By DOUGLAS MARTIN

ROBERT FOGEL, a Nobel-winning economic historian and pioneer in the use of quantitative methods in economic history, has died at the age of 86. The University of Chicago has an obituary here, and the New York Times here. Mr Fogel was perhaps best known for his work on the economics of slavery (there is some discussion of this here). His work argued that southern farms were highly productive and profitable under slavery, and that without political change the slave system would probably have continued. My first exposure to Mr Fogel's work came as an undergraduate economics student, when a professor gave me his 2000 book "The Fourth Great Awakening and the Future of Egalitarianism". It is a thought-provoking work of economic storytelling, which links periodic religious awakenings to episodes of technological change and social reform movements. But the strain of Mr Fogel's work I have found most influential was that on the economic importance of the American railroad.

Prior to his contributions, the general view of the railroad was that its value to the American economy was immense, indeed revolutionary. Mr Fogel suggested that this shouldn't be taken for granted. Railway construction clearly lead to a redistribution of economic activity around the country, and toward the Midwest especially. But the cost savings of rail relative to alternatives, like canals, were not exceptionally large; a new transport technology didn't have to be hugely cheaper than alternatives to come to dominate the market. And just as markets optimised around railroad infrastructure after its construction (and later, around highways), they would have continued to optimise around canals and other transport modes in the absence of the railroad. Taking such things into consideration, he argued, rail still gave the American economy a boost, but of perhaps only a few percentage points of GDP.

Economists have continued to study the question, and some estimates now suggest that Mr Fogel's method, which calculated the "social savings" of the railroad, underestimated the contribution of the railroad. But the broader lesson—that one has to think critically about the counterfactual in trying to assess technologies or shocks or economic policy—has been an indispensible one for me.

經濟分析史上曾有過兩件影響經濟學發展的重要研究，分別是史替格勒(G. Stigler)反省美國電力管制之成效的文章，和傅戈(R.Fogel)反省西部鐵路美國對經濟成長之貢獻的著作。它們的重要性，除了前者後來發展成「管制經濟學」而後者發展出「新經濟史」兩新思考的方法

Slavery was generally an unprofitable investment and depended upon raising and selling slaves to be profitable.
Slavery was only profitable on new, highly fertile land.
Slavery as an economic institution was economically moribund.
Agricultural production based upon slave labor was economically inefficient.
slavery caused the economy of the South to stagnate, or at least retarded its economic growth, during the period before the Civil War.
Slavery provided extremely harsh material conditions for the typical slave.

Slavery was not an economically irrational system. The price of slaves was justified by the profits to be earned with slave labor.
Slavery was not economically moribund on the eve of the Civil War and there was no evidence that it would have ended without political intervention.
Plantation agriculture based upon slave labor was not economically inefficient. It may have been significantly more efficient than family farming.
The typical slave field-hand was not unproductive. On average the typical slave field-hand may have been more productive than a free, white field-hand.
Slavery was not incompatible with industrial production.
The slave family was the basic unit of social organization and slave owners encouraged the stability of slave families. Most slave sales were of whole families or of individuals who were readily to leave the family.
The material standard of living of slaves in the South compared favorably with that of free workers in industry.
Over the course of a field-hand slave's lifetime he received about 90 percent of the value of his production.
The economy of the antebellum South was not stagnating. In the period between 1840 and 1860 per capita income increased faster in the South than in the rest of the country.
Slavery was generally an unprofitable investment and depended upon raising and selling slaves to be profitable.
Slavery was only profitable on new, highly fertile land.
Slavery as an economic institution was economically moribund.
Agricultural production based upon slave labor was economically inefficient.
slavery caused the economy of the South to stagnate, or at least retarded its economic growth, during the period before the Civil War.
Slavery provided extremely harsh material conditions for the typical slave.

Slavery was not an economically irrational system. The price of slaves was justified by the profits to be earned with slave labor.
Slavery was not economically moribund on the eve of the Civil War and there was no evidence that it would have ended without political intervention.
Plantation agriculture based upon slave labor was not economically inefficient. It may have been significantly more efficient than family farming.
The typical slave field-hand was not unproductive. On average the typical slave field-hand may have been more productive than a free, white field-hand.
Slavery was not incompatible with industrial production.
The slave family was the basic unit of social organization and slave owners encouraged the stability of slave families. Most slave sales were of whole families or of individuals who were readily to leave the family.
The material standard of living of slaves in the South compared favorably with that of free workers in industry.
Over the course of a field-hand slave's lifetime he received about 90 percent of the value of his production.
The economy of the antebellum South was not stagnating. In the period between 1840 and 1860 per capita income increased faster in the South than in the rest of the country.

Robert Fogel, won Nobel Prize in Economics, 1926-2013