Month: October 2018

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Exam Questions Harvard Leontief Undergraduate

Harvard. Undergraduate mathematical economics. Schumpeter, Leontief, Goodwin. 1933-1950

 

 

Joseph Schumpeter introduced a one semester undergraduate course “Introduction to the Mathematical Treatment of Economic Theory” in the first semester of the 1933-34 academic year at Harvard. Schumpeter taught the course three times and it was taught from 1935-36 through 1947-48 by Wassily Leontief. The course was then continued by Richard Goodwin in 1949-50. This post presents a grab-bag of information that includes early and a late course description, annual enrollment data, a course outline from 1945-46 and five exams. Links to all earlier posts for the course available at Economics in the Rear-view Mirror have been included as well.

Some of the backstory to this course is included in this earlier post (memo by Crum of 4 April 1933 and a list of topics to be covered).

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Course Announcement, 1933-34

Economics 8a 1hf. Introduction to the Mathematical Treatment of Economic Theory

Half-course (first half-year). Mon., 4 to 6, and a third hour at the pleasure of the instructor. Professor Schumpeter, and other members of the Department.

Economics 8a is open to those who have passed Economics A, and Mathematics A, or its equivalent. The aim of this course is to acquaint such students as may wish it with the elements of the mathematical technique necessary to understand the simpler contributions to the mathematical theory of economics.

Source:  Announcement of the Courses of Instruction offered by the Faculty of Arts and Sciences 1933-34 (Second edition) in Official Register of Harvard University, Vol. XXX, No. 39 (September 20, 1933), p. 126.

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Course Enrollment, 1933-34

[Economics] 8a 1hf. Professor Schumpeter. — Introduction to the Mathematical Treatment of Economic Theory.

15 Graduates, 3 Seniors, 5 Others. Total 23.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College and Reports of Departments for 1933-1934, p. 85.

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Exam not found for Economics 8a, 1933-34

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Course Enrollment, 1934-35

[Economics] 8a 1hf. Professor Schumpeter. — Introduction to the Mathematical Treatment of Economic Theory.

2 Seniors, 1 Junior, 1 Sophomore. Total 4.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College and Reports of Departments for 1934-1935, p. 81.

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 1935 final exam questions.

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Course Enrollment, 1935-36

[Economics] 8a 2hf. Asst. Professor Leontief. — Introduction to the Mathematical Treatment of Economic Theory.

4 Juniors, 2 Sophomores. Total 6.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College and Reports of Departments for 1935-1936, p. 82.

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Implicit course outline and course readings with the 1936 exam questions.

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Course Enrollment, 1936-37

[Economics] 4a 2hf. Asst. Professor Leontief. — Introduction to the Mathematical Treatment of Economic Theory.

1 Graduate, 2 Seniors, 3 Juniors, 2 Sophomores, 1 Other. Total 9.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College and Reports of Departments for 1936-1937, p. 92.

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Final Examination, 1936-37
HARVARD UNIVERSITY
ECONOMICS 4a

Answer at least THREE questions: one in each group

Group I

  1. Discuss the relation between the production function of an enterprise and its cost curve.

 

Group II

  1. Given a cost of a single plant:
    C=\frac{1}{A+X}+BX
    where C indicates the total cost, X the total output, and the magnitudes of the two constants are such
    that A< 0 and B> 1/A.
    Derive the total cost curve of an enterprise which consists of two identical plants of this kind.
  2. A monopolist sells in two markets a commodity produced without costs. The total revenue, R1, obtained from the sale of q1 units of this commodity in the first market is given by:
    {{R}_{1}}=A{{q}_{1}}+Bq_{1}^{2}\text{ }\left( A>0,\text{ }B<\text{ }0 \right)
    The sale of q2 units in the second market nets:
    {{R}_{2}}=K{{q}_{2}}+Lq_{2}^{2}\text{ }\left( K>0,\text{ }L<\text{ }0 \right)
    Compute the prices which this monopolist would charge (a) with discrimination between the two markets; (b) without discrimination.

 

Group III

  1. Prove that marginal costs are increasing in the point of minimum average costs.
  2. Prove that a tax on profits cannot affect the output of an enterprise unless it induces it to suspend its operations.

 

Source: Harvard University Archives. Examination Papers. Finals 1937. (HUC 7000.28) Vol. 79. Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Papers Printed for Final Examinations. History, History of Religions, …, Economics, …, Military Science, Naval Science. January-June, 1937.

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Course Enrollment, 1937-38

[Economics] 4a 2hf. Asst. Professor Leontief. — Introduction to the Mathematical Treatment of Economic Theory.

2 Graduates, 2 Seniors, 6 Juniors, 1 Sophomore. Total 11.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College and Reports of Departments for 1937-1938, p. 85.

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Final Examination, 1937-38
HARVARD UNIVERSITY
ECONOMICS 4a2

Answer THREE questions including question 1. Devote to discussion of question 1 about one hour and a half.

  1. Discuss fully the relation between the production function and the cost curve of an enterprise.
  2. Given:
    1. The cost curve of a monopolist:
      C= A+ BQ+ CQ2
      C indicates the total cost, Q the total output, A, B, C,are given constants.
    2. The demand function for his product in Market I.
      q1= a1– b1p1
      q1 is the quantity consumed for his product in Market I at the price p1.
      a1and b1 are given constants
    3. The demand function for his product in Market II.
      q2= a2– b2p2
      q2is the quantity taken in at the price p2;
      a2 and b2 are given constants.
      The monopolist is able to discriminate between the two markets provided the difference between the two prices is not larger than K
      Find (and express in terms of the given constants) that the value of Kwhich would maximize the sales q1 in the first market.
  3. Given:
    1. A, monopolist’s cost curve:
      C = A+ BQ+ CQ
    2. The demand curve for his product:
      p= a – bQ
      C stands for total costs, Q for total output, p for the market price, A, B, C, d, and b are constants.
      A subsidy at S dollars is paid to the monopolist per unit of output.
      Find how large the subsidy S must be in order to induce him to produce and sell twice as much as he would without the subsidy.
  4. Is it possible that the average costs of an enterprise are increasing with the output while the marginal costs are decreasing at the same time?
    Give and answer and demonstrate that it is correct.

 

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University Final Examinations, 1853-2001. (HUC 7000.28) Box 4. Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Papers Printed for Final Examinations. History, History of Religions, …, Economics, …, Military Science, Naval Science. January-June, 1938.

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Course Enrollment, 1938-39

[Economics] 4a 2hf. Asst. Professor Leontief. — Introduction to the Mathematical Treatment of Economic Theory.

2 Graduates, 2 Seniors, 2 Juniors, 1 Sophomore. Total 7.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College and Reports of Departments for 1938-1939, pp. 97-98.

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Exam not found for Economics 4a, 1938-39

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Course Enrollment, 1939-40

[Economics] 4a 2hf. Associate Professor Leontief. — Introduction to the Mathematical Treatment of Economic Theory.

1 Graduate, 1 Sophomore. Total 5.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College and Reports of Departments for 1939-1940, p. 98.

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Final Examination, 1939-40
HARVARD UNIVERSITY
ECONOMICS 4a2

Answer four questions including question 1.

  1. Discuss the relation between the marginal costs of an enterprise and the marginal productivities of the factors used in production.
  2. An enterprise manufactures two commodities X and Y, using two factors of production, V and W. The production function is x(yb– 1) = vnwm.
    Given the prices px, py, pvand pwwrite down the equations which determine the most profitable outputs of X and Y and the corresponding inputs of V and W.
  3. Given:
    1. The total cost curve of a monopolist
      C = A + Kx2 and
    2. the market demand curve for his product
      p = B – Lx,
      p is the price and x the quantity of the commodity produced and sold. A, K, B and L are positive constants.
      An excise tax of z dollars per unit of output is being levied.
      What magnitude of z (expressed in terms of the given constants) would maximize the total tax receipts?
  4. Prove that the price of labor will exceed its marginal value productivity if
    1. labor is the only factor of production used in manufacture of a given commodity,
    2. the producer of this commodity sells his output on a purely competitive market, but is the only (“monopsonistic”) buyer of the particular kind of labor used in his plant,
    3. The supply curve of labor is negatively inclined.
  5. Discuss the problem of price discrimination by a monopolist.

 

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University Final Examinations, 1853-2001. (HUC 7000.28) Box 5. Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Papers Printed for Final Examinations. History, History of Religions, …, Economics, …, Military Science, Naval Science. June, 1940.

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Economics 4a not offered in 1940-41

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Course Enrollment, 1941-42

[Economics] 4a 2hf. Associate Professor Leontief. — Introduction to the Mathematical Treatment of Economic Theory.

1 Graduate, 5 Seniors, 8 Juniors, 3 Sophomores, 1 Freshman. Total 18.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College and Reports of Departments for 1941-1942, p. 62.

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Course Outline Economics 4a 1941-42 (and 1942-43)

https://www.irwincollier.com/harvard-intro-to-mathematical-economics-schumpeter-leontief-1935-42/

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Final Examination, 1941-42
HARVARD UNIVERSITY
ECONOMICS 4a

Answer one question in each of the following three groups:

(a) 1 or 2
(b) 3 or 4
(c) 5 or 6

  1. Describe in detail the relation between a production function and the corresponding cost function.
  2. Show that the slope of a supply curve of a single enterprise is positive.
  3. Show that a total cost curve can be of such a shape that the marginal costs are increasing but the average costs decreasing throughout its whole length. Give example.
  4. The cost curve of an enterprise is
    C = A + x + Bx2+ Kx3
    (C are the total costs, x – the output, A, B, and K – constants).
    What is the lowest competitive price at which the owner will find it profitable to operate the plant rather than to cease production entirely?
  5. An enterprise consists of two identical plants. Each has a following cost curve:
    C = A + Bx2+ x3
    (C are the total costs, x – the output, A and B are constants).
    Compute the combined cost curve of the whole enterprise.
  6. Given a production function y = f(x,z)
    (y is the amount of product, py – its price, x and z inputs of two factors, px and pz – their respective prices.)
    The producer maximizes his profits under conditions of pure competition. Show that an increase of the price px of factor x will reduce the amount (x) of this factor used in the process of production.

 

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University Final Examinations, 1853-2001. (HUC 7000.28) Box 6. Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Papers Printed for Final Examinations. History, History of Religions, …, Economics, …, Military Science, Naval Science. June, 1942.

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Course Description, 1942-43

Economics 4a 1hf. Introduction to the Mathematical Treatment of Economic Theory. Half-course (first half-year). Mon., 4 to 6. Associate Professor Leontief.

Economics A and Mathematics A, or their equivalents, are prerequisites for this course.
The course is intended to instruct beginners in economic theory (having had elementary mathematical training) in the application of elementary mathematical methods in economics and at the same time to enable them to understand some of the major contributions to economic theory made by such writers as Marshall, Cournot, Walras, and Edgeworth.

Source:  Official Register of Harvard University, Vol. XXXIX, No. 45 (June 30, 1942). Division of History, Government, and Economics Containing an Announcement for 1942-43. 

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Course Enrollment, 1942-43

[Economics] 4a 1hf. Associate Professor Leontief. — Introduction to the Mathematical Treatment of Economic Theory.

1 Graduate, 2 Seniors, 4 Juniors, 2 Sophomores, 1 Public Administration. Total 10.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College and Reports of Departments for 1942-1943, p. 46.

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Exam not found for Economics 4a, 1942-43

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Course Enrollment, 1943-44

[Economics] 4a. (winter term) Associate Professor Leontief. — Introduction to the Mathematical Treatment of Economic Theory.

2 Juniors in ROTC, 1 Radcliffe, 3 Seniors, 4 Navy (V-12). Total 10.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College and Reports of Departments for 1943-1944, p. 56.

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Exam not found for Economics 4a, 1943-44

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Economics 4a not offered in 1944-45

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Course Enrollment, 1945-46

[Economics] 4a. (fall term) Associate Professor Leontief. — Introduction to the Mathematical Treatment of Economic Theory.

1 Senior, 2 Juniors, 3 Sophomores, 2 Radcliffe. Total 8.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College and Reports of Departments for 1945-1946, p. 58.

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Course Outline, 1945-46

INTRODUCTION TO THE MATHEMATICAL TREATMENT OF ECONOMIC THEORY
Economics 4a
1945-46, Fall Term

  1. Introductory remarks.
    Profit function.
    Maximizing profits.
  2. Cost functions: Total costs, fixed costs, variable costs, average costs, marginal costs, increasing and decreasing marginal costs.
    Minimizing average total and average variable costs.
  3. Revenue function.
    Price and marginal revenue.
    Demand function
    Elasticity and flexibility.
  4. Maximizing the net revenue (profits).
    Monopolistic maximum.
    Competitive maximum.
    Supply function.
  5. Joint costs and accounting methods of cost imputation.
    Multiple plants.
    Price discrimination.
  6. Production function.
    Marginal productivity.
    Increasing and decreasing productivity.
    Homogeneous and non-homogeneous production functions.
  7. Maximizing net revenue, second method.
    Minimizing costs for a fixed output.
    Marginal costs and marginal productivity.
  8. Introduction into the theory of consumers’ behavior.
    Indifference curves and the utility function.
  9. Introduction to the theory of the market.
    Concept of market equilibrium.
    Duopoly, bilateral monopoly.
    Pure competition.
    Monopoly.
  10. Time lag and time sequences.
  11. Introduction into the theory of general equilibrium.

 

Reading: R. G. D. Allen, Mathematical Analysis for Economists.

Evans, Introduction into Mathematical Economics.

Antoine Cournot, Researches into the Mathematical Principles of the Theory of Wealth.

Jacob L. Mosak, General Equilibrium Theory in International Trade.

Weekly problems.

Source: Harvard University Archives. Syllabi, course outlines and reading lists in Economics, 1895-2003. HUC 8522.2.1, Box 3, Folders “1945-1946 (1 of 2)”.

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Final Examination, 1945-46
1945-46
HARVARD UNIVERSITY
ECONOMICS 4a
Introduction to Mathematical Economics

Answer any three questions.

  1. Show the relationship between the total cost curve and the supply curve of an enterprise.
  2. Show that, at the point of optimum output, the marginal costs of an enterprise are equal to the price of any cost factor divided by its marginal productivity.
  3. A consumer has an income of q1 dollars in the first and of y2 dollars in the second year. Although the combined expenditures in the two years equal y1+ y2, he can spend more than y1 in the first year, and correspondingly less in the second year or vice versa. In both years, he purchases one kind of consumers’ goods, its price being p1 dollars in the first and p2 dollars per unit in the second year. The utility function which the consumer maximizes is u= f(x1, x2) where u is the utility level, x1 and x2 the quantities consumed in the first and second year respectively.
    1. Derive the equations which determine the optimum magnitudes of x1 and x2.
    2. Show that an increase of the price p1, with p2, y1,y2 remaining constant, might increase x1.
  4. The demand, q, for the product of a monopolist depends upon the price, p, of his produce and the amount of money, y, which he spends on advertising. The total production cost, c, depends upon the quantity of output, q. Given the demand function: q=\frac{A}{p}+{{y}^{{1}/{4}\;}}-p
    and the total (production) cost function c = q
    where A is a positive constant;
    Determine the output, the price, and the advertising outlay which would maximize the profits (total revenue minus total outlay) of this enterprise.
  5. The well-being, u, of a worker depends upon the amount, x, of consumers’ goods which he can buy with his daily wage, and the number of hours of leisure, y, which remain to him after he finishes his daily work:
    u= f(x, y)

    1. Derive the equations determining the number of hours (call it l) of daily work which he will be willing to do at the wage of w dollars per hour, if the price of the consumers’ good is p dollars per unit.
    2. Show that an increase of the hourly wage rate might reduce the number of hours which the worker will choose to work.

 

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University Final Examinations, 1853-2001. (HUC 7000.28) Box 11. Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Papers Printed for Final Examinations. History, History of Religions, …, Economics, …, Military Science, Naval Science. January, 1946.

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Economics 4a not offered in 1946-47

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Course Enrollment, 1947-48

[Economics] 4a. Professor Leontief. — Introduction to the Mathematical Treatment of Economic Theory (Sp).

2 Graduates, 6 Seniors, 8 Juniors, 1 Sophomore, 2 Public Administration, 1 Radcliffe. Total 20.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College and Reports of Departments for 1947-1948, p. 89.

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Reading list and midterm and final examination question, 1947-48

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Economics 4a not offered in 1948-49

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Course Enrollment, 1949-50

[Economics] 104 (formerly Economics 4a). Assistant Professor Goodwin. — Introduction to the Mathematical Treatment of Economic Theory (Sp).

3 Graduates, 6 Seniors, 1 Junior, 2 Sophomores, 1 Public Administration, 1 Radcliffe. Total 14.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College and Reports of Departments for 1949-1950, p.72.

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Course Texts on Library Reserve, 1945-46

R.G.D. Allen. Mathematical analysis for economists

W.L. Crum. Rudimentary mathematics for economists and statisticians

P.A. Samuelson. Foundations of economic analysis.

Source: Harvard University Archives. Syllabi, course outlines and reading lists in Economics, 1895-2003. HUC 8522.2.1, Box 4, Folders “1949-1950 (1 of 3)”.

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Image Sources: Schumpeter and Leontief from Harvard Class Album 1950, Goodwin from Harvard Class Album 1951.

Categories
Cambridge Chicago Teaching

Chicago. Harry Johnson’s observations and reflections on teaching, 1969

 

The transcribed letter below was written by Professor Harry G. Johnson to (then) graduate student Michael Mussa whose proposal for student evaluations of graduate courses at the economics department of the University of Chicago met with hostile reception. It is always a genuinely nice gesture for a senior professor to take time and effort to recognize a student initiative and this letter is a model of such a response. I presume the copy of this letter I found in Milton Friedman’s papers had been shared by Johnson with his colleagues.

Johnson first reflects on the nature of teaching in a leading graduate institution, concluding on the one hand that some bad teaching will be inevitable but that even the worst teachers could improve their (literal) performances. He then illustrates with his own course (the third of the three quarter sequence in Price Theory) followed by three examples from his own Cambridge training: D. H. Robertson, Maurice Dobbs, and Joan Robinson. 

Pro-tip: the snap-shot of Harry Johnson comes from Robert J. Gordon’s very own personal collection “Photos of Economists”.

Johnson mentioned that Joan Robinson refused to hand out reading lists for her courses. For a rare Joan Robinson reading list: from Williams College 1982.

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From a Photocopy of a letter from Harry Johnson to Michael Mussa

May 28, 1969

Michael Mussa:

I’ve been reading the reports of the faculty-student advisory committee, in which your proposal for student evaluations of courses seem to have fared rather badly. Personally, I am more favorable to the idea than my colleagues seem to have been.

There are of course plenty of problems in defining the function of such evaluations; and at least in a place like Chicago teaching competence can’t be given much weight (a) because a large part of staff work is guiding Ph.D.s and conducting the workshops—i.e. research rather than teaching oriented; (b) because our courses ought to be not only teaching the accepted structure of knowledge, but exposing students to the frontiers of the subject, and this kind of material is often difficult to teach; (c) our competitive position as a leading world graduate school, which among other things determines the quality of the students we get and therefore the “externalities” our students obtain from each other, ultimately depends on the published scientific contributions of our faculty and not on their capacity to teach a particular course well at a particular time.

On the other hand, I do not share the view of some of my colleagues—both here and even more in England—that teaching performance is an absolutely fixed characteristic of the individual that cannot be altered by care and study on his part. Consequently I think that student evaluations can be useful to both the individual teacher and his colleagues, as guides to where some investment in improvement could usefully be undertaken.

One obvious point, with respect to which I benefitted from last year’s evaluation, is the course reading list. As a result of that evaluation, I took off the 302 reading list an article by Champernowne, the approach of which I wanted represented in the course, but which students considered too difficult for what they got out of it; instead, I now present the approach in very simple form. I also took off a number of readings on the poverty problem which were significant when the war on poverty started, but which now appear to have little substantive content. I now link the poverty material more closely to the general theme of the course.

I think that student evaluation of the reading list can be very valuable in indicating what readings are really useful and what are either too hard or too easy for the level of the course. An even more important function, which would be harder to devise, would be for students to suggest from their own current and previous reading of the journals and textbooks better sources for the main parts of the course. The literature is tremendous, and there is no easy way of searching it for the most useful contributions.

As to the teaching itself, it seems to me that there are two separate problems, each of them susceptible of solution by rational investment by the individual teacher. The first is organization of the material; this includes reading list and course organization, organization of the individual lecture and supplementation of the lecture by appropriate hand-outs of crucial data or pieces of analysis. The Chicago course-load is fairly light by most universities’ standards, and the purpose of the lecture I teaching rather than public virtuoso performance. There is little reason why a person who knows or is told that he is disorganized and confusing while on his feet in front of a class should not provide his students with the insurance of a paper version of what he meant to tell them. The second problem is that of personality. A teacher has to understand that in the classroom he is playing a role, which does not have to define or exhaust the full scope of his private personality; and he has to forego the tricks that people use in private conversation to defend themselves and preserve what they think is the respect of others. Specifically, it is not helpful to students to be exposed to an account of all the mental confusion that accompanied the first discovery of a new truth (especially if the truth itself never emerges). Nor does it help for a lecturer to use two methods of disguising uncertainty or insufficient thought in private conversation: (1) vehement assertion of a conclusion without adequate supporting argument; (2) dropping the voice just as the crucial point is reached, so that the audience doesn’t really hear what is being said (Margaret Reid picked me up on this trick when I first came to Chicago).

It seems to me that lecturers have a lot to learn from the acting profession in this respect: even if the lines are lousy, they deliver them with conviction. It also seems to me that student evaluations would help to tell lecturers that, however good the message they thought they were putting across, it was being scrambled in transmission and wasn’t reaching the students.

I would not pretend that everybody can be a good lecturer. All I claim is that most people could do better than they do, by recognizing their weaknesses and trying to correct them. Even so, you could well not get very good lectures.

I remember when I was a student at Cambridge, England. D.H. Robertson was Professor; he had had a lot of acting experience in his youth. He wrote every word of his lectures, and rewrote them every year. He delivered them well, but you had to listen hard and know a lot already to get the points. Yet he would never answer any questions from class; once a year, in the second-last lecture, he would ask the class for written questions; in the last lecture, he would read us his written answers to the written questions. Maurice Dobb, who was my supervisor and whose lectures I attended religiously out of a youthful enthusiasm for left-wing causes, also wrote every word of his lectures on socialist planning, and they were beautifully logical and well-organized constructions; but he read them in a flat monotone that rapidly depressed the audience, with the result that the beachhead of communism he established in Cambridge never got occupied by troops prepared to push on to a major assault on capitalism. Joan Robinson, on the other hand, always claimed she lectured as the spirit moved her, and refused to give out either a reading list or reference (apart from insulting remarks about D.K. Robertson, and favorable references to Keynes and Kalecki). In fact she said the same thing every year; but the students always got excited because to them it came as something new.

In my judgment, Robertson could have learned to answer the questions he could answer, and ask for time to consider the others; Dobb could have learned to modulate his voice to emphasize the difference between major points and supporting arguments; and Robinson could have been persuaded by student demands to produce a reading list. But it is quite likely that none of them would have changed their ways; and I doubt that Cambridge would have been well advised to fire them if they hadn’t.

Yours sincerely,
[signed]
Harry G. Johnson
Department of Economics

HGJ/sf

 

Source: Hoover Institution Archives. Papers of Milton Friedman. Box 194, Folder “194.4 Economics Dept. A-G”.

Image Source:  Harry Johnson. Photo by Robert J. Gordon, Summer 1970 or 1971.

 

Categories
Economists Harvard Sociology Wellesley Wing Nuts

Harvard. Economics Ph.D. alumnus. Vervon Orval Watts, 1932

 

You are about to encounter a Harvard Ph.D. economist, vintage 1932, who illustrates just how deep the roots of American right-wing economics can be traced. 

A disciple of Harvard Professor Thomas Nixon Carver, Vervon Orval Watts evolved from his checkered pre- and post-Harvard Ph.D. (1932) academic career to become an apostle of laissez-faire, anti-Keynesianism, anti-globalism, and anti-communism — first as chief economist of the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce and later as an editor/economist with the Foundation for Economic Education. In 1963 he became a leading figure at the young conservative business college, the Northwood Institute (now Northwood University) in Michigan, where he headed the Division of Social Studies over the next two decades.

Watts was hired by Leonard Read [greatest hit “I, Pencil”] in 1939 to become the chief economist for the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, where Leonard Read was executive director. Read later made Watts the leading economist at the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE). From Watts’ papers at the Hoover Institution Archives, Economics in the Rear-view Mirror was able to provide some of the back-story to the publication of the FEE publication “Roofs or Ceilings?, a famous Friedman-Stigler anti-rent-control pamphlet from 1946.

The Foundation for Economic Education posted a previously unpublished interview with Watts that took place in the mid-1970s. Here is a link to an archived copy.

Birth/Death Dates for Vervon Orval Watts:

Born: March 25, 1898 in Walkerton, Bruce County, Ontario, Canada
Died:  March 30, 1993 in Palm Springs, California.

Fun Facts: Northwood University is home to the DeVos Graduate School of Management. The DeVos family (Amway) was married into by Elisabeth (Betsy) Dee Prince who is currently serving as the United States Secretary of Education. Her brother Erik Prince is the founder of Blackwater USA.

__________________

From Harvard University sources

1926-27. Vervon Orval Watts was the Christopher M. Weld Scholar in Economics. Fifth-Year Graduate Student. Instructor in Economics and Tutor in the Division of History, Government, and Economics.

Source: Report of the President of Harvard College, 1926-1927, p. 111.

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Ph.D. awarded in 1932

Vervon Orval Watts, A.B. (Univ. of Manitoba) 1918, A.M. (Harvard Univ.) 1923.
Subject, Economics. Special Field, Sociology. Thesis, “The Development of the Technological Concept of Production in Anglo-American Thought.”
Associate Professor of Economics, Antioch College.

Source: Report of the President of Harvard College, 1931-1932, p.124.

__________________

Vervon Orval Watts
(1898-1993)
c.v.

Taught in Gilbert Plains High School in Ontario, Canada.

1923-26. Instructor in Sociology, Clark University.

1927-29. Instructor Harvard University.

1930. Visiting lecturer, Wellesley College.

1930-36. Associate professor of economics, Antioch College.

1936-39. Associate professor of economics, Carleton College.

1939-46. Economic counsel, Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce.

1946-49. Editorial director and economist, The Foundation for Economic Education.

1949-51. Visiting professor of economics, Claremont Men’s College.

1949-64. Economic counsel, Southern California Edison Company.

1951-57. Columnist, Christian Economics.

1961-63. Visiting professor of economics, Pepperdine College.

1963–84. Professor of economics and chairman of the Division of Social Studies, Northwood, Institute.

1975-76. First Lundy Professor of the Philosophy of Business at Campbell University, N.C. [on leave of absence from Northwood Institute].

Producer and moderator of radio and television forum programs.
Regular contributor to The Freeman and The National Review.

Books:

Why Are We So Prosperous.[1938]
Do We Want Free Enterprise? [1944]
Away from Freedom, the Revolt of the College Economists. [1952]
Union Monopoly: Cause and Cure. [1954]
The United Nations: Planned Tyranny.[1955]
Politics vs. Prosperity. [author and editor, 1976]

Sources: V. Orval Watts (Co-Author and Editor). Free Markets or Famine.[link to 1975 second edition] Midland, Michigan: Ford Press, 1967, p. 578. Copy in the Hoover Institution Archives. Papers of V. Orval Watts. Box 17. Obituary in the Los Angeles Times, 1 April 1993.

*  *  *  *  *  *

Obituary by a comrade-in-arms

Murray N. Rothbard, “V. Orval Watts: 1898-1993” reprinted in Making Economic Sense (2nded., 2006), pp. 450-452.

__________________

Vervon Orval Watts (1898-1993)
Selected Awards

1918. Gold Medalist in political economy, University of Manitoba.

1967. Liberty Award, Congress of Freedom, Birmingham, Alabama.

1967. Honor Certificate Award, Freedom Foundation, Valley Forge.

Source: Southwest Dallas County Suburban (Jan. 21, 1971) p. 9.

__________________

Obituary

V. Orval Watts; Chamber of Commerce Economist
by Myrna Oliver

Los Angeles Times, April 01, 1993

V. Orval Watts, the first full-time economist employed by a chamber of commerce in the United States, has died in Palm Springs at the age of 95.

Watts, who died Tuesday, was named in 1939 as economic counsel for the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, which at the time was the largest organization of its kind in the world. He continued in the position until 1946, when he became editorial director for the Foundation for Economic Education in Irvington-on-Hudson, N.Y.

Before the United States was thrust into World War II, Watts advised businessmen convening in Los Angeles that “Europe’s war” should teach Americans four things–to avoid war, to avoid monopolies and price-fixing, to avoid restrictions on trade and output designed to make work or maintain prices, and to remember that credit is sound only when based on production.

Once the United States was in the war, Watts repeatedly cautioned that wartime inflation created only the illusion of prosperity rather than actual prosperity.

Vervon Orval Willard Watts was born March 25, 1898, in Manitoba [sic, Ontario], Canada, and earned his bachelor’s degree at the University of Manitoba in 1918. He later earned master’s and doctoral degrees in economics at Harvard University.

He taught for more than six decades–at Gilbert Plains High School in Ontario, Canada; Clark University; Harvard; Wellesley; Antioch College; Carlton College; Claremont Men’s College; Pepperdine University, and Campbell College. He was professor emeritus of Northwood University, where he served as director of economic education and chairman of the Division of Social Studies from 1963 to 1984.

Watts also served during the 1950s as economic counsel for Southern California Edison, Pacific Mutual and other companies in Los Angeles. He contributed regularly to publications such as “Christian Economics,” “The Freeman” and “National Review.”

His books included “Why Are We So Prosperous?” in 1938, “Do We Want Free Enterprise?” in 1944, “Away from Freedom” in 1952, “Union Monopoly” in 1954, “United Nations: Planned Tyranny” in 1955, “Free Markets or Famine” in 1967 and “Politics vs. Prosperity” in 1976.

Watts is survived by his wife, Carolyn Magill Watts; a son, Thomas; daughters Joan Carter, Carol Higdon and Louise Crandall; nine grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren…

Source: Los Angeles Times. April 1, 1993.

__________________

Brief, Official History of Northwood University

On March 23, 1959, two young men with an idea, a goal, and a pragmatic philosophy to encompass it all, broke away from their careers in a traditional college structure to create a new concept in education.

Their visionary idea became a reality when Dr. Arthur E. Turner and Dr. R. Gary Stauffer enrolled 100 students at Northwood Institute. They used a 19th-century mansion in Alma, Michigan, as a school building, a small amount of borrowed money for operating expenses and a large amount of determination.

Northwood was created as the world was changing. The Russians had launched Sputnik and America was soon to follow. Stauffer and Turner watched the race to space. They envisioned a new type of university – one where the teaching of management led the way. While the frontiers of space were revealing their mysteries, Stauffer and Turner understood all endeavors – technical, manufacturing, marketing, retail, every type of business – needed state-of-the-art, ethics-driven management.

Time has validated the success of what these two young educators called “The Northwood Idea” – incorporating the lessons of the American free-enterprise society into the college classroom.

Dr. David E. Fry took the helm in 1982 and then Dr. Keith A. Pretty in 2006, each continuing the same ideals as Stauffer and Turner, never wavering from the core values. The University grew and matured. Academic curricula expanded; Northwood went from being an Institute to an accredited University, the DeVos Graduate School of Management was created and then expanded; the Adult Degree Program and its program centers expanded to over 20 locations in eight states; international program centers were formed in Malaysia, People’s Republic of China, Sri Lanka, and Switzerland; and significant construction like the campus Student Life Centers added value to the Northwood students’ experience. New endeavors such as Aftermarket Studies, entertainment and sports management and fashion merchandising, along with a campus partnership in Montreux, Switzerland, demonstrate an enriched experience for all our students.

With a clearly articulated mission to develop the future leaders of a global, free-enterprise society, Northwood University is expanding its presence in national and international venues. Professors are engaged in economic and policy dialogue; students are emerging as champions in regional and national academic competitions. At all campuses and in all divisions, Northwood University is energized and is actively pursuing dynamic programming and increased influence.

Northwood University educates managers and entrepreneurs – highly skilled and ethical leaders. With more than 57,000 alumni and a vibrant future ahead, The Northwood Idea is alive and well.

 

Source: Northwood University website.

Image Source: Harvard Class Album, 1932.

 

Categories
Cambridge Chicago Columbia Economists Harvard Ohio State Vanderbilt

Harvard. Economics Ph.D. alumnus, James W. Ford, 1954.

 

In this latest addition to our series “Get to Know an Economics Ph.D.”  we meet a Harvard Ph.D. from 1954, James William Ford.  His Ph.D. dissertation’s title was “International monetary relations and the British monetary system, 1920-1939”.

Ford’s academic path began as an undergraduate at Oberlin, then he went on to Harvard for his graduate work. Before getting his Ph.D., Ford received one of the very first round of Fulbright Fellowships to attend Cambridge University. He taught at Columbia, Vanderbilt, and Ohio State followed by two years working at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. His long final career stage was with the Ford Motor Company as a leading financial economist.

_____________

James William Ford (1923-2017)
Obituary

James William Ford, a beloved father, grandfather, and great-grandfather, died at age 94 on November 23 at his home in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Mr. Ford was born February 1, 1923 in Alameda, California, the son of Eunice George Ford and Shelton C. Ford, and older brother of Eunice Ford. He is survived by his second wife, Phyllis Ford; three children, Julian Ford, Amy Milkovich, Carol Arkin; two step-children, Jessica Leix and Peter Leix; 10 grandchildren; 1 step-granddaughter; and 7 great-grandchildren. In the first three decades of his life, Mr. Ford was an outstanding student and a City of Detroit High School Debate champion, served in the Army as a meteorologist during World War II, a graduate of Oberlin College in 1947, a Master of Arts recipient in economics from Harvard University in 1949, one of the first class of Fulbright Scholars in 1951 (at Cambridge University in Great Britain), and Doctor of Philosophy recipient in economics from Harvard University in 1954. Mr. Ford taught economics at Columbia University from 1951 to 1953, at Vanderbilt University from 1953 to 1957, and Ohio State University from 1957 to 1959, before becoming a postdoctoral fellow at the University Chicago with the eminent economist Milton Friedman. Mr. Ford served as Economist to the Board of Governors at the U.S. Federal Reserve from 1959-1961. He then moved to Ford Motor Company where he worked for the rest of his career until retiring in 1988. Mr. Ford was the Assistant Controller for the Ford Motor Company Finance Staff from 1961 to 1975, Executive Vice President for Insurance and Special Finance Operations at Ford Motor Credit Company from 1975-1977, then president from 1977-1980 and Chairman,1980-1987, of Ford Motor Credit Company. At Ford Motor Company he became Vice President from 1980-1987, Executive Vice President from 1987-1988, and President of Ford Finance Services Group from 1987-1988. Under his leadership, Ford Motor Credit Company developed a program and portfolio of financial policies and investments that achieved unprecedented fiscal success for the company. He visited and met with Ford Motor Company dealership executives all over the country, developing a network of successful entrepreneurs and many close friendships that lasted throughout his retirement. After retiring at age 65, Mr. Ford was very active for the next 25 years as a Board member for several nonprofit agencies serving children and families, investment firms, and most especially with the United Methodist Retirement Community and the Towsley Center in Chelsea, Michigan, where a wing is dedicated to his mother and a garden is dedicated to his beloved first wife Anne, and with Starfish Family Services. Mr. Ford was an avid tennis player for most of his life and captained a small sailboat every weekend for many years, and followed in his mother’s tradition by traveling widely around the world. He was a devoted brother to his younger sister, Eunice, and was much loved by many other members of the Ford family and in-laws on the Farley side of his and Anne’s family, and countless close friends including members of a potluck group in Ann Arbor that convened monthly for more than four decades. According to his wishes, a gravesite service will be held at Botsford Cemetery in Ann Arbor in the Spring…

Source:  Published in Ann Arbor News on Dec. 3, 2017.

Image Source: Oberlin College Yearbook, The Hi-O-Hi, p. 32.

Categories
Berkeley Carnegie Institute of Technology Columbia Economist Market Modigliani Ohio State Salaries

Columbia. Economist salaries below market. Examples of Modigliani and James W. Ford, 1956

 

The following letter provides interesting testimony to Franco Modigliani‘s market value in 1956 as well as how A. G. Hart hoped to offer Modigliani’s other offers together with an offer extended to James William Ford (Harvard economics Ph.D., 1954) by Ohio State University as evidential ammunition in the economics department plea for a significant increase in Columbia University salaries to remain competitive.

_________________

COPY

[Stamp: Office of the Vice President, July 13, 1956, Columbia University]

July 8, 1956

Prof. Carl S. Shoup
Executive Officer
Department of Economics
503 Fayerweather

Dear Professor Shoup:

This is to give further background on the scrap of evidence about the adequacy of Columbia University salary scales that is offered by Franco Modigliani’s comment on our offer of a visiting professorship for next year. As your note points out, the interpretation hinges largely on his professional status.

Against our offer of $10,000 for a one-year visit, as I read Modigliani’s letter with its gentlemanly absence of specific figures, he was offered $12,000 for a year as visiting professor at Harvard and at least $12,500 as permanent professor at Berkeley, and settled for (I take it) $12,000 to stay at Carnegie Tech. His age is 37 or 38, I believe, and he has been professor for two or three years at Carnegie Tech.

Modigliani’s reputation is established, but not very wide. He has published several distinguished articles, and has important work in progress; but his only book publication to date has been a collaboration with Neisser. Furthermore, he has lacked the backing of the major graduate schools (being an immigrant with a doctorate from the New School), and has thus tended to be undervalued by the market. Besides, he suffered a setback because he had the misfortune to be in the thick of the fracas at the University of Illinois. When working conditions there became intolerable, he felt such an unconditional urge to leave that he sacrificed the bargaining power of his tenure there as associate professor. At the time he went to Carnegie Tech, he could not command a tenure appointment but went on a term arrangement which however it took them only a few months to convert to an appointment with tenure.

In short, here is the kind of man we will want when next we have an appointment to make—and undervalued rather than overvalued on the national economics market—and our salary scale is at least $2500 below what he can command at good centers with about our teaching load, and with a lower cost of living. Another interesting comparison has come in meanwhile. James Ford, whom we let go from a Columbia instructorship to be assistant professor at Vanderbilt, writes that he has refused a post at Ohio State as associate professor at $8100. This is for a man of about the caliber and stage of development we think suitable for an assistant professorship at Columbia. We must be a good $1500 below the market at that level, if this is evidence.

Very truly yours,
/s/ Albert Gailord Hart
Professor of Economics

Source:  Columbia University Archives, Rare Book and Manuscript Library. Central Files, 1890-, Box 400. Folder “Shoup, Carl Sumner (2/2); 1/1956—6/1948”.

Image Source: Franco Modigliani, from MIT Museum website.

Categories
Economics Programs M.I.T.

M.I.T. Announcement of new graduate program in economic development, 1955

 

 

It pays to advertise and long ago in a paper world, departments would send out fliers to be posted on other departmental bulletin boards to capture the procrastinating eyes of undergraduates in the hope of stocking a qualified applicant pool for their incoming classes. Below is one such announcement for a newborn program in economic development jointly offered by the MIT Department of Economics and the Center for International Studies.

The last line of the announcement is somewhat ambiguous: “The Fellowship will carry a stipend of $2,000 exclusive of M.I.T. tuition.” Academic tuition that year ran $900 for two terms. On-campus housing for undergraduates ran to $380/year at the high end and two academic terms of board was about $500. Thus it looks like the fellowship would have broken down roughly 50:50 between tuition/fees and room/board/books.

________________

ANNOUNCING A NEW PROGRAM OF
GRADUATE TRAINING
IN ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

offered by

The Department of Economics and Social Science and
The Center for International Studies, M.I.T.

Beginning with the Fall Term of 1955, the Department of Economics at M.I.T. will offer a new program of graduate study leading to the Ph.D. in Economics that will provide students with special opportunities for studying the process of economic growth.

Members of the staff of the Center for International Studies will participate in courses and seminars in a way that will make available to students the current experience of the Center’s long-range research program in the field of economic development. Opportunities will be available for writing dissertations on problems being studied in a number of foreign countries.

The Center for International Studies was established by M.I.T. in 1951 to undertake research on political and economic problems that are of importance both for public policy and for the advancement of academic knowledge. Although the Center’s research is not limited to economic development, its extensive work in this field makes it appropriate to expand the economics curriculum at this time in recognition of the widespread interest in the problem of economic development.

Senior staff members of the Center who will participate in this new program of graduate instruction include Max F. Millikan, Director of the Center; Everett E. Hagen; Benjamin H. Higgins; Wilfred Malenbaum; Paul N. Rosenstein-Rodan; and Walt W. Rostow. Professors Rodan, Malenbaum, and Higgins are directing research projects on economic development in Italy, India, and Indonesia, respectively.

In order to augment the Fellowship funds available to students in the Department of Economics and Social Science, the Center for International Studies will offer one Fellowship in Economic Development for the 1955-1956 academic year. The Fellowship will carry a stipend of $2,000 exclusive of M.I.T. tuition.

 

Source:  M.I.T. Archives. School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Office of the Dean, Records, 1934-1964. Box 3, Folder “Economics Department, General. March 1951-1956”.

Categories
Harvard Suggested Reading Syllabus

Harvard. Advanced Economic Theory, Second Term. Schumpeter, 1948

 

 

In 1947-48 the advanced economic theory sequence of two semester courses featured the pairing of Gottfried Haberler and Joseph Schumpeter in the Winter and Spring terms, respectively. In this post you will find course enrollment data along with the course outline and assigned readings for the Spring term taught by Schumpeter. Alas I could not find the final examination questions for this course in the otherwise fairly complete collection of course examinations in the Harvard Archives.

Materials from the Winter Term course 1947-48 taught by Gottfried Haberler.

__________________

Course Enrollment

[Economics] 103b. Professor Schumpeter.—Advanced Economic Theory (Sp).

Total 10:  8 Graduates, 1 Public Administration, 1 Radcliffe.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College, 1947-48, p. 90.

__________________

Advanced Economic Theory
Joseph Schumpeter

Economics 103b
Spring Term 1947-48

Plan of Course and Suggestions for Reading

The plan of the course is to start from and to build upon Professor Haberler’s lectures in the Fall Term (103a). We shall start from the statics of equilibrium and then discuss at some lengths the use and limitations of the method of Comparative Statics. After this, we shall survey various Dynamic Models. These models will be made the starting points of excursions into relevant fields of pure and applied theory.

Professor Haberler’s reading list remains in force. Wicksell’s Lectures I being particularly recommended. In addition, perusal of the following items will prove helpful. The more important ones are marked by an asterisk. The list is intended to cover also suggestions for the reading period.

J. Tinbergen*, Suggestions on Quantitative Business Cycle Theory, Econometrica, July 1935.

F. Modigliani*, Liquidity Preference, Interest, and Money, Econometrica, January 1944.

N. Kaldor*, Stability and Full Employment, Economic Journal, December 1938

F. Lavington, Approach to a Theory of Business Risks, Economic Journal, June 1925

L. Metzler, Factors Governing the Length of Inventory Cycles, Review of Economic Statistics, February 1947

M. V. Jones, Secular and Cyclical Saving Propensities, Journal of Business of the University of Chicago, January 1944

L. M. Lachmann, Uncertainty and Liquidity Preference, Economica, August 1937

M. Kalecki, A Theorem on Technical Progress, Review of Economic Studies, June 1941

P. A. Samuelson*, Foundations of Economic Analysis, 1947

 

Source: Harvard University Archives. Syllabi, course outlines and reading lists in economics, 1895-2003. Box 4. Folder “Economics, 1947-48 (2 of 2)”.

Image Source: Joseph Schumpeter in Harvard Class Album 1946.

 

 

Categories
Harvard Suggested Reading Syllabus

Harvard. Advanced Economic Theory. Outline and readings. Haberler, 1947

 

 

In 1947-48 the advanced economic theory sequence of two semester courses featured the pairing of Gottfried Haberler and Joseph Schumpeter in the Winter and Spring terms, respectively. In this post you will find course enrollment data along with the course outline and assigned readings for the Winter term taught by Haberler. Alas I could not find the final examination questions for this course in the otherwise fairly complete collection of course examinations in the Harvard Archives.

Materials from the Spring Term course 1947-48 taught by Joseph Schumpeter.

__________________

Course Enrollment

[Economics] 103a. Professor Haberler.—Advanced Economic Theory (F).

Total 20:  15 Graduates, 2 Seniors, 2 Public Administration, 1 Radcliffe.

Source:Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College, 1947-48, p. 90.

__________________

Advanced Economic Theory
Gottfried Haberler

Economics 103a
Fall Term, 1947

This course will be devoted to a discussion of some selected topics centering around the theory of capital and interest. An attempt will be made to conduct the course in a seminar-like fashion.

Content

  1. Introduction

Types of economics

Theoretical vs. non-theoretical approach.

Logical types of economic theory

Individualistic—collectivistic economics
Microscopic—Macroscopic (aggregative) theories
Psychological—behavioristic approach
Static—dynamic analysis
Equilibrium—disequilibrium
General—Partial equilibrium
Price theory—welfare theory
Pure—monetary economics

Some major schools

Classical and neo-classical economics
Marxian economics
Keynesian economics
Others

  1. Brief recapitulation of modern time-less theory

Theory of household
Theory of firm
Theory of distribution

  1. Theory of capital and interest

“Pure” vs. “Monetary” theories of capital and interest
Time preference
“Productivity” of capital
Liquidity preference theory of interest
Dynamic theory of interest
Profits and interest
Uncertainty and time

  1. Topics in the theory of capital and interest

Substitutability of “capital” and “labor”
Influence of changes in wage and interest rates or the substitution of capital for labor
The “Ricardo” effect
“Capital intensity” and the trade cycle
Theoretical problems of capital accumulation

*  *  *  *  *  *

Reading

  1. [Introduction] No definite assignments. Suggestions:

Joan Robinson: An Essay on Marxian Economics
P. M. Sweezy: “Orthodox and Marxian Economics,” Science and Society, Summer 1947.
L. R. Klein: The Keynesian Revolution
L. R. Klein: “Theory of Effective Demand and Employment,” Journal of Political Economy, April 1947.

  1. [Brief recapitulation of modern time-less theory]

Hicks: Theory of Wages, Part I.
Hicks: Value and Capital, Parts I and II.
Readings in the Theory of Income Distribution, Chs. 5, 7, 8, 12.
P. H. Douglas: The Theory of Wages, Chs. I, II, III.

  1. [Theory of capital and interest]

I. Fisher: Theory of Interest, mainly Part II and first two chapters of Part III.
F. H. Knight: Articles on Capitaland Interest in Ethics of Competitionor in Readings.
F. A. Hayek: “Mythology of Capital,” in Readings
Schumpeter: Theory of Economic Development, Chs. IV and V.
D. H. Robertson: “Mr. Keynes and the Rate of Interest,” in Readings
K. Wicksell: Lectures, Vol. I, Chs. on interest.
F. Lutz: “The Criterion of Maximum Profits in the Theory of Investment,” Quarterly Journal of Economics, November 1945.

  1. [Topics in the theory of capital and interest]

Hayek: Profit, Interest and Investment, first essay.
Hayek: “The Ricardo Effect,” Economica, May 1942.
Haberler: Prosperity and Depression, 1941, pp. 481-491.
N. Kaldor: “Capital Intensity and the Trade Cycle,” Economica, 1939.
N. Kaldor: “Professor Hayek and the Concertina-effect,” Economica, 1942.

 

Source: Harvard University Archives. Syllabi, course outlines and reading lists in economics, 1895-2003. Box 4. Folder “Economics, 1947-48 (2 of 2)”.

Image Source: Gottfried Haberler, Harvard Class Album 1946.

 

Categories
Austria Economists Exam Questions Johns Hopkins Methodology

Johns Hopkins. Final exam for Fritz Machlup’s methodology course, 1956

 

 

Besides the questions for the final exam in Fritz Machlup’s course on the methodology of economics from the first semester of the 1955-56 academic year at Johns Hopkins University, I include the following photo from the 1956 yearbook Hullabaloo (p. 15) that identifies neither the speaker nor the seminar. While this is about as generic a seminar photo as one can imagine, I have something more than a mere suspicion that we are looking at Fritz Machlup in action. Perhaps some visitor with a keener forensic eye can confirm or reject my tentative identification in a comparison of the above portrait of Machlup reading himself with the speaker in the mystery seminar. The third man on the right, counting from the speaker, sure looks like a young Evsey Domar.

My hunch is based on the following picture of almost certainly the same seminar room in 1963 from the Carl Christ memorial website at Johns Hopkins.

 

______________

THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY
METHODOLOGY
18.601

Professor Fritz Machlup
January 27, 1956

Answer five questions, one from each group.
Write on loose sheets of paper; start a new sheet for each question.
Identify each sheet by the Question Number in the left corner and your Examination Number (which you draw before the examination) in the right corner; your name should appear nowhere.
You are on your honor not to use notes or to give or accept advice.

I.

  1. According to Poincaré, “a priori propositions are irrefutable because they are really firm resolutions to carry on the scientific game according to certain rules or stipulations.” Nevertheless, Morris Cohen considers a priori principles as “methodologic or regulative principles which enable us to organize our factual knowledge” and as “expressive of the fundamental nature of things,” What light does this view throw upon the methodological discussions of Hutchison, Kaufmann, Mises, and Knight?
  2. “While the deductive method might be applicable to a simple and stationary condition of industry, it becomes valueless in face of the increasing complexity of the modern economic world.” What was John Neville Keynes’ reaction to this point of view?
  3. “Just as the same proposition may express both a universal and a historical, or both a verbal and a real judgment, so it may express both a positive and a normative judgment.” (Fraser, Economic Thought and Language). First explain each of the three sets of antonyms and then explain and illustrate the statement.

II.

  1. Contrast and compare the logical nature of introspectionism and sensationalism as expounded by Felix Kaufmann or Morris Cohen.
  2. Give a reasoned explanation of Kaufmann’s distinction between three meanings of probability, one “relating to empirical knowledge as such”, another relating “to synthetic propositions undecided in a given scientific situation,” and a third referring to “the relative frequency of an attribute” within a certain collective.
  3. Felix Kaufmann, having made a distinction between empirical laws and theoretical laws, states: “Whereas we have both types of laws in natural science, there are, as I see it, no empirical laws established in social science, and even the tendency to establish such laws is not very strong. But if we consider the significance of theoretical laws in natural science, we cannot regard this as constituting a fundamental difference between the methods of natural science and those of social science.” Explain and discuss this statement in a way intelligible to someone who has not read Kaufmann’s writings.

III.

  1. Explain what Ludwig von Mises means by ”methodological apriorism”, “methodological individualism”, and “methodological singularism”.
  2. “In the history of applied Economics, the work of a Jevons, a Menger, a Bowley, has much more claim on our attention than the work of, say, a Schmoller, a Veblen, or a Hamilton.” What is Robbins driving at with this [last word cut off, “statement?” matches the spacing of the tips to the letter “t” that are still visible]
  3. Hutchison implies that pure theory may help the analyst to formulate questions to be answered by empirical studies: “The constant object of the scientist…is to compel the facts of experience to answer his questions definitely ‘yes’ or ‘no’…” Robbins appears to reverse the relationship: “Realistic studies may suggest the problem to be solved….But it is theory and theory alone which is capable of supplying the solution.” Discuss the paradox from the point of view of any of the other writers on methodology.

IV.

  1. If the description or institutional part of economics is viewed by Professor Knight as lying in the domain of cultural anthropology rather than economics proper, does this mean that in institutional inquiries sense observation assumes greater emphasis than intercommunication and interpretation? If not, why does Knight distinguish institutional from theoretical economics?
  2. “There are no better terms available to describe the difference between the approach of the natural and the social sciences than to call the former objective and the latter subjective.” (Hayek, “Scientism and the Study of Society”.) Explain the meaning of the essential terms employed and the statement as a whole.
  3. Hayek said: “It is only in so far as some sort of order arises as a result of individual action but without being designed by any individual that a problem is raised which demands a theoretical explanation.” Explain.

V.

  1. “Economics is in fact the only science which enjoys the advantage of an automatic quantification of its subject matter.” (Parsons, “Sociological Elements in Economic Thought”). Explain and discuss.
  2. Parsons distinguishes the following ideal types of criticism of abstract economic theory: (1) supplementary positivistic empiricism: (2) radical positivistic empiricism; (3) romantic empiricism; (4) supplementary non-economic sociology. Characterize each in a brief statement illustrated by examples.
  3. Discuss Veblen’s principal categories of human action—especially the “pragmatic” versus the “workmanlike” type—and compare them with the general “rational” type and the narrower “economic” type used in the abstract theories of traditional economics.
  4. On what grounds do Professors Herskovits and Knight reject and defend, respectively, the concept of the “economic man” as a useful tool of economic analysis?

 

Source:  Johns Hopkins University. The Ferdinand Hamburger, Jr. Archives. Department of Political Economy, Series 6. Box 3/1. Folder: “Department of Political Economy, Graduate Exams, 1933-1965”.

Image Source:  Johns Hopkins University yearbook, Hullabaloo, 1957, p. 28.

Categories
Columbia Economic History Race

Columbia. John W. Burgess charged with “anti-Negro thought” by W.E.B. Du Bois, 1935

 

Preparing for class tomorrow, I was reading the concluding chapter of W.E.B. Du Bois‘s book, Black Reconstruction in America, 1860-1880, that includes the following unflattering portrait of the founder of Columbia University’s School of Political Science, John W. Burgess. Since Burgess’s School of Political Science was the home of graduate economics education at Columbia University and the boundaries between the disciplines of law, history, political science, economics, and sociology were much less well-defined then than today, I think it is worth including W.E.B. Du Bois’s observations here at Economics in the Rear-view Mirror. 

Image Source: W.E.B. Du Bois (ca. 1919 by C. M. Battey) in Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division

_____________________

Excerpt from
Black Reconstruction in America, 1860-1880
by W.E.B. Du Bois.

The real frontal attack on Reconstruction, as interpreted by the leaders of national thought in 1870 and for some time thereafter, came from the universities and particularly from Columbia and Johns Hopkins.

The movement began with Columbia University and with the advent of John W. Burgess of Tennessee and William A. Dunning of New Jersey as professors of political science and history.

Burgess was an ex-Confederate soldier who started to a little Southern college with a box of books, a box of tallow candles and a Negro boy; and his attitude toward the Negro race in after years was subtly colored by this early conception of Negroes as essentially property like books and candles. Dunning was a kindly and impressive professor who was deeply influenced by a growing group of young Southern students and began with them to re-write the history of the nation from 1860 to 1880, in more or less conscious opposition to the classic interpretations of New England.

Burgess was frank and determined in his anti-Negro thought. He expounded his theory of Nordic supremacy which colored all his political theories:

“The claim that there is nothing in the color of the skin from the point of view of political ethics is a great sophism. A black skin means membership in a race of men which has never of itself succeeded in subjecting passion to reason, has never, therefore, created any civilization of any kind. To put such a race of men in possession of a ‘state’ government in a system of federal government is to trust them with the development of political and legal civilization upon the most important subjects of human life, and to do this in communities with a large white population is simply to establish barbarism in power over civilization.” [Burgess, Reconstruction and the Constitution, p.133 ]

Burgess is a Tory and open apostle of reaction. He tells us that the nation now believes “that it is the white man’s mission, his duty and his right, to hold the reins of political power in his own hands for the civilization of the world and the welfare of mankind.”4

4 Burgess, Reconstruction and the Constitution, pp. viii, ix.

For this reason America is following “the European idea of the duty of civilized races to impose their political sovereignty upon civilized, or half civilized, or not fully civilized, races anywhere and everywhere in the world.”5

5 Burgess, Reconstruction and the Constitution, p. 218.

He complacently believes that “There is something natural in the subordination of an inferior race to a superior race, even to the point of the enslavement of the inferior race, but there is nothing natural in the opposite.”6 He therefore denominates Reconstruction as the rule “of the uncivilized Negroes over the whites of the South.”7 This has been the teaching of one of our greatest universities for nearly fifty years.

6 Burgess, Reconstruction and the Constitution, pp. 244-245.
7 Burgess, Reconstruction and the Constitution, p. 218.

Dunning was less dogmatic as a writer, and his own statements are often judicious. But even Dunning can declare that “all the forces [in the South] that made for civilization were dominated by a mass of barbarous freedmen”; and that “the antithesis and antipathy of race and color were crucial and ineradicable.”7a The work of most of the students whom he taught and encouraged has been one-sided and partisan to the last degree. Johns Hopkins University has issued a series of studies similar to Columbia’s; Southern teachers have been welcomed to many Northern universities, where often Negro students have been systematically discouraged, and thus a nation-wide university attitude has arisen by which propaganda against the Negro has been carried on unquestioned.

7a Dunning, Reconstruction, Political and Economic, pp. 212, 213.

The Columbia school of historians and social investigators have issued between 1895 and the present time sixteen studies of Reconstruction in the Southern States, all based on the same thesis and all done according to the same method: first, endless sympathy with the white South; second, ridicule, contempt or silence for the Negro; third, a judicial attitude towards the North, which concludes that the North under great misapprehension did a grievous wrong, but eventually saw its mistake and retreated.

These studies vary, of course, in their methods. Dunning’s own work is usually silent so far as the Negro is concerned. Burgess is more than fair in law but reactionary in matters of race and property, regarding the treatment of a Negro as a man as nothing less than a crime, and admitting that “the mainstay of property is the courts.”

In the books on Reconstruction written by graduates of these universities and others, the studies of Texas, North Carolina, Florida, Virginia and Louisiana are thoroughly bad, giving no complete picture of what happened during Reconstruction, written for the most part by men and women without broad historical or social background, and all designed not to seek the truth but to prove a thesis. Hamilton reaches the climax of this school when he characterizes the black codes, which even Burgess condemned, as “not only … on the whole reasonable, temperate and kindly, but, in the main, necessary.”8

8 Hamilton, “Southern Legislation in Respect to Freedmen” in Studies in Southern History and Politics, p. 156.

 

Source:   W.E. Burghardt Du Bois, Black Reconstruction. An Essay Toward a History of the Part which Black Folk Played in the Attempt to Reconstruct Democracy in America, 1860-1880, pp. 718-720.

Image Source: John W. Burgess in Universities and their Sons, Vol. 2. Boston: R. Herndon Company, 1899,  p. 481.