Talk:Robert Fogel

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[edit] On Cliometrics

There was an essay in the New York Review of Books circa 1989 discussing Time on the Cross and (this is all from memory) one number I remember quoted was that since the probability of severe physical punishment (whipping) for slaves was only about 1/100 per year, physical punishment could not have been an important control of slave behaviour. I put this number into my own experience: I attended a high school of 1500 students for four years, and if the same conditions of punishment had obtained I would have witnessed 60 public whippings in four years. Does anyone think this threat -- realized on many other people -- wouldn't control your behaviour, even if the odds of you yourself being whipped during four years is only 1/25? 137.82.82.132 03:39, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

Good job, you have articulated the very same criticism that Fogel and Engerman's colleagues levelled against that assertion. Also, the primary source on which that number was based was very dubious: A record from a single Louisiana plantation owner's diary was, in effect, generalized across the entire slave-holding South.

Fogel's work is valuable less for its own sake than for the valuable work he spurs his colleagues to do in order to rebut his wilder claims. Time on the Cross is a mess -- but a superbly marketed mess. The history of its reception in the mass media ca. 1974 is fascinating. -- Rob C (Alarob) 23:15, 8 November 2006 (UTC)