Stanley Engerman

Infobox Scientist
name = Stanley Engerman


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birth_date = Birth date and age|1936|3|14|mf=y
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nationality = United States
field = Economics
work_institution = University of Rochester
alma_mater =
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doctoral_students =
known_for = Economic history
prizes =
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Stanley Lewis Engerman (born March 14, 1936) is an economist and economic historian at the University of Rochester. He received his Ph.D. in economics in 1962 from Johns Hopkins University. Engerman is known for his quantitative historical work along with Nobel prize winning economist Robert Fogel. His first major book, co-authored with Robert Fogel in 1974, was "." This significant work, winner of the Bancroft Prize in American history, challenged readers to think critically about the economics of slavery. Dr. Engerman has also published over 100 articles and has authored, co-authored or edited 16 book-length studies.

Engerman served as President of the Social Science History Association as well as President of the Economic History Association. He is Professor of Economics and Professor of History at the University of Rochester where he teaches classes in Economic History and the Economics of Sports and Entertainment.

Time on the Cross

The critical reception of Engerman's most widely read work, "Time on the Cross" (co-authored with Robert Fogel), was unique in its public visibility. Reminiscent of Charles Beard's economic analysis of the Constitution in its longevity, "Time on the Cross" made a variety of politically charged claims based on cliometric quantitative methods. Fogel and Engerman claimed that slavery remained an economically viable institution and slave ownership was generally a profitable investment, slave agriculture was very efficient, and the material conditions of the lives of slaves "compared favorably with those of free industrial workers." [Fogel and Engerman, "Time on the Cross"(New York: Little Brown, 1974), 5.]

Charles Crowe best sums up the work: "The cliometricians announced the scientific discovery of a vastly different South led by confident and effective slaveowning entrepreneurs firmly wedded to handsome profits from a booming economy with high per capita incomes and an efficiency ratio 35 per- cent greater than that of free Northern agriculture. In the new dispen- sation the efficient, often highly skilled, and very productive slaves embraced the Protestant work ethic and prudish Victorian morals, avoided both promiscuity and substantial sexual exploitation by plant- er3, lived in father-headed and stable nuclear families, kept 90 percent of the fruits of their labor, and enjoyed one of the best sets of material conditions in the world for working class people." [Time on the Cross: The Historical Monograph as a Pop EventAuthor(s): Charles CroweSource: The History Teacher, Vol. 9, No. 4 (Aug., 1976), pp. 588-630Published by: Society for the History of EducationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/492099]

Works

*"The Political Economy of Slavery: Studies in the Economy and the Society of the Slave South", 1965.
*"Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery" (with Robert Fogel), 1974.
*"A Historical Guide to World Slavery" by Seymour Drescher and Stanley L. Engerman (1998)
*"Slavery, Emancipation, and Freedom: Comparative Perspectives" (Walter Lynwood Fleming Lectures in Southern History) by Stanley L. Engerman (2007)
*"Slavery (Oxford Readers)" by Stanley Engerman, Seymour Drescher, and Robert Paquette (2001)
*The Evolution of Suffrage Institutions in the New World SL ENGERMAN, KL SOKOLOFF - The Journal of Economic History, 2005 - Cambridge Univ Press
*Institutional and Non-Institutional Explanations of Economic DifferencesSL ENGERMAN, KL SOKOLOFF - NBER Working Paper, 2003

Notes

References

*Boles, John & Nolen, Elelyn Thomas (editors) "Interpreting Southern History: Historiographical Essays in Honour of Sanford W. Higginbotham", Louisiana State University Press, 1987.

External links

* [http://eh.net/bookreviews/library/weiss.shtml Thomas Weiss review essay on Fogel and Engerman's "Time on the Cross"]
* [http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2006/11/engerman_on_sla.html Podcast Interview with Engerman on "Time on the Cross"] on EconTalk at Econlib

♦ In their paper “History Lessons: Institutions, Factor Endowments, and Paths of Development in the New World,” Kenneth L. Sokoloff an Stanley L. Engerman present an argument that the differences are largely attributed to initial inequalities that have tended to carry over to the present time. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factor_endowment]