Stanley L. Engerman, economic historian and John H. Munro Professor of Economics and professor of history at the University of Rochester, will receive the Award of Distinguished Fellow from the American Economic Association (AEA) in January.
Each year since 1965, the association has recognized the lifetime contributions of distinguished scholars in economics by bestowing this award. Two other economists, Hugo F. Sonnenschein and Michael Rothschild, also will be honored with the award at the group's national meeting in Boston.
Sonnenschein, the Adam Smith Distinguished Service Professor and president emeritus of the University of Chicago, is a member of the University of Rochester Board of Trustees and an alumnus of the College. Rothschild is the William Stuart Tod Professor of Economics and Public Affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School of Princeton University.
Engerman's studies of economic growth in the Americas, especially on the history of slavery, have been acknowledged internationally. He has authored, co-authored, or co-edited more than 18 books and another 100 articles. His analysis with Nobel Laureate Robert W. Fogel on the economic underpinnings of slavery, titled Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery (1974), remains a landmark study for its reinterpretation of data about the daily lives of slaves and the economics of the plantation. The book won the 1975 Bancroft Prize for American history.
He is past president of the Economic History Association and the Social Science History Association. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, he has been a member of many academic editorial and advisory boards. His forthcoming book, co-authored with Lance Davis, is titled Naval Blockades in Peace and War: An Economic History of Naval Blockades since 1750 to be published by Cambridge University Press.
Two other members of the Department of Economics at Rochester have received the AEA's Award of Distinguished Fellow: Lionel W. McKenzie in 1993 and Walter Oi in 1995. The AEA, organized in 1885, and its members encourage economic research, especially the historical and statistical study of the actual conditions of industrial life, issue publications on economic subjects, and promote free discussion of economic topics.
Engerman will be spending the 2006 spring semester at Harvard University as one of 19 W. E. B. Du Bois Institute Fellows, who were selected for their achievements in the fields of African and African-American studies. He will continue research on a book based on a series of lectures he delivered earlier this year on "Slavery, Emancipation, and Free Labor in World Perspectives."