Cliometrics

Cliometrics, Application of economic theory and statistical analysis to the study of history, developed by Robert W. Fogel (b. 1926) and Douglass C. North (b. 1920), who were awarded the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1993 for their work. In Time on the Cross (1974), Fogel used statistical analysis to examine the relationship between the politics of American slavery and its profitability. North studied the link between a market economy and legal and social institutions such as property rights in such works as Structure and Change in Economic History (1981). See also econometrics.