WEBVTT

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
When you do economic research,
you have three pieces.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
I think of them as balls

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
that I want floating up
all the time.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
I'm juggling them,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
and one of them is the idea.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
I have to begin with
"What's the question,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
what's important?"

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
- [Narrator] Economists!

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
Not a group with a lot
of Marys, Natashas, or Juanitas,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
and that's caused
a lot of controversy.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
However, what's often overlooked
are the actual female economists

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
who are economics forward
by addressing real world issues.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
Welcome to Women in Economics.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
- [Ilyana] One thing I definitely
learned from Claudia

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
is to approach economic
research like a detective.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
I think, especially,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
when you're working
with economic history,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
when you can't just download
a cleaned-up dataset.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
You really have to go searching
open, dusty boxes

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
and look under tocks.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
- [Lawrence] She is the consummate,
economic historian.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
She has been the innovator and pioneer

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
on bringing economical logic
and historical and better data

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
to understanding
women's role in the economy,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
and then she is a fantastic
labor economist,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
who had been a leader on work on understanding inequality.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
Claudia Dale Goldin was born in 1946 in the Bronx.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
She was a problem-solver from the beginning.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
As a child, she avoided the New York City heat

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
by spending her summer days playing cards

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
or reading in air-conditioned department stores.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
And while she always knew she wanted to be a scientist of some kind,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
she wasn't always set on economics.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
SHe'll tell stories to me about when she first went to the Natural History Museum

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
when she was living in the Bronx

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
and fell in love with mummies

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
and thought that archeology was going to be her passion.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
But then she discovered microbiology,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
and she suddently realized that microscopes uncovered a whole new world of discovery for her.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
It wasn't until she actually went to college at Cornell

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
that she first got introduced to economics.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
I decidede to become an economist

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
because I took an economics class from an amazing person named Fred Kahn.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
He was so excited about the field of industrial organization

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
and product markets and regulation

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
that it was infectious.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
And in fact, when I went to graduate school at the University of Chicago,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
I went there to study Industrial Organization.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
Under the mentorship of Bob Fogel,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
Claudia studied AMerican Economic History,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
particularly the economics of slavery
and the post civil war south.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
SHe had to travel to some southern states to gather archival materials for this research.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
Goldin didn't approach this trip like a traditional economist.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
She thought what I should do is hitchhike between the different cities in the south.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
She met somebody in one of the archives

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
who let her stay at their place,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
and when she came back, her advisor asked her for a list of the receipts and expenses

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
associated with the trip,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
she had no clue that you were supposed to actually stay in hotels and pay for actual travel,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
and you could get reimbursements.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
By actually staying with the archivists and getting access to archives

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
and knowledge that you wouldn't have had,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
it probably created [ ] and understanding that wouldn't have been possible

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
if you were going through usual channels.