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Statistics as Artifacts: A New History of Economics
Drawn to the University of Notre Dame by two distinctive interdisciplinary programs – the undergraduate Program of Liberal Studies and the graduate program in History and Philosophy of Science - Assistant Professor Tom Stapleford has found the College of Arts and Letters to be an environment conducive to his research in the history of human sciences.
His current book project, Economic Statistics and Political Order: The Consumer Price Index in Twentieth-Century America, looks at the history of the Consumer Price Index (CPI), a controversial measure of retail price change whose results impact a variety of federal programs, including tax brackets, social security payments, and federal pensions.
Although Stapleford studies a great deal of quantitative data, his analysis is not purely an economic one. By studying the history of the CPI, he asks unusual questions of economic statistics. For example, his efforts include determining what elements of the political system led to the CPI’s prominence and considering why, given the historical range of possibilities for cost-of-living statistics, the CPI developed into its current form.
More broadly, he aims to use the history of statistics to inform our understanding of the modern state, asking “What happens if we treat statistics as historical artifacts? What can that process tell us about political history?”
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