Railroads, American Growth, and the New Economic History: A Critique

Peter D. McClelland

The Journal of Economic History, 1968, vol. 28, issue 1, 102-123

Abstract: Robert Fogel and Albert Fishlow have attempted in recent studies to measure the net contribution of the railroad to American economic growth in two specific years: 1890 and 1859. Both their methods and conclusions have confused, if not dismayed, more conventional historians. This article has two objectives: The first is to provide a simplified guide to the analytical framework underlying their calculations and the second is to suggest to both old and new economic historians that the measurements employed by Fogel and Fishlow bear no direct relationship to what they claim to measure—the benefits to the nineteenth-century economy from the existence of the railroad.

Date: 1968
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