Theories of Distribution was a course open to both undergraduate and graduate students and taught by Thomas Nixon Carver at Harvard in 1914-15. The course announcement, enrollment figures, and the final examination questions come from three different sources, all of which are available on-line. Over the next few weeks, I’ll be posting corresponding material from the twenty economics courses offered during the 1914-15 year for which the final examination questions had been printed and subsequently published.
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Course Announcement
Economics 7. Theories of Distribution. Mon., Wed., Fri., at 9. Professor Carver. —.
Course 7 undertakes an analysis of the laws of value, as applied to consumable goods and to agents of production, including labor, land, capital, and management; the laws determining wages, rent, interest, and profits; and an examination of the relation of the laws of value to the problem of social adjustment; the social utility of various forms of property; also a critical reading of various works on the distribution of wealth, on socialism, on the single tax, and other special schemes for attaining the ideals of economic justice. [p. 66]
Source: Division of History, Government, and Economics 1914-15. Official Register of Harvard University, Vol. XI, No. 1, Part 14 (May 19, 1914).
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Course Enrollment
[Economics] 7. Professor Carver.—Theories of Distribution.
Total 66: 5 Graduates, 25 Seniors, 31 Juniors, 5 Others.
Source: Report of the President of Harvard College, 1914-15, p. 59.
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Course Enrollment
ECONOMICS 7
- Is the landlord productive? On what grounds can the private ownership of land be justified?
- What is the function in production of “waiting”?
- How would you classify the forms of human conflict and what are the reasons for and against the possibility of eliminating the more primitive forms?
- What is meant by the irksomeness of risk and how is it related to profits?
- “At the proper time for plowing, let plowing cease. Would not the symptoms of scarcity at once manifest themselves without waiting for the time of the harvest?” How would you answer this question? Would an affirmative answer prove that labor is supported from contemporaneous production?
- Under which form of income would you place the following and why?
(a) Rent.
(b) The income of a successful speculator in land.
(c) The income of a successful manipulator of stocks.
- Are profits a part of the cost of production?
- What should be the attitude of the State toward inheritances? Why?
- Suppose the United States were to conquer and govern Mexico. Would such action be justifiable and on what grounds?
(a) According to the teaching of the Course.
(b) According to Willoughby.
- State and criticize Clark’s standard of distributive justice.
Source: Harvard University Examinations. Papers Set for Final Examinations in History, History of Science, Government, Economics, Philosophy, Psychology, Social Ethics, Education, Fine Arts, Music in Harvard College. June 1915, pp. 50-51.