“As Ed Mason tactfully hints, I’ve had enough lost causes for one year.”–Galbraith
In the following exchange of letters initiated by John Kenneth Galbraith in December 1972 we find multiple instances of seething rage barely concealed under veneers of formal academic politeness. Critical hiring and firing decisions regarding the subtraction of radical voices from the economics department faculty went overwhelmingly for the consolidation of mainstream economics earlier that month and Galbraith appears to have sought a vulnerability of this counterrevolution in its potential for conflicts of interest as he imagined coming from Otto Eckstein’s start-up, Data Resources, Inc. Eckstein’s response provides us with some interesting backstory to DRI. Feldstein and Jorgensen offered their witness testimony regarding this early episode in what would ultimately result in the so-called empirical turn in economics.
But even after suffering this tactical defeat, Galbraith’s strategic point was to be confirmed by history:
“I do have one final thought. In accordance with the well-known tendencies of free enterprise at this level, one day one of these corporations is going to go down with a ghastly smash. It will then be found, in its days of desperation or before, to have engaged in some very greasy legal operations. The Department and the University will be held by the papers to have a contingent liability. It will be hard to preserve reticence then. It would have been better to have taken preventative action now.”
The conflict of interest cases brought by the U.S. Department of Justice in 2000 against economics professor Andrei Shleifer and the Harvard Institute for International Development resulted in a settlement that required Harvard to pay $26.5 million to the U.S. government.
_____________________________
On behalf of the Department,
Galbraith wants to know more about DRI
JOHN KENNETH GALBRAITH
HARVARD UNIVERSITY
CAMBRIDGE. MASSACHUSETTS
December 20, 1972
Professor Otto Eckstein
Littauer Center
Professor Martin S. Feldstein
1737 Cambridge Street
Professor Dale W. Jorgenson
1737 Cambridge Street
Dear Otto, Marty and Dale:
It will hardly be news that I have been deeply concerned over the several recent actions of the Department of Economics on appointments as well as the academically less consequential problem of the less than gracious response to those of us who have expressed alarm.
There is an impression, of which you will undoubtedly be sensitive, that the positions of some of those favoring the recent action could reflect, however subjectively and innocently, their corporate involvement in conflict with their academic responsibilities. I do not wish in any way to prejudge this matter or even to be a source of embarrassment. The problem does seem to me sufficiently somber so that in the interest of everyone you no less than the rest of us the circumstances should be clearly known. In this spirit I raise the following questions:
- Could you indicate the nature of Data Resources, Inc? I have reference to assets, sales, employees, services rendered, identity of corporate clients and charges.
- I believe it can fairly be assumed from general knowledge that the Corporation owes part of its prestige and esteem to association with members of the Harvard Department of Economics. The foregoing being so and reputation being a common property of the Department and Harvard University, could I ask as to your ownership or other interest or other participation of whatever sort and return?
- Has the Corporation employed students and nontenured members of the Department of Economics and would you indicate the names?
- Could I ask if you have participated in the past in the consideration of Harvard promotion of any such employees, consultants or people otherwise associated with the Corporation and in what cases?
- Could past service or inferior service or present or potential utility to the Corporation or extraneous judgment based on business as distinct from academic performance create, again perhaps subjectively, the possibility of a conflict of interest in your passing on Harvard promotions? How have you handled this conflict in the cases in which people with an association, past or present, with the Corporation have been up for Harvard promotion, always assuming that there have been such cases?
- In the recruiting of clients for the Corporation, what of the danger that they will be affected by the close relation between the Corporation and the Department? Specifically could there be effort, however subjective, to quell their fears? The radical economists come obviously to mind. But, as you are perhaps aware, even I am not a totally reassuring figure to many businessmen department with too many people of my viewpoint might also evoke alarm. Does safety here suggest that one with major corporate interest disqualify himself on all appointments?
- Is there a possibility — I by no means press the point that the kind of economics that serves corporate interest will take on an exaggerated importance when some of our ablest faculty members, and students are working on such problems?
Let me repeat that I ask these questions only for a clarification in which we share a common interest. I do not of course raise the more general question of outside activity. This would come with very poor grace from me — it is indeed the reason why I have sought not to be a charge on university resources,
Yours faithfully,
John Kenneth Galbraith
CC: Professor James S. Duesenberry
Dean John T. Dunlop
JKG:mih
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Eckstein provides his answers to Galbraith’s “interesting questions”
Otto Eckstein
24 Barberry Road
Lexington, Mass. 02173
January 8, 1973
Professor J. Kenneth Galbraith
Department of Economics
Harvard University
207 Littauer Center
Cambridge, Mass. 02138
Dear Ken:
Pursuing the habits of a lifetime, you raise interesting questions in your letter of December 20th. Let me answer them by giving you an account of the origins and development of Data Resources, Inc., and of its relations to Harvard. I believe this will respond to all of your questions.
(1) Origins of DRI
As you know, my professional career has largely been devoted to the application of the techniques of economics to actual problems of the U.S. economy. After my most recent period of full -time government service in 1966, my views on the economy were sought by business and financial organizations. I quickly discovered that they made little use of macro economics or econometrics. The gap between macro and micro was unbridged. They typically ignored the overall situation. Econometrics, which always looked to me to be a very practical way to establish quantitative relationships, received little use and remained an academic plaything. I had already discovered in the government that even macro-decisions were made on the basis of very crude quantitative work, without the benefit of the thirty years of methodological development of econometrics.
In mid-1967, I had the idea that the technology of the time-sharing computer provided the missing link that would make it possible to use the modern techniques to improve private and public planning on a day-to-day basis. The time-sharing technology had the potential of overcoming the mechanical hurdles of programming, data punching, batch runs, etc. which had made econometrics a slow process open only to economists of exceptional mechanical aptitude. The time-sharing technology had the potential of bringing high quality data bases to researchers of providing them with the programs that would allow them to develop individual equations and to combine these equations into simulation models, and to evaluate their “satellite” models for historical analysis, contingency analysis and micro-forecasting. Such satellite models might encompass revenues and costs of their own industries or products, the detailed composition of unemployment, regional incomes, and the tax collections of governments.
These satellite models are constructed by users, at their own remote locations, combining their own data with the national data banks on the central computers. The programs allow the construction of the models and their on-line linkage to the centrally managed national models. Once the models are built, the particular company or government can quantitatively assess its own demand, costs, production, etc., assuming a particular macro-situation. It can see its own revenue and cost outlook assuming the central forecast, or alternatively what would happen if the economy should do better or worse. The micro-implications of changes in fiscal or monetary policy are also made apparent.
Besides making the tools that are our main stock-in-trade widely useable in the actual economy, the existence of such a system could accomplish these goals:
(1) There would be a rationally decentralized structure of information flows. The national data banks would be large and accessible, but local private information would remain where it belonged — in the confidential hands of the local analysts best equipped to use it.
(2) Analysis itself would be rationally decentralized. National forecasting could be done centrally with the use of lots of resources and with the benefit of an enormous data base and model collection. Micro forecasting would be done by the user organization itself.
(3) Micro-analysis would consider macro-environments as quantitative inputs. If the macro-forecasts are better than the crude assumptions previously made, the errors in micro-decisions should be reduced.
(4) As a result, the stability of the economy should be enhanced. There should be fewer and smaller mistakes in private and public economic decisions. Some of the benefits of indicative planning are realized without the political risks.
Once the basic ideas were clear, how was it to be done? The obvious possibilities were (1) a foundation financed project at Harvard; (2) persuade the government to undertake this work; (3) go to a large company such as a computer manufacturer or bank; or (4) organize a new, small private enterprise. After some reflection, I decided that the new, small private enterprise form was the only suitable one. A Harvard project was ruled out immediately because of the poor experience with the Harvard Economic Barometers of the late 1920’s, an episode with which I was familiar from reading the archives of The Review of Economics and Statistics. Also, the system would require considerable operating staff for the computers, data banking, service and marketing. A university is not a good employer for such a staff nor a good working environment for these functions. I knew from my government experience that such a project was beyond the capacities of public agencies, at least in the United States, and budget stringency would have made federal funding unlikely, The large company would have posed difficult personal and political questions. Further, I felt that if the scheme were successful — and I had a good deal of faith in it — it could grow and reach its full potential by generating its own revenues. Finally, the idea of ultimately supporting my family from my main activities rather than “moonlighting” was attractive.
In 1968, Mitchell, Hutchins and Company, an investment firm with whom I was consulting, found the venture capital, an amount in seven figures. Donald Marron, its President, and I then co-founded DRI. The largest fraction of the capital was provided by First Security Corporation, an asset management group under the leadership of Mr. Robert Denison, a summa graduate of Harvard College and the Business School. The Board of Directors of the company are Mr. Marron, Mr. Denison, myself, and Mr. Stanton Armour, the Chairman of the Operating Committee of Mitchell, Hutchins.
The project required managers, econometricians, programmers, and computer experts. Mitchell, Hutchins managed the organization of the company, provided the initial business background and management, recruited personnel, etc. Dr. Charles Warden, previously special assistant to several chairmen of the CEA joined the company and took on many of its managerial burdens. Later on the company was organized into three divisions, each headed by a Vice-President.
Given the complexity and ambition of the scheme, I recognized that I needed the collaboration of the very best econometricians in terms of ideas, review and quality control. Mr. Marron and I, therefore, put together a founding consulting group, consisting of Jorgenson, Nerlove, Fromm, Feldstein, Hall and Thurow. This group made major contributions in the design stage. Today, the academic consultants mainly direct policy studies that DRI has been asked to undertake by government agencies and foundations. At all stages, the largest part of the work of developing and operating the DRI system and forecast was done by full-time professional employees of the company.
To help assure the widest application of the new techniques and to be able to offer alternative model forecasts, DRI entered into an agreement with the Wharton model group directed by Lawrence Klein. We continue to collaborate with them, and the Wharton model and its forecasts are maintained on the DRI computers. Subsequently, we have entered into arrangements with the model building group at the University of Toronto and with Nikkei, the sponsors of the Japan Economic Research Center.
As for the distribution of ownership, about half of the equity is in the hands of the institutions who provided the capital. Professional employees have ownership or options on another substantial fraction of shares, and my children and I own about a fifth of the shares. The academic consulting group has about 5% of the shares, received at the time of the founding of the company. All of the stock is restricted; it is not registered with the SEC and hence not saleable. The academic consultants are paid on a per diem basis as they actually spend time. In order to give the company a better start, I did not take any pay in the first three years; last year I began to receive a modest compensation.
(2) The Status of DRI Today
On the whole, my hopes and aspirations for DRI have been realized The economic data bases are the most comprehensive in existence and their accuracy is unquestioned. The econometric models have advanced that art in certain respects. The forecasts have been good and are now followed and reported quite widely. The people — management, research economists, service consultants, data processing and programming experts, and marketing — are capable and the organization is strong. While it inevitably takes time for new concepts and techniques to gain acceptance and be widely adopted, more than half of the fifty largest industrial companies and a large fraction of the financial institutions utilize the DRI system. Every major government agency involved in macro economic policy as well as every major data producing government agency is a user of the DRI system. The research environment created by the DRI data banks, software, models and computers has proved so attractive that even organizations with considerable internal facilities find it useful to have access. DRI as an organization has no political views, though individuals associated with the company can take any position they wish.
Our system has also been used by ten universities and colleges and we have just begun to develop special services for the state governments. As DRI is becoming better known and our communications network to our computers spreads to cover a far greater number of communities, we expect that more colleges and universities will find it possible to take advantage of these research facilities.
The company reached the break-even point in the twentieth month of operation after expending the larger part of the venture capital to create the initial version of the DRI system. It is now moderately profitable and earnings are advancing rapidly. Thus far, the capitalists have earned no return of dividends or interest. They have been extraordinarily forbearing in not pressing for quick returns, preferring to let the company use all of the resources in these early years to bring the DRI concept to full fruition. The probabilities are good that the investors will be handsomely rewarded over the next few years. Having taken the risk and waited, they will have earned their return.
(3) The Relation of DRI to Harvard University
Recognizing the sensitivity of this issue from the beginning, I have made sure that Data Resources produced a flow of benefits to Harvard and that Harvard would not provide resources to DRI. The Board of Directors, heavy with Harvard alumni, formally instructed me early in our development to provide free use of the DRI system to Harvard students. Quite a few have done so, including students on my small NSF project on prices and wages. This Fall, for the first time, I have a graduate working seminar in econometric model building. Each of the seven students enrolled is building his own model, simulating it, and writing a paper. The projects include the first econometric model of Ghana, a small scale two-country model of Canada and the United States, an exercise in policy optimization using the DRI model, a study to use macro models to estimate the changing distribution of income, a study of tax incidence using translog production functions, and a model of Venezuela. If this experimental seminar is successful, a lot more can be done, of course.
In terms of relations with professors, Feldstein and Jorgenson were members of the original academic consulting group, along with professors at MIT, Chicago, Brookings and Wharton. I direct and take responsibility for the DRI forecasts, working with full -time employees. The others have focussed on policy studies, including three major studies for the Joint Economic Committee which received considerable attention. They have also done studies for the U.S. Treasury, the Ford Foundation, etc. These studies have not been a significant source of profit to the company, but they surely help to build Data Resources as an authoritative source of economic analysis and serve the public interest.
DRI has had very limited relations with the non-tenured faculty in the Harvard Economics Department. We cooperated with the Department in January 1969 to make it possible for Barry Bosworth to assume his appointment a semester early when he wished to leave the Council of Economic Advisers. He did some useful research that spring and summer, most of which reached fruition in his subsequent papers at The Brookings Institution. His half-time support was transferred to a project at Harvard after one semester. Mel Fuss collaborated in the early stages of our analysis of automobile demand sponsored by General Motors. Bill Raduchel has done some consulting in the programming area with us, but this was always was a very minor part of his activities. While it would be improper to recount the precise role of myself or Feldstein and Jorgenson in the promotion considerations of these three men, it is perfectly obvious and easily documented that there is no substantive historical issue of DRI considerations entering into Harvard appointments. Bosworth went to Brookings before his appointment came up; Fuss and Raduchel were not promoted.
Perhaps this is the point to digress on my philosophy on Harvard promotions. I believe that assistant professors should be selected on the basis of professional promise, their potential contribution to the undergraduate teaching program and whatever publication record they already possess. Promotion to associate professor should mainly be based on research accomplishments as well as teaching performance, with both prerequisites. I have always strongly felt that collaboration in the research projects of senior professors should be given no weight in non-tenured appointments because of the considerable risk that the Harvard appointment thereby becomes a recruiting device for the personnel of these projects. In my years at Harvard, I have never asked the Department to appoint anyone whose presence would be useful to me, and I never will make such a request. To the best of my knowledge, Feldstein and Jorgenson have pursued the same policy. I recommend adoption of procedures that would assure that all of us avoid such appointments.
There are more intangible relations between DRI and Harvard which are hard to assess and easy to exaggerate. If I did not possess a professional reputation which has been enhanced by my professorship here my career would have been different, and I might not have received my extraordinary opportunities of public service. As far as the development of DRI is concerned, my greatest institutional indebtedness is to the Council of Economic Advisers. It was this experience which made me appreciate the importance of accurate and quick information and of the tremendous potential of using econometrics to bridge the gap between macro- and micro-economics. As far as the relations with our private and public clients are concerned, a sophisticated group containing numerous Harvard graduates, they understand perfectly well the tremendous diversity of people and ideas present at Harvard. They know that Harvard has no institutional position on political questions or on the merits or demerits of the existing social, political or economic system. It is also clear to them that Data Resources is a totally distinct entity. I am not responsible for your views and you will not be tainted by mine.
Your final question, whether “the kind of economics that serves corporate interest will take on an exaggerated importance when some of our ablest faculty members and students are working on such problems” is a deep philosophical one which I can only attempt to answer in this way. The Harvard Economics Department has always contained individuals with widely varying concepts of their role in life and preferences in their professional activities. Compared to its historical position, the Department at this time is exceptionally heavy in abstract theory and methodology, and in social philosophy and criticism of the existing order. I represent a different point of view that has always been common in our department. It is my aim to apply economics to the country’s problems in the belief that the existing system can be made to meet the needs of the good society. The development of Data Resources is my current personal expression of this philosophy.
Sincerely yours
[signed] Otto
Otto Eckstein
OE/gc
_____________________________
Feldstein reports being a satisfied user of DRI services
HARVARD UNIVERSITY
MARTIN S. FELDSTEIN
Professor of Economics
1737 CAMBRIDGE STREET, 617
CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS 02128
January 9, 1973
Professor J. K. Galbraith
Department of Economics
Harvard University
Littauer 207
Dear Ken:
Although I was surprised by your letter, I am happy to describe my relations with Data Resources. I have been an “economic consultant” to DRI since it was organized. I would describe both the amount of work that I have done and my financial interest as very limited. Last year, my only DRI work was a study of the problem of unemployment that I did for the Congressional Joint Economic Committee. The Committee contracted with DRI for the study. DRI provided the use of the DRI model and data bank and the special computing facilities. Professor Robert Hall of MIT, another DRI consultant, worked on the study for a few days. The study, Lowering the Permanent Rate of Unemployment, was used as the background for hearings in October and will be published by the Committee this year. I am enclosing a copy for your interest. I might also note that although the work on this for DRI is now complete, I am planning to continue on my own to do research on some of the problems that I examined in this study. A graduate student who helped me during the summer became so interested in some of the questions of labor force participation that he is considering doing his thesis on that subject.
Before last year I worked on developing the financial sector of the Data Resources model. The basic work here was building a bridge between the usual Keynesian analysis and the Fisherian theory with its emphasis on the expected rate of inflation. My work here started as direct collaboration with Otto Eckstein; we published a joint paper, “The Fundamental Determinants of the Interest Rate,” in the 1970 Review of Economics and Statistics. This research led me to consider the importance of expected inflation in all studies of the impact of interest rates; I described my work on this in “Inflation, Specification Bias, and the Impact of Interest Rates” (Journal of Political Economy, 1970). Although further work on the financial sector is now done primarily by members of the DRI full-time staff, I did some work in 1971 on extending the analysis of expectations and testing alternative econometric models of expectations. This work is described in a recent paper, “Multimarket Expectations and the Rate of Interest” with Gary Chamberlain, that has been submitted for publication.
I have described my DRI studies in such detail to give you a sense of both the substance and nature of the work. It has been scientific research on substantively and technically interesting questions of macroeconomics and macroeconomic policy. I have also found the access to the DRI facilities, particularly the macroeconomic model system and data bank, to be useful in my other research and teaching.
I cannot believe that my association with DRI could create any of the problems that you indicate in your questions 5, 6 and 7. I believe that Otto is writing to you about the specific points that you raised about DRI in your questions 1 through 4. I hope that all of this material reassures you about the relations between DRI and members of our department.
Please call me if you have any further questions,
Sincerely,
[signed] Marty
Martin S. Feldstein
MSF:JT
Enclosure
_____________________________
Galbraith to Feldstein: You did not address my concern about “problems of conflict of interest”
January 19, 1973
Professor Martin S. Feldstein
Room 617
1737 Cambridge Street
Dear Marty:
Many thanks for your detailed — and good-humored — response. I’m grateful also for the JEC Study of which Otto spoke and which I am taking to Europe for my own reading. I have taken the liberty of giving a copy of your letter to Ed Mason who, as you perhaps know, is making a study of this whole problem.
As you can guess, I am untroubled by work done directly or through DRI for the government. I am concerned about the problems of conflict of interest that seem to me to arise when a corporation which owes its esteem to members of our Department markets profit-making services to other corporations. But this is something on which I should like to reserve comment until Ed Mason has come up with his conclusions.
Yours faithfully,
John Kenneth Galbraith
JKG:mjh
_____________________________
Jorgenson: I think you are barking up the wrong tree
HARVARD UNIVERSITY
DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMICS
January 22, 1973
DALE W. JORGENSON
Professor of Economics
1737 CAMBRIDGE STREET, ROOM 510
CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS 02138
(617) 495-4661
Temporary Address until 6/30/73:
Department of Economics
Stanford University
Stanford, California 94305
Professor John Kenneth Galbraith
Littauer 207
Harvard University
Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138
Dear Ken:
Many thanks for your letter of December 20 and your note of December 21. Let me take this occasion to thank you for the copy of your AEA Presidential Address you sent to members of the Department. It was a masterpiece of the genre and will be long remembered by its readers. I am very sorry that I was unable to attend your oral presentation at Toronto.
I share your deep concern over recent actions of the Department of Economics on non-tenure personnel, even though our views on these matters do not always coincide. In view of the strong feelings involved I found the discussion to be remarkably free of personal considerations. I hope that I have not been a party to what you describe as a less than gracious response to vour own views. If I have, I hope that you will accept my apologies.
Since your letter is addressed to Otto Eckstein, Martin Feldstein and myself, I will limit this response to my own role in DRI. I am a stockholder and consultant to DRI and have been for almost four years. In my work for DRI, I have acted as a consultant to several U.S. government agencies and to the Ford Foundation. I have had only one corporate client for my services. My main current activity for DRI is a study of energy policy for the Ford Foundation.
DRI provides a unique environment for certain types of research in applied econometrics. My current work on energy policy would be infeasible without the DRI system. The computer software, computerized data bank, and econometric forecasting system have been indispensable in modeling the energy sector and in studying the effects of economic policies related to energy. The facilities available at DRI have reduced the burden of data processing and computation for econometric model-building by several orders of magnitude.
To my mind the two most important features of the DRI system are its high quality from the scientific point of view and its ability to assimilate the results of research and to make them available for routine application. The data bank is unparalleled in scope and reliability and is constantly expanding as new sources of data are made available. The computer software package is highly sophisticated and is under continuous development as new econometric methods are designed. The forecasting system is the core of DRI’s operations and has undergone a process of improvement and extension that has continued up to the present.
The performance of the DRI system is the main source of attraction for DRI’s clients. This is certainly the case for my study of energy policy. You raise a general question about the concerns of DRI’s clients and the views of members of Harvard’s Department of Economics. In my experience there is no connection, either positive or negative. The clients of DRI are buying the services of DRI. As I have already indicated, this is a rather unusual product, unavailable at any university economics department, including Harvard’s.
On the issue of non-tenured members of the Department of Economics who are also employee-consultants of DRI, I have not employed any non-tenured members of the Department in my work for DRI, as I indicated in our telephone conversation. I find it difficult to envision circumstances in which any conflict of interest related to junior appointments could arise from my DRI association. There have been no such circumstances in the past.
I hope that these observations help to clarify the issues you raise
Yours sincerely,
[signed] Dale
Dale W. Jorgenson
DWJ: cg
cc: E. Mason, J. Dunlop, H. Rosovsky, R. Caves, J. Duesenberry, O. Eckstein, M. Feldstein
_____________________________
Galbraith back to Jorgenson: we need to avoid even the appearance of a “conflict of interest”
Gstaad. Switzerland
February 13, 1973
Professor Dale W. Jorgenson
Department of Economies
Stanford University
Stanford, California 94305
Dear Dale:
Many thanks for your letter and for your nice comments. I hope life goes well for you at Stanford. I am writing this from Switzerland where I am on the final pages of what I intend shall be my last major effort on economics. When I get tired I propel myself across the snow and think how good the mountains in the winter would be in a world where one did not feel obliged to take exercise.
I must say that my attention after writing was shifted to yet another of our corporations of which, to my annoyance, I was unaware. It functions currently, I gather, as a subsidiary of the antitrust problems of IBM.
I do feel that there are serious problems here. Participation in the management of the Department, especially in the selection and recruitment of personnel, and in the management of a profit-making enterprise are bound to involve if not the reality of conflict of interest then the appearance of conflict. Appointments, it will be held, are influenced by what influences corporate customers or needs. This must be avoided. It is especially clear if the corporation sells such services as antitrust defense. But it is also the case if the corporation becomes large and successful —, as I would judge, DRI is certain and deservedly to be.
The proper course, as I have suggested to Ed Mason and informally to Otto, is not to deny any professor the right to participation in a profit-making enterprise. Rather it is to separate the two management roles. A man should be free to have an active ownership role in a corporation or an active position in Department management. He should not do both. This would obviate problems of conflict or seeming conflict and protect the positions of all concerned. Needless to say, I would have the same rule apply to all.
Yours faithfully,
John Kenneth Galbraith
JKG:mjh
cc: E. Mason, J. Duesenberry, O. Eckstein, M. Feldstein, R. Caves, H. Rosovsky, F. Ford
_____________________________
“Economics Dept. Reports On Faculty’s Outside Ties”
by Fran R. Schumer. Harvard Crimson, March 20, 1973
A committee in the Economics Department reported yesterday that business connections between Economics professors and outside corporations do not interfere with hiring decisions and teaching practices.
James S. Duesenberry, chairman of the three-man committee, said yesterday that business ties do not impose a conservative bias on the Department’s hiring practices and do not limit the faculty’s teaching time.
Complaints
The committee’s investigation was prompted by complaints raised last term by John Kenneth Galbraith, Warburg Professor of Economics.
Galbraith attributed the Department’s “conservative hiring practices” to faculty members’ ties with business firms. “The fact that the Department sells its services to American business firms biases its administrative decisions,” Galbraith said.
Despite the committee’s negative findings, Otto Eckstein, professor of Economics and president of Data Resources Inc., a consulting firm, has requested to go on half-time status at Harvard, effective September 1.
Eckstein said yesterday that his decision resulted from Galbraith’s complaints and a new rule prohibiting professors from spending more than one day a week consulting. The rule, previously implicit, was formally written into University law this year.
Galbraith voiced objections to faculty members’ business ties several weeks after the Department’s decision last December not to rehire two radical economists.
At that time, Galbraith told Duesenberry that “business ties necessarily impair the faculty’s ability to impartially judge economists, especially radical economists.”
Galbraith also complained that the Department’s decision last December not to promote William J. Raduchel, assistant professor of Economics, was based on the quality of Raduchel’s work for an outside Resources had little influence on the consulting firm and not on his research and teaching abilities in the Department.
Raduchel is a consultant for Data Resources Inc. and is also a sectionman for Galbraith’s course, Social Science 134, “The Modern Society.”
The committee, composed of Duesenberry, Arthur Smithies, Ropes Professor of Political Economy, and Richard E. Caves, Stone Professor of International Trade, reported last January that Raduchel’s work for Data Resources had no influence on the Department’s decision.
The committee also reported that outside ties do not prejudice the Department’s hiring decisions and do not interfere with normal administrative functioning.
The committee reported its findings only to Duesenberry, the chairman of the Economics Department. Committee members refused to comment on how they investigated the problem.
Duesenberry attributed Galbraith’s objections to the Department’s decision not to promote Raduchel. “Galbraith is annoyed because his boy didn’t get promoted,” he said.
Raduchel told The Crimson last month that he was satisfied with the Department’s decision not to promote him. He said that the decision had “nothing to do with my connection to Data Resources, and was based on my academic work.”
Eckstein agreed with Duesenberry’s conclusion that Raduchel’s work at Data Resources had little influence on the Department’s decision.
Explaining his own position at Data Resources Inc. Eckstein said that his case is no different than that of other faculty members who do consulting work.
Currently, at least three senior faculty members and one junior faculty members do consulting work at Data Resources.
Eckstein described consulting work an inevitable product of Harvard’s hiring policies. “Harvard naturally attracts people who get involved in the outside world,” he explained.
He said that he has a “clear conscience” about the work he is doing at Harvard.
_____________________________
Galbraith to Chairman Duesenberry:
Gstaad, Switzerland
March 27, 1973
Professor James S. Duesenberry
Littauer M-8
Dear Jim:
Herewith some good-humored thoughts on our final talk the other day about our corporate affiliates. As you request, I will now leave the problem to the President, Steiner and whomever.
- Although both you and Henry Rosovsky had earlier expressed discomfort about our corporation and some action now seems in prospect, you say I’m severely viewed for raising the issue. Isn’t this a little hard? The important thing, I suggest, is to get things right. However, although given my sensitive soul it has been difficult, I have steeled myself over the years to the idea of not being universally loved.
- You say that the bias from combining business entrepreneurship with professorial activities in the eye of some of our colleagues is not greater than that deriving from my (or Marc Roberts’) support of George McGovern. I somehow doubt that the faculty would agree. There is indication of difference, I think, in the way one reacts. I do not find myself shrinking especially from identification even with anything now so widely condemned as the McGovern campaign. I detect a certain desire to avoid public discussion of our corporations.
- In keeping with the desire for reticence, I told Ed Mason I wouldn’t talk with the press. The Crimson tells me that you have explained that I raised the issue only out of pique over the non-promotion of Raduchel. Isn’t this a bit one-sided? However, beyond denying any such deeply unworthy motive, I’ll stick to my agreement, always reserving the right of self-defense.
- As to my motives, so far as I can judge them, I did feel that Raduchel got judged on his corporate work, while — as Smithies and I both complained — there was no consultation with those who best knew about his teaching. His teaching has been very good. I suggest that we are always in favor of improving undergraduate teaching in principle but not in practice. Also I do not agree that he was unpromotable. He has a lively, resourceful mind and has worked hard for the University and the students. I think him far, far better than the dull technicians we do carry to the top of our nontenured ranks, possibly even beyond.
- But, as I probe my soul for the purest available motive, it was not Raduchel. I simply think that, when a professor speaks or acts on a promotion, we should know that he is doing it as a professor and not as a businessman.
- I had thought that the separation of our business arrangements from the Department management might be a solution, with the proposed withdrawal of voting rights from the aged as a precedent. This, I gather, will not wash, so I subside. As Ed Mason tactfully hints, I’ve had enough lost causes for one year.
I do have one final thought. In accordance with the well-known tendencies of free enterprise at this level, one day one of these corporations is going to go down with a ghastly smash. It will then be found, in its days of desperation or before, to have engaged in some very greasy legal operations. The Department and the University will be held by the papers to have a contingent liability. It will be hard to preserve reticence then. It would have been better to have taken preventative action now.
Conforming to your wish that I restrict communications on this subject, I’m not circulating this letter. But would it trouble you If I added it discreetly to the file in the President’s office? Do let me know.
Yours faithfully,
John Kenneth Galbraith
JKG:mjh
Source: John F. Kennedy Presidential Library. John Kenneth Galbraith Personal Papers. Series 5 Harvard University File, 1949-1990. Box 526. Folder “Harvard Dept. of Economics. Discussion of appointments, outside interests and reorganization, 1972-1973 (1 of 2)”.
Image Sources: John Kenneth Galbraith (1978), Harvard University Archives; Otto Eckstein (April 1969), Harvard University Archives; Martin Feldstein (ca. 1974), Newton Free Library, Digital Commonwealth, Massachusetts Collections Online; Dale Jorgenson. (1968). John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.
