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Robert Fogel Interview RF Winter 07v43-sig3-INT 2/28/07 11:13 AM Page 44 INTERVIEW Robert Fogel In the early 1960s, few economic historians engaged RF: I understand that your initial academic interests in rigorous quantitative work. Robert Fogel and the were in the physical sciences. How did you become “Cliometric Revolution” he led changed that. Fogel interested in economics, especially economic history? began to use large and often unique datasets to test Fogel: I became interested in the physical sciences while some long-held conclusions — work that produced attending Stuyvesant High School, which was exceptional in some surprising and controversial results. For that area. I learned a lot of physics, a lot of chemistry. I had instance, it was long believed that the railroads had excellent courses in calculus. So that opened the world of fundamentally changed the American economy. science to me. I was most interested in physical chemistry and thought I would major in that in college, but my father said Fogel asked what the economy would have looked that it wasn’t very practical and persuaded me to go into like in their absence and argued that, while important, electrical engineering. I found a lot of those classes boring the effect of rail service had been greatly overstated. because they covered material I already had in high school, so it wasn’t very interesting and my attention started to drift elsewhere. In 1945 and 1946, there was a lot of talk about Fogel then turned to one of the biggest issues in all whether we were re-entering the Great Depression and the of American history — antebellum slavery. In 1974, widely held view was that we could not have full employment he and Stanley Engerman published Time on the Cross. in a capitalist society. So those debates started to shift my They argued that on the eve of the Civil War, slavery interests to the social sciences and economics in particular. was far from a dying institution. Compared to RF: The 20th century has been a period of remarkable Northern agriculture, slave-based agriculture was progress. Yet, as you have written, in the era immediately relatively efficient. Moreover, slave labor was being following World War II, many economists did not put to productive uses in the manufacturing sector. expect the American economy to do as well as it has. Similarly, economists generally believed that the future Fogel and Engerman were certainly not justifying the for many developing countries was going to be signifi- South’s “peculiar institution” — they were simply cantly bleaker than it turned out — that population trying to understand and explain how that system growth was going to be a major problem and that it was functioned economically. Nevertheless, the book quite unlikely that we would see such rapid progress among the “Asian Tigers,” for instance. What do you drew considerable criticism. Many of its conclusions, think accounts for those overly pessimistic forecasts? however, have stood the test of time and it has become a classic work in economic history. More Fogel: A lot of it was the difficulty of escaping from the recently, Fogel has turned to questions of economic impact of the Great Depression and the influence of demography, including why life spans have increased Keynesianism, one reading of which seemed to suggest that whatever had propelled capitalist economies during the so significantly in the developed world. 19th century and early part of the 20th century — major technical advances, the settlement of the frontier — had run Fogel started his teaching career at Johns Hopkins out of steam. This view was common at Harvard, Princeton, and most of the other Ivy League schools. But it was hotly University, where he received his Ph.D. in 1963. He contested by people such as Arthur Burns and Wesley subsequently taught at the University of Rochester, Mitchell who were centered around the National Bureau of the University of Chicago, and Harvard University, Economic Research and Columbia. So it never firmly took before returning to the Chicago faculty in 1981. Fogel hold there or at Chicago. was awarded the Nobel Prize along with another But, in general, the profession had become pretty pessimistic about the future and feared that depressions economic historian, Douglass North, in 1993. Aaron would occur with some frequency. Simon Kuznets, for Steelman interviewed Fogel at his office in Chicago instance, was the least ideological economist I have ever on November 13, 2006. known, but even he was very cautious about the economy’s 44 Region Focus • Winter 2007 RF Winter 07v43-sig3-INT 2/28/07 11:13 AM Page 45 future late into the 1940s. By then, he began to believe that not have the same focus, but they thought that our we had entered a new era of economic growth and maybe the techniques were appropriate. And those, like Kuznets, who Great Depression was the exception, not the norm. were very empirically oriented, were, of course, supportive When I was beginning my graduate work at Columbia in of the work. We did run into problems with some of the 1956-1957, James Angell, who taught the monetary course younger people, though. I remember going to one meeting and the basic macro graduate course, said that you still of the British Economic History Society. Some young couldn’t rule out the possibility that the economy was being economic historians there said, “If you succeed, we will kept afloat by wars. First, you had World War II and then be unemployed.” So they felt we were a threat, but they you had the Korean War. So that were wrong because the “old- uncertainty was still prevalent fashioned” analytical history is in the mid- to late-1950s, but always relevant. We did not I think it was beginning to shift want to replace that. We were as we started to see more tech- providing an additional dimen- nological change and export-led sion. Happily, I think that growth. strife has largely ended. The people who were at war with RF: How has the practice quantifiers will now say, “If of doing economic history quantification will help, by all changed over the course of means, count.” They no longer your career? For instance, how think we are barbarians. have improvements in the To do economic history well, processing of huge datasets you need to understand the affected the research pro- social context in which people grams of economic historians? were acting, and a lot of that is qualitative, not quantitative. Fogel: Prior to the mid-1950s, You have to understand from there were no high-speed com- where the data have come — puters and even the best in and whether the data are real. those days were not as good as That’s old-fashioned history. my current laptop. When they said “create a loop,” they were I will give you an example. Bill Parker, who was an eco- not talking metaphorically. They gave you a peg board nomic historian at Yale and one of the earlier cliometricians, and you literally wired a loop. was interested in the annual growth of cotton farming in the If you were interested in doing empirical research, 19th century. He found a pamphlet produced by the especially from micro data, the work was incredibly time- Department of Agriculture that gave data for cotton intensive. First, data retrieval was very hard. We used to have production by county between census years. So he went to to go into archives with paper and pencil and record see the head of the department’s statistical division, showed information by hand. Second, once you had assembled the him the pamphlet, and asked if he had the raw data that data, it took a long time to write and run the computer were used to put it together. The fellow said he did not have programs and to input the data by punch cards. So, as the the data but the man who wrote the pamphlet was still alive, technology improved, you no longer needed to place such occasionally came into the office, and the next time he did a high burden on theory. You could take several competing he would call Bill, who was working in Washington that year. theories, test them relatively quickly, and find out which one So Bill eventually spoke to him and asked him how he was the most promising. Over time, this led us to increase collected the data. He said: “Well, I had the 1870 and 1880 our ambitions. In the work I did on the aging of the Union census data. I had a big map of all the counties with infor- Army recruits, we could do careful longitudinal studies with mation on elevation and other soil properties. I looked at a lot of medical information from the military wartime the map and I looked at the census and I put those balloons records and, for those who survived the war, from the where I thought they ought to be.” pension records. That would have been impossible just a So that happens. Some of the data are manufactured. couple of decades before. Just because something is in print doesn’t mean it can be trusted. You have to go back and find out how those data RF: You were one of the pioneers in using rigorous were generated. quantitative methods to examine questions in economic Also, there are all kinds of mistakes that are made in the history. How was this approach received initially? census. When we go back to the original manuscripts, we find errors, with a column being shifted over a slot, or simple Fogel: Our teachers were very encouraging.
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