Professor Trevon D. Logan

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I am an economist who specializes in economic history and applied demography. I also do work that intersects with health economics, applied econometrics, applied microeconomics and development economics. My research agenda covers two general areas:

(1) Economic History. The central goal of my research in economic history is the development of living standards measures that can be used to directly asses the question of how the human condition has changed over time. One of the general features of my approach to historical living standards has been to apply the techniques of contemporary living standard measurements to the past as a means of deriving consistent estimates of well-being over time, which have been lacking due to data limitations. I am currently branching out to work that looks at childhood health in the past and at various aspects of economic change in the last two centuries. Most of my historical work uses historical household surveys, but also includes some new data to look at topics such as the returns to education in the early twentieth century.

This research has taken several directions. My largest project in this area concerns nutrition. Given the fundamental nature of food to human welfare, empirical analysis of food demand yields consistent estimates of one key dimension of human welfare. In these articles I comparatively analyze human nutrition in the past (Nutrition and Well-Being in the Late Nineteenth Century), test theories of nutrition’s role in human physiological change (Food, Nutrition and Substitution in the Late Nineteenth Century), confirm questionable statistical assumptions about human calorie consumption (Is the Calorie Distribution Log Normal? Evidence from the Nineteenth Century), and use an international comparison of calorie demand to challenge convention measures of human welfare (The Transformation of Hunger: The Demand for Calories Past and Present).

Another project in this area concerns families and households. If households with more members can share public goods (such as heating and cooling costs) then larger households should be better off than smaller households at lower levels of per capita expenditure. This idea has far reaching implications—tax and transfer formulas, child welfare calculations, and measuring inequality all require an accounting of economies of scale in the household. Unfortunately, we had little evidence in what the trends in these factors were, or their implications. I have produced the first comparable historical estimates of household economies of scale (Economies of Scale in the Household: Puzzles and Patterns from the American Past) and also considered how these scale economies influence estimates of real income in the past (Are Engel Curve Estimates of CPI Bias Biased?).

A third project looks at technological progress and human capital. I have looked at how geographic differences in resource endowments led to stark differences in the returns to educations in the United States over the twentieth century use a new data source, from the U.S. Commissioner of Education in 1909, to produce the earliest estimates of the returns to education by region for the United States (Factor Endowments and the Returns to Skill: New Evidence from the American Past). Also, I have looked at the role of health in explaining the striking differences in human capital acquisition and mobility for African Americans. I find that the low levels of human capital accumulation and mobility of former slaves after the Civil War is partly explained by the poor health status of slaves and their immediate descendants (Health, Human Capital, and African American Migration before 1910).

(2) Applied Demography. My applied demography research agenda is diverse. In one project, I look at the phenomena of dowries in South Asia. I analyze and test predictions of the dowry-as-bequest versus dowry as groomprice to see if the purpose of dowry has changed over time (On the Heterogeneity of Dowry Motives) and also provide the first empirical investigation of dowry inflation (Is there Dowry Inflation in South Asia? An Assessment of the Evidence).

Another project looks at the economics and social implications of male sex work. This work looks at the value of information in this illegal market (Face Value: Information and Signaling in an Illegal Market) and also uses the unique social position of male sex workers to quantitatively test sociological theories of gender and masculinity (Personal Characteristics, Sexual Behaviors, and Male Sex Work: A Quantitative Approach).

One small project that falls outside of these two larger areas of research is my work on empirical analysis of college football polls (Econometric Tests of American College Football’s Conventional Wisdom) and college football betting markets (Betting Markets and Market Efficiency: Evidence from College Football).

(3) Current and Future Projects. My current and future plans for research include a large project that will estimate the impact of HIV/AIDS on fertility in Sub-Saharan Africa with Stacy Sneeringer of Wellesley College (A Closer Examination of the Fertility/HIV Linkage), a project with Paul Rhode of the University of Michigan that looks at endogenizing taste in the late nineteenth century (Moveable Feasts: A New Approach to Endogenizing Tastes), a project with Rodney Andrews of UT-Dallas that looks at the role that child and family health may play in explaining black-white test score gaps (Family Health, Children’s Own Health, and Test-Score Gaps), and further work on sexual behaviors and HIV among male sex workers.