Author: Irwin Collier

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Harvard. Alumnus Economics Ph.D. Canadian Prime Minister, W. L. Mackenzie King. 1909

 

 

In the continuing series, Get to Know an Economics Ph.D., we meet W. L. Mackenzie King who made his way to Harvard via the Universities of Toronto and Chicago. In a quick internet background check I stumbled upon the fact that this most distinguished Harvard alumnus was also someone who consulted crystal balls and regularly attended seances to communicate with the dead. These odd  facts only became known upon the publication of his diaries that can be consulted online at the Libaries and Archives Canada website. In this post I provide a 1921 report from the Harvard Alumni Bulletin and the excerpt from his diary describing his first day at Harvard.

Dictionary of Canadian Biography Vol. XVII (1941-1950).
Library and Archives Canada. Diaries of William Lyon Mackenzie King.

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A Harvard Prime Minister.
W. L. Mackenzie King, A.M. 1898, Ph.D. 1909

To W. L. Mackenzie King, Prime Minister. A.M. ’98, Ph.D. ’09, who led the Liberals to victory in the recent Canadian elections and now becomes Prime Minister of the Dominion, we are glad to extend our felicitations. Harvard men have had seats in the Cabinet at Ottawa on several previous occasions, but this is the first time that the University has had one of her graduates at the head of the ministerial table there.

After taking his undergraduate course at the University of Toronto, Mr. King came to Harvard in September, 1897. He had already acquired an interest in labor problems and his chief purpose in coming to Cambridge was to study economics under the guidance of Professor Taussig. His strength of intellect and his vigorous personality soon made an impression, both in the classroom and out of it; Mr. King was generally regarded as one of the ablest among the graduate students of his day. After receiving his master’s degree in 1898 and spending a further year in work leading to the Ph.D. degree in economics, he was awarded the Henry Lee Memorial Fellowship for study abroad, and spent the winter of 1899-1900 in Europe, chiefly at the London School of Economics.

Returning from London in the summer of 1900, Mr. King was offered an instructorship in economics at Harvard and was on the point of accepting it when a new development caused him to shift his plans. The Canadian government, just at this time, had decided to establish a Labor Bureau, and, casting about for a capable young man to take charge of it, offered the post to Mr. King, who accepted it with some misgivings because he had set his ambitions upon an academic career. At any rate, the Department of Economics had to find another instructor while King went to Ottawa where he became Deputy Minister of Labor and filled that post with such conspicuous success that in 1909 he was made a member of the Laurier Cabinet. With the defeat of the Liberals in 1911 he went out of office, but not out of public life, and on the death of Sir Wilfred Laurier he became the leader of the Liberal party. Now, at the age of forty-seven, he has reached the top rung of his political ladder.

During the twenty years since he left the University, Mr. King has never lost touch with Harvard. Among Harvard graduates in Canada he has been one of the most loyal and enthusiastic. From time to time he has looked in upon us during brief visits to Boston and we count him no stranger here. He has our best wishes for a successful administration.

Source: Harvard Alumni Bulletin. Vol. XXIV, No. 13 (December 22, 1921), pp. 285-286.

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 First Day at Harvard
from W. L. Mackenzie King’s Diary

Tuesday, September 28, 1897.
(Handwritten—p. 271)

…We arrived at Boston about 10.30 got off at Huntingdon St. & was greatly taken with the first glimpse at the city, everything so clear, like an English city, the names etc. not so much smoke or rush, took a street car for Harvard square & went at once to the College yard.

After looking about for a while I met Prof. Ashley & gave him the letter from Mr. Smith. He was very kind in showing me the library & taking me to the Episc. Theol. Seminary, where he sd. he hoped I wd. get a room as the life there was more like the Oxford life than anything in Cambridge. He tried to find the Bursar, pointed out to me the Washington Elm & the Craigie House, which are both close by, told me about other points of interest. I am much taken with the beauty of Cambridge, it is an ideal college town—the trees are beautiful, people live as well as exist here. I met Mr. Jno. Cummings during the afternoon. He is quite a young fellow & not just the man I expected. Spent a good part of the afternoon waiting upon the Bursar of the Epis. Theol. Seminary. May be able to get a room there. Went on a search for other rooms. About tea time got a place at 14 Millar St., Mrs. Morrison, where I could room & board till I get settled. The woman told me all her sorrows at the table. After dinner, after helping some girls with a bicycle, I called on Prof. Taussig—short call. I went for a stroll after dinner met a young girl was anxious to talk with some one lonely a little & restless. We walked about awhile together. Had I read my diary before going out I wd. not have gone so far—returned about 10. Went to bed tired & sorry at the mistake I had made.

Met Prof. Peabody who was very kind in offering to be of any service to me. Prices are very high here. Saw a room on 14 Sumer St. I like very much too high, 150 wd. come down 10.

Source:  Libraries and Archives Canada. Diaries of Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King, MG26-J13. Item: 1650.

Image Source: William Lyon Mackenzie King in 1899. Wikipedia.

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Exam Questions Harvard

Harvard. Core Advanced Economic Theory. Taussig (and Day), 1915-1917

 

 

Examination questions spanning just over a half-century can be found in Frank Taussig’s personal scrapbook of cut-and-pasted semester examinations for his entire Harvard career. Until Schumpeter took over the core economic theory course from Taussig in 1935, Taussig’s course covering economic theory and its history was a part of almost every properly educated Harvard economist’s basic training. Taussig’s exam questions were posted for the academic years 1886/87 through 1889/90 along with enrollment data for the course;  material from 1890/91 through 1893/94; 1897-1900 ; 1904-1909 ; 1911-14 have been posted as well.  

The course was taught by Taussig up through the Winter term of 1916/17. Early in 1917 Taussig was appointed chairman of the newly created United States Tariff Commission. He also was appointed a member of the Advisory Committee on the Peace (sub-committee on tariffs and commercial treaties) and he went to Europe for the economic sessions of the peace negotiations. His resignation from the Tariff Commission was  effective August 1, 1919 after which he returned to Harvard.

U.S. Tariff Commission Reports under Taussig 1917-1919:

First Annual Report (Fiscal Year ended June 30, 1917)
Second Annual Report (Fiscal Year ended June 30, 1918)
Third Annual Report (1919). 

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1914-15
HARVARD UNIVERSITY

ECONOMICS 11
Mid-year Examination
[F. W. Taussig]

Arrange your answers in the order of the questions.

  1. “Given machinery, raw materials, and a year’s subsistence for 1000 laborers, does it make no difference with the annual product whether those laborers are Englishmen or East Indians?
    . . . The differences in the industrial quality of distinct communities of laborers are so great as to prohibit us from making use of capital to determine the amount that can be expended in any year or series of years in the purchase of labor.”
    Under what further suppositions, if under any, does this hypothetical case tell in favor of those holding that wages are paid from a wages fund? Under what suppositions, if under any, in favor of those holding views like Walker’s?
  2. (a)“The labourer is only paid a really high price for his labour when his wages will purchase the produce of a great deal of labour.”
    (b) “If I have to hire a labourer for a week, and instead of ten shillings I pay him eight, no variation having taken place in the value of money, the labourer can probably obtain more food and necessaries with his eight shillings than he before obtained for ten.”
    Explain concisely what Ricardo meant.
  3. What, according to Ricardo, would be the effects of a general rise of wages on profits? on the prices of commodities? on rents? the well-being of laborers?
  4. “The component elements of Cost of Production have been set forth in the first part of this enquiry. The principal of them, and so much the principal as to be nearly the sole, we found to be Labour. What the production of a thing costs to its producer, or its series of producers, is the labour expended in producing it. If we consider as the producer the capitalist who makes the advances, the word Labour may be replaced by the word Wages: what the produce costs to him, is the wages which he has had to pay.”   J.S. Mill.
    What would Ricardo say to the proposed substitution [of “Wages” for “Labour”]? Cairnes? Marshall?
  5. “Suppose that society is divided into a number of horizontal grades, each of which is recruited from the children of its own members, and each of which has its own standard of comfort, and increases in number rapidly when the earnings to be got in it rise above, and shrinks rapidly when they fall below that standard. Suppose, then, that parents can bring up their children to any trade in their own grade, but cannot easily raise them above it and will not consent to sink them below it. . . .
    On these suppositions the normal wage in any trade is that which is sufficient to enable a laborer, who has normal regularity of employment, to support himself and a family of normal size according to the standard of comfort that is normal in the grade to which his trade belongs. In other words the normal wage represents the expenses of production of the labor according to the ruling standard of comfort.” Marshall.
    On these suppositions, would value depend in the last analysis on cost or utility?
  6. (a)“Were it not for the tendency [to diminishing returns] every farmer could save nearly the whole of his rent by giving up all but a small piece of his land, and bestowing all his labor and capital on that. If all the labor and capital which he would in that case apply to it gave as good a return in proportion as that he now applies to it, he would get from that plot as large a produce as he now gets from his whole farm; and he would make a net gain of all his rent save that of the little plot that he retained.”
    (b) “The return to additional labour and capital [applied to land] diminishes sooner or later; the return is here measured by the quantity of the produce, not by its value.”
    (c) “Ricardo, and the economists of his time generally were too hasty in deducing this inference [tendency to increased pressure] from the law of diminishing return; and they did not allow enough for the increase of strength that comes from organization. But in fact every farmer is aided by the presence of neighbours, whether agriculturists or townspeople. . . . If the neighbouring market town expands into a large industrial centre, all his produce is worth more; some things which he used to throw away fetch a good price. He finds new openings in dairy farming and market gardening, and with a larger range of produce he makes use of rotations that keep his land always active without denuding it of any one of the elements that are necessary for its fertility.”
    Have you any criticisms or qualifications to suggest on these passages from Marshall?
  7. “When the artisan or professional man has once obtained the skill required for his work, a part of his earnings are for the future really a quasi-rent. The remainder of his income is true earnings of effort. But this remainder is generally a large part of the whole. And herein lies the contrast. When a similar analysis is made of the profits of the undertaker of business, the proportions are found to be different: in this case nearly all is quasi-rent.”
    Explain what you believe to be Marshall’s meaning, and why he considers undertaker’s profits not to be “true earnings of effort.”

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1914-15
HARVARD UNIVERSITY

ECONOMICS 11
Final Examination
[F. W. Taussig]

Arrange your answers in the order of the questions.

  1. Explain briefly what Walker meant by the “no-profits” business man; what Marshall means by the “representative firm”; what your instructor means by the “marginal product of labor.” How are the three related?
  2. Explain briefly whether anything in the nature of a producer’s surplus or a consumer’s surplus appears as regards (a) instruments made by man and the return secured by their owners; (b) unskilled labor and the wages paid for it; (c) business management and business profits.
  3. “ Wages are paid by the ordinary employer as the equivalent of the discounted future benefits which the laborer’s work will bring him — the employer — and the rate he is willing to pay is equal to the marginal desirability of the laborer’s services measured in present money. We wish to emphasize the fact that the employer’s valuation is (1) marginal, and (2) discounted. The employer pays for all his workmen’s services on the basis of the services least desirable to him, just as the purchaser of coal buys it all on the basis of the ton least desirable to him; he watches the ‘marginal’ benefits he gets exactly as does the purchaser of coal. At a given rate of wages he ‘buys labor’ up to the point where the last or marginal man’s work is barely worth paying for. . . . If, say, he decides on one hundred men as the number he will employ, this is because the hundredth or marginal man he employs is believed to be barely worth his wages, while the man just beyond this margin, the one hundred and first man, is not taken on because the additional work he would do is believed to be not quite worth his wages.”
    Does this seem to you in essentials like the doctrine of Clark? of your instructor?
    [Hand-written note: The author is I. Fisher.]
  4. An urban site is leased at a ground rental of $2,000 a year; a building is erected on it costing $50,000; the current rate of interest is 4%.
    Suppose the net rental of the property (after deduction of expenses and taxes) to be $8,000. What is the nature of this return, according to J. S. Mill? Marshall? Clark?
    Suppose the net rental to be $3,000; answer the same questions.
  5. “That capital is productive has often been questioned, but no one would deny that tools and other materials of production are useful; yet these two propositions mean exactly the same when correctly understood. Capital consists primarily of tools and other materials of production, and such things are useful only in so far as they add something to the product of the community. Find out how much can be produced without any particular tool or machine, and then how much can be produced with it, and in the difference you have the measure of its productiveness.”
    What would Böhm-Bawerk say to this? What is your own view?
    [Hand-written note: The author is Carver.]
  6. “ Wages bear the same relation to man’s services that rent does to the material uses of wealth. . . . While rent is the value of the uses of things, wages is the value of the services of men. . . . The resemblance is very close between rent and wages.”
    “The principles governing the rate of wages are, in a general way, similar to those governing the rate of rent. The rate of a man’s wages per unit of time is the product of the price per piece of the work he turns out multiplied by the rate of output. His productivity depends on technical conditions, including his size, strength, skill, and cleverness.”
    Explain what is meant by “rent” in these passages and by what writers it is used in this sense; and give your opinion on the resemblance between such “rent” and wages.
    [Hand-written note: The authors are Fetter and Fisher, respectively.]
  7. Böhm-Bawerk remarks that the theory which he has put forward bears “a certain resemblance” to the wages fund theory of the older English school, but differs from it in various ways, one of which is “the most important” What are the points of resemblance? and what is this most important difference?
  8. “While the slowness of Nature is a sufficient cause for interest, her productivity is an additional cause. . . . Nature is reproductive and tends to multiply. Growing crops and animals make it possible to endow the future more richly than the present. By waiting, man can obtain from the forest or farm more than he can by premature cutting or the exhaustion of the soil. In other words, not only the slowness of Nature, but also her productivity or growth, has a strong tendency to keep up the rate of interest. Nature offers man, as one of her optional income-streams, the possibility of great future abundance at trifling present sacrifice. This option acts as a bribe to man to sacrifice present income for future, and this tends to make present income scarce and future income abundant, and hence also to create in his mind a preference for a unit of present over a unit of future income.”
    What would Böhm-Bawerk say to this? What is your own view?
    Whom do you believe to be the writer of the passage?
    [Hand-written note: The author is I. Fisher]

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1915-16
HARVARD UNIVERSITY

ECONOMICS 11
Mid-year Examination
[F. W. Taussig]

Arrange your answers strictly in the order of the questions.

  1. On what grounds is it contended that there is a circle in Walker’s reasoning on the relation between wages and business profits? What is your opinion on this rejoinder: that Walker, in speaking of the causes determining wages, has in mind the general rate of wages, whereas in speaking of profits he has in mind the wages of a particular grade of labor?
  2. According to Ricardo, neither profits of capital nor rent of land are contained in the price of exchangeable commodities, but labor only.” — Thünen.
    Is there justification for this interpretation of Ricardo?
  3. “Instead of saying that profits depend on wages, let us say (what Ricardo really meant) that they depend on the cost of labour. . . . The cost of labour is, in the language of mathematics, a function of three variables: the efficiency of labor; the wages of labour (meaning thereby the real reward of the labourer); and the greater or less cost at which the articles composing that real reward can be produced or procured.”   — J. S. Mill.
    Is this what Ricardo really meant? Why the different form of statement by Mill? What comment have you to make on Mill’s statement?
  4. State resemblances and differences in the methods of analysis, and in the conclusions reached, between (a) the temporary equilibrium of supply and demand (e.g. in a grain market), as explained by Marshall; (b) “two-sided competition,” as explained by Böhm-Bawerk; (c) equilibrium under barter, as explained by Marshall.
  5. Explain concisely what is meant in the Austrian terminology by “value,” “subjective value,” “subjective exchange value,” “objective exchange value.”
    Does the introduction of “subjective exchange value” into the analysis of two-sided competition lead to reasoning in a circle?
  6. “Suppose a poor man receives every day two pieces of bread, while one is enough to allay the pangs of positive hunger, what value will one of the two pieces of bread have for him? The answer is easy enough. If he gives away the piece of bread, he will lose, and if he keeps it he will secure, provision for that degree of want which makes itself felt whenever positive hunger has been allayed. We may call this the second degree of utility. One of two entirely similar goods is, therefore, equal in value to the second degree in the scale of utility of that particular class of goods. . . . Not only has one of two goods the value of the second degree of utility, but either of them has it, whichever one may choose. And three pieces have together three times the value of the third degree of utility, and four pieces have four times the value of the fourth degree. In a word, the value of a supply of similar goods is equal to the sum of the items multiplied by the marginal utility.” — Wieser.
    Do you think this analysis tenable? and do you think it inconsistent with the doctrine of total utility and consumer’s surplus?
  7. “If the modern theory of value, as it is commonly stated, were literally true, most articles of high quality would sell for three times as much as they actually bring.” What leads Clark to this conclusion? and do you accept it?

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1915-16
HARVARD UNIVERSITY

ECONOMICS 11
Final Examination
[F. W. Taussig]

Arrange your answers strictly in the order of the questions. Allow time for careful revision of your answers.

  1. “The productivity of capital is, like that of land and labor, subject to the principle of marginal productivity, which is, as we have seen, a part of the general law of diminishing returns. Increase the number of instruments of a given kind in any industrial establishment, leaving everything else in the establishment the same as before , and you will probably increase the total product of the establishment somewhat, but you will not increase the product as much as you have the instruments in question. Introduce a few more looms into a cotton factory without increasing the labor or the other forms of machinery, and you will add a certain small amount to the total output. . . . That which is true of looms in this particular is also true of ploughs on a farm, of locomotives on a railway, of floor space in a store, and of every other form of capital used in industry.” Is this in accord with Clark’s view? Böhm-Bawerk’s? Marshall’s? Your own?
  2. What is the significance of the principle of quasi-rent for
    1. the “single tax” proposal;
    2. Clark’s doctrine concerning the specific product of capital;
    3. the theory of business profits.
  3. Explain what writers use the following terms and in what senses: Composite quasi-rent; usance; implicit interest; joint demand.
  4. On Cairnes’ reasoning, are high wages of a particular group of laborers the cause of the result of high value (price) of the commodities made by them? On the reasoning of the Austrian school, what is the relation between cost and value? Consider differences or resemblances between the two trains of reasoning.
  5. “This ‘exploitation of interest’ consists virtually of two propositions: first, that the value of any product usually exceeds its cost of production; and, secondly, that the value of any product ought to be exactly equal to its cost of production. The first of these propositions is true, but the second is false. Economists have usually pursued a wrong method in answering the socialists, for they have attacked the first proposition instead of the second. The socialist is quite right in his contention that the value of the product exceeds the cost. In fact, this proposition is fundamental in the whole theory of capital and interest. Ricardo here, as in many other places in economics, has been partly right and partly wrong. He was one of the first to fall into the fallacy that the value of the product was normally equal to its cost, but he also noted certain apparent ‘exceptions,’ as for instance, that wine increased in value with years.” Is this a just statement of Ricardo’s view? Of the views of economists generally? In what sense is it true, in in any, that value usually exceeds cost?
  6. Explain carefully what Böhm-Bawerk means by
    1. social capital;
    2. the general subsistence fund;
    3. the average production period;
    4. usurious interest.
  7. In what way does he analyze the relation between (b) and (c)?
  8. Suppose ability of the highest kind in the organization and management of industry became as common as ability to do unskilled manual labor is now; what consequences would you expect as regards the national dividend? the remuneration of the business manager and of the unskilled laborer? Would you consider the readjusted scale of remuneration more or less equitable that that now obtaining?
  9. What grounds are there for maintaining or denying that “profits” are (a) essentially a differential gain, (b) ordinarily capitalized as “common stock,” (c) secured through “pecuniary,” not “industrial” activity? What method of investigation would you suggest as the best for answering these questions?

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Course Enrollment
1916-17

[Economics] 11. Asst. Professor Day.—Economic Theory

Total 28: 21 Graduates, 2 Seniors, 1 Junior, 1 Radcliffe, 3 Others

Source: Harvard University. Reports of the President and Treasurer of Harvard College, 1916-1917, p. 57.

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1916-17
HARVARD UNIVERSITY

ECONOMICS 11
Midyear Examination
[F. W. Taussig]

Arrange your answers strictly in the order of the questions.

  1. “Is it not true, in any normal condition of things, that consumption is supported by contemporaneous production?
    . . . Just as the subsistence of the laborers who built the Pyramids was drawn not from a previously hoarded stock, but from the constantly recurring crops of the Nile Valley; just as a modern government when it undertakes a great work of years does not appropriate to it wealth already produced, but wealth yet to be produced, which is taken from producers in taxes as the work progresses; so is it that the subsistence of the laborers engaged in production which does not directly yield subsistence, comes from the production of subsistence in which others are simultaneously engaged.”
    Consider, as regards contemporaneous production in general and also as regards the example of the Pyramids.
  2. “Our [British] commodities would not sell abroad for more or less in consequence of a free trade and a cheap price of corn; but the cost of production to our manufacturers would be very different if the price of corn was eighty or was sixty shillings per quarter; and consequently profits would be augmented by all the cost saved in the production of exported commodities.” — Ricardo.
    Explain what Ricardo meant here by “cost of production”; why he thought cost would be different in consequence of free trade in corn; and whether he believed cost (in this sense) to be the regulator of value.
  3. In what sense is the term “demand” used by Mill when speaking of (a) the equation of demand and supply, (b) demand and supply in relation to labor, (c) the demand for money?
  4. “The one universal rule to which the demand curve conforms is that it is inclined negatively throughout the whole of its length.” Can you mention exceptions as regards the demand curve for short periods? for long periods? In what sense is the term “demand” here used?
  5. It has been said that Marshall’s discussion of demand and utility is “an elementary analysis of an almost purely formal kind.” Does this seem to you a just comment?
  6. Explain “subjective value” and “subjective exchange value.” Under what conditions is subjective value to sellers of substantial influence in the determination of “objective exchange value”? Under what conditions, if under any, is subjective exchange value effective in such determination?
  7. “He [Longe] puts the case of a capitalist who, by taking advantage of the necessities of his workmen, effects a reduction in their wages, and succeeds in withdrawing so much, call it £1000, from the wages-fund; and asks how is the sum, thus withdrawn, to be restored to the fund? On Mr. Longe’s principles the answer is simple — ‘by being spent on commodities;’ for it may be assumed that the sum so withdrawn will, in any case, not be hoarded. . . . And I am disposed to flatter myself that the reader who has gone with me in the foregoing discussion will not have much difficulty in replying to it [the question] upon mine.”
    What is the answer on Cairnes’s principles? and is this the answer to be expected on the basis of a wages-fund doctrine?
  8. Explain in what way the relation between cost and value is analyzed by Cairnes and by the Austrian School. Would Cairnes’s analysis differ in essentials from the Austrian, if he were to assume complete mobility of labor? What significance do the Austrians attach to mobility of labor?

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1916-17
HARVARD UNIVERSITY

ECONOMICS 11
Final Examination
[E. E. Day]

  1. “The ultimate determinant of value…is marginal utility, not cost in the sense of labor of effort.” What would Marshall say of this? Böhm-Bawerk? Taussig?
  2. “The forces which make for Increasing Return are not of the same order as those that make for Diminishing Return…The two ‘laws’ are in no sense coordinate….The two ‘laws’ hold united, not divided, sway over industry.” Comment critically.
  3. Suppose the Federal government imposes a tax of 10 cents a bushel on all wheat grown in the United States. Upon whom will the burden of the tax fall? What conditions determine the final incidence of the tax? Illustrate, where possible, by diagram.
  4. “Rent forms no part of the expenses of production….Rent is not one of the factors bearing on price, but is the result of price.” Carefully analyze this contention.
  5. “The differences in the productive power of men due to their heredity or social position give to certain individuals the same kind of an advantage over others that the owner of a corner lot in the center of a city has over one in the suburbs. If the income from a corner lot is a surplus and can therefore be described as unearned, the income of a man of better heredity, education or opportunity must also be regarded as a surplus income and therefore unearned.” Discuss this statement with reference to your general theory of distribution.
  6. Contrast briefly the definitions of “capital” advanced by (a) Böhm-Bawerk; (b) Clark; (c) Taussig; (d) Fetter; (e) Veblen.
  7. Discuss the place of abstinence (or the sacrifice of saving) in the interest theories of (a) Böhm-Bawerk, (b) Clark; (c) Fetter; (d) Taussig.
  8. “In previous chapters, interest has been accounted for, in part at least, by the fact that there is productivity of capital; it results from the application of labor in more productive ways. If this were the whole of the theory of interest, we should reason in a circle in saying that wages are determined by a process of discount.” Do you agree as to the circle? Why or why not?

Source: Harvard University Archives. Examination Papers (HUC 7000.28, vol. 59). Harvard University Examinations. Papers Set for Final Examinations in History, History of Religions, History of Science, Government, Economics,…, Fine Arts, Music in Harvard College, June 1917. p. 61.

Image Source: Frank Taussig’s 1919 passport application.

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Categories
Harvard Social Work

Harvard. Interdisciplinary Department of Social Ethics, 1920

 

The death of the benefactor of Harvard’s Department of Social Ethics, Alfred Tredway White (1846-1921), provided the Harvard Alumni Bulletin an opportunity to review the history of the origins and progress of the interdisciplinary Department of Social Ethics established in 1905 which could trace some of its roots to the sociology course offerings of the Department of Economics. 

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Social Ethics.

The article by Professor Cabot which we print in the present issue serves a double purpose. On the one hand it pays a fitting tribute to the memory of one of Harvard’s most generous and self-forgetful benefactors. Mr. Alfred T. White did not give from love of himself, nor even from love of something that was his, such as an alma mater. He gave to a cause in which he believed, and he was concerned only that that cause might be effectively promoted.

But Professor Cabot’s article also throws light on the history and plans of one of the most interesting departments of the University. There is a sense in which this light is needed—for the Department suffers from its ambiguity. It has grown up in close relations with Philosophy, and is at present a member of the same division, and a fellow-tenant of Emerson Hall. Furthermore, Social Ethics sounds like “ethics”, and it is well known that ethics is a branch of philosophy. On the other hand, Social Ethics sounds almost equally like sociology; and that, according to our Harvard plan of organization, is a branch or dependency of Economics. Furthermore, when we come to examine the details of the Social Ethics courses we find that they deal with poverty, immigration, labor, and the like; and these topics appear also in the courses on Economics. There is even a third affinity that confuses the identity of Social Ethics. It is edifying Social Ethics. and improving, and in that respect like Divinity. When Professor Peabody headed the Department of Social Ethics he was at the same time “Plummer Professor of Christian Morals” and preached (as happily he still does) in Appleton Chapel.

What, then, would be left of Social Ethics if its definitions of moral standards were assigned to Philosophy, its descriptions of social facts to Economics, and its devotional spirit to the Divinity School? Nothing—that is, nothing except just that peculiar thing which you get when the three are combined. But the more one thinks of it the more clear one becomes that they are well worth combining.

Consider, for example, the case of poverty. The mere philosopher will prove that it is evil; the mere economist will describe its quantity, its varieties, and its causes; the mere priest will visit the poor and pity them. But suppose you combine the three things in one and the same man. He will have a rational and defensible judgment that poverty is bad; he will be well-informed about it, especially in its broader aspects and underlying conditions; and he will seek to provide a remedy. Now it was Professor Peabody‘s idea and Mr. White’s idea that society will be best served by this thrice-armed man, and that it might well be one of the functions of a great university to arm him and send him forth.

That every college man should acquire something of this reasoned and enlightened zeal to help effectively in the ceaseless struggle of man against nature and against his own infirmities, it would indeed be cynical to doubt. That there should be a special Department of the University in which this three-fold interest is focussed and nurtured is fitting and desirable. But apart from this contribution to undergraduate instruction, the Department of Social Ethics promises to render an important service to the community at large in its development of instruction for professional social workers. Several such courses are announced in the new pamphlet for 1921-22 as offered by the Department itself. But more significant of future development and possibilities is the reference to courses offered in other Departments or schools of the University, which by being systematically grouped would serve as admirable programs of professional social training. Thus, for example, courses in Social Ethics and Education (courses on play, mental hygiene, etc.) make up a varied and adequate program for workers in community centres, settlement houses, or recreation departments. It is evident in this case as doubtless in many others that the rich resources of the University may be made to serve new ends merely through being intelligently correlated with one another and with the public needs of the time.

________________________

A. T. White and the Department of Social Ethics

By Richard C. Cabot, ’89, Professor of Clinical Medicine and Professor of Social Ethics

Alfred T. White of Brooklyn, N. Y., has been the benefactor of the Department of Social Ethics at Harvard. His recent death makes it fitting to sum up here and now what he has done for the University.

Other benefactors have given to Harvard larger sums. But seldom has a single department been so generously and so steadily supported by a single individual. The total amount of his gifts has now reached nearly $283,000. In 1903 he gave $50,000 to provide quarters for Social Ethics in the new Philosophy Building then projected. In 1905 he added $100,000 as an endowment of the Department. In 1917 and again in 1918 he gave $50,000 for the same purpose. His will contained a bequest for $50,000, to which should be added smaller donations for temporary needs.

In these gifts there are several unusual qualities. First,—the giver was not a Harvard graduate. He was moved to help social ethics because he believed in it and because he believed in Professor F. G. Peabody, his life-long friend. Moreover, Mr. White believed in social ethics when almost no one else did. Professor Peabody has recently pointed this out: “When Mr. White began to invest in the teaching of social ethics at Harvard University, the subject was hardly recognized as appropriate to a place of learning and was viewed by many critics with apprehension and by some with hostility. Mr. White, however, realized that the problems of social welfare and change must be, as he once said, the central matter of interest to educated .young men for the next fifty years. He proceeded to create what was, I believe, the first systematic and academic department for such instruction that this or any other University has maintained.”

Moreover, he was a remarkably persistent giver. “It was a dramatic opportunity,” says Professor Peabody, “to endow a department of social ethics, but it was a much severer test of conviction to be the anonymous source of a continuous stream of benefactions, prizes, publications, and equipment for nearly twenty years and to secure their continuance after his death.”

I do not wish to prescribe a precise application for every part of the income which will arise from this endowment, but I shall be glad to have it applied toward the provision and maintenance of material, such as books, photographs, drawings, models, etc., toward a special library and a social museum; toward the payment of further instructors, assistants, and curators; to the encouragement through prizes, fellowships, and other rewards, of special researches or publications; or for lectures or new forms of instruction. My interest in developing these studies at Harvard University is prompted largely by my observation of the courses originated and directed by Professor Peabody, and it is my desire that, while he continues to administer this instruction, the income from this endowment shall be expended, with the concurrence of the Corporation, under his direction and in fulfillment of the purposes which he has in mind. I would like to have the endowment known as “The Francis Greenwood Peabody Endowment” for the encouragement of the studies of the Ethics of the Social Questions.

Doubtless the adventurous and pioneering quality of Mr. White’s gifts was enhanced by the fact that he was helping another pioneer. For Professor Peabody’s courses anticipated by many years the earliest teaching of social work in this country. The Boston School for Social Workers, one of the earliest in the country, was not founded until 1904—or twenty-two years after the time when Professor Peabody began to give similar instruction at Harvard.

It was in the autumn of 1883 that there first appeared as Philosophy II (later Philosophy 5) a course by Professor Francis G. Peabody described as: “Ethical Theories and Moral Reforms. Studies of the practical problems of temperance, charity, divorce, the Indians, labor, prison discipline, etc.” —a half-course. This course, to which there was added in 1895 a Seminary in Sociology (200), was given by Professor Peabody both in the Divinity School and in the Philosophical Department up to 1905, a period of twenty-two years. In 1904, Dr. Jeffrey R. Brackett, of the newly established Boston School for Social Workers, began to give also (as Philosophy 19) a course on “The Practical Problems of Charity, Public Aid and Correction”.

These courses, which at their inception had no parallels in any other American college, attracted the interest of Mr. White, long an intimate and valued friend of Professor Peabody. The result is best stated in his own words:

For fifty years my approach to any understanding of the involved social and industrial problems of the day has been from the point of view and practical experience of a layman. It was a recognition of a dire need which led me more than forty years ago to endeavor to study housing problems, but I was forced to cross the Atlantic to obtain any guidance. Incidentally, I became interested in industrial problems, in problems of intemperance, etc. . . . . When I found some thirty years since that Professor Peabody was endeavoring to instruct classes at Harvard along the very lines on which I had been endeavoring to work or find guidance, it seemed to me that an opportunity was presented of which it was my duty to make the most, and my contribution to the erection of Emerson Hall and the endowment of the Department of Social Ethics resulted.

This result was attained in 1905, when the Department of Social Ethics first appears in the University Catalogue, following that of Philosophy, and began to occupy its present quarters on the second floor of Emerson Hall, where space was provided (according to the plan of Professor Peabody and Mr. White) for a museum of social ethics and for a social ethics library, as well as for recitation rooms and small departmental study-rooms. Mr. White hoped that in this new building the Department might extend its usefulness and its influence:

I wish that all the teaching in the Department of Social Ethics might be of the highest possible quality, but I wish also that the Department might be made to reach the largest possible number of undergraduates. During fifty years I have seen the difficulty of making sane progress which is due largely on the one side to satisfied ignorance and on the other to untrained theorists. Instruction which Harvard has given and is giving in its Department of Social Ethics in the way of promoting careful and sane consideration of social and industrial problems seems to me really invaluable. Not infrequently I have happened to hear testimonies to its great usefulness.

It now seems clear to me that instruction in these subjects of study will have an unprecedented opportunity of usefulness in connection with the consideration of the grave problems of reconstruction which are opening before this country.

At the close of the Civil War I rejoiced to be coming of age at a time when similar though lesser problems confronted us, and now I am almost envious of those who are coming to manhood at this time and of those who have the opportunity to instruct them.

In accordance with these hopes, the Department added to its staff in 1908 Doctors Ford, Foerster, and McConnell, the first two of whom, after Professor Peabody’s retirement in 1913, have carried on the courses up to the present academic year.

The group of subjects which Professor Peabody could treat in the Department’s early years under the compass of a single course (at first a half-course) have since then been developed and separated into two separate full courses and nine half-courses. Thus Dr. Rogers (1905) and later Dr. McConnell gave separate half-courses in “Criminology and Penology”. The “European Phases of Social Effort” needed special treatment in a half-course by Dr. Foerster, begun in 1909. “Rural Social Development” (Dr. Ford) was added next year, “Housing Problems” (Dr. Ford) in 1912 and a new course, “Immigration and Race Problems”, by Dr. Foerster appears in the same year. In 1913 the “Alcohol Problem” becomes under Assistant Professor Ford a topic deserving separate treatment, and Mr. Carstens comes in from his Boston work in the Prevention of Cruelty to Children to give a course in “Child Helping Agencies”.

Hitherto all the ethical problems involved in the “Labor Question” had been treated as part of the general introductory course with which Professor Peabody began. In 1915 another offshoot appears as Social Ethics 6,—“Unemployment and other interruptions of income with special reference to social insurance” (Professor Foerster), also a seminary in “labor legislation, standards of living and earning”. In 1916 “Poor Relief” becomes a separate half-course under Assistant Professor Ford, and Assistant Professor Foerster adds a half-course in “Recent Theories of Social Reform”.

In 1920 the courses fitted to train professional social workers were separated from the rest as definitely professional courses, carried on by Professor Ford. An introductory course (A) and another advanced course (16) have also been added.

Mr. White assigned a very central position to the study of social ethics. He believed, as I do, that social ethics differs from most other subjects in being one that only an automaton or a maniac can wholly neglect. To direct one’s affairs at all, one must make some estimate of a better and a worse, which estimate is ethical and almost invariably social. One can neglect music and mathematics, chemistry and Latin, history and economics, if one is so foolish. But even neglect and foolishness have an ethical tinge in all but the most hare-brained people.

In one sense, then, social ethics is a subject that everyone deals with, well or ill. In this sense, like language, it is everybody’s specialty. But the question remains: Can social ethics be taught? I do not know whether Mr. White ever asked himself this question. I admit that it seems to me difficult to answer it with a confident affirmative. Each of us must, to a large extent, teach himself and find his own way in ethics. But this is almost as true of every other important subject. Only the mechanical and mnemonic elements of music, history, or mathematics can be “taught”. The spirit of these studies and of all studies has to be found by each for himself. This belief is, I suppose, at the root of President Lowell’s advocacy of the tutorial system. How to find out for oneself the interest of any study is perhaps possible under tutorial guidance for many who never could discover it in the class room. At any rate our chance of usefulness to the student will be as good as anyone’s when our methods of teaching are made more individual and personal through good tutors. Then the tremendous appeal of social ethics to the spirit of our time can be presented with its full force.

 

Source: Harvard Alumni Bulletin, Vol. 23, No. 30 (May 5, 1921) pp. 688-689, pp. 700-702.

Image: Robert Franz Foerster, Assistant Professor of Social Ethics. In Harvard Class Album 1920.

Categories
Economists Harvard

Harvard. Taussig’s assessment of the French economist Charles Rist for a Harvard lectureship, 1919

 

 

After Edwin F. Gay resigned his position at Harvard, Abbott Payson Usher took over his courses in 1921-22. (e.g. Economics 2a: European Industry and Commerce in the Nineteenth Century). From the files of President Lowell of Harvard we find that the French economist Charles Rist was seriously considered for that position. Frank Taussig‘s brief letter, transcribed below, was apparently sufficient to get a green-light from the President’s Office. I don’t know (yet) what was the deal breaker or even whether an offer actually ever went out.

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Letter of Economics Chairman E. E. Day to President Lowell

HARVARD UNIVERSITY
DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMICS

Cambridge, Massachusetts

March 4, 1920

Dear President Lowell:

I spoke to you some time ago of the Department’s wish that an invitation be extended to Professor Charles Rist to come as Lecturer in the Department for at least one half of the next academic year. I have not broached the subject again, because Mr. Gay has thought he might have other suggestions to make. It now appears that the expectations Mr. Gay had in mind will not materialize, and that he has no proposal to make which seems to him to promise better than that the Department had in mind. I consequently renew at this time the Department’s suggestion. In view of Mr. Gay’s resignation, the offering of the Department is obviously deficient. I understand that you will support the Department in its endeavor to discover a man who may be brought in permanently to fill in part the serious gap which Mr. Gay’s departure has created. The suggested invitation to Professor Rist is one of the measures in this direction which the Department thinks most promising.

Professor Taussig is the only member of the Department who has had an opportunity to become personally acquainted with Professor Rist. I enclose herewith a statement of Professor Taussig’s impressions of the man. The other members of the Department know Rist only through his publications. These appear to be of highest quality.

It is the proposal of the Department that an invitation be extended to Rist to lecture here during the first half of 1920-1921. Possibly he may be secured on an exchange arrangement. If not, the Department would like to see him appointed as Lecturer in Economics for not less than the first half of the year.

Sincerely yours,
[signed]
Edmund E. Day

Enc
President A. Lawrence Lowell

_______________

From a typed copy of Taussig’s statement

DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMICS

Cambridge, Massachusetts
November 28, 1919

            Professor Charles Rist is a member of the staff of the Sorbonne in the Department of Law. Economics is one of the subjects required of law students in France, hence there is a considerable economic staff for the law students. Rist is a man of 40-45 years, an extremely temperate, clear-headed, scholarly person. Of all the French professors with whom I came in contact in France he seemed to me the most promising. He has a most attractive personality, and is a clear as well as pleasing writer. His scholarly standing is assured. He is married, and has a family of several boys. For the sake of the boys, as well as for his own advantage, he remarked to me that he would very much like to come to the United States. If tolerable pecuniary arrangements can be made, he would doubtless come.

Rist’s command of English is not now sufficient to enable him to lecture in English. He would have to arrange to come over here a couple of months in advance and acquire a reasonable command of the spoken language. I should myself strongly advise him to do this, in case an invitation were extended.

Rist is the only man whom I saw in France who seemed to me a serious possibility for a permanent member of our staff. I think very highly of the man and his work, and have this possibility in mind in recommending him.

(Sgd) F.W. TAUSSIG

_______________

Copy of Lowell’s Response to E. E. Day

March 9, 1920

Dear Mr. Day:

It seems to me that the best thing would be to have Professor Rist sent here as the exchange professor from the University of Paris next year. We do not like to ask authoritatively to have a particular person sent, because we should not like it if they did the same to us. Therefore the best plan would be to have Professor Taussig write to him, suggesting that he should ask to be sent here next year as exchange professor, and he might add that he, M. Rist, feels confident that his selection would be acceptable at Harvard.

Very truly yours,
[name stamp] A. Lawrence Lowell

Professor E.E. Day
Department of Economics
Massachusetts Hall
Cambridge, Mass.

 

Source: Harvard University Archives, President Lowell’s Papers, 1919-1922, Box 155, Folder 293.

Image Source: Charles Rist at BnF Gallica website.

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Uncategorized

MIT. Economics Ph.D. alumnus (1957) Jaroslav Vanek. Obituary, 2017

 

When I conducted a bit of scholarly due diligence to try to establish the date of a Harvard economics skit I posted a few days ago (the script refers to the fact that Professor Vanek was leaving the Harvard department much to the regret of the skit-writers), I discovered that MIT Ph.D. alumnus, Jaroslav Vanek, passed away last month. Having been raised a comparative economics economist, I was aware of some of his work and post the local obituary that provides some insight into the man and scholar. 

______________________

Vanek, Jaroslav
04/20/1930-11/15/2017
Published in Ithaca Journal on Nov. 18, 2017

Ithaca resident Jaroslav Vanek, 87 years of age, passed away peacefully at Hospicare of Ithaca on Wednesday, November 15, due to the effects of myelodysplasia. He was born in Prague, Czechoslovakia, on April 20, 1930, to Josef and Jaroslava Vanek. His father worked in the Czech government’s labor ministry. He survived the occupation of Czechoslovakia by the Axis forces from 1938 to 1945, and during this time his mother took up beekeeping as a way to make ends meet, which turned into an interest that he would continue in his later years. Other early activities included building a canoe to paddle on the Vltava River that passes through Prague, and time spent at the family’s summer house in the village of Voznice, in the forested hills about 25 miles south of the city.

Jaroslav graduated from the Prague Gymnasium (high school) in 1949, where he was the pole vaulter on the track and field team. Later in life he reconnected with his high school classmates and attended many reunions with them in the Czech Republic in recent years. In September 1949, the family fled for political reasons into Germany, where they at first landed in a refugee camp in Munich, before eventually settling in Geneva and Paris.

The hardships of the Second World War and the communist takeover of Eastern Europe instilled in Jaroslav a lifelong desire to make the world a better place, including at first social justice and eradication of poverty, and later protection of the environment and development of renewable energy. Desire to increase the welfare of ordinary people led to an interest in economics, and he earned a degree in the field from the University of Geneva in 1954. He stayed on in Geneva to work as a professional economist, and while there met Prof. Charles Kindleberger of MIT. In 1955 he left Geneva for Cambridge to pursue a doctorate in economics under Prof. Kindleberger’s supervision, which he earned in 1957. He then taught economics at Harvard University. In 1958 while teaching at Harvard he met Wilda Marraffino of Larchmont, NY, then a doctoral candidate in history at Harvard, and they married on December 26, 1959.

Jaroslav left Harvard for an economics position with the U.S. State Department in Washington, DC, in 1963, and then came to Ithaca in 1964 to take a position with the Department of Economics in the College of Arts and Sciences at Cornell. Upon arrival they rented a house from the late Prof. Herbert Gilman of Cornell’s Veterinary College at 414 Triphammer Road, and later purchased the house. Although he and Wilda traveled widely, they would always call the house, known among family members as either “Triphammer” or “414”, home for the rest of his days and years.

His early work focused on international economics, one notable book being “Maximal Economic Growth” published in 1968. In the late 1960s and early 1970s he turned his attention to labor managed cooperatives as an alternative to mainstream economic models, leading to titles such as “The Participatory Economy: An Evolutionary Hypothesis and a Strategy for Development” in 1971. He was visiting professor in Belgrade, Yugoslavia; Louvain, Belgium; Wassenaar, Netherlands; and The Hague, Netherlands. These appointments gave his growing family a chance to live and go to school in several foreign countries, which formed an influential part of their upbringing. He also advised the governments of Peru and Turkey during this time.

In 1979 while on his second sabbatical at the Institute for Social Studies in The Hague, he got to know a Bangladeshi graduate student named Shakur who was eager to start a cooperative using solar energy to bake clay building bricks. This encounter sparked Jaroslav’s lifelong interest in appropriate technology combined with cooperatives, as a way to address economic inequality in the world. On his return to Ithaca he started the “Ensol” solar energy cooperative and began involving his family and graduate students in a flurry of low-tech solar inventions ranging from very large inflated parabolic discs, simple parabolas to generate steam power and improving simple one-pot solar oven design.

Jaroslav would also develop prototypes to harness wind and wave power. In 1986, as the work continued and attracted interest from around the world, Jaroslav and Wilda created the S.T.E.V.E.N. Foundation not-for-profit (Sustainable Technology and Energy for Vital Economic Needs) to fund continuing research and outreach abroad. Longtime Ithacans may remember the shiny Mylar-lined parabolic solar collectors which were visible in front of their home at 414 Triphammer Rd in the eighties and nineties.

Jaroslav enjoyed physical activity whether building his inventions in the backyard, walking or biking to his office on Cornell campus or summertime swimming in the local parks. In 1988 at 58 years old he biked around Cayuga Lake. His mother had remained in Geneva, Switzerland, and took up beekeeping as she had done during the war, so over the years he would help her when visiting. His children distinctly remember dad loading the family Volkswagen bus within an inch of breaking the rear axle at the Migro supermarket in Geneva with bags of sugar for mixing sugar-water for the beehives. In retirement, he enjoyed pitching in with projects at his daughter Teresa’s farm, notably assisting in beginning the beekeeping operation there and passing the interest to the third and eventually fourth generation. He also helped three local children with building their homes: a straw-bale home for each Teresa and her brother Steven, and a cohousing home for their brother Francis in the Ecovillage at Ithaca Second Neighborhood.

In 1989, forty years after he escaped with his parents, Jaroslav was invited to present at an economic conference in what was still Czechoslovakia – just before the Velvet Revolution. He brought the family along to see his birthplace for the first time. Thankfully he was able to reconnect with many friends and family. In 1992 the rise and fall of communism in Czechoslovakia came full circle and the summer house in Voznice that had been confiscated was returned to Jaroslav and his brothers’ ownership. This sturdy house that bordered on forests and a large swimming pond became a home away from home during annual visits to Czech Republic. Jaroslav and Wilda (and frequently their children and grandchildren) enjoyed bicycling, walking in the nearby forests – sometimes collecting delicious mushrooms and berries — and the cultural riches of Prague. They were fortunate to revive friendships in Czech Republic that continue until this day.

In closing, Jaroslav truly lived the maxim to “do all the good you can, for as long as you can.” He is survived by his wife of 57 years Wilda Vanek, and children and grandchildren: Josef Vanek, MD, surgeon in Uniontown, PA (wife Sue, children Carolyn and Tess); Francis (wife Catherine Johnson, children Ray and Mira), faculty at Cornell University; Rosie (husband Jon Liden), the Global Fund, Geneva, Switzerland; Steven (wife Leia Raphaeledis, children Anais and Jan), faculty at Colorado State University, Fort Collins; and Teresa (husband Brent Welch, children Milan and Luka), co-owner of Bright Raven Farm and Apiary.

A mass of Christian burial will be held at Immaculate Conception Church, 113 N. Geneva St., Ithaca, on Saturday, November 18, 2017 at 11:30 AM. Family will receive friends at the church at 10:45 AM. Burial will take place at Pleasant Grove Cemetery, in Cayuga Heights, following a brief reception after mass.

 

http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/theithacajournal/obituary.aspx?page=lifestory&pid=187271566

Categories
Exam Questions Harvard Suggested Reading Syllabus

Harvard. Undergraduate International Trade. Enrollment, Readings, Exam. Harris, 1949

 

Seymour Harris was a Harvard man from his undergraduate years through his retirement from his alma mater. He served many terms as a government economic adviser and after Harvard moved on to be the chair of economics at the University of California, San Diego. This post provides a course description, enrollment data, reading list and examination questions for his winter semester course 1949-50 “International Trade”. An earlier post provides the outline the 1933 version of the course “International Trade and Tariff Policies”.

Seymour Edwin Harris was born September 8, 1897 in New York City. He received an A.B. in 1920 and a Ph.D. in 1926 from Harvard University. From 1922 to 1964, Dr. Harris taught economics at Harvard University, where he received a full professorship in 1954, and served as the chairman of the department of economics from 1955 to 1959. During World War II, Dr. Harris was involved in several wartime planning projects. From 1954 to 1956, Dr. Harris became chief economic advisor to Adlai Stevenson. He then served Senator John F. Kennedy in the same capacity and was chosen as a member of President Kennedy’s task force on the economy. In 1961, Dr. Harris was named as chief economic consultant to Douglas Dillon, Secretary of the Treasury. During the Kennedy administration. Dr. Harris, a proponent of Keynesian economics, was a member of Walter W. Heller’s New Frontiersmen, which persuaded President Kennedy that the stimulation of the economy was more important than a balanced budget and tax cuts and government spending could counter threats of a recession. In 1963, Dr. Harris became the chairman of the department of economics at the University of California at La Jolla. At the same time, he served as a chief economic advisor to the Johnson administration. [Source: John F. Kennedy Presidential Library, Finding Aid to the Papers of Seymour E. Harris]

Harris had quite a reputation for grinding out volumes of edited papers (written by others):  From a 1962 or 1963 student skit:  Professor Gerschenkron’s alleged advice for Matthew (the Evangelist): “I wanted Matthew to rewrite his paper for the Quarterly Journal and call it ‘Christ as a proto-Keynsian’ [sic] But no, he was a very strong-willed boy and he brought it out in a syposium [sic] edited by Seymour Harris, called the Bible, essays in honor of God.”

_________________________

Course Description

Economics 143a (formerly Economics 43a). International Trade

Half-course (fall term). Mon., Wed., and (at the pleasure of the instructor) Fri., at 12. Professor Harris.

This course deals with the theory and practice of foreign trade and capital movements, including the importance of foreign trade, the manner of increasing its amount, its relation to the domestic economy, the problem of exchange rates, exchange control, international organizations in their relation to trade and capital movements. Political, economic, and administrative aspects are considered also.

Source: Harvard University Archives. Box 6, Courses of Instruction (HUC 8500.16), Final Announcement of the Courses of Instruction Offered by the Faculty of Arts and Sciences for the Academic Year 1948-49, p. 75

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Course Enrollment

[Economics] 143a (formerly Economics 43a). International Trade. (F) Professor Harris.

Total 120: 9 Graduates, 46 Seniors, 36 Juniors, 11 Sophomores, 1 Freshman, 12 Radcliffe, 5 Others.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College and Reports of Departments, 1949-1950, p. 43.

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Course Readings

Economics 143a
International Trade

  1. National Income and the Balance of Payments—4 weeks
    Relation of domestic policies and the balance of payments; the balance of payments of the United States and the United Kingdom; capital movements and reparations problems; dollar shortage and the E.R.P.
    Assignment

    1. *Harris; The European Recovery Program, pp. 1-120, 185-206, 272-276
    2. *Harrod; Are These Hardships Necessary? pp. 1-103
    3. United Nations; A Survey of the Economic Situation and Economic Prospects for Europe, pts. 2-5
  2. Regional Problems in the Balance of Payments—1 week
    No assignment.
  3. Industrialization and International Competition—1 week
    No assignment
  4. Monetary Aspects of International Trade—3 weeks
    Assignment

    1. Harris: The New Economics, pp. 246-293, 323-400
    2. *Ellsworth: International Economics, Part 1, Chs. 7, 9-11
  5. The Case for Free Trade and Obstacles to Trade—3 weeks
    Division of labor; comparative costs; tariffs and other obstacles; international commodity agreements and distribution of raw materials.
    Assignment
    Ellsworth, Part II, Chs. 1-5, 7-9
  6. The Problem of Allocation of Resources and Comparative Costs
    Assignment
    Ellsworth, Part I, Chs. 3-5

Reading Period Assignment—One of the Following:

  1. Staley: World Economic Development
  2. Buchanan and Lutz: Rebuilding the World Economy
  3. Marshall: Money, Credit, and Commerce, Pt. III
  4. Harris: Foreign Economic Policy for the United States

*To be bought.

Source:   :   Harvard University Archives. Syllabi, course outlines and reading lists in economics, 1895-2003. (HUC 8522.2.1), Box 4, Folder “Economics, 1949-50 (2 of 3)

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Course Final Examination

HARVARD UNIVERSITY
ECONOMICS 143a
International Trade

Spend forty-five minutes on each question. It is strongly suggested that you spend ten minutes assembling and organizing your thoughts before beginning each essay.

  1. Answer (a) or (b):
    1. It is a prerequisite for the establishment of interregional trade that relative prices would be different in one region from those in another if the regions were prevented from trading with one another. Why does this condition commonly occur, how does it lead to interregional trade, and in what way is that trade beneficial to the participating regions?
    2. Much of the theory of international trade attempts to explain how equilibrium in the balance of payments will be maintained by automatic tendencies. Present as fully as you can in the allotted time a classification and explanation of the forces working to frustrate these automatic tendencies and produce persistent dis
  2. Answer (a) or (b):
    1. Exchange depreciation has been resorted to in depression for reasons very different from those advanced for its use in periods of full employment. Compare and contrast the advantages and disadvantages of depreciation in these two situations, making use of specific illustrations.
    2. The incorporation of national income analysis into international trade theory has led economists to distinguish helpfully corrective international economic policies from so-called beggar-thy-neighbor policies. How would you make such a distinction, and how effectively can it be applied?
  3. Answer (a) or (b):
    1. Comment on the relevance of the domestic policies of ERP countries for the attainment of international equilibrium by 1952.
    2. Discuss the reciprocal trade agreements program of the United States with reference to (1) the general arguments for and against tariffs, and (2) the limitations of tariff policy as a means of achieving international economic equilibrium.
  4. Answer one of the following with reference to your reading period assignment:
    1. What basic changes in the world economic structure have resulted from two World Wars, and how do they obstruct the reestablishment of stable multilateral trade?
    2. On what conditions does Staley base his case that, for existing industrial areas, it is possible to make the advantages of the economic development of new areas far outweigh the disadvantages? Discuss these conditions critically.
    3. Diagnoses of the widespread “dollar problem” differ according to (1) the definition of equilibrium adopted, and (2) the particular country under discussion. Discuss both these sources of variation in analysis. (Treat either one at greater length than the other if you wish.)
    4. Marshall is noted for his development of the theory of international supply and demand (commonly called “reciprocal demand”) as the determining influence on the barter terms of trade. Develop this part of his theory, and comment on some aspect or aspects of its relevance to current problems discussed in this course.

Final. January, 1950.

 

Source: Harvard University, Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Papers Printed for Final Examinations; History, History of Religions, Government, Economics,…,Military Science, Naval Science. February, 1950.

Image Source: Seymour Harris in Harvard Class Album 1947.

 

Categories
Funny Business Harvard M.I.T.

Harvard or MIT. Economics graduate student skit, ca. 1963.

 

Because of the reference to Jaroslav Vanek’s leaving Harvard, we are able to date the following script to 1962-63 since Vanek left Harvard to work at the State Department in 1963. Almost everything about this script would lead me to conclude that it was used in a Harvard graduate student skit that somehow wound up in the folder for the Graduate Student Association at the Department of Economics of M.I.T. The folder is otherwise filled with clearly M.I.T. skit material from the 1960s. One of the students is identified as “David” another “Bob” and the third looks like “Les”.  

Lester Thurow did get his Ph.D. from Harvard in 1964 and came to M.I.T. in 1968 so it is not inconceivable that the following transcription is indeed based upon his personal typed script copy with original pencil stage directions that made its way into the folder. 

One thing that I find rather surprising about the text is just how many Harvard professors’ names have been misspelled.

__________________________

D—This is a review with a message—a message no economist can afford to ignore. The year is 2000 A.D. 16 years have now passed since 1984, that Armageddon of the economics profession when Professor Wassily Leontief finally established that the world really was homogeneous of degree one. The then President of the United States, Mr. Norman Mailer, immediately issued the great Marginal Product Proclamation. Everyone was to receive their marginal product.

B— But there was nothing left over for the economists. Economists became the hand-loom weavers of the 20th. century.

L—Arthur Schlesinger Jr. vividly described their position in a 17-volume work entitled “The Coming of the Raw Deal.” Economists everywhere, after the first shock, set out upon new careers. Tonight we shall discover what happened to some of those whom we know and love.

D—Several of them went into the movie industry and we will now let you hear the soundtrack of the preview of one of their movies.

(Epic Music—Bruckner?)

[Insert: Stand]

L—Ladies and Gentlemen, 21st Century Fox are proud to present Arthur Smithies and Joan Robinson in….The Big Push, the story of the unbalanced growth of an economist….

B—Production by Karl [sic] Kaysen

D—Copyright by Edward Hastings Chamberlain [sic]

L—All labor disputes on location and with Elizabeth Taylor arbitrated by John Dunlop.

B—Continuity by Simon Kuznets

L—Editing by Seymour Harris, of course.

D—Costumes by Robert Dorfman.

B—This is the story of Ragnar Maynard von Eckstein (his parents had always wanted him to be an economist). After many struggles at last he got to Harvard Graduate School.

L—It is a tale of |horror. See him now at a seminar on the economics of Medical Care…..

D—This after-noon I am going to discuss the economics of Blood-banking. One of the crucial problems in this field is what proportion to maintain of liquid assets. In this category we have blood [Insert:   L. What about near blood] near-blood. We also have non-liquid assets—bonds in the form of pounds of flesh. Another problem is the current shortage of tellers, for we can only employ vampires with a strong liquidity preference. If we cannot get more it will clot up the flow of funds and reduce the velocity of circulation.

L—It is a tale of |ambition…..

B—Coming from a family whose marginal product was zero, Ragnar Maynard realized that to get on quickly he must publish something. But what? He had not written anything. But our resourceful hero saw a way out: he would publish his first book before it was written. It was called First Draft, a revised tentative, preliminary, provisional text. It was based on Photostat copies of his blackboard notes.

L—It is a tale of |love….

D—Ragnar Manyrd fell passionately in love with a beautiful capital theorist, played in the movie by ravishing Joan Robinson. His demand for her love was infinitely elastic; her supply could not meet him—at least not at his price. The price was to join him in his exhausting search over peaks and through troughs for the elusive U-shaped cost curve.

L—It is a tale of |excitement

B—See Ragnar Maynard trying to free himself from the dreaded liquidity trap.

Insert: D—It’s true, it really is thicker than water

L—All this and more you can see in this movie—The Big Push is a take-off point in the development of the motion-picture.

B—See the exciting attempt on Professor Leontief’s life (with a 202 rifle) to try to prevent him revealing his startling discovery of a constant returns world.

D—See the world’s largest input-output table which proved it—drawn by the Economic Research project in the sand of the New Mexican desert.

L—You cannot afford to miss this motion picture. Filmed in wonderful new—Solocolor. An introducing revolutionary—Rostowscope.

(concluding epic music)

[Insert: Sit]

D—But the movies could not accommodate everybody…

[Insert: Bob in middle]

[Insert: one illegible word]

L—Professor Leontief, having escaped with his life, and using his input-output table from Scientific American as a testimonial, got into the business of designing bathroom tiles.

B—Professor Duesenbery [sic] was well qualified to go into the demonstration business. He drove Cadillacs around low-income districts to stimulate demand. And changed his name to Jones so that it would be him that everyone was keeping up with.

D—In England many economists went to work for the government where they produced a remarkable effect. Before 1984 political speeches had sounded something like this.

B—Good evening; I’m the Prime Minister. My name is….. [insert: ad lib] etc.

D—But now all this has changed…

B—Good evening…[insert: ad lib] etc.

L—Professor Tom Schelling took up a career in Madison avenue. It was he who was responsible for some of the following products…

D—Ladies, now you can wear the most powerful and alluring perfume in the world—First Strike—the only perfume with complete credibility. It also contains the only deodorant with overkill.

B—Now at last there is a product to take away the smell of deodorant—it is called Counterforce. Only Counterforce gives you 24-hour protection against odorlessness. [Insert: 5120 or S120]

[Insert: STAND]

L—For years girls have been searching for a perfume which will attract the men and yet prevent them from taking liberties—now they have it in the form of Deterrence—the perfume which is effective [Insert: only] if you don’t use it.

D—He also introduced a city wide deodorant campaign under the title of Civil defence.

L—And the only really safe method of birth control—Early Warning.

B—Meanwhile Professor Dunlop had become a truck driver and a shop steward for Jimmy Hoffa.

D—And Professor Kuznets took to selling abacuses.

[Insert: Some economists, not from Harvard opened a cafeteria.]

[Insert: Bob-Les—come forward]

L—Professor Galbraith first thought of becoming a rice farmer. But he soon saw that since there was no more need for economists he could now come into his own. After a coup d’etat he took over the Littauer building and changed it into the department of Affluent Studies. The idea was the ultra-popularization of economics; the main qualification for admission was to be a good phrase-monger. The new department published books like…

B—The Economics of Sex, with an appendix on the second derivatives of Jayne Mansfield. A geometric interpretation with diagrams.

D—The department became identified with a new theory of economic decline, published as a non-Rostovian manifesto. All countries, it said, tend to decline, and their speed of decline is determined by their relative degree of economic advancement. Its five stages of decline started with the age of mass consumption, through the age of preconditions for decline, coming then to the crucial landing stage.

B—Other books appeared like ‘The Naked Truth about Public Squalor, and so on.

[Insert: Pause—back to audience]

L—Only one of the redundant economists took the highest calling of all. Let us now eavesdrop on a sermon by [Insert: his eminence] Archbishop Gerschenkron…

[Insert: seated]

B—You know, when I was an economist one of my graduate students wrote a very good paper for my course. Matthew, [Insert: I said] why don’t you publish this paper, no, really why don’t you publish. But you know youll have to change the title. What journal is going to publish a paper called ‘the First Gospel’? But you know it really was a very good paper. There was a lot of interesting material about the farm problem in Egypt and about the almost miraculous elasticity of supply of loaves and small fishes in Gallillee [sic]. Then there was a very good section about Christ throwing the money-changers from the temple. Well, you see, the rate of interest was very high then. Don’t you think that the real reason why Christ did this was to reduce the rate of interest and to stimulate investment. You see, I wanted Matthew to rewrite his paper for the Quarterly Journal and call it ‘Christ as a proto-Keynsian’ [sic] But no, he was a very strong-willed boy and he brought it out in a syposium [sic] edited by Seymour Harris, called the Bible, essays in honor of God. But, you know, it was still required reading for my course.

D—Professor Harberler [sic] took to song writing, and here is a sample…

[Insert: stand behind table]

(tune: God bless America)

[Insert: All:] God bless free enterprise,
[Insert: MOC or HOC or NOC] System divine,
Stand beside her and guide her,
Just as long as the profits are mine.
[Insert: Salute]
Corporations may they prosper
Big business, may it grow!
[Insert: MOC or HOC or NOC] God bless Free Enterprise,
The Status quo!

L—Well, David, I guess that’s it. Do you think they’ll throw us out?

D—I dont know. But I dont suppose we’ll ever be allowed to pass generals. There are still some jobs you can get without a Ph.D.

B—No chance at all is there? I mean about generals….

D—Well they were all in it weren’t they—all the generals board.

L—What about Professor Vanek? He emerged unscathed.

D—That’s true but he’s leaving.

B—That’s fair, of course.

L—Yes, he hasn’t done much since he’s been here really.

D—Half a dozen good articles…

B—4 books, or is it 5?

L—He’s become an acknowledged expert on at least two major fields of economics…

D—A clear and stimulating teacher…
And a nice guy…

L—Not much really. [Insert: Clearly not a Harvard type]

B—Not surprised they’re letting him go

D—Well, that’s it then.

B—One more thing actually…The perpetrators of this entertainment would like it to be known that any resemblance of characters in this review to any person or persons living or half-dead is purely intentional.

L—So be it.

All—In the name of the Holy Trinity:

D—Dorfman,

L—Samuelson,

B—and Solow.

All—Amen

 

Source:   MIT Archives. Department of Economics Records, Box 2, Folder “GEA 1961-67”.

 

Categories
Exam Questions Harvard

Harvard. Core Economic Theory. Enrollments and Exams. Taussig. 1911-14

 

 

 

Examination questions spanning just over a half-century can be found in Frank Taussig’s personal scrapbook of cut-and-pasted semester examinations for his entire Harvard career. Until Schumpeter took over the core economic theory course from Taussig in 1935, Taussig’s course covering economic theory and its history was a part of almost every properly educated Harvard economist’s basic training. Taussig’s exam questions were posted for the academic years 1886/87 through 1889/90 along with enrollment data for the course;  material from 1890/91 through 1893/94; 1897-1900 ; and 1904-1909 have been posted as well.  

Sad backstory: The year gap in teaching that immediately preceeeded the years covered below was because Frank Taussig took a leave of absence in 1909-10 that he spent with his wife (Edith Thomas Guild, born 1861) in Saranac Lake, New York where she died on April 15, 1910.
Source: J. A. Schumpeter, A. H. Cole, and E. S. Mason “Frank William Taussig” in Quarterly Journal of Economics, vol. 44, No. 3 (May, 1941), p. 352.

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Course Announcement
Economics 2
1910-11

  1. Economic Theory. Mon., Wed., Fri., at 2.30. Professor Taussig.

            Course 2 is intended to acquaint the student with some of the later developments of economic thought, and at the same time to train him in the critical consideration of economic principles and the analysis of economic conditions. The exercises are accordingly conducted mainly by the discussion of selected passages from the leading writers; and in this discussion the students are expected to take an active part. The writings of F.A. Walker, Cairnes, Clark, Marshall, Böhm-Bawerk, and other recent authors, will be taken up. Attention will be given chiefly to the theory of exchange and distribution; but other subjects, such as international trade, and free trade and protection, will also be considered.

Source: History and Political Science, Comprising the Departments of History and Government, and Economics, 1910-11. Published in the Official Register of Harvard University. Vol. VI,I No. 23 (June 21, 1910), pp. 52-3.

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Enrollment Economics 2
1910-11

For Undergraduates and Graduates:—

[Economics] 2. Professor Taussig.— Economic Theory

Total 42: 16 Graduates, 15 Seniors, 5 Juniors, 2 Sophomores, 4 Others. 

Source: Harvard University. Annual Reports of the President and Treasurer of Harvard College, 1910-11, p. 49.

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ECONOMICS 2
Mid-year Examination

Arrange your answers strictly in the order of the questions.

  1. Is there a vicious circle in F. A. Walker’s reasoning on the relation between wages and business profits?
  2. (a) “The railroads of the United States receive annually hundreds of millions for transporting passengers. These receipts come in day by day, yet the railroad company habitually pays its employees at the close of the week or the close of the month. Here we have a class of services where the employer receives the price of his product before he pays for the labor concerned in its production. . . . Hotel-keepers and, in less degree, boarding-house keepers collect their bills before they pay their cooks, chambermaids, and scullions. Nearly all the receipts of theatre, opera, and concert companies are obtained day by day, although their staff and troupes are borne on monthly or weekly pay-rolls.”
    (b) “In very primitive life the work spent on capital goods and that spent on consumers’ goods are not always synchronous, but organization and the acquirement of a permanent fund of capital make them so. Work to-day, and you eat to-day food that is the consequence of the working. In point of time the canoe-makers are fed as promptly as the fishermen, and this fact is duplicated in every part of the industrial system. . . . The synchronization of labor and its reward does not appear in the industry of primitive beginnings, but is the fruit of organization.”
    Explain what doctrine is attacked by these extracts; whether the reasoning is essentially the same in the two; whether you would accept it in either case; what authors you suppose to have written the passages.
  3. (a) “Most commodities render several different kinds of service at the same time. A thing of this kind is to be regarded as a bundle of distinct utilities, tied together by being embodied in a common material object.”
    (b) “A bundle, as a whole, is never a final unit of any one’s consumers wealth; but each element in it is a final utility to some class, and it is that class only whose mental estimate of it fixes its price. . . . There are, then, five prices in the canoe. Expressing the values of the five different services which the canoe renders, they are, respectively, twenty-five, twenty, fifteen, ten, and five dollars. The entire canoe, then, brings seventy-five dollars in the market.”
    (c) “In every such commodity there is a marginal utility, and this is the only that counts in fixing the price of it. Every commodity, except the poorest and cheapest that can be made, is, in effect, such a bundle of service-rendering elements as we have just described. The marginal element in the bundle has a direct influence on prices, but the other elements have none.”
    (d) “If the principle of final utility be applied to entire articles, it will give values that are, in most cases, many fold greater than are the actual values that the dealings of the market establish. . . . Goods of fine quality would then be, as a rule, many times dearer than they are.”
    Consider which of these statements, if any, you would accede to; and whether they are consistent with each other.
  4. A limited edition of Roosevelt’s “African Travels,” bound in pigskin, each copy inscribed by the author, is published at $20 a copy. What economic principles are illustrated?
  5. Explain the equilibrium of demand and supply, for short periods and for long, in case of a sharp decline in the demand for a commodity made with much fixed capital, under conditions of constant return.
  6. Is there quasi-rent, and if so, how do you measure it, in the following cases: —
    (a) A manufacturing plant, whose gross earnings more than cover prime costs, but do not suffice to cover supplementary costs.
    (b) A deep-water harbor site, provided with piers and docks, and let on a long lease at a rental bringing a liberal return on the expense for improvements.
    (c) A handsome dwelling, in a neighborhood deserted by fashion, whose rental is less than interest on the cost of the dwelling.
  7. (a) Suppose a tax to be levied at four per cent on the capital value (i.e. on the selling price as it was before the tax) of urban sites used for business purposes. What would be the effect on the rentals of the buildings on the sites, on the prices of things made or sold in the buildings, on the profits of tenants?
    (b) Suppose owners of urban real estate to be prohibited by law from collecting in rentals more than four per cent (net) on the cost of buildings alone; what would be the effect on the prices of things made or sold in the buildings, on the tenants, on the effective utilization of the property?

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ECONOMICS 2
Final Examination
1910-1911

Arrange your nswers in the order of the questions

  1. Explain concisely the theories of wages (general wages) set forth by

A. Walker,
J. B. Clark,
A. Marshall,
E. Böhm-Bawerk,
Your instructor, —

and indicate what you consider the weakest point in each.

  1. Wherein is there similarity, wherein dissimilarity, between the views of Böhm-Bawerk and Clark on the productivity of Capital?
  2. Quasi-rent;
    derived utility;
    the incidence of taxes on building sites and on buildings, —
    among the trains of reasoning suggested by these phrases, which tend to support the doctrine that rent is a return essentially different from interest, which run counter to that doctrine?
  3. “That part of a man’s income which he owes to the possession of extraordinary natural abilities is a free boon to him; and from an abstract point of view bears some resemblance to the rent of other free gifts of nature, such as the inherent properties of land. But in reference to normal prices, it is to be classed rather with the profits derived by free settlers from the cultivation of new land, or again with the find of a pearl-fisher.” Why? or why not? Whose doctrine do you suppose this to be?
  4. “There is a constant tendency towards a position of normal equilibrium, in which the supply of each of these agents [of production] shall stand in such a relation to the demand for its services, as to give those who have provided the supply a sufficient reward for their efforts and services. If the economic conditions of the country remained stationary sufficiently long, this tendency would realize itself in such an adjustment of supply to demand, that both machines and human beings would earn generally an amount that corresponded fairly with their cost of rearing and training, conventional necessaries as well as those things which are strictly necessary being reckoned for.”
    Whom do you believe to be the writer of this passage? and do you infer that he holds value to be determined in the end by utility or by cost?
  5. Under what circumstances, if under any. —
    (1) Will the imposition of an import duty cause the domestic price of the taxed commodity to rise permanently by the amount of the duty.
    (2) Will it cause the price to rise permanently, but by an amount less than the duty;
    (3) Will it cause the price to fall;
    (4) Will it cause the prices of other commodities to fall?
  6. After the passage of the tariff act of 1890, a Bohemian firm of pearl button makers transferred their business to the United States, sending over the working people and erecting a factory in the U. S. Was this to the advantage of the people of the U. S.? If so, wherein? If not, why not?

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Enrollment Economics 2
1911-12

For Undergraduates and Graduates:—

[Economics] 2. Professor Taussig.— Economic Theory

Total 54: 23 Graduates, 11 Seniors, 16 Juniors, 2 Sophomores, 2 Others.

Source: Harvard University. Annual Reports of the President and Treasurer of Harvard College, 1911-12, p. 63.

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ECONOMICS 2
Mid-year Examination
1911-12

  1. Define concisely: —

(1) Consumer’s surplus,
(2) Producer’s surplus,
(3) Saver’s surplus.

Is Saver’s surplus analogous to the first or to the second?

  1. Suppose all persons to have the same income; would it be easier or more difficult to measure consumer’s surplus?
  2. (a) “It has sometimes been suggested that if all land were equally advantageous and all were occupied, the income derived from it would partake of the nature of a monopoly rent; but this seems to be an error.” Do you think it an error?
    (b) “Suppose, for instance, that all the meteoric stones in existence were equally hard and imperishable; and that they were all in the hands of a single authority; further, that this authority decided, not to make use of its monopolistic power to restrict production so as to raise the price of its services artificially, but to work each of the stones to the full extent it could be profitably worked (that is up to the margin of pressure so intensive that the resulting product could barely be marketed at a price which covered, with profits, its expenses without allowing anything for the use of the stone),” — would there be “rent”? would there be “monopoly rent”?
  3. “There are many infra-marginal savers. As to these, the appropriation of part of their income by the state would not lessen accumulation. The same principle is applicable as in the case of rent proper. A tax on rent falls definitely on the owner, and has no further effect on the supply or the utilization of the source of rent. From this point of view there may be ground for progressive taxation of large funded incomes.” Do you think this well-reasoned?
  4. Draw diagrams illustrating (1) the effects of a bounty on a commodity produced under conditions of increasing returns; (2) the effects of a tax on a commodity produced under the same conditions; and consider whether, taking account of consumer’s surplus, there is likely to be a net gain or loss in either case.
  5. Explain the distinction between external and internal economies; and consider wherein a tendency to increasing returns has different consequences according as it is due to external or to internal economies.
  6. Explain what is meant by “two-sided competition,” and the determination of price by the subjective valuations of marginal pairs; and consider the significance of the following passage: “In the present conditions of industry, most sales are made by men who are producers and merchants by profession. . . . For them, the subjective use-values of their own wares is for the most part nearly nil. . . . In sales by them, the limiting effect which, according to our theoretical formula, would be exercised by the valuation of the last seller, practically does not come into play.”
  7. Wherein is there resemblance, wherein difference, between Böhm-Bawerk’s analysis of “two-sided competition” and Marshall’s reasoning concerning the equilibrium of demand and supply?
  8. An eminent German economist has written: “As against Thornton, George, and the apostles of trade-unions, I believe that the wages-fund doctrine, rightly stated and rightly understood, is at bottom true; but I should add the qualification, to which Hermann called attention, that the payments by those who demand the finished goods from the source from which, in the long run, the capitalists are enabled to employ labor, or to maintain a demand for labor, from their wages-fund.”
    What do you say of the mode of dealing with the wages-fund doctrine involved in this qualification?

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ECONOMICS 2
Final Examination
1911-12

Arrange your answers strictly in the order of the questions.

  1. “Suppose that society is divided into a number of horizontal grades, each of which is recruited from the children of its own members, and each of which has its own standard of comfort, and increases in number rapidly when the earnings to be got in it rise above, and shrinks rapidly when they fall below that standard. Suppose, then, that parents can bring up their children to any trade in their own grade, but cannot easily raise them above it and will not consent to sink them below it. . . . On these suppositions the normal wage in any trade is that which is sufficient to enable a laborer, who has normal regularity of employment, to support himself and a family of normal size according to the standard of comfort that is normal in the grade to which his trade belongs; it is not dependent on demand except to this extent, that if there were no demand for the labor of the trade at that wage, the trade would not exist. In other words the normal wage represents the expenses of production of the labor according to the ruling standard of comfort.”
    Does Cairnes reason on these suppositions? Does Marshall? Granting them, would you conclude that value in the end was determined by utility or by cost?
  2. Explain briefly (50 words under each head), in which of the following cases, if in any, you think there is reasoning in a circle:

(a) The residual theory of wages, as stated by Walker;
(b) The proposition that the value of commodities produced by a particular grade (non-competing group) of laborers depends on the rate of wages paid in that grade;
(c) The proposition that general wages depend on the marginal product of labor discounted at the current rate of interest.

  1. Does “quasi-rent” form a constituent part of supply-price? Does “supplementary cost” form a constituent part of supply-price?
  2. “‘Rent is not an element in price’ — such is the classical statement on the subject. It even expresses a view that is now prevalent. The expression itself, however, is vague. It seems to mean that the fact of rent plays no part in the adjustment of values, and that things would exchange for one another in exactly the ratios in which they now do, if there were no such thing as rent. But, if one defines rent as product imputable to a concrete agent, the impossibility of maintaining such a claim becomes apparent. Even if one were to restrict the term rent to the product created by the land, the claim that it is not an element in adjusting market values would be absurd; for it would amount to saying that a certain part of the output of every kind of goods has no effect on their market value. The ‘price’ referred to in the formula is, of course, the market value expressed in units of currency.”
    What do you think?
  3. “Goodwill taken in its wider meaning comprises such things as established customary business relations, reputation for upright dealing, franchises and privileges, trademarks, brands, patent rights, copyrights, exclusive use of special processes guarded by law or by secrecy, exclusive control of particular sources of materials. All these items give a differential advantage to their owners, but they are of no aggregate advantage to the community. They are wealth to the individual concerned, — differential wealth; but they make no part of the wealth of nations.” Why? Or why not?
  4. “The workmen have a natural right to the value which their work, of itself and aside from the aid furnished by others, imparts to the material that is put into their hands, and when they sell their labor, they are really selling their part of the product of the mill. In like manner, paying interest is buying the share which capital contributes to the product. The owners of the capital have an original right to what the machines, the tools, the buildings, the land, and the raw materials, of themselves and apart from other contributions, put into the joint product.”
    Whom do you believe to be the writer of the passage? What would Böhm-Bawerk say to it? Veblen?
  5. “It is not true that the spinning of yarn in a factory, after allowance has been made for the wear-and-tear of the machinery, is the product of the labor of the operatives. It is the product of their labor, together with that of the employer and subordinate managers, and of the capital employed; and that capital itself is the product of labor and waiting: and therefore the spinning is the product of labor of many kinds, and of waiting. If we admit that it is the product of labor alone, and not of labor and waiting, we can no doubt be compelled by inexorable logic to admit that there is no justification for interest, the reward of waiting; for the conclusion is implied in the premises.”
    Whom do you think the writer of this passage? What would be said of the conclusions by Clark? By Böhm-Bawerk? What is your own view?
  6. “The English theory has it that the rate of wages is simply got by dividing the wage fund by the number of existing workers. This is entirely wrong. In any event the laborers get the wage fund wholly and entirely as wage: but that does not say wage for what time; for one year, or two years, or three years, or more. . . . The English Wage Fund theory has thus a core of truth, but it is wrapped up in a quite overpowering mass of error.”
    Explain what Böhm-Bawerk means; and give your opinion on the question involved.

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Enrollment Economics 11
1912-13

For Undergraduates and Graduates:—

[Economics] 11 (formerly 2). Professor Taussig.— Economic Theory

Total 31: 20 Graduates, 4 Seniors, 5 Juniors, 2 Others. 

Source: Harvard University. Annual Reports of the President and Treasurer of Harvard College, 1912-13, p. 57.

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ECONOMICS 11
Mid-year Examination
1912-13

  1. “If there really were a national fund, the whole of which must necessarily be applied to the payment of wages, that fund could be no other than an aggregate of smaller similar funds possessed by the several individuals who compose the employing part of the nation. Does, then, any individual employer possess any such fund? Is there any specific portion of any individual’s capital which the owner must necessarily expend upon labor? . . . May he not spend more or less on his family and himself, according to his fancy — in the one case having more, in the other less, left for the conduct of his business? And of what is left, does he or can he determine beforehand how much shall be laid out on buildings, how much on materials, how much on labor? . . . It sounds like mockery or childishness to ask these questions, so obvious are the only answers that can possibly be given to them; yet it is only on the assumption that directly opposite answers must be given that the Wages-fund can for one moment stand.”
    What answers would Mill have given to such questions? What would be your own answer?
  2. “On the ranches of Montana cattle are breeding, among the forests of Pennsylvania hides are tanning, in the mills of Brockton shoes are finishing; and, if the series off goods in all stages of advancement is only kept intact, the cow-boy may have today the shoes that he virtually creates by his efforts. . . . With sheep in the pastures, wool in the mills, cloth in the tailoring shops, and ready-made garments on the retailers’ counters the labor of the people can, as it were, instantaneously clothe the people.”
    “It is not necessary to the production of things that cannot be used as subsistence, or cannot be immediately utilized, that there should have been a previous production of the wealth required for the maintenance of the laborers while the production is going on. It is only necessary that there should be, somewhere within the circle of exchange, a contemporaneous production of sufficient subsistence for the laborers, and a willingness to exchange this subsistence for the thing on which the labor is being bestowed. . . . The subsistence of the laborers engaged in production which does not directly yield subsistence comes from the production of subsistence in which others are simultaneously engaged.”

Do you see any difference between the propositions stated in these extracts?
By whom do you think they were written?
Do you accept the conclusions?

  1. “Though there are few commodities which are at all times and for ever unsusceptible of increase of supply, any commodity whatever may be temporarily so; and with some commodities this is habitually the case. Agricultural produce, for example, cannot be increased in quantity before the next harvest; the quantity of corn already existing in the world is all that can be had for sometimes a year to come. During that interval corn is practically assimilated to things of which the quantity cannot be increased. In the case of most commodities, it requires a certain time to increase their quantity; and if the demand increases, then, until a corresponding supply can be brought forward, that is, until the supply can accommodate itself to the demand, the value will so rise as to accommodate the demand to the supply.”
    Wherein, if at all, is this way of dealing with the temporary equilibrium of demand and supply different from Marshall’s?
  2. Is it true that the first effect of increased demand for a commodity is to raise its supply price, and that the ultimate effect is to lower its supply price? If so, under what conditions in either case?
  3. Explain briefly: —

(a) internal economies,
(b) external economies,
(c) increased returns.

It has been said that the tendency to increase of effectiveness because of large-scale production should be distinguished from the tendency to increasing returns. Why, or why not?

  1. “The last three chapters examined the relation in which cost of production stands to the income derived from the ownership of the ‘original powers’ of land and other free gifts of nature, and also to that which is directly due to the investment of private capital. There is a third class, holding an intermediate position between these two, which consists of those incomes or rather those parts of incomes, which are the indirect result of the investment of capital and labour by individuals for the sake of gain.”
    What is the third class? and why does it hold an intermediate position?
  2. Explain what Clark means by the “extensive margin of indifference” and the “intensive margin of indifference”; and give your opinion on the significance of the conception in both aspects.
  3. “That part of a man’s income which he owes to the possession of extraordinary natural abilities is a free boon to him; and from an abstract point of view bears some resemblance to the rent of other free gifts of nature, such as the inherent properties of land. But in reference to normal prices, it is to be classed rather with the profits derived by free settlers from the cultivation of new land, or again with the find of the pearl-fisher.”
    Why? or why not?

___________________________

ECONOMICS 11
Final Examination
1912-1913

[Arrange your answers strictly in the order of the questions]

  1. Explain the connection between

(a) the rent of mines;
(b) Carey’s doctrine that the total rent received by landowners is less than interest on the total investment for improving land;
(c) the earnings of barristers or opera-singers;
(d) the earnings of “successful” business men.

  1. “Men are not equal. . . . Those capable of organizing and leading industrial enterprise are in a minority, and are indeed few; hence they can put a price on their services which would be impossible if there were many. Their services are not worth more on this account, but they can get more for them. Because the community needs their services, and cannot perhaps get along without them, they can, if they like, put “famine prices” on the commodity (organizing and directing talent) which they have to sell; while, on the other hand, those who have only labor or physical skill, though they are just as necessary, are many, and hence can about as readily be taken advantage of as the others can take advantage.”
    What have you to say? Can the “famine prices” be justified?
  2. (a) “There are, in fact, few no-rent men in actual employment; and the reason for this is clear, since work involves a sacrifice, and it does not pay to incur the sacrifice unless the earnings be a positive quantity. In those times and places in which child labor has been employed, with little regard for the welfare of the victims, labor that was not at the no-rent point, but very near it, has been pressed into service. But, where the sacrifice entailed by labor is, in some way, neutralized by a benefit that work confers, labor which created literally nothing may sometimes be employed. Lunatics and prisoners may be kept at work, in order that they may secure fresh air and exercise, even though the amount of capital that they use, if it were withdrawn from their hands and turned into marginal capital, would produce as much as it does when it is used by them. In such a case the product imputable to their labor is nil.
    The existence of any no-rent labor enables us to make the rent formula general and to apply it to every concrete agent of production.”
    (b) “The productivity of any capital, whether human or external, will differ with the capital. Men differ in quality, i.e., in productive power, as truly as lands or other instruments differ. Some men have a high degree of earning power and some have not. Some men can work twice as fast as others. Some men can do higher grades of work than others. The result is that we find men classified as common manual laborers, skilled manual laborers, common mental workers, superintending workers, and enterprisers. Just as we can measure the rent of any land by the difference in productivity between that and the low-rent, or no-rent, land, in exactly the same way we can measure the difference in productivity between men. There is no grade of workmen called the “no-wages men,” but there would be such a grade if it were customary for their employer to pay for their cost of support (as the employer of land pays for its cost), so that only the excess above this cost were to be called wages.”
    Compare the two trains of reasoning; give your opinion; and state by what authors the passages were written.
  3. “If the proprietor of superior land were to say, ‘I will take no rent for it,’ this would not make wheat cheaper. The supply would not be changed; for the same quantity would be raised, the marginal amount raised on the no-rent land would be needed and would be bought at the former price, and all other parts of the supply would command the same rate. . . . It is a striking fact — but one hitherto much neglected — that similar conclusions apply to the product of every other agent” [capital and labor].
    Do similar conclusions apply? Who do you think is the author of this passage?
  4. What three grounds explain, according to Böhm-Bawerk, the preference for present goods over future? Which of them does he conclude to be the most important? State Fisher’s criticism; and give your own opinion on the controverted question.
  5. “In the present condition of industry, most sales are made by men who are producers and merchants by profession. . . . For them, the subjective use value of their own wares is, for the most part, very nearly nil. . . . In sales by them the limiting effect which, according to our theoretical formula, would be exerted by the valuation of the last seller, practically does not come into play.” — BÖHM-BAWERK.
    What is the “theoretical formula”? and what is the importance of the qualification here stated?
  6. In what sense are the terms “demand” and “increase of demand” used in the following passages: —

(a) “The democratization of society and the aping of the ways of the well-to-do by the lower classes have greatly increased the demand for silk fabrics.”
(b) “The lower price of sugar after 1890, when sugar was admitted free of duty, at once caused an increase of demand.”
(c) “The cheapening of a commodity may mean an increased demand such that the total sum spent on it will be as great as before, even greater than before.”

  1. Explain the essentials of Veblen’s theory of crises, and state wherein you think it most tenable, wherein least so.

___________________________

Course Announcement: Economics 11
1913-14

Primarily for Graduates
I
ECONOMIC THEORY AND METHOD

[Economics] 11. Economic Theory. Mon., Wed., Fri., at 2.30. Professor Taussig.

Course 11 is intended to acquaint the studeent with some of the later developments of economic thought, and at the same time to train him in the critical consideration of economic principles and the analysis of economic conditions. The exercises are accordingly conducted mainly by the discussion of selected passages from the leading writers; and in the discussion of selected passages from the leading writers; and in this discussion the students are expected to take an active part. The writings of J. S. Mill, Cairnes, F. A. Walker, Clark, Marshall, Böhm-Bawerk, and other recent authors, will be taken up. Attention will be given chiefly to the theory of exchange and distribution.

Source: Division of History, Government, and Economics 1913-14 in Official Register of Harvard University, Vol. X, No. 1, Part X (May 19, 1913), p. 65..

___________________________

Enrollment Economics 11
1913-14

For Undergraduates and Graduates:—

[Economics] 11. Professor Taussig.— Economic Theory

Total 39: 23 Graduates, 11 Seniors, 2 Juniors, 2 Others, 1 Radcliffe.

 

Source: Harvard University. Annual Reports of the President and Treasurer of Harvard College, 1913-14, p. 55.

___________________________

ECONOMICS 11
Mid-year Examination
1913-14

Arrange your answers in the order of the questions. One question may be omitted.

  1. “The distinction, then, between Capital and Not-capital, does not lie in the kind of commodities, but in the mind of the capitalist — in his will to employ them for one purpose rather than other; and all property, however ill adapted in itself for the use of labourers, is a part of capital, so soon as it, or the value to be received from it, is set apart for productive reinvestment. The sum of all the values so destined by their respective possessors composes the capital of the country.”
    What is to be said for this doctrine, what against it? By whom was it maintained?
  2. “Prices of commodities in great measure are fixed by supply and demand, but, except temporarily, they cannot be less than all costs, including wages and taxes, entering directly or indirectly into their production and distribution, together with some profit for the use of the capital employed. Hence an increase of the wages or cost of labor usually must be paid by consumers. A general increase of the wages of all labor would cause an equivalent increase of the price of nearly every product of labor and a general increase of the cost of living. The increased wages of the laborers then would not buy more than did their former wages and they would be no better off than before the increase. For this reason the economic welfare of the masses in the aggregate cannot be materially improved by the simple expedient of raising generally the wages of labor.”
    What would Ricardo say to this? J. S. Mill? Your own view?
  3. Marx’s doctrine, that value is embodied labor, has been said to be essentially the same as Ricardo’s doctrine that value rests on the labor given to producing an article. Why or why not?
  4. Suppose an increase in the demand for a commodity, in the schedule sense: —

(a) For short periods, under what conditions, if under any, would you expect supply price to rise? to fall?
(b) For long periods, under what conditions, if under any, would you expect supply price to rise? to fall?

Note whether your answer differs in any particular from that to be expected from Marshall.

  1. “The part played by the net product at the margin of production in the modern doctrine of distribution is apt to be misunderstood. In particular many able writers have supposed that it represents the marginal use of a thing as governing the value of the whole. It is not so; the doctrine says we must go to the margin to study the action of those forces which govern the value of the whole; and that is a very different affair.”
    Explain.
  2. “It has sometimes been argued that if all land were equally advantageous and all were occupied, the income derived from it would not be a true rent, but a monopoly rent.”
    Under what conditions, if under any, would there be true rent in such a case? Under what conditions, if under any, would there be a monopoly rent?
  3. “The derived supply price [of one of a group of things having a joint supply price] is found by a rule that it must equal the excess of the supply price for the whole process of production over the sum of the demand prices of all the other joint products.”
    Explain, illustrating by diagram.
    State the corresponding rule for the derived demand price of one of a group of commodities for which there is a joint demand.
  4. (a) “In hundreds and thousands of suburban homes the question is asked every day, “How much milk shall we take in today, ma’am?” or “How much bread?” and the housewife knows without consideration that if she ordered one loaf of bread and one pint of milk, the marginal significance of bread and milk would be higher than their price, and if she said six loaves and five quarts of milk, the marginal loaf and pint would not be worth their price. Such orders, therefore, never enter into her head. But she deliberates, perhaps, whether she will want three loaves of bread or four, or three loaves and a twist, or three white loaves and a half-loaf of brown, and whether she shall take three quarts of milk or a pint more or less. Thus, whatever the terms on which alternatives are offered to us may be, we detect in conscious action at the margin of consideration the principles which are unconsciously at work in the whole distribution of our resources.”
    Do you find anything to criticize in this?
    (b) “When the supply (of a given commodity) is limited, the diminishing utility of each increment will be arrested at a point below which the consumer will prefer to abandon the use of an increment for something else. The margin here is a margin of indifference between an increment of one commodity and an increment of another commodity. Since these increments are not necessarily the same, the margin of indifference may be reached at a point where the tenth increment of one commodity balances the twentieth of another, where, in other words, the marginal utility of the first commodity is twice that of the second.”
    Explain what you think is meant; and give your opinion on the conclusion stated in the last clause of the final sentence.
  5. “An English ruler who looks upon himself as the minister of the race he rules (say in India) is bound to take care that he impresses their energies in no work that is not worth the labor that is spent on it; or, to translate the sentiment into plainer language, that he engages in nothing that will not produce an income sufficient to defray the interest on its cost.”
    Would Marshall question this principle? On what grounds, if at all? Would you?

___________________________

ECONOMICS 11
Final Examination
1913-14

Arrange your answers in the order of the questions.
Answer all questions.

  1. “What about the ‘supply curve’ that usually figures as a determinant of price, coördinate with the demand curve? I say it boldly and baldly: there is no such thing. When we are speaking of a marketable commodity, what is usually called the supply curve is in reality the demand curve of those who possess the commodity; for it shows the exact place which every successive unit of the commodity holds in their relative scale of estimate.”
    Is this criticism just if directed to (1) the temporary equilibrium of supply and demand, as analyzed by Marshall for a grain market; (2) the “price zone determined by marginal pairs,” as analyzed by Böhm-Bawerk; (3) the long period equilibrium of supply and demand, as analyzed by Marshall.
  2. “The rent of land is no unique fact, but simply the chief species of a large genus of economic phenomena; and the theory of rent is no isolated economic doctrine, but merely one of the chief applications of a particular corollary from the general theory of demand and supply.”
    Explain this statement of Marshall’s; mention other species which he assigns to the large genus; and consider wherein, if at all, the general doctrine differs from that of Clark, and from that of Böhm-Bawerk.
  3. “As is true of good will and credit extensions generally, so with respect to the good will and credit strength of these greater business men: it affords a differential advantage and gives a differential gain. In the traffic of corporation finance this differential gain is thrown immediately into the form of capital and so added to the nominal capitalized wealth of the community. . . . This capitalization of the gains arising from a differential advantage results in a large ‘saving’ and increase of capital.”
    Does this resemble in essentials Walker’s doctrine? If so, wherein? If not, why not?
    In what sense, if in any, is it true that the differential gains lead to an increase of capital?
  4. “It may be conceded that if a certain class of people were marked out from their birth as having special gifts for some particular occupation, and for no other, so that they would be sure to seek out that occupation in any case, then the earnings which such men would get might be left out of account as exceptional, when we are considering the chances of success or failure for ordinary persons.”
    Consider whether, given the premise, the conclusion here stated would follow; what the bearing of the reasoning is on Walker’s theory of business profit; what Marshall would say of premise and conclusion.
  5. In what sense, if in any, is a “productivity” theory of wages put forth by Walker? by Clark? by your instructor?
  6. “All apital goods — tools, machines, and the like — were explained [by the economists of the British School] as merely so much stored-up labor, or as the stored-up wages paid for it; the capitalist, as a laborer gone to seed; and thereby the product of capital as indirectly the product of the earlier wage-paid labor; interest being thus mere indirect wages. It was implied in this that the interest payments are for mere wear-out of the principal invested, and that the sum of all the interest payments upon a given investment can normally or regularly equal only the original capital sum invested in wages; and that sometime a given capital investment must cease its career of earning interest.”
    Consider whether this was the doctrine of the British economists; whether it is the doctrine of Böhm-Bawerk; of your instructor; and give your own opinion.
  7. “In the main, the way in which the increase of savings can find escape from its difficulties is through the parallel advance in the arts, calling for more and more elaborate forms of capital. . . . Given continued improvements calling for more and more elaborate plant, — more of time-consuming and roundabout applications of labor, — than savings can heap up, and a return will be secured by the owner of capital.”
    What are the “difficulties” here referred to? What should be said of this way of escape by Böhm-Bawerk? by your instructor? by Veblen?

Sources:

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 1913, pp. 50-53.
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 1914, pp. 51-52.
Harvard University Archives. Prof. F. W. Taussig, Examination Papers in Economics 1882-1935 (Scrapbook).

Image Source:  Frank W. Taussig in Harvard Class Album, 1915.

Categories
Economists Harvard

Harvard. Economics Ph.D. Alumnus William Thomas Ham, 1926

 

 

_________________

Today’s post provides biographical information about a fresh Harvard economics Ph.D. contained in a memo (ca. 1930) filed along with correspondence between that alumnus, William Thomas Ham, and Harvard economics department chair (1927-1939)  Professor Harold H. Burbank.

From genealogical data bases I have assembled a few additional items: William Thomas Ham was born 8 Jan 1893 in Chasewater, Cornwall, England; his family arrived in New York Sept. 22, 1899 on the St. Louis from Southhampton, England.

Ham originally came to Harvard in 1920 to do work in entymology but due to an eye problem was unable to work with microscopes so he switched to graduate work in industrial relations in the department of economics (social ethics). He received a Ph.D. in economics in 1926 with the dissertation “Employment relations in the construction industry of Boston.” In the Harvard Classbook of 1937 under his faculty picture is printed “Former Assistant Professor of Economics and Tutor in the Division of History, Government, and Economics”.

According to the 1940  U.S. Census, he and his family lived at 3618 Wisconsin Ave. , Washington, D.C.   His occupation was listed at that time as economist for the U.S. Department of Agriculture. From the Social Security death records we learn that he died in November 1973 and Washington, D.C. was reported to be his last residence. 

_________________

MEMO.
William T. Ham.

Period prior to coming to Cambridge

1893, Jan. 8, date of birth
1905-09 Tuolumne County High School, California.
1909-13 College of the Pacific, San Jose, California.
1913 A.B.
1913-15 Graduate student (part-time) Stanford University, and teacher, College of the Pacific, San Jose, California
1915-16 Instructor (part time) Stanford University. [penciled in: “Eng.”]
1916 A. M., Stanford
1916-17 Instructor, State College of Washington, Pullman, Washington, and assistant to the State Entomologist.
1917-20 Scientific Assistant and Field Agent in Oregon and Washington, U. S. Department of Agriculture, Bureau of Entomology. Worked under the direction of the State Entomologist.

 

Period of Residence in Cambridge, 1920-.

1920. Came to Harvard from the state of Washington, where I had been stationed, under the Civil Service, as Scientific Assistant and Field Agent of the Bureau of Entomology, United States Department of Agriculture.
Entered the Bussey Institution for work in genetics and entomology, but was forced to discontinue in the spring of 1921 owing to the recurrence of an old eye trouble, arising in connection with microscopic work.
1921, Autumn. Began work in Economics and Social Ethics, at first under the direction of Prof. Robert Foerster. This change was due to a felling that, if I was debarred from a microscope, the next best thing I could do would be to get to the bottom of certain problems in industrial relations which had attracted my attention during my years of sojourn in the northwest.
1921-22. Assistant in Social Ethics under Prof. James Ford.
1922-26. Instructor in Social Ethics. (1925-26, Tutor.)
1924, April. Passed General Examination in Economics (Social Ethics.)
1924-25. Taught Social Ethics 1b (Labor, Industrialism, Social Reform.)
1925-26. Taught Social Ethics 1b and also S. E. 4 (Problems of Population and Immigration) and S. E. 6 (Problems of Unemployment and Social Insurance.)
1924 Summer School: Taught two courses (Social Ethics 1 a and 1 b.)
1926 Summer School: Taught two courses (Social Ethics 1 b and 4.)
1926 Ph.D. in Economics (Social Ethics.)
1926-27 Instructor and Tutor in the Division of history, Government and Economics.
1927-29 Fellow of the Social Science Research Council, studying the labor situation in England and Germany.
1929-30 Instructor and Tutor in the Division of History, Government and Economics. Courses:   Economics A; Economics 6 b.
(Appointed in 1928, but given leave of absence for the year 1928-29.)

 

Source: Harvard University Archives. Department of Economics, Correspondence & Papers, 1902-1950 (UAV349.10). Box 5, Folder “H”.

Image Source:  William Thomas Ham “Former Assistant Professor of Economics and Tutor in the Division of History, Government, and Economics”, in Harvard Classbook 1937.

 

Categories
Duke Undergraduate

Duke. Reflections on the learning objectives for undergraduate economics majors. Bronfenbrenner, 1977

 

 

This is a transcription of a draft of a paper that was later presented at the New York meeting of the American Economic Association (December 28, 1977) by Martin Bronfenbrenner (Chicago Ph.D., 1939). A revised version was published in Atlantic Economic Journal, vol. 6 (1978), pp. 22-25. The revision sandwiched the text below between an introductory and concluding sections. The conclusion consists of his responses to “strenuous opposition” the paper received from radical economists and faculty from small, “self-consciously ‘proletarian’ institutions.” To document the year of the draft, I have appended the comments (with date) from the Duke department of economics chair, Allen Kelley.

What struck me first upon seeing this draft was the reflection of a sexist empirical reality expressed in the subtitle of the paper. Bronfenbrenner title refers to “the person majoring in economics” as opposed to meaning major as “a particular course of study”: the published version begins with the sentence: “I view the undergraduate economics major not as a potential economist but as a potential lawyer or businessman, politician or journalist, and likewise as a potential voter.”)  But the brief note is more interesting as an artifact, an older scholar’s reflections (in the late 1970’s) of what an undergraduate education in economics should be all about. 

From the perspective of today, Bronfenbrenner’s inclusion of doctrinal history, 3 semesters of historical and/or current policy applications, 2 semesters of “alternative economic ideas and institutions” sounds like an early call (about forty years early to be precise) for the CORE Project.

__________________________

THE ECONOMICS MAJOR—WHAT IS HE?
Martin Bronfenbrenner, 1977 draft

We have on undergraduate campuses “Junior Ph.D.,” “Fraternity Row,” and “Split Level” major programs in Economics. As an elitist (meritocrat, intellectual snob) I want Economics to become a “Junior Ph.D.” major, along with, e.g., Mathematics and most of the natural sciences. There are plenty of alternatives open, including individual Economics courses, to playboys doing nothing and to intellectual anarchists “doing their own things.”

And so I should like undergraduate economics concentrations to include at least:

(1) Two semesters (or equivalent) of intermediate-level macro- and micro-theory of the standard sort. Doctrinal history might also fit into this group.

(2) Three semesters of quantitative techniques (mathematics at full-blown university level, statistics, econometrics, computer science, accounting). Formal requirements, such as the calculus, should also apply to the intermediate theory courses under (1) to avoid postponement to the student’s final term (which makes them meaningless).

(3) Three semesters of courses applying (1-2) to a historical record and-or to significant current problems of the U.S. and international economies.

(4) Two semesters’ exposure to “alternative” economic ideas and institutions. Radical and institutional economics naturally belong here, along with comparative systems, economic anthropology, specific studies of non-capitalist countries, etc.

(5) (For honors candidates) A “small-group learning experience” of a semester seminar which includes an honors essay. The essay should not only overcome passivity and indicate competence in some facet of undergraduate economics, but demonstrate ability at expository writing.

I have minimized reference to specific courses, since Section 1 of Public Finance, say, under Professor Jones, may be all theory and belong in Group 1, while Section 2 (Professor Brown) may be all policy problems (Group 3) and Section 3 (Professor Johnson) may fit equally well in either category. Harassed Chairmen, Executive Officers, and Directors of Undergraduate Studies will have unavoidable problems with the “nuts and bolts” of such a major, if they take their duties seriously. These problems will be lessened, of course, insofar as superior students are allowed to do whatever they like regardless of formal rules.

But before writing this proposal off as “impossible” or “Utopian” (as well as “elitist,”) please consider a few “matters in mitigation.”

(a) Economics won’t, and shouldn’t, do it all. Credit toward all the above requirements should be allowed for work in other departments. Mathematics, Computer Science and Economic History (as viewed by historians) are obvious examples. Labor Law in the Law School, History of Politics of Africa or Latin America with strong “Economic Development” or “International Economics” loadings, the History of Socialism, inter-disciplinary studies of the U.S.S.R. or Modern China, are only a little less obvious.

(b) The prospective Economics major should be encouraged to read Principles on his own, and go directly into Intermediate Theory. Alternatively, he should be shunted into a one-semester version of Principles. (Need I add that some version at least of the Principles course should be open to Freshmen?) More controversially perhaps, I also believe that the Principles course should be aimed primarily at non-majors, and modeled more frequently on the legendary “Physics for Poets” than on cram courses for Ph.D. qualifying examinations.

(c) The seminar (5) would presumably always count simultaneously toward satisfaction of some other requirement (1-4).

(d) And finally, I think the universities yielded too much on course requirements to the student activism of 1967-71. Reduction of the standard 5-course load to 4 courses, I recall, was proposed to promote student creativity and student participation in the real-world off-campus community. Well, it didn’t work that way. (And thank God, say I, whenever I read a student newspaper!) The 5-course normal load, I accordingly suggest, should be restored at least for the Sophomore and Junior years. Freshmen in process of culture shock, and Seniors in process of job-hunting, might well be left alone with the 4-course load.

MARTIN BRONFENBRENNER
Duke University

__________________________

Comment on draft by Allen Kelley, Chairman of the Duke Department of Economics

Department of Economics
Duke University

Chairman [Allen Kelley]
August 31, 1977

Dear Martin,

Dave Davies passed along your draft of the comment for the Christmas meetings.

A couple of observations.

Why would you consider doctrinal history as a substitute for theory? I’d almost put it in your category 4.

Why so much quantitative training? Statistics I can see as a major requirement. But accounting, computer programming? The latter can be learned at a mini-pragmatic level in the stat course, where the student runs some regressions with standard packages (e.g., SPSS). Many excellent students will want to do more analytical work, and spending three of their courses on quantitative skills seems a bit excessive.

I like everything else, and especially your addition of 4. Of course, I believe in 5, and most of the students already do 3 in most majors.

A final point, one that can’t be resisted by a zealous chairman. Does the University of Colorado have to get such heavy credit—looks like a joint appointment. We Dukies want to internalize all of your great prestige!

I’ve not sent this to Japan, since it would take too long to forward back to Durham.

Welcome home.

[signed “Allen”]

Durham, North Caorlina 27706

(919) 684-2723

 

Source: Duke University. David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library. Economists’ Papers Project. Papers of Martin Bronfenbrenner, Box 26, Folder “Misc”.