanding attribute as a scholar was his ability to visualize and orchestrate the complete architecture of a project, each piece polished and in its proper place with the whole greater than the sum of the parts. He could envision his research in final form long before any of the parts were complete.

He said that they had been his students when his career was taking off and in full swing. He then became famous, was awarded the Nobel, and had many demands on his time. He also aged and developed various infirmities. Bob always stressed the importance of family and his many students are like a family. As he once said, it is difficult to be orphaned at any age. They take solace and pleasure in the statement of a recent student that he was the best of scholars and a caring teacher.

Nobel Prize

Robert W. Fogel’s scientific breakthrough was his book (Railroads and American Economic Growth) on the role of the railways in the American economy. Joseph Schumpeter and Walt W. Rostow had asserted with general agreement earlier that modern economic growth was due to certain important discoveries playing a vital role in development. Fogel tested this hypothesis with extraordinary exactitude and rejected it. The sum of many specific technical changes, rather than a few great innovations, determined the economic development. They find it intuitively plausible that the great transport systems play a decisive role in development. Fogel constructed a hypothetical alternative, so-called counterfactual historiography that he compared the actual course of events with the hypothetical to allow a judgement of the importance of the railways. He found that they were not necessary in explaining economic development and that their effect on the growth of GNP was less than three percent. Few books on the subject of economic history have made such an impression as Fogel’s. His use of counterfactual arguments and cost-benefit analysis made him an innovator of economic historical methodology.

Fogel’s meticulous critique of his sources and his use of diverse historical materials made it difficult for his critics to argue against him on purely empirical grounds. As Fogel has stressed, it is the lack of relevant data rather than the lack of relevant theory that is often the greater problem for research workers. Fogel’s use of counterfactual analysis of the course of events and his masterful treatment of quantitative techniques in combination with economic theory has had a substantial influence on the understanding of economic change. Fogel’s second work of importance in 1974, which aroused great attention and bitter controversies, treated slavery as an institution and its role in the economic development of the United States. Fogel showed that the established opinion that slavery was an ineffective, unprofitable, and pre-capitalist organization was incorrect. The institution did not fall to pieces due to its economic weakness but collapsed because of political decisions. He showed that the system, despite its inhumanity, had been economically efficient.

His exceedingly careful testing of all possible sources and his pioneering methodological approach have allowed Fogel to both increase our knowledge of an institution’s operation and disintegration and to renew our methods of research. Both his book on the railways and that on slavery have forced researchers to reconsider earlier generally accepted results, and few books in economic history have been scrutinized in such detail by critical colleagues. Fogel’s third area of research has been economic demography and in particular the changing rate of mortality over long periods and its relation to changes in the standard of living during recent centuries. This project is less controversial than the other two, both interdisciplinary and international, with fellow workers from many countries. He concludes that less than half of the decrease in mortality can be explained by better standards of nourishment before the breakthroughs of modern medicine. This leaves the greater part of the decline unexplained. According to Fogel, a systematic analysis demands an integrated study of mortality rates, morbidity rates, food intake, individual body weights, and statuses. A combination of biomedical and economic techniques is required to achieve this, something that he has at present set about accomplishing. It is already apparent that his analyses will affect research in economic history at many levels.

Conclusion

Robert W. Fogel was a trailblazing financial historian who revolutionized the field of financial history with his innovative use of quantitative analysis and counterfactual thinking. His ground-breaking work on the role of railroads in economic expansion discredited conventional wisdom and demonstrated that no single technological improvement is totally to blame for changes within the economy. In addition to considering transportation, he also examined the economic aspects of slavery, living standards, and the long-term impacts of early life circumstances on mortality and well-being. He made a significant contribution to the field by emphasizing the importance of historical context in understanding contemporary economic issues through the Fogel Framework of Research. His commitment to careful examination and empirical evidence made beyond any doubt that his conclusions were not only hypothetical but also had viable repercussions for both academics and policymakers.

In addition to his scholarly achievements, Fogel was a committed educator, a coach, and an individual who cherished photography and workmanship. Eras of history specialists and financial specialists were inspired by his devotion to careful examination and his one of a kind capacity to arrange and organize extensive research ventures. He kept on being committed to his calling and thrust the limits of financial investigation indeed after winning the Nobel Prize. In expansion to his tremendous sum of work, his bequest perseveres much obliged to the various analysts and understudies he instructed who proceed his commitment to chronic ponder and financial comprehension. For numerous decades to come, Robert W. Fogel commitments will proceed to impact how we get our financial history.

Muhammad Rafee Firman Adli e!24

References

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“The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 1993.” NobelPrize.org, 2024, http://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/economic-sciences/1993/fogel/lecture/. Accessed 14 Mar. 2025.

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William, Robert, et al. A LIFE of LEARNING. http://www.acls.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Haskins_1996_WilliamRobertFogel.pdf. Accessed 14 Mar. 2025.