The publication of vogel's Railway and American Economic Growth: Essays on the History of Econometrics marks the birth of "Historical Metrology" or "New Quantitative Economic History". This is a new discipline that combines the principles of neoclassical economics and statistical inference to examine the counterfactual problem: if the railway never existed, what would be the economic growth rate of the United States? For those who oppose this question, the answer is that all historical studies are actually asking counterfactual questions, but in an implicit rather than straightforward way.
In the heated discussion around the rise of "new economy" historiography, vogel firmly defended the methods clearly formulated in New Interpretation of American Economic History and History of Science and Tradition. Not only that, vogel overthrew many previous studies on the economic impact of American railways in the19th century; He collaborated with engelmann Qi Xin to re-examine the economics of slavery in the United States. American history is famous for its heated debates. The Times of Suffering: American Slavery Economics is the most controversial book published in American history so far. A.H.Conrad and J.R.Meyer published in the Journal of Political Economy (No.65438+April and No.65438+1 The article "The Economics of the South of the Civil War" published in October refuted the orthodox view that slavery was an inefficient and unprofitable mode of production for the first time. Vogel and engelmann accepted the argument of this classic article, and then severely criticized those who were as obsessed with orthodox views as racists; Persisting in slavery has considerable benefits, and only a super economic force like civil war can lead to its disintegration. Their books have been translated into other languages many times. In less than 10 years, all kinds of critical documents about this book far exceeded the original work itself.