Intersectional economics: Visiting scholar Dr. Trevon Logan challenges research norms in visit to St. Kate’s community
Cover photo: Dr. Trevon Logan
By Ella Tracy
The St. Catherine University community hosted Dr. Trevon Logan this past week in a series of events centered around the intersection of storytelling, race and economics. Logan is an economist from Ohio State University specializing in economic history and applied demography. While at St. Kate’s on Monday, Sept. 18 and Tuesday, Sept. 19, Logan discussed this year’s One Read for Racial Justice, “The Stars and the Blackness Between Them” by Junauda Petrus, with students and staff, presented two lectures and answered economic students’ questions about research and career paths.
One Read for Racial Justice Discussion
“Astrology is like macroeconomics. It’s only real if you believe it,” said Logan to his impromptu book club as they discussed “The Stars and the Blackness Between Them.” Logan provided thought-provoking ideas from the perspective of an engaged reader and a professional economist.
He began by complimenting the level of sophistication of the diction, reflecting that many of the young adult books he would have read in his teens were not nearly as advanced. “Younger readers are introduced to deeper topics,” Logan said. “The realism of the young people’s voice had a level of authenticity that I don’t recall from the books I read.”
“I expected the book to have much more interaction with technology,” he added. “It was refreshing to see that the core of the book was face-to-face interactions.” He also enjoyed seeing an unconventional teen relationship mature over the course of the book.
The group also discussed book bans. “The reasons people are objecting to books are not substantiated,” Logan said. Banning books creates a “homogeneous collection of characters that are supposed to be representative of the human experience.” Logan added, “If we take these books off the shelf, we limit what people think of as literature.”
Diverse literature is crucial so we are able to relate to others by “transposing ourselves into the minds of characters,” said Logan.
Storytelling and Economic Inference: Public Lecture
The first lecture investigated how current economic inference is widely done without much thought toward cultural, historical and racial contexts. “Economists have produced a large amount of scholarship on race without an economic theory of race, racialization or racism,” said Logan. Such a theory would demand qualitative data in a field that places tremendous value in strictly quantitative data. “Data and methodology are ways to measure and mismeasure the social world,” Logan explained. “What we could learn by changing or expanding our methodology can change what we claim to have learned.”
Logan presented his lecture to more than 170 people, who attended both virtually and in person. Credit: Kristine West
Logan gave two examples demonstrating how qualitative stories change research outcomes, the first being Black names. Economic research around Black names ignores the racialization of these names. As certain names grew in popularity among the Black community in the antebellum era, those names decreased in popularity among white individuals. “Black names have a history tied to the racial experience in America,” said Logan. “The Black names become ‘infectious,’ so people who do not have to experience the burdened individuality that comes with being Black do not use those names.” This historic racism is rarely touched on in present-day quantitative research into the impact of Black names.
Black migration, Logan argued, also cannot be fully understood without racial and cultural contexts. Current research often uses census data and assumed models to estimate how people traveled from the South to the North after emancipation. However, these models do not take race into account.
“Migration intent cannot be inferred from rates,” Logan said. “Migration effects are not fully estimated from rates.” To understand intent and effects, Logan listened to the stories of his family, who have complex histories with migration. Modern economics would likely ignore these stories because they are not hard data. It is to society’s detriment that qualitative data is largely not included in economic research.
“Question Everything”: Mentoring Lunch
Numerous students met with Logan informally to inquire about his research and ask for career advice. The group spent most of the hour emphasizing the importance of intersectionality within economics. Most of the students in attendance were economics majors with a supporting major in a related social science or humanities field. “More exchange needs to happen between disciplines, both methodological and substantively,” said Logan after applauding the students for their dedication to diverse study.
Logan also pointed out the value of research opportunities many St. Kate’s economics students have. “Having research experiences is quite rare amongst students,” Logan explained. Rigorous research programs offered to St. Kate’s economics students are incredibly unique but also critical for training innovative economists.
Logan’s final piece of advice was to pay careful attention when learning economic theories and models. By doing so, we can identify what these models are assuming that might be untrue. This will increase students’ comfort introducing qualitative research methods into the future of economics.
Reparations and the Racial Wealth Gap
Students’ final interaction with Logan was his lecture that examined whether eliminating the racial wealth gap is the correct way to distribute reparations after enslavement. He established that a racial wealth gap does exist, principally due to dramatic differences in household wealth, median household income and wealth transfers. But would resolving the racial wealth gap be enough?
Some economists argue it would be. But the theories supporting racial wealth gap elimination as reparations are almost entirely based on quantitative productivity data from the days of slavery. If one factors in mental and physical damages due to punishments inflicted on enslaved people, the numbers would change dramatically. “[Eliminating the wealth gap] would capture the wealth effects of racist policies, but it might not capture the true compensatory damages due to descendants of the enslaved,” Logan concluded.
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As it is impossible to summarize the depth and breadth of knowledge presented by Logan during his visit, readers are encouraged to pursue more of his research on their own time. Read his article in the Journal of Economic Perspectives about enslavement and Black economic history.
