Fogel wins Nobel Prize: headed NBER program on Development of the American Economy.

• Position: National Bureau of Economic Research research associate Robert W. Fogel

NBER Research Associate Robert W. Fogel and former NBER Board member Douglass C. North will share the 1993 Nobel Prize in economics for their research in economic history. Fogel, a professor at the University of Chicago, has been associated with the Bureau since 1978. He was director of the NBER's Program on the Development of the American Economy (DAE) from 1978 to 1991, and has written a number of Historical Papers for the NBER.

Fogel was awarded the Nobel Prize for his pioneering research in the application of economic models and statistical methods to historical questions. His work has been, and continues to be, distinguished by startlingly new findings that often overturn conventional knowledge. In early work, Fogel explored the role of the railroads in American economic growth. The railroads had been viewed by many as the magic bullet of economic development, just as infrastructure investments often are viewed today in less developed countries. But rath-er than being a leading sector that pulled along the rest of the economy, the railroads added a surprisingly small net gain to GNP, Fogel demonstrated.

Fogel is also known for his work on slavery and the economy of the American South. With coauthor Stanley Engerman, Fogel calculated the relative efficiency of large southern slave plantations relative to small southern slave farms and nonslave farms. They found that the large slave plantations were considerably more more efficient than the other farms. This enormous increase in efficiency held the key to understanding slavery as a labor system. If the larger plantations were more efficient, it was because they worked their labor more intensively. After Emancipation, large slave plantations rapidly disappeared, and southern agricultural production fell substantially. Because slavery was profitable and greatly enhanced efficiency, it was not about to disappear without the Civil War. Time on the Cross and Without Consent or Contract brilliantly established these facts, and poignantly considered the role of the slave family in the southern antebellum economy...