quarta-feira, 12 de junho de 2013

Robert W. Fogel (1926-2013)

Robert W. Fogel, Nobel-Winning Economist, Dies at 86

Robert W. Fogel, a Nobel-winning economist whose number-crunching empiricism upended established thinking, most provocatively about the economics of slavery, died on Tuesday in Oak Lawn, Ill. He was 86.
Sally Ryan for The New York Times
"... it was the publication 10 years later of “Time on the Cross,” a two-volume study of slavery, written with Stanley L. Engerman, that propelled Professor Fogel into the critical spotlight and instant celebrity.They contended that slavery had not been, as widely portrayed, an inefficient system destined for collapse, with slaves living in virtual concentration camps and worked to death.
Rather, after studying medical records, cotton yields and other data, the authors argued that slavery had been highly efficient in utilizing economies of scale and that plantation owners had regarded workers as economic assets whom they were inclined to treat at least as well as livestock. This tended to limit exploitation, Professor Fogel and his colleague found, declaring, in fact, that slave life in the South was generally better than that of industrial workers in the North..."

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