The previous posting was a transcription of the examination questions for the Ph.D. qualifying exam in money-and-banking (a.k.a. financial organization) at Chicago in 1933. This posting gives us the analogous exam for the field Economic History which tested both U.S. and Western European economic history equally. Bracketed checkmarks have been included for the questions that the economist A. G. Hart explicitly checked himself. It seems unlikely that Hart did not answer two of the last three questions of Group II, but until someone finds the typed copy of his exam (see introduction to previous posting, link above), we won’t know.
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ECONOMIC HISTORY
Written Examination for the Ph.D.
[University of Chicago]
Summer Quarter, 1933
Time: 4 hours
Divide your time equally between Group I and Group II.
Where suitable, answers in outline form are preferable and will save time. Read the instructions and questions carefully.
Group I
Answer question 1 and 3 others. Time, 2 hours.
- [✓] What reasons can you suggest to explain why the per capita money income in the United States around the first of the twentieth century was so much higher than that in the United Kingdom?
- [✓] Explain how economic conditions in the colonies reacted upon the transplanting of English institutions, political, social and economic, in the colonies.
- Describe the chief laws governing the disposition of the public domain since 1800 and give a critical estimate of the results of this legislation.
- [✓] Enumerate the various ways in which our ideal of democracy (in the broad sense) has reacted upon our economic history.
- [✓] Outline and explain the history of our merchant marine since 1789.
- Trace the evolution of the financial institutions upon which agriculture had to depend for its credit since about 1820, giving a critical estimate of the adequacy of these facilities at different periods.
Group II
Answer question 1 and 3 others. Time, 2 hours
- [✓] Make an outline or list of the main changes in economic institutions from 12th-century West-Europe to the World War. Briefly compare the conditions of at the later date with economic organization at the height of “classical” (Greco-Roman) civilization.
- [✓] Discuss in detail the manner in which the rising prices during the 16th century may have affected industrial development in England, France and the Belgian provinces? What comfort can advocate of “controlled inflation” today derived from the monetary history of the 16th century in these three countries?
- Compare the agrarian history of Italy in the first and second centuries A.D. With that of northern France in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries A.D. To what extent, if any, can the differences be explained by the differences in the natural resources of the two countries?
- Trace the history of thought in connection with any one of the following three subjects from the earliest times down to the present: (a) the influence of climate upon civilization; (b) The quantity theory of money; (c) The influence of religion upon the rise of capitalism.
- Selects some topic in economic history which you would be interested in investigating. Tell how you would go about obtaining the material. What sort of historical criticism would you apply to the material?
Source: Columbia University Libraries, Manuscript Collections. Albert Gailord Hart Collection. Box 60, folder “Exams: CHI QUALIFYING”.
Image Source: Social Science Research Building (Lecture Hall 2). University of Chicago Photographic Archive, apf2-07483, Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library.