Author: Irwin Collier

Chicago. Graduate Price Theory Preliminary Examination, 1964

Post author By Irwin Collier
Post date 2017-09-10

Something inside of me continues to hope for this growing collection of historical economics examinations to attract comments that provide answers to the questions. But at least for now, I am at least adding to the digital historical record of economics education exam by exam and syllabus by syllabus.

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CORE EXAMINATION
Price Theory
Winter, 1964

Preliminary Examination for the Ph.D. and A. M. Degrees

WRITE THE FOLLOWING INFORMATION ON YOUR EXAMINATION PAPER:

Your Code Number and NOT your name
Name of Examination
Date of Examination

Results of the examination will be sent to you by letter.

Answer all questions. Time: 3 hours

[45 points] Indicate whether each of the following statements is true or false and explain briefly why.

T F	1.	An “inferior” good is one for which the marginal utility is negative.
T F	2.	The short-run marginal cost curves cross the long-run marginal cost curve from below (proceeding from left to right) at the quantities corresponding to the points of tangency of their respective average curves.
T F	3.	For a homogeneous production function of degree one, and, for given relative factor prices but varying output, both of the following are true: a. The ratios of the quantities of the various inputs are constant at all levels of outputs. b. The average productivities for each factor are constant at all levels of output.
T F	4.	Suppose you have the following budget data for two periods for a consistent consumer (i.e., a consumer who, in those situations where the same two commodity bundles are within his budget and he chooses one of them, will never choose the other one): prices of all goods in only the first period p_i¹ for i = 1, 2, …, n) and quantities purchased of all goods (q_i¹ and q_i² for i=1, 2, …, n). Then it is true that implies that the consumer is “better off” in the first period than in the second.
T F	5.	Consider an individual’s demand functions for two goods, x_k and x_j. Then the cross elasticity of demand for x_k with respect to p_i^k is equal to the cross elasticity of demand for x_j with respect to p_k when only the substitution terms are considered.
T F	6.	“The more the merrier” is a denial of the law of diminishing marginal utility.
T F	7.	“The increment of product resulting from adding one more worker to a firm should not be attributed exclusively to labor because it results partly from the more intensive working of the other productive factors.”
T F	8.	A tax of 20 per cent on all wages and salaries will decrease the supply of labor by more than a tax of 20 per cent on overtime pay alone.
T F	9.	Carpenters would not receive a wage equal to the value of their marginal product if they were a “specific factor of production” in the industry using their services.
T F	10.	The demand function for labor on the part of a competitive industry can in some cases be more elastic in the neighborhood of a given point if the quantities of other factors are taken as given than if the prices of other factors are taken as given.

[Note: Question II neatly ripped off from this copy, presumably deleted from the examination]

[15 points] A substitute for a product is invented. What, if anything, can you say about the effect of this invention on (a) the position; (b) the elasticity of the demand curve for the initial product? (To fix ideas, one example is the effect of the invention of electric shavers on the demand for safety razors; another, and perhaps more widely quoted example, is the effect of the introduction of financial intermediaries on the demand for money.)
[15 points] We frequently hear it said that labor is cheap and capital dear in a country like the U.S. Such statements seem reasonable, yet it is not clear how one can compare the price of labor (rupees or dollars per hour) with the price of capital (percent per year). Can you suggest a way to interpret the statements so that they make sense?
[30 points] In the 1880’s there were a class of independent railroad ticket brokers called “scalpers,” who purchased tickets in quantity at reduced prices from the railroads and resold them to the public, typically at prices below the prices posted by the railroads and charged to people who bought tickets at the railroad windows.
In discussing the practice in its 1890 report, the Interstate Commerce Commission argues that (a) it raised the cost of transportation because it made it necessary, “to support the auxiliary force of scalpers,” and (b) also reflected “the avidity of nearly every railroad to do a greater amount of passenger business than any competitor.”
Is (a) correct? Is it consistent with (b)?
[30 points] President Johnson has recently sent to Congress a bill that would require certain industries to pay double the standard wage-rate for overtime. Assuming competitive conditions, what can you say about the effect on (a) prices of products (b) output (c) number of man hours, (d) number of persons employed in (1) the industries affected and (2) other industries?
[30 points] Currently, the number of taxicabs permitted to operate in the city of Chicago is limited by licensure, no new licenses are being issued, and existing licenses which can be transferred sell for substantial sums. In addition, the price which taxicabs charge is fixed by the city. (A) Suppose restrictions on licensure were lifted but prices continued to be fixed at present levels. What would be the effect on (a) number of cabs, (b) incomes of non-driving owners of cabs, (c) wages of non-owning (i.e., hired) cab drivers?
(B) Suppose the price restrictions were lifted, so cabs could charge whatever they wanted. What would you expect to happen to prices for taxicab rides, both with respect to level and structure?

Source: University of Chicago Archives. George Stigler Papers. Addenda, Box 33, folder “Exams and Prelim Questions”.

Image Source:University of Chicago Photographic Archive, apf4-01703 1923 photo of the University of Chicago band’s bass drum (over 8 feet in diameter). , Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library.

Economists M.I.T.

MIT. Three Kindleberger quips à la Solow, 1990

Post author By Irwin Collier
Post date 2017-09-08
2 Comments on MIT. Three Kindleberger quips à la Solow, 1990

In an earlier post we encountered a second-order quote from the Columbia economic historian Vladimir G. Simkhovitch–Frank Fisher quoting Charles Kindleberger quoting Simkhovitch. Today we have some first-order hearsay of Charles Kindleberger from witness Robert M. Solow, his MIT colleague. Kindleberger wit with a Solow twist! In the court of history hearsay evidence is of course admissible after being critically received. On behalf of former, present, and future graduate students of the world, I call the reader’s attention to the second of the three Kindlebergian remarks.

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TRAVELS WITH CHARLIE

That was actually the name of a book that John Steinbeck wrote, all about driving around the country with his dog. The P in CPK does not stand for Poodle. But I like the title, and so will Charlie. I just want to rummage around in my memory.

There should be some permanent record of the time that Charlie and I were part of a panel discussion before an audience. Some question about exchange rates came up, and I spoke my piece. I must have said something wrong, because Charlie broke in to say: “The audience should keep in mind that MIT does not pay Professor Solow to think about international economics.” Bad dog!

Here is another unforgettable shaft. I can not remember the occasion; I think that some of our graduate students were expressing discontent with their lot and suggesting improvements. Charlie summed up the situation by pointing out that fundamentally a graduate student was someone with a boy’s income and a man’s appetite. Of course they felt better immediately. (By the way, the gender-specificness of that remark was just the empirical truth of the time.)

Finally I want to preserve a conversation that took place about 10 years ago when the Kindlebergers, the Samuelsons, the Solows, and Ingo and Barbara Vogelsang were dinner guests of the McFaddens. German economists were mentioned and Ingo Vogelsang asked if anyone remembered George Halm. Ingo thought that must now be very old. Oh no, said Charlie, mature maybe but certainly not what you would describe as old. You’re right, said Paul. What’s old about 80? It seemed funnier to me then than it does now. Now it’s just a home truth: what’s so old about 80? Not a thing, not if you have been, as Charlie has been, devoted to his colleagues and his students, and full of ideas, always full of ideas.

Robert M. Solow

Source: Letter from Robert M. Solow included in Reminiscences of Charles P. Kindleberger on his Eightieth Birthday, October 12, 1990 in the Charles P. Kindleberger Papers, Box 24, MIT Libraries, Institute Archives and Special Collections.

Image Source: Charles Kindleberger in MIT Technique, 1950.

Tags Kindleberger, McFadden, Samuelson, Solow, Vogelsang

Economists Harvard Kansas

Harvard. Economics Ph.D. Alumnus, John Christopher Ise, 1914

Post author By Irwin Collier
Post date 2017-09-07

The Ph.D. alumni of a department typically provide their alma mater with talent-spotting services for future graduate students. The University of Kansas professor (and Harvard economics Ph.D., 1914) John C. Ise spotted Edward S. Mason, Lloyd A. Metzler (cf. the ERVM post of the Metzler memorial service) and John Lintner and sent them to Harvard for graduate school in economics. Quite the rate of return!

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John Christopher Ise
1996 Inductee of the Osborne County Hall of Fame

One of the foremost Kansas educators of the twentieth century was born June 5, 1885, in western Ross Township of Osborne County. Named after his maternal grandfather, John Christopher Ise was the seventh of twelve children born to Henry and Rosena (Haag) Ise on the homestead Henry had claimed in June 1871. As an infant John was stricken with polio, which caused his right leg to become withered and nearly useless. His parents decided early that his best chance at success in life was for him to become a scholar.

John attended the nearby one-room Ise School and learned to play the guitar and the violin. With the latter he occasionally gave recitals in the area. In 1902 he taught a term at the Prairie Bell School in Bethany Township, receiving thirty dollars a month in pay. Later he also taught at the Rose Valley School in Ross Township. In 1903 his damaged leg was amputated and he was fitted with an artificial one, after which he could walk almost normally.

Ise entered the University of Kansas (KU) and graduated with a degree in music in 1908. He followed this with Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Law degrees. In 1911 he was admitted to the Kansas bar. The next year he received his master’s degree from Harvard University, where in 1914 John also became a Doctor of Philosophy. He was an assistant professor of economics at Harvard and Iowa State College before joining the faculty at the University of Kansas in 1916. He became a full professor there in 1920.

Dr. Ise’s interest in natural resources economics made him internationally known and internationally debated. “As crusty as the Kansas sod, Ise had the self-imposed mission of shocking both students and the public from their intellectual lethargy,” wrote Clifford Griffin in his The University of Kansas: A History (1983). Then-radical ideas such as conserving national oil reserves against future shortages and restricting drilling and mining in national parks and other federal lands caused Ise to be branded a Communist by some. But as time went on his ideas and writings earned him lasting respect both as a resource conservationist and a prophet of the energy crisis of the 1970s.

On August 4, 1921, John married Lillie Bernhard in Lawrence, Kansas. They had two sons, John Jr. and Charles. John was an independent in politics and a charter member of the League for Independent Political Action. He also served as president of the American Economics Association, the Mid-West Economic Association and on the editorial board of the American Economic Review. He was given life membership in the Kansas Illustriana Society in 1933 and later was named to Who’s Who in America.

John was a member of several local organizations in the Lawrence area. He and his wife gave $25,000 in 1955 to the Lawrence Humane Society for an animal shelter in memory of their son Charles, who had died in a plane crash, and spent much more time with this cause. Dr. Ise’s efforts in this area were recognized in 1968 by the American Humane Association.

John’s eight books ranged in subject matter from a comprehensive test on economics to a collection of humorous comments on current condition, interspersed with the classic story of his pioneer family in Osborne County. The United States Forest Policy (1920), The United States Oil Policy (1926), and Our National Park Policy: A Critical History (1961) all reflected his economic views on the nation’s natural resources. The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, better known as OPEC, was formed in 1961 based on Ise’s conclusions in his Oil Policy book. Economics (1940) was a classroom textbook by Ise that was used at KU and several other colleges and universities from 1940 to 1965. Sod and Stubble (1936), a look at his parents’ life on the Kansas prairie in nineteenth century Osborne County, is still in print over 75 years after its initial publication. Ise also edited Howard Ruede’s critically-acclaimed Sod-House Days: Letters from a Kansas Homesteader (1937). These latter two books are considered to be the finest literature ever written about homesteading life on the Great Plains of North America, and have made Osborne County a focal point for scholarly study of the region. Ise’s final book, The American Way, was actually a present to him by his colleagues at KU upon his retirement in 1955 and is a collection of his finest speeches and letters.

Ise kept in touch with his boyhood home in Downs, whether giving the commencement address at the high school graduation or just visiting old friends. It was also customary for him to hold in Lawrence a yearly dinner for all Osborne County students attending KU.

John retired in 1955 with more earned degrees than any other KU faculty member. Up to fifteen thousand students had passed through his classes in thirty-nine years of teaching. He retired a world-renowned economist and is considered one of the three greatest professors in University of Kansas history. Currently the John Ise Award is given annually to recognize the student with the most outstanding achievement by the University of Kansas Department of Economics. John continued in the post of professor emeritus and also taught as a visiting professor of economics at Amherst College in Massachusetts, Groucher University in Baltimore, Maryland, Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas, and at Harvard University.

John Ise passed away March 26, 1969, at Lawrence and was buried there in the Oak Hill Cemetery. His legacy of teaching and his writings will continue to shape and inspire the world we live in for many years to come.

JOHN ISE
MEMORIES OF MY FATHER

“I was asked to write a brief summary of my father’s life as it pertained to Osborne County. Of his early life I know little beyond his own story of his parents’ life as set forth in his book Sod and Stubble. This book, which I understand is being reissued in 1996, delineates the hardships, sorrows, and joys experienced by Rosa and Henry Ise (nee Eisenmanger) as early settlers near Downs. It ends with the selling of the Ise farm and the move of the family to Lawrence following Henry’s death.

It became abundantly clear to me how much my father’s early farm life had affected him, since for as far back as I can remember (I was born in 1923, in Lawrence, Kansas) he always owned a couple of farms. These were both quarter-sections, one near Richland and the other near Doniphan. He let neighbors farm these in exchange for half the wheat crop, which I remember as yielding (at least during the 1930s) a modest negative return. And just after my brother was born, in March 1926, he moved our family from the rented house on Louisiana Street to a farmhouse a few miles west of Lawrence on Highway 40. His nostalgia for the farm had apparently overweighed my mother’s misgivings, but after about a year she prevailed and they moved back to 1208 Mississippi Street, where he spent the rest of his life.

He had extremely broad interests in life. Thus at KU he earned bachelor’s degrees from three schools – the School of Fine Arts in 1908 (in music), the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences in 1910, and the School of Law in 1911. He subsequently earned Master’s and Ph.D. degrees from Harvard in economics, which became his consuming interest from then on, particularly the study of conservation and farm economics. He wrote several books on these subjects, U.S. Oil Policy, U.S. Forest Policy, and U.S. National Park Policy, in addition to Sod and Stubble.

His early life on a Kansas farm had imbued him with several traits that I always found very admirable. He was scrupulously honest – I can remember once when he found that a sales clerk at the old Woolworth’s store on Massachusetts had given him a nickel too much change, whereupon he walked a block and a half in a light snowfall to return the nickel. This was not an easy task for a man who had to drag along a heavy artificial leg (prosthetics have come a long way since he had his withered leg cut off in 1903).

He loved animals with an unqualified love. He had worked his way through college by serving as a mounted officer for the Lawrence SPCA. His stories of how he had rescued dogs and horses from what seemed to my brother and me as incredible brutality and cruelty made a deep impression on both of us. After losing the use of his leg at the age of two to polio he had to get to school (half a mile) in a little wagon pulled by his faithful dog, Coalie. When my brother was killed in a light plane crash in 1955 my father donated money for the Charles Ise Animal Shelter in Lawrence.

And he seemed to have an uncanny way with animals. During the months that we spent on the farm west of Lawrence a neighboring farmer gave him a large and savage Airedale that had so badly bitten several of the farmer’s hired hands that he had to get rid of the dog. I can still remember Dad taking me and the dog by the scruff of the neck and saying, ‘Pal, this is Johnboy – you two are going to be friends.’ Not a growl from the fierce-looking dog, who did indeed become my fast friend, twice saving my life (as I still believe), once from a huge sow who had broken down her pen – this pig had actually eaten two of her own piglets – and once when I got stuck in quicksand in a wash near the farmhouse. These incidents may have hastened our move back to Lawrence!

My father was also a firm believer in the Biblical injunction ‘By the sweat of thy brow shalt thou earn thy daily bread’ and he worked harder than anyone I knew. He would teach all morning ‘up on the Hill,’ come home for lunch and then immure himself in his office, or ‘Library,’ as we called it. This was the downstairs room in our three story house, which contained many hundreds of books, mostly in his own field. All the rooms of the house, except for the kitchen, had bookcases, all full and almost all read. Dad worked, grading papers, preparing lectures, or writing some book or other, all afternoon and for three or four hours after dinner. This was a daily routine, except on Saturday afternoon when the Metropolitan Opera was playing, or when my parents either went out to dinner at friend’s homes or entertained friends themselves. My mother was an excellent cook; once being written up in Clementine Paddleford’s Sunday column for her Black Walnut Cake, but no wine or liquor was ever served in her house. Her father had been a Methodist minister and she and her nine brothers and sisters had been raised quite strictly. Dad’s parents had actually drunk beer and wine on rare occasions, to the considerable embarrassment of all their eleven children, most of whom remained strict teetotalers.

There were many things Dad could not teach me and my brother, because of his artificial leg. Thus there was no ball throwing or family bicycling trips. But he showed us things that to me were more important. As a child in Kansas he had had to be very inventive in the matter of playtime activities. He had learned to whittle with his jackknife–I still have a little box in which he carried his flute, carefully crafted from about a dozen types of wood native to Kansas. He showed Charlie and me how to crack a long bullwhip, and how to make shingle darts, launched with a stick with a knotted piece of string which fit into a notch in the body of the dart. He was incredibly precise with those things, and could hit targets at fifty yards as well as my brother and I could with our BB guns. Because of his missing leg he had had to compensate by using his arms more and had such strength in his arms and hands that he could chin himself with one hand, holding onto the exposed ceiling joists, a feat that his athletic older brothers could not duplicate. But the most important things he could and did teach us were attitudes and beliefs. We learned to love the outdoors, what is now called ‘the environment.’ Summer vacations were always spent camping in the western national parks. We picked up a love of great art, good music and great literature. His favorite author was always Mark Twain. He was fiercely loyal to Kansas and to the United States, which belies his frequently controversial views about many things. He was widely considered to be a Communist sympathizer for many years and the chancellor and even the governor received occasional letters from Kansas businessmen complaining about “that radical John Ise, infecting the young minds in our University.” This amused Dad greatly, but infuriated me and my brother. And thanks to a tolerant administration he remained at KU for thirty-nine years and I believe he taught at least a few thousand students how to think for themselves.

During my postdoctoral Fulbright fellowship to France in 1950 I was working with Jean Daudin, then a leading physicist in the field of cosmic rays. He also happened to be one of the leaders of the Communist Party in southern France and we worked together at the Pic du Midi, on the Spanish border, where he frequently entertained Spanish Loyalists hostile to Franco. Dad was teaching that summer at a seminar in Salzburg, sponsored by Harvard University, and I can remember the bitter argument he had with Daudin about communism, when the two of them met in Paris, for by 1950 the grim reality of Stalin’s dictatorship was obvious to all. I had to translate for the two of them for Dad spoke no French and Daudin no English and it was difficult for me to translate Dad’s cusswords into the kind of French I had learned from Mademoiselle Crumrine at KU!

He was a very good economist, serving as president of the American Economic Association, and an excellent teacher. His textbook on economics was for a time used by the majority of state universities, and I am glad that I was able to take his course in Economics 90, although I was too shy to ever open my mouth in class. When he retired from the KU faculty in 1955 his colleagues expressed their admiration by publishing a collection of his essays in a book, The American Way. In 1963 he was very proud to receive KU’s highest honor, the Citation for Distinguished Service, awarded at Commencement exercises. He remained a true son of Kansas all his life, which was inexorably shaped by his early upbringing in Downs. In one short essay reproduced in The American Way, entitled ‘No Time To Live’, he recalled one episode of his college days, when the family was still living in Downs, in the following manner:

‘When we went to Lawrence to college we did not expect to make the trip in four hours but rode the unhurried Central Branch, changed trains a time or two, making connections if we were lucky – if not, lounging around the depot for some hours or perhaps all night. I remember well the evening my sister and I missed connections at Beloit and sat out behind the depot most of the night, reciting poetry and talking of our plans and ambitions and theories of the good life. It was full moon, and there was a mist on the field of ripening wheat across the fence, and the frogs were croaking from the creek nearby. Sister has been gone these many years, but I can still close my eyes and see that lovely, peaceful scene as if I had been there only yesterday. An interruption of our long journey which I, no doubt, cursed with vigor, had enriched my life with an unforgettable experience. It was enforced leisure, but how rich and enduring.’

One final remark he made about the early settlers among whom he was raised is still relevant: ‘They had what it took, and it took a lot.’ That about sums it up.” – John Ise, Jr., November 1995.

Source: The Osborne County Hall of Fame, Presenting The Notable Past and Present Citizens of Osborne County, Kansas. 1996 Inductees.

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Excerpt from Edward S. Mason’s Autobiography

John Ise, then an Associate Professor of Economics, was a remarkable man and he came from a remarkable family. His father, Henry Eisenmenger, had come to this country from Wurttemberg, Germany in 1857. As his son later recounted, the father “joined the Union arising at the outbreak of the Civil War, helped guard the Mississippi, fought around Chattanooga, marched with Sherman to the sea, and at the close of the war, returned to Illinois, with a new name, ‘Ise’ – because the captain could not remember his full name.”* He moved west after the war, took up a “free” claim of 160 acres in western Kansas, made it into a thriving farm and, with the help of an indomitable wife, raised 12 children, of whom 11 lived. All of them attended college and a few became significant figures in the life of their communities. John was one of the younger ones. He was stricken with infantile paralysis in his youth but, although crippled, he was a powerful man and full of energy. He was also a most engaging teacher.

John Ise had taken his, doctor’s degree at Harvard in 1914 with a dissertation on the History of the Forestry Policy of the United States which foreshadowed later interest in natural resources and land policy**. Ise was much impressed by the Harvard Economics Department – a little too much impressed I later thought when studying under some of the same teachers and – it led him to send his good students there for graduate training. Among others, Lloyd Metzler, now Professor at the University of Chicago, and John Lintner, now Professor at Harvard, passed through his hands. Although Ise could not be called an eminent economist he was an eminent teacher and I received a thorough grounding in Alfred Marshall’s Principles that later stood me in good stead. But he was much more than a teacher and economist. He was a liberal influence in the University and throughout the state. Indeed his very effective speeches in public affairs acquired for him the reputation of having somewhat of a “socialist tinge” which was unusual, to say the least, in Republican Kansas. Whether socialist or not he was the only teacher I ever had who significantly influenced the course of my development.

*John Ise, Sod and Stubble: The Story of a Kansas Homestead. New York, Barnes and Noble, Inc. 1940, p. 10

**His dissertation was later published in part by the Ames iowa Forester. Among subsequent publications were: The United States Oil Policy, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1926. Our National Park Policy, Johns Hopkins Press, Baltimore, 1961. He also published a textbook, Economics, Harper, N.Y., 1946.

Source: Edward S. Mason, A Life in Development: An Autobiography (privately published by his son Edward H. L. Mason, 2004) p. 14. [Available in the Harvard University Archives Box 1 of Papers of Edward Sagendorph Mason

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Ise’s account (1922) of the undergraduate principles of economics course

…Most departments of economics, nevertheless, follow the plan of giving an all-inclusive course in Elements or Principles to freshmen or sophomores, and make this course prerequisite to most other work in economics. This arrangement can probably be explained, if not excused, by the power of academic tradition. Not many decades ago, only one or two courses in economics were given in most universities — Principles of Political Economy, and perhaps one or two other courses. New courses were gradually added to the curriculum, but the course in Principles was retained as a fundamental introductory course. As long as there were only a few other courses, there was justification for a broad course in the Principles, even if there was little reason for making it the first course; but when enough advanced courses were added to cover the entire field of economics, the course in Principles represented little but duplication. It was not changed much, in character or in scope, as the other courses were added. This is revealed by examination of some of the textbooks used in the United States during the past half century or more. Wayland, Bowen, Amasa Walker, Perry, Meservey, Newcomb, Macvane, Osborne — all cover somewhat the same general ground. Wayland’s Elements of Political Economy, published in 1837, strikingly resembles many recent texts.

John Stuart Mill’s Principles is not very different from many texts now in use, except that it is somewhat superior to most of them.…

There has been a widespread appreciation of the fact that underclassmen do not have the basis of information necessary to a thorough grasp of the course in Principles ; and at least twenty institutions have provided one or two, or even as many as three courses, to precede the Principles and lay a foundation for it. The courses most commonly prescribed are largely historical or descriptive — Economic History of England, Economic History of the United States, Commercial Geography, Commercial Industries, Economic Resources, American Economy, The Economic Order, Modern Economic Life, Industrial Society, Industries and Commerce, Descriptive Economics, etc…

Source: John Ise. The Course in Elementary Economics. American Economic Review, Vol. 12, No. 4 (Dec. 1922), pp. 614-623.

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Kansapedia article
[Yes, there is a Kansapedia]

John C. Ise

Born: June 5, 1885, Ross Township, Osborne County, Kansas. Married Lillie Bernhard, 1921.
Died: March 26, 1969, Lawrence, Douglas County, Kansas.

John Ise was born June 5, 1885, in June 5, 1885, in Ross Township, Osborne County, Kansas, to Henry and Rosena (Haag) Ise, where the family had homesteaded in 1871. He was the eighth of 12 children.

Ise attended the University of Kansas and earned bachelor’s degrees in 1908, 1910, and 1911. He earned a master’s degree in 1912 and doctoral degree in 1914 from Harvard University. In 1916 Ise joined the faculty of the University of Kansas in the economics department and reached full professor status in 1920. He married Lillie Bernhard in 1921. They had one child.

Ise retired from the University of Kansas in 1955. He authored eight books that include humorous anecdotes, economics textsbooks, and pioneer family stories. Ise was a philanthropist who supported the animal shelter in Lawrence. He served on numerous boards related to economics and became known around the world for his work as an economist. He was still considered among the three greatest professors in the history of the University of Kansas for many years.

Sod and Stubble is Ise’s most well-known work. The story tells of pioneer life on the Kansas plains in the late 19th century. His mother inspired the character of the pioneer woman who at the age of 17 married a young German farmer and settled in north central Kansas and raised a large family.

Source: “Ise, John, C.” in Kansas Historical Society, Kansapedia. Webpage created June 2014 and modified December 2015.

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From: John Ise Papers at the University of Kansas

…Over the course of his career he authored eight books, served as president of the American Economics Association and the Mid-West Economic Association, and served on the editorial board of the American Economic Review. Sod and Stubble is Ise’s best known work, recording his childhood as a child of homesteaders in Osborne County in the late 19th century. Other volumes written by Ise include Economics, Our National Park Policy: A Critical History, The American Way, The United States Forest Policy, and The United States Oil Policy.

Ise was also a generous philanthropist, notably supporting and for a time serving as president of the Lawrence Humane Society in Lawrence, Kansas…

Research Tip: Box 19 “Clippings, letters, published materials, class notes” would almost certainly have course materials from Harvard, but perhaps also from his own student days:

Source: Excerpt from short biography in University of Kansas Libraries, Kenneth Spencer Research Library. Guide to the John Ise Collection.

Image Source: The Osborne County Hall of Fame, Presenting The Notable Past and Present Citizens of Osborne County, Kansas. 1996 Inductees.

Tags Ise, Lintner, Mason, Metzler

Chicago Exam Questions Suggested Reading

Chicago. Jacob Viner’s Price and Distribution Theory Course, 1941

Post author By Irwin Collier
Post date 2017-09-06

Jacob Viner’s graduate course on price and distribution theory has become a legend in the history of economics. Milton Friedman (1932) [links to many of the course readings assigned by Viner found in the posting for 1932] attended Viner’s lectures as did Paul Samuelson (1935). During the Fall quarter of 1941, Norman M. Kaplan attended Viner’s price and distribution theory course. From Kaplan’s approximately 100 pages of handwritten class notes plus 150 pages of handwritten notes on the course readings, I am able to post today a transcription of his notes from the first week of the course along with a list of titles of readings that I have found referred to in his class notes and/or in his reading notes. In the folder with these notes one also find course examination questions together with Kaplan’s answers. I only include Viner’s examination questions today.

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Course Description

Price and Distribution Theory.—A study of the general body of economic thought which centers about the theory of value and distribution and is regarded as “orthodox theory.” This course includes the critical examination of some modern systems of this character. Prerequisite: Economics 209 or equivalent and the Bachelor’s degree. Summer, 8:00, Knight; Autumn, 9:00, Viner.

Source: Announcements of the University of Chicago. Vol. XLI, No. 10. (April 25, 1941). The College and the Divisions for the Sessions of 1941-1942. p. 306.

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First Week: Introduction
Kaplan’s notes to Viner’s lectures

Oct. 7

I. Changes in econ. theory in last 10 years.

Increasing tendency now to general as vs. partial equilibrium analysis. (More than one variable permitted to vary as vs. Marshall,: ceteris paribus relaxed). You surrender usually the breadth of the generalization in the interest of reality, of closer approximation to facts. Since Walras-Pareto school, technical skill of economists has increased so that little is lost in way of generalization. Few now use Walras-Pareto method; Schultz last used Lausanne method preceded by Henry Moore.
A more definite and thorough incorporation of monetary theory in general theory. In Marshall’s Principles, e.g., equilibrium is described with monetary theory & banking structure excluded. This stemmed from Classical Economists’ criticism of Mercantilists as exaggerating role of money; money was a “veil covering other things”. Since 1929, emphasis has been placed on monetary theory due to depression (depressions always yield concentration on monetary matters) and to special influence of Keynes.
Increasing attention to cyclical phenomena (now on wane, thinks Viner)—depression is normal & prosperity an aberration.
Greater attention paid to monopolisitic practices and to deviations from perfect competition.
Substitution of production theory for distribution theory. Distribution theory in Marshallian sense is disappearing from theory.

Viner will give little of these changes; this is a course in Marshallian econ., primarily.

II. Most of econ. propositions are quantitative in nature, mathematical

(Includes “greater than”, and “less than” concepts; though qualitative may also be math.).

Criteria: (1) Have you been logically consistent; (2) If you have been logically consistent, where have you gotten in deduction from premises. Another important issue is selection of premises; here is where economists frequently fall down.

Premises must be examined: (1) what variables are you recognizing; (2) how many & nature of variables; (3) nature of preconceptions—what do you assume with regard to econ. rationality, e.g. Part of reason for controversial nature of econ. is wide range of possible choices as to premises due to wide range of variables in any situation as vs. physical sciences where there are few variables & laboratory control can reduce the no. of these. On the other hand, variables in econ. are too few to apply probability theory as in actuarial science or celestial mechanics where you don’t have to worry about nature of variables, since great no. of variables none of which has any intelligible significance.

III. Two types of analysis:

(1) Reduction of variables in any situation & particular scrutiny of variables; (2) Probability theory. Criteria of probability theory: (1) Population is large; (2) Population is homogeneous; (3) All members are roughly coordinate in effect. Economist uses probability in his statistical analyses; he selects dominant variables & leaves the rest to probability theory on grounds that none of these variables exert a very important influence on result. Leaving the rest to probability is an euphemism for neglecting them.

IV. Marshallian approach is a static equilibrium approach.

Changes & disturbances through time have been dealt with not through process analysis [illegible parenthetical insert here: perhaps “(time implicit)”)] but through comparative statics—no analysis of how you get from one place to another through time but a comparison of two static equilibriums with slight changes. Marshallian economics is a balanced aquarium system, with individual inhabitants undergoing cycles of life & death but with the equilibrium undisturbed by individual dynamics.

Oct. 8

I. We ordinarily assume a stationary economy in some sense (something not changing through time) in orthodox theory.

Often you start out with “exchange economy”—no change in production; no consumption. All participants have commodities, swap; who has what & how much?
Another type of assumption.—fixed quantity of resources or factors of production
Another type of assumption.—fixed quantity of services
Another type of assumption.—fixed supply functions of resources (not inconsistent with stationary state)
Another type of assumption.—fixed supply functions of services (not inconsistent with stationary state)

II. [Meaning of stable equilibrium]

In assuming stable equilibrium, you may assume that all atoms are in equil. or that atoms may be in disequilibrium but over all equil. is possible because disequil. in one direction are offset by disequil. in other direction.[Note by Kaplan:

III. Theorists are tending to work from individuals to aggregate rather than vice versa.

IV. Neo-classical theory is criticized as being abstract.

But abstraction is necessary to generalizations & generalization is the only thought we know.
Such critics usually meant that it’s too abstract, if they mean anything.
1. Complete absence of concrete detail is practically inconceivable. There always must be some factual or allegedly factual material or you wouldn’t know it was econ.
2. Complete particularism (no generalization) can’t be found.
  1. Even an infant beginning to talk uses generalizations—“cat” as label
  2. Use of symbols is so tied with generalization it’s impossible to use words without generalization.

Walton H. Hamilton is a particularist; generalizations are dangerous because they lead to abstraction. His book on prices shows each industry has peculiarities of its own. Of course, but particularism is dangerous because it shows absence of thought; no inquiry into uniformities.

The degree of abstraction depends on the purpose of economic inquiry—eternal economic truths or problem solving.

V. 4 kinds of purposes in economic analysis.

Intellectual exercise
Cultural value—throwing light on history & nature of mankind
Tool sharpening—to teach skill in use & invention of tools of analysis
(Social) problem solving—most important for profession as a whole.

Degree of abstraction depends on purpose.

VI. Econ. is criticized for assuming the rationality of man

(Cf. Mitchell’s [word illegible: appears to be “Phillisipl”, probably a misspelling of “Felicific. See Wesley Clair Mitchell, “Bentham’s Felicific Calculus”. Political Science Quarterly (June, 1918), pp. 161-183.] Calculation of Bentham) Mitchell says we have now learned man is not dominated by rational behavior—thinking of Freud & Behaviorism.

But what is rational behavior? What proportion of time must a man spend so behaving (after rational is defined) to be dominated by such behavior? Sentence is meaningless. Habit may be rational in origin, habitual behavior does not mean irrational behavior.

does assume rationality in some sense.
To econ. rationality means:
1. Correct use of means to attain desired ends, given the state of kg. [knowledge] of the actor.
2. Substantial degree of reliable accurate kg. [knowledge]
3. Immediate ends of behavior econ. is looking at are primarily economic—i.e., directed towards wealth, leisure, productive activity.

Testing rationality would be very difficult probably impossible.

Classical economist believed that except for depraved & degraded persons the behavior of man was substantially close to the three criteria to constitute rationality. They were biased in favor of rationality because they were essentially democrats (politically) & equalitarians [sic]. They had a technological (professional) bias in favor of rationality because they were proficient in such an assumption, they had been taught that. (A professional bias, not a class bias, says Viner). That technological bias was for a priori deductive analysis because earlier classicals were deductive and it was easier & body of kg. [knowledge] was deductive. Deductive analysis is tied up with rationality because otherwise you would have to make observations to know how men would behave. Econ. even deductive econ., is not absolutely tied to rationality but only to some predictable pattern of human behavior (which may be irrational, but must be predictable if science is to be a priori.[)]

Oct. 9

I. Assumption of rationality.

No reason why econ. couldn’t take account of irrationality if it could find such patterns, but that would take systematic observation. Rationality is easier.
Economic man:
1. Is he selfish? Unit is the family; it’s an economic family not an economic man; Ricardo, e.g., took it for granted that wife would be taken care of & children raised. Ends which economist treats are not final ends, though they may be final as far as economist analyzes. Assumption is only that in market place, man is economic. Whatever altruistic motives man may have are not directed towards other party to contract. Altruism or hostility to other bargainer disturbs economic theory; participant is neutral towards other. This is extent of selfishness. Such an assumption—indifference of party A in contrast to welfare of party B—may be unrealistic in some markets: hostility in Irish landlord-tenant and Negroe [sic] sharecropper relation and benevolence in English landlord-tenant relation. English landlord may be acting rationally, though not an economic man.
2. Not synonymous with rationality.

II. [When the “means” themselves are “ends”]

You don’t get very far with definition of econ. as application of scarce resources to desired ends because one of the most difficult problems is to distinguish between means and ends. Adam Smith dealt with division of labor as allocation of scarce resources to desired ends but Ferguson criticized Smith for not seeing the values in the activities. What Smith thought were means may have been ends. Agriculture may be a means, but it may also be an end—agr. as a “way of life”.

III. What is rational attitude towards risk taking?

Value all risks which could be valued at actuarial values? But is abhorrence of risks & therefore undervaluing them or love of chance & therefore overvaluing any the less rational.[?]

IV. Even Classical did not always assume rationality:

Dealt with ignorance factor—patterns of behavior due to misinformation or lack of it
In connection with savings they said masses failed to make adequate provision for future, did not foresee needs of the future or hadn’t the will to so provide (former is ignorance; latter is irrationality)
Population theory based on irrationality—family decisions not made on grounds of economic welfare.

We will assume rationality in this course, but in economics generally we must be flexible and willing to drop the assumption if necessary.

End of introduction

[Oct. 9 notes continue with a preliminary discussion of the Marshallian demand curve]

________________________

Suggested/Required Course Readings
Compiled from Kaplan’s notes
Notes on these readings ( made by Kaplan

Demand & Supply: Cost of Production

*Marshall, Book V, Ch. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 12, Appendix H
*Viner, Cost Curves & Supply Curves
*Chamberlin, Theory of Monopolistic Competition, Ch. II & Appendix B, pp. 190-93.
Harrod, Theories of Imperfect Competition (get article)

On Cobweb Adjustment

*M. Ezekiel “The Cobweb Theorem” QJE, Feb. 1938
*N. W. Buchanan “On the Cobweb Theorem” JPE, Feb 1939

Empirical Analysis

(Optional) Joel Dean, “Statistical Investigation of Costs with Especial Reference to Marginal Costs”, Supplement to 1936, U. of C. Journal of Business.
*Stigler, “The Limitations of Statistical Demand Curves,” J. of Am. Stat. Assn. Sept 1939, pp. 469-81

Austrian Theory of Value

*Smart, Intro. to Theory of Value, pp. 64-83
*Wicksteed, Commonsense of P.E. Robbins edition Intro. Vol. I p. XX, Vol. II, pp. 784-88

Joint Demand & Joint Supply.

*Marshall, Bk. V, Ch. 6 & Math Appendix H

Monopoly Value.

*Marshall Bk. V., Ch. 14

Distribution Theory

*Distribution theory. Marshall, Bk. VI, Ch’s 1 & 2
J.B. Clark, Dist. of Wealth. Preface & chapters 1, 7, 8.

Some items mentioned as suggested readings

Cf. A. L. Meyers. Elements of Modern Economics (1941 ed.), Ch. V on Indifference Curves.
or *Boulding Economic Analysis, [Ch. 30 Advanced Theory of Consumption]

Cf. Hans Staehle. Elasticity of Demand & Social Welfare. QJE, Feb. 1940.

Betterman, Elasticity of Supply Am. Ec. Rev. 1934, pp. 417 ff. Better: R. F. Fowler “The diagrammatical representation of elasticity of supply” Economica, May 1938.

Cf. p. 24 of Viner article on conflict between English & Austrian schools.

Cf. Ch. 23 Boulding

Halevy, Westminister Review

Not recorded as assignments in lecture notes,
but reading notes were taken by Kaplan

*F. H. Knight. “Demand” in Encyclopedia of Soc. Science.

Marshall

*Book III, Ch. I, II, III, IV, V, VI, Note III in math appendix. Ch. III A, Ch. IV B., Note IV
*Book V, Ch 1 Note A, B
*Book V, Ch. 2. Note A, B
*Book V, Ch. 3. Note A, B, C
*Book V, Ch. IV
*Book V, Ch. 5, Note A, B, C, D, E, F
*Book V, Ch. 6, Note. A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K
*Book V, Ch. VI, mathematical note XIV appended to note D.

________________________

Course Exams

ECONOMICS 301
[Perhaps midterm: Kaplan answers only for 1-3]

Comment briefly on each of the following passages (explanation, justification, disproof, qualification, as may be appropriate).

“It is not the case that an increased demand for mutton must in the long run necessarily operate to lower the price of wool. An increased demand for mutton will stimulate sheep farming, but it will also stimulate the substitution of crossbred [mutton type] for merino [wool type] breeds; and the resultant of these two opposite tendencies is logically indeterminate.”
“When Consols are at 93½ , and business in in a tranquil state, it matters not how many buyers of these securities there are at 93, or sellers at 94. They are really off the market. Those only are operative who may be made to buy or sell by a rise or a fall of an eighth. The question is, whether the price shall remain at 93½, or rise to 93 5/8, or fall to 93 3/8. This is determined by a very few persons and by the sale or purchase of very small amounts.”
“The degree of monopoly control by a seller equals the degree by which price exceeds marginal revenue.”
“The degree of monopoly control by an employer as employer equals the degree by which the value of the marginal product of labor exceeds the marginal supply price of labor.”
“Where it is the case that people would not give as large a total sum for a larger quantity of an article than for a smaller, this would be expressed geometrically by saying that the demand curve would cut negatively a rectangular hyperbola.” [negatively means cut from above]
“The fact that supplying labor with better or more instruments results in an increase in output has sometimes led to the conclusion that capital is productive, a phrase which must be used with care. The strictly accurate statement is that labor applied in some ways is more productive than labor applied in other ways. Tools and machinery, buildings and materials, are themselves made by labor, and represent an intermediate stage in the application of labor. Capital as such is not an independent factor in production, and there is no separate productiveness of capital.”

ECONOMICS 301
Thursday [December 18, 1941]

Time: 1 hour.

a. If elasticity of demand is unity, and original rate of sales is 1,000 per month, what will happen to the rate of sales if price falls 50 per cent?
b. If elasticity of demand is two, and original rate of sales is 1,000 per month, what will happen to the rate of sales if price falls 25 per cent?
c. “Since elasticity of demand measures variations in quantity demanded divided by variations in price, the elasticity of the demand for anything will be seven times as large for seven similar demanders taken together as it is for one.” Comment.
Discuss the probable shapes for a particular plant of its short-run and its long-run average cost curves, and given these curves, explain the derivation of the corresponding marginal cost curves.
On what grounds can it be held that in any important industry, increase in output is in the static long-run likely to be subject to conditions of increasing cost? Give and discuss the arguments which have been presented in support of different views.

ECONOMICS 301
Friday [December 19, 1941]

Time: 1 hour.

Suppose that a single monopolist takes charge of an industry which has hitherto been in the hands of a large number of independent producers and which makes extensive use of a specialized type of labor. Give an account of the factors which will determine the effect of the change on (a) the industry’s output, and (b) the volume of employment of labor by the industry.
A power monopoly, operating within the range where there are net internal economies of large-scale production sells current for both industrial and domestic use. The distribution costs on the latter are 20 cents per unit higher than for the former. Given: (a) the industrial demand schedule for current; (b) the domestic demand schedule for current; (c) the average cost schedule for generating current plus distributing it to industrial users.
What rates should be charged to each type of customer to maximize the net income of the company?
a. What conditions are necessary if the demand curves for particular firms in an industry are to have negative inclinations, but without any net monopoly profits?
b. Are these conditions compatible with long-run equilibrium?

Source: The University of Chicago Archives. Norman M. Kaplan Papers, Box 4, Folder 1.

Image Source: Image Source: University of Chicago Photographic Archive, apf1-08490, Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library.

Tags Kaplan, Viner

Chicago Economists Harvard Yale

Harvard. Mason, Domar and Samuelson at Metzler Memorial Service, 1980

Post author By Irwin Collier
Post date 2017-09-05

These memorial remarks for Lloyd Metzler come from Evsey Domar’s papers. Edward S. Mason and Evsey D. Domar’s remarks have been transcribed in full. I have only provided excerpts of those by Paul Samuelson that were published later in Vol. V of his Collected Scientific Papers. The common denominator of all three remembrances is that Metzler was an outlier among economists both with respect to his analytical abilities and contributions to economics as well with respect to his uncommon utter decency. It appears even back then, nice guys in economics attracted as much attention as an albino moose today. Samuelson’s speculative remark regarding Metzler’s assignment to the “Burbank ghetto” is priceless as is his recounting of Keynes’ less than sage advice to Sidney Alexander.

___________________

LLOYD A. METZLER
1913-1980
by Edward S. Mason

We are here to celebrate the life of Lloyd Metzler who gave comfort and pleasure not only to his family but to a host of friends. In the six short years he was at Harvard, he made a name for himself as a scholar of promise and a man to whom others turned for help and companionship.

Lloyd took his first degree at the University of Kansas and studied under a man who was my own teacher and who taught John Lintner and a number of others who later came to Harvard. I’d like to say a word about this man, John Ise, who left his imprint on Lloyd, on me, and on all those who passed through his hands. Ise was one of five children who grew up on the Kansas prairies just after the Sod House days that he later wrote about. All of these children went through the University and all made their mark in life. He was a strong man who fought for his unpopular opinions and encouraged his students to strike out for themselves. I know he impressed Lloyd as much as he did me.

After teaching two years at Kansas, Lloyd came to the Graduate School at Harvard in 1936. It was an interesting period in Cambridge and in the Department of Economics. The old guard was leaving the Department and a new crew coming in. Taussig, Carver, and Bullock retired; Ripley died; and Gay left for the Huntington library. These were the stalwarts who had dominated the Department since 1900. Early in the 1930s, Schumpeter, Leontief, and Haberler joined the Department and, later, Hansen, Schlichter, and Black. They were a vigorous crew. Lloyd early discovered his major interest in international trade and worked, in particular, with Hansen and Haberler. Harvard economics was also fortunate in attracting during that period a number of exceptional graduate students, a number of whom are here with us today. I am sure that Lloyd learned as much from them as from his teachers and, in the process, gave as much as he took.

The 1930s were also a period of upheaval in the country and in the University. In some respects it resembled the late 1960s though the protagonists and antagonists were not as strident or violent. It was a period when new ideas percolated the environment and questions of public policy were much to the fore. The influence of Keynes dominated the last few years of the decade, and Lloyd soon found himself in the middle of Keynesian controversies.

After leaving Harvard in 1942, he spent a year as a Guggenheim Fellow and then joined the Office of Strategic Services for a year. Although OSS had a good stable of economists, I am sure that he felt more at home at the Federal Reserve Board where he served from 1944 to 1946. After that a brief period at Yale, and then the University of Chicago where he was a distinguished member of the Economics Department for the rest of his life.

I leave it to others to comment on his considerable scholarly accomplishments, but want to say something about how Lloyd impressed me as a young man. He was obviously much more than an economist, with deep interests in music and literature. He was a cultivated man who in some respects reminded me of Allyn Young who also had a great interest in music and who, for a brief moment in the 1920s, shed his light on Harvard. Young looked more like a poet than an economist though I admit it is difficult for me to describe just what an economist is supposed to look like. Lloyd was a sensitive gentleman with a gift for friendship. Everyone who knew him like him and all of us join Edith in deeply mourning his departure.

ON LLOYD METZLER
by Evsey D. Domar

Last Sunday, The New York Times reviewed another book on President Truman. He is a gold mine for historians. A man of modest ability, yet a good president. Well, perhaps not quite so good… On the other hand, by comparison with our presidents in the recent past and, may I add, expected in the near future, a giant indeed… Many contradictions in his character and performance and so on. Could you find a better man to write about?

Lloyd Metzler does not offer such wonderful opportunities. As I look back over nearly forty years since I first met him, I don’t find contradictions either in his character nor in his actions; what stands out is a man of rare intellectual ability, remarkable modesty and much kindness.

Over my lifetime I have known a number of very bright people, including some economists; and a number of very modest and kind people, also including some economists. But I have never met one who could excel Lloyd in the combination of ability, modesty and kindness.

This was true at Harvard where he was finishing his thesis when I first met him in 194’ [sic]. If a visitor asked then, “Who is your brightest graduate student?” the answer, without any hesitation was “Lloyd Metzler, of course.” If the question was, “Who is your nicest graduate student?” the answer was once again, “Lloyd, of course.” Ant the same was true at the Federal Reserve where he spent a couple of years during the War. It was true in his office, in the cafeteria, in the afternoon math class which he gave for the staff, and outside of that marble building which has lately appeared several times on TV. (Hard to believe now that in those days the interest rate of government securities was something like 2½ per cent.)

As Solzhenitsyn said, he “was the one righteous person without whom, as the saying goes, no city can stand. Neither can the whole world.”

LLOYD METZLER
(April 3, 1913—October 26, 1980)
by Paul A. Samuelson

[Excerpts]

That we should hold this memorial service in the Harvard Yard is fitting. Widener Library was Lloyd’s first stamping grounds after he came to Harvard in 1937 from Kansas. Later, when the Littauer building was new, he switched his battleground to the other side of where we now meet. In my mind’s eye, I can still see Lloyd Metzler walking across the Harvard Yard, with his little dachshund in tow, engaged in animated badinage with Bob Bishop or Dan Vandermeulen. A young resident of Winthrop House, destined to be president of the United States [John F. Kennedy], used to be disturbed in his studies by our revels in Lloyd’s Winthrop House tutorial suite.

…To be near K.U., the family finally moved to Lawrence, Kansas. There the spellbinder populist, John Ise, rescued Lloyd from the swamp of the business school. Just as Ise had done with Ed Mason, and as he was to do with John Lintner, Challis Hall, and a host of other sons of the middle border, Ise sent Metzler on to his old graduate student at Harvard.

Harold Hitchings Burbank, noting the Germanic “z” in Lloyd’s name and recognizing his egregious talent, probably mistook him for a Jew…Like other able people Burbank didn’t favor, Lloyd was put in the galleys of Frickey and Crum, to serve as assistant in the undergraduate courses in statistics and accounting. Since I never had that honor, I can with good grace report that the cream of the graduate school, those who have won the Wells Prizes and top honors of our profession, all came from this Burbank ghetto.

…What is in order is to speak of Wassily Leontief and E.B. Wilson We few mathematical economists at Harvard were blessed by these great teachers…Wilson spotted Metzler’s genius. One of President Conant’s few stupid decisions was to retire Wilson at the earliest possible age, and this in a period of teacher shortages, thereby depriving the post-Metzler generations of the consumers’ surplus that Metzler, I, Bergson, Tsuru, Alexander, and some other happy few enjoyed.

That, however , was par for the critics of mathematical economics. In the year that Metzler came to Harvard, Sidney Alexander was Keynes’s last tutee at Cambridge University. Keynes seriously advised Alexander not to waste his time with mathematical economics…

…All in all, Lloyd Metzler added enormously to economic science. And that sense of humor and sweet nature lives on in our happy memories.

Note: Samuelson’s complete remarks at the memorial service were published in The Collected Scientific Papers of Paul A. Samuelson, Vol. V (Kate Crowley, ed.) pp. 827-830. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1986.

Source: Duke University. Rubenstein Library. Papers of Evsey Domar, Box 6, Folder “Correspondence: Lloyd Metzler etc.”

Image Source: “Lloyd A. Metzler/Fellow: Awarded 1942/Field of Study: Economics”John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Webpage .

Tags Alexander, Bergson, Bishop, Black, Burbank, Domar, HallCh, Hansen, Ise, Leontief, Lintner, Mason, Metzler, Samuelson, Tsuru, Vandermeulen, Wilson, Young

Columbia Economic History Economists Harvard Illinois Johns Hopkins Minnesota Yale

Columbia. Seligman Recommends Three Harvard Colleagues for English Visiting Professorship, 1925

Post author By Irwin Collier
Post date 2017-09-03

The Sir George Watson Chair of American History, Literature, and Institutions was administered by the Anglo-American Society for a distinguished visiting professor to lecture in several English universities. The inaugural lecture was given in 1921 by Viscount Bryce. That lecture, “The Study of American History” was published along with an account of the establishment of the Sir George Watson Chair. The first full course of lectures, “Economic Problems of Democracy” was given the following year by the economist and President-Emeritus of Yale University, Arthur T. Hadley.

From the following exchange of letters between the president of Columbia University and economist, E.R.A. Seligman, we harvest Seligman’s ranking of four economics professors (three from Harvard and one from Johns Hopkins) regarded by Seligman to dominate the leading specialists in American economic history for this prestigious visiting position in “American History, Literature, and Institutions”. I have been unable at this time to determine who was actually appointed in 1925 or 1926

______________________________

Columbia President Butler Requests E.R.A. Seligman to Propose Names of Distinguished Economists for a British Chair in American History

Columbia University
in the City of New York
President’s Room

January 6, 1925

Professor E. R. A. Seligman
Department of Economics

My dear Professor Seligman

The electors to the Watson Chair of American History in British Universities contemplate acting upon a suggestion of mine and naming in the not distant future a competent American scholar to present the subject of our economic history and development. The topics that I have in mind include the migration West and the settlement of the large land areas there, the development of government aid in internal improvements, the building up of the railway and other transportation systems, the struggles over the tariff, the development, both industrially and geographically, of our manufacturing system, and the growth and character of foreign trade. There would, of course, also have to be treatment, although in general fashion, of the high points of our financial history.

Can you out of your wide acquaintance with American economists suggest a few names that I might send to the electors for consideration when they come to make their choice? The man ought to have enough standing at home to make his appointment abroad significant. He ought to be a good lecturer before a general academic audience and he ought to have a sufficiently philosophic cast of mind to avoid plunging into a morass of facts and statistics when what is needed is philosophic exposition of principles, happenings and trends of events.

With cordial regards an all the compliments of the season, I am

Faithfully yours
[signed]
Nicholas Murray Butler

______________________________

Copy of Seligman’s Response to Butler’s Request

January 7, 1925.

President Nicholas Murray Butler,
Columbia University.

My dear President Butler:

In reply to your letter of January 6^th I would say that the professed economic historians are not of the very first rank. The best of them are Clive Day, of Yale, who is, I am afraid, a bit ineffective as a speaker; E. L. Bogart, of Illinois, who is a much more impressive personality and who is a fine fellow, although not a scholar of the first rank; and, finally, Professor Gras, of Minnesota, who is a younger man. It would be far better, it seems to me, to choose some prominent economist, many of whom either give courses in economic history as an incidental matter or who may be assumed to have a competent knowledge of American history. In this rank I should put first Professor E. L.(sic) Gay, of Harvard, with whom no doubt you are acquainted, and who was formerly editor of the Evening Post; then either Ripley or A. A. Young, of Harvard, would do very well, as they are both men of distinction and personality. Other men, like Hollander of Johns Hopkins, occasionally gives courses similar to the one that I give every few years, on economic and fiscal history. Taking it all in all, the order of my choice would be Gay, Young, Ripley, Hollander.

If you desire more detailed information about any of these and their characteristics or standing, I should be glad to talk it over with you.

Faithfully yours,
[E.R.A. Seligman]

Source: Columbia University Archives. Edwin Robert Anderson Seligman Collection, Box 37, Folder “Box 100, Seligman, Columbia 1924-1930”.

Image Source: E.R.A. Seligman portrait in American Economic Review, 1943.

Tags Bogart, DayC, Gay, Gras, Hadley, Hollander, Ripley, Seligman, Young

Economists Funny Business M.I.T.

M.I.T. Analysis in Wonderland. Graduate Student Skit, 1975

Post author By Irwin Collier
Post date 2017-09-02

The annual skit party was a huge social event in the economics department at MIT in the 1970s and presumably before and after. Each of the cohorts was expected to write and perform its own skit in which economics and economics professors were the principal targets. Faculty written skits were often a part of the festivities. Here in this posting for the historical record, a parody of Alice in Wonderland set in the Wonderland Institute of Technology in 1975 written by the first-year class of 1974-75. But first I provide a list of my classmates with links to some biographical information where I was able to find something…whatever happened to Paul Krugman? Not everybody participated in the preparation and performance so there remains a presumption of comic innocence for the majority of the following.

In 1978 many of this cohort were involved in Casablank, a parody of the movie Casablanca. That script has been transcribed and posted at the highlighted link.

__________________

First Year Economics Graduate Students, 1974-75
M.I.T. (Spring 1975)

Abel, Andrew B.
Aspe, Pedro A.
Begg, David K. H.
Beleza, Luis Miguel C. P.
Bookstaber, Richard M.
Collier, Irwin L., Jr.
Datcher, Linda P.
Daula, Thomas V.
Desormeaux, Jorge J.
Donnelly, John F.
Duarte, Virgulino
Klorza, Santiago C.
Feiger, Margaret C.
Frankel, Jeffrey A.
Geehan, Randall R.
Giavazzi, Francesco
Halpern, Janice D.[sic, H.?]
Helms, L. Jay
Hill, Raymond D.
Krasker, William S.
Krugman, Paul R.
Malveaux, Julianne M.
Mincy, Ronald B.
Mooney, Patricia D.
Mork, Knut A.
Nagatani, Hiroaki
Neuer, Margaret R.
Smith, David A. [Alton]
Startz, Richard
Winicker, Mary K.

Source: M.I.T. Archives. MIT Department of Economics Records, Box 1, Folder “Women & Minorities”.

__________________

While transcribing this skit from my own days as a graduate student, I discovered how much I had indeed forgotten. The mapping of many a character to the corresponding faculty member was no longer obvious to me. I have added a listing of Dramatis Personae with annotations based on the combined incomplete memories of myself, Jeff Frankel, Dick Startz, Andy Abel, Ray Hill and Jay Helms. Perhaps some long-lost member of the troupe will stumble across this page and help me fill in the blanks, especially with respect to casting (20 characters!).

______________________

ANALYSIS IN WONDERLAND

Composed and performed by the first-year economics graduate students at M.I.T.
Second term, 1974-75

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

Narrator: played by Richard Bookstaber
Alice (Representative Graduate Student): played by Margaret (née Agnew) Feiger
Advisor (presumably the actual first-year advisor, Peter Diamond): actor unknown
Cheshire Cat (Jagdish Bhagwati): actor unknown
Micro: (Hal Varian?): actor unknown
Macro: (Stanley Fischer?): actor unknown
Quick & Dirty (Martin Weitzman): actor unknown
Palmer (Palmer, an actual Sloan School graduate student): actor unknown
Dormouse (Evsey Domar?): actor unknown
Mad Hatter (Charles Kindleberger): played by Jeffrey Frankel
March Hare (Robert Engle?): actor unknown
Tweedledee (Jerry Hausman): possibly played by Jay Helms
Tweedledum (Robert Hall): possibly played by Bud Collier
Knave of Hearts (Franco Modigliani): actor unknown
Knave of Clubs (Arthur Burns): actor unknown
Knave of Spades (William McChesney Martin): actor unknown
Knave Alan (Allan Greenspan): actor unknown
King (President Gerald Ford): actor unknown
Joker (Paul Samuelson): possibly played by Ray Hill
White Rabbit (Robert Bishop?): actor unknown

ACT I

Narrator:	The first year class presents… Analysis in Wonderland, a tragicomedy in four unnatural acts. Any resemblance to faculty members living or otherwise should be inferred from the initials worn by the characters. Act I, Alice enters Wonderland and meets the Cheshire cat.
(Alice is sitting at a table reading Samuelson’s Economics.)
Narrator:	One day Alice was reading a book, but she was getting very bored, for the book had no conversations or jokes in it.
Alice:	And what is the use of a book without conversations or jokes?
Narrator:	And so she began to drift off. And eventually she noticed that there was someone on the other side of the desk…
Advisor:	Hi! Welcome to the Wonderland Institute of Technology. You must be a first year graduate student. I’m your first year advisor, and it’s my job to talk to you and give you a feeling that someone cares about you personally. Now, let me see your schedule (grabs book). Well, uh, (looks at book then says with emphasis) Paul, this schedule looks fine to me (signs it) and remember to turn in your roll cards on the first day of each class. (Through all this Alice keeps going “uh” and “but”…but can’t manage to say anything) Remember that if you have any questions or problems, just come in and talk to me, I have plenty of time. Excuse me! (The advisor gets up and runs out. Alice runs after, then comes back)
Alice:	What a strange place! But where should I go from here? Why there’s a Cheshire Cat. (Enter Cheshire cat) Excuse me, sir, but can you tell me where I ought to go from here?
Cheshire Cat:	Why, I’m wery [sic] glad you asked me that. You should go to the optimal point, of course.
Alice:	But how long will that take me?
Cheshire Cat:	I can’t tell you that, listen to this. (Turns on radio, which produces static. Turns it off.) You see! Our economic theories are all static.
Alice:	I would like to see some faculty.
Cheshire Cat:	Well, you could go to Harward [sic], but it’s wery rare that anyone sees any faculty there. Or you could stay here, but everyone here has completely lost their faculties. They’re all mad, you know.
Alice:	But I don’t want to go among mad people.
Cheshire Cat:	Oh, you can’t help that; we’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.
Alice:	How do you know I’m mad?
Cheshire Cat:	Well, a physicist’s not mad, you grant that? Now, a physicist starts with facts and tries to find theories that fit them. I start with theories and don’t bother with facts. Therefore I’m mad. Yes?
Alice:	But what are your theories about?
Cheshire Cat:	Do they have to be about anything?
Alice:	Well, I’ve often seen a subject without a theory, but a theory without a subject? It’s the most curious thing I ever saw in all my life! (Alice suddenly starts)
Cheshire Cat:	Don’t worry, it’s just the inwisible hand.
(Enter two characters with paper hats (?) on which are cross diagrams. One has a potato chip taped to his shoulder.)
Cheshire Cat:	They’re Mike and Mac Ro
Micro:	Someone must stop him! It’s shameful! Look at that silly diagram he’s wearing! It’s a disgrace to the profession.
Macro:	It’s a perfectly good diagram. Not like that ridiculous diagram you’re wearing!
Alice:	But the diagrams look just the same.
Cheshire Cat:	Shhh! You’ll only get them more upset.
Alice:	Why don’t you try to talk your differences over?
Micro:	Well, we microeconomists believe in logic, so I’m willing to reason it out.
Macro:	You can’t expect me to be reasonable. Can’t you see I’ve got a chip on my shoulder?
Alice:	Why, yes—it’s a potato chip in fact.
Macro:	I wear it in honor of our founder, Cain’s. So prepare to defend yourself.
Micro:	I warn you, I’m a master of the Marshallian arts.
Macro:	But I’m armed with the most deadly tool of macroeconomics: (pulls out several pairs of pliers)…Multi-pliers!
Micro:	And I have the most dangerous concept of microeconomics. (pulls out a slingshot) Elasticity!
Alice:	Oh no, they’re going to have a duel and micro is a semi-strict under dog! (Mike and Mac turn back to back) (enter panting, the Quick and Dirty banker, carrying a money bag and a calculator)
Q&D:	Wait! You can’t have a duel without a primal.
Alice:	Who are you?
Q&D:	I’m duh quick and doity bankuh. And by my quick and doity bankuh’s calculation, I find dat what you need is more liquidity which I will now provide. (out of the moneybag he pulls a waterpistol, shoots everyone, then runs)
Macro:	Now we’re all wet. What are we going to do?
Alice:	It’s all right, I know just what to do. Here’s the driest thing I know. (begins reading from Bishop [notes])
Micro:	This isn’t getting me dry at all.
Macro:	Now there’s only one way to get dry, and this will prove to you that macroeconomics is good for something.
Alice:	What are you going to do?
Macro:	I’m going to do some hand-waving! Macroeconomists are always drying things out by waving their hands.
Alice:	They are?
Macro:	Of course! That’s why none of their theories will hold water. Now, watch this! (He begins to draw a diagram)
Alice:	What do those lines mean?
Macro:	Oh, I don’t know. But they’re pretty good lines, and Lord knows I have the right to a few good lines in this ridiculous skit.
Palmer:	Haven’t you got the A line drawn wrong?
Macro:	(Going very fast) Well, that line doesn’t really matter. (erases it)
Palmer:	But then shouldn’t you erase the k line, too?
Macro:	Well, all right (erases).
Palmer:	What do X and Y stand for?
Macro:	Oh, don’t worry about the axes (erases them). Actually, these are not quite like this anyway. (erases remaining lines) And, as you can see, equilibrium is at the intersection.
Alice:	Well, I’ve often seen lines without an intersection, but an intersection without lines? It’s the most curious thing I ever saw in my whole life.
Narrator:	You’re repeating yourself, Alice.
Alice:	What do you expect, Mel Brooks?
Micro:	You think that’s hand-waving! Why, I have seen hand-waving, compared with which that is no better than eternal bliss.
Alice:	But what is better than eternal bliss?
Micro:	Well, a ham sandwich, for instance.
Alice:	But nothing’s better than eternal bliss.
Micro:	And a ham sandwich is better than nothing. So, by transitivity, there you are!
Alice:	(ignoring Micro as she turns to the Cheshire Cat) Isn’t there anyone here who isn’t mad?
Cheshire Cat:	You might try an assistant professor.
Alice:	Which one should I try?
Cheshire Cat:	It doesn’t matter—pick one at random.
Alice:	How do I do that?
Cheshire Cat:	Just draw one from an assistant professor urn.
Alice:	What’s an assistant professor urn?
Micro, Macro, Cheshire Cat, Narrator (in unison)	About eleven thousand a year!
(pause)
Narrator:	…and a copy of Bishop’s notes.
Alice:	Curiouser and curiouser.
(exeunt all)

ACT II

Narrator:

Act II. The Mad Boston Tea Party

(Dormouse sleeps throughout. Mad Hatter stuttering throughout; price keeps going up on hat.)

Mad Hatter:

What’s your liquidity preference my dear?

Alice:

It looks like you have nothing but tea.

Mad Hatter:

That is all we have.

Alice:

Then why did you ask?

Mad Hatter:

Consumer sovereignty. (gives Alice tea) I would like to suggest to you that that will be eight pence (takes shilling from Alice.)

Alice:

No cover charge?

Mad Hatter:

A gentleman never takes cover, as we say in the old country.

Alice:

Hey, I gave you a shilling and you only gave me two pence change back!

Mad Hatter:

A gentleman never counts his change.

Hare:

Gentleperson!

Alice:

This sounds like a liquidity trap to me.

Mad Hatter:

Alright, I’ll put it down on the T-account…(gets book)

Alice:

There is something floating in my tea.

March Hare:

(looking) Exchange rates.

Mad Hatter:

… two pence… (fiddling with T-accounts)

Alice:

No it’s ice.

Mad Hatter:

…under frozen assets.

Hare:

Gary Becker! (general laughter)

Mad Hatter:

Why is the Poisson distribution like a temperature of 102?

Alice:

Well, let’s see… I suppose you would have to integrate e to the…

Mad Hatter:

Integration! They only do that in South Boston.

March Hare:

No, that’s disintegration.

Alice:

I suppose you have to differentiate between…

Mad Hatter:

Differentiate? The first derivative is the last refuge of a scoundrel.

Alice:

I give up, why is the Poisson distribution like a temperature of 102?

Mad Hatter:

I haven’t the slightest idea.

Alice:

That’s not very funny.

Mad Hatter:

Funny?

March Hare:

She wants to hear a joke.

Mad Hatter:

A joke, a joke!

March Hare:

…Fogel and Engerman! (general laughter)

Alice:

I’m afraid I don’t get it.

Mad Hatter:

Well, you see, certain names are standing jokes around here, like…Walt Whitman Rostow! (laughter)

Alice:

Can I try one?

Mad Hatter:

Go right ahead.

Alice:

Milton Friedman! (silence among the actors who look sour a moment after the audience’s laughter dies down.)

Mad Hatter:

Try another one.

Alice:

Jay Forrester….(more silence).

Alice:

I don’t understand. What’s wrong?

Mad Hatter:

Well, some people just can’t tell a joke.

March Hare:

Perhaps you’d like to see a proof?

Mad Hatter:

A proof! A proof!

March Hare:

This is a proof I recited before the Queen of Hearts. (goes to board)

Twiddle Twiddle lambda star
Alpha hat, beta hat times X bar.
Alpha hat, beta hat sigma X_i

One over n, equals mean of Y.

[writes on board:]:
$\begin{array}{l}\mathop{{\tilde{\tilde{\lambda }}}}^{*}=\hat{\alpha }+\hat{\beta }\cdot \bar{X}\\=\hat{\alpha }+\hat{\beta }\cdot \sum{{{X}_{i}}}\left( \frac{1}{n} \right)=\bar{Y}\end{array}$

Mad Hatter:

Time to move on to the next place.
(everybody gets up to move)

Alice:

What?! You mean you just move on to the next place without erasing?

March Hare:

We don’t have to erase; we just relabel the axes.

Mad Hatter:

I always erase twice, once before the period and once afterward. (erases)

(everyone moves down one, and relabels axes and curve)

Alice:

And I suppose when you use up all the places you just start again at the beginning of the circle?

Mad Hatter:

Yes. It’s called recycling.

March Hare:

You better wake up the Dormouse.

(Mad Hatter and March Hare exit)

Alice:

(To Dormouse) Wake up, wake up. (shakes him)

Dormouse:

(waking) Whaaaaat?

Alice:

Wake up. It’s over.

Dormouse:

(Pause…) Can I Xerox your notes?

Alice:

(starts to leave. turns and says) Why is a Poisson distribution like a temperature of 102? (Pause. Alice exits)

Dormouse:

(alone) Because it’s not normal.

ACT III

Narrator:	Act III. Alice meets Tweedledum and Tweedledee, who have a battle.
(Alice enters and sits down. Dum and Dee enter, arm-in-arm, prancing. Dee sits down; Dum goes to the board and begins. Throughout, Dee is frantic, pacing, and talking very fast. Dum is red-faced, slow-talking, constantly looking at the floor; arms folded, with noticeably short pants and a turtleneck.)
Dum:	So, to conclude yesterday’s talk, we can see that it’s entirely possible that for the two sub-groups, say, men and women, you could have different parameters in the regression…
Dee:	(jumping up to interrupt) I think I can draw a picture that will make that all clear. Wish I had my colored chalk… [draws pictures].

	…so you see that while the slope in the pooled regression is zero, contrariwise; it’s actually negative for men and positive for women.
Dum:	…Sort of, different slopes for different folks, which tells us…
Dee:	[interrupting] …and contrariwise, I can clear this up by drawing a picture that would show…[draws picture]

Dum:	[interrupting]…that there could be kinky behavior in some subgroups….
Dee:	Right. (sits down)
Dum:	But, as I was going to say, this illustrates the 287^th “Iron Law” of econometrics, which states that….
Dee:	(again jumping up to interrupt)…Contrariwise,…I think I can make that clear with a picture in four dimensions. Damn, I just wish I had my colored chalk…(draws pictures)

	…which shows that…
Dum:	(getting very irritated, interrupting) Nohow! The time has come, the Walras said to talk of many things, of matrices and error terms of cabbages and kings, and keeping out your pictures that keep complicating things.
Dee:	Contrariwise! In my way of showing things I’m better far than you, Your talk is like an old dead horse– It’s slow, not unlike glue.
Dum:	Now wait a second…
(Dum and Dee break into a general dispute, yelling at one another.)
Dum:	….you’re not consistent…
Dee:	…you’re almost surely driving me to the p-limit…
Dum:	…you’re a homoscedastic deviate…
(While Tweeledum and Tweedledee continue arguing, the Narrator breaks in…)
Narrator:	So Tweedledum and Tweedledee Agreed to have a fight For Tweedledum said Tweedledee Couldn’t prove Gauss-Markov right.
Dum:	Of course we must have a fight. What time is it?
Dee:	10:40—We’re late getting started, so we better hurry up.
Dum:	Let’s fight ‘till noon, then have lunch.
Narrator:	So they agreed to fight and, as Alice watched, they began to see who could prove the theorem better.
(Dum and Dee give lectures simultaneously, beginning and ending at the same time with the same words.)
Dee:	[simultaneously with Dum] I CLAIM THAT OLS IS BLUE. Basically, we want to prove that ${{\sum{\left( \mathbf{{X}'Y} \right)}}^{-1}}\mathbf{{Z}'}\beta \le {{\sum{\left( \mathbf{{X}'\tilde{Y}} \right)}}^{-1}}\mathbf{{Z}'}\gamma$ Now just take the inverse of the antilog of the Jacobian and delete the fourth row. Let little x be the square root of big X, and let medium-sized x be measured from its mean; substitute back in and we have ${{\sum{\left( \mathbf{{X}'}\left[ \begin{matrix} \mathbf{Y} \\ \mathbf{Z} \\ \end{matrix} \right] \right)}}^{-1}}{\left\| J \right\|\cdot \Pi \cdot {{R}^{2}}}/{\text{hat size}}\;$ which you will recall from 14.381. Then, as I promised, you can use this by transposing Z and x, deleting R and reversing the inequality…..OH SHIT…I’ve screwed up…Well, just change every medium-sized x in your notes to big X, delete all sigmas, and reverse the third and fourth steps of the proof I gave last week which was right here on the board. Or look in Tahl’s [Theil with an West Virginian accent] book. Everyone should understand this perfectly—and of course the notation is clear. Then, adding the obvious steps we learned in 14.381 to this proof completes the argument. SO OLS IS BLUE, as promised.
Dum:	[simultaneously with Dum] I CLAIM THAT OLS IS BLUE. Well….a lot of people go around proving the Gauss-Markov….Theorem….but the literature is full of cases….where what’s done is wrong….Take matrix addition for example….Some people just add element-by-element….while often the more interesting thing to do…..is to use the Choleski factorization of one of the matrices….And recalling that Tweedledum and I are the final arbiters of econometrics at W.I.T. (at least until Fisher gets back off leave) you’d better do it this way, or consider dropping the course. SO OLS IS BLUE, as promised.
Palmer:	Shouldn’t you invert that Jacobian before proceeding to expansion in Lambert spaces….
Dee:	[interrupting] If it was so, it might be; If it WERE so, it could be; But as it isn’t, it ain’t. That’s logic.
Narrator:	Alice couldn’t figure out just who had won the fight, although Tweedledee HAD used a lot more words….
[exeunt]

ACT IV

Tweedledee:	Act Four, “The trahl”.
Narrator:	Within a few moments Alice will witness the trial of the Knave of Hearts who is in deep trouble now because the King of Hearts is flying all the way from the Capital of Wonderland to preside at the trial. You are undoubtedly familiar with the Knave of Hearts most important contribution to economic analysis, “A Life-Cycle Built for Two”. But now he has been accused of starting the latest Wonderland inflation and depression—or as they say in the seminar rooms down by the River Chuck—“inflession”. The economic experts of the King—Knave Arthur of Clubs, Knave William of Spades, and Knave Alan of Diamonds—have all convinced him that economic voodoo has been practiced on models on the Wonderland economy in the hallowed halls of W.I.T. Since the King of Hearts has never played with a full-deck in his life, he was easily deceived by these rascals. Fortunately for the Knave of Hearts the Queen was unable to come to the trial due to a prior speaking engagement before the Veterans of Foreign Business Cycles.
	(Enter Knaves of C.S. &D. They play “Hail to the Chief” on kazoos for a few bars and end with “Pop goes the weasel.” Then the King enters wearing a helmet and carrying a football. A WIN button is conspicuous. King bends over, hikes the ball to Knave of Clubs. King sits down on throne in middle of stage.)
Knave of Clubs.	Where’s the jury?
King of Hearts.	(points at the Knaves) You. (Knaves turn around but no one is behind them. King continues…) Yes, you. You are his peers. And for a proper trial before we cut off his grant, we must have a jury of his peers.
Knight of Diamonds.	(tossing a coin à la [George] Rath) We know what to do.
	(Enter all the other characters from Wonderland, except Joker and reporters)
King:	What are the charges?
Knave of Clubs:	Eleven dollars a barrel.
White Rabbit:	The King of Hearts, he has no smartz But Unemployment yes. The Knave of Hearts has played his part To make inflation worse.
Knaves in the jury-box:	Boo, Hiss, Boo!
King:	It is a pretty despicable offense isn’t it?
Knave of Spades:	Are you kidding? The charges don’t even rhyme.
King:	Will the defendant rise?
Knave of Hearts:	If I had known you were going to ask me that question I would have built it into my model.
King:	I’ll hold you in contempt!
Knave of Hearts:	I don’t suppose I’ll become overly fond of you either.
King:	Let the jury note the defendant’s behavior.
Knave of Hearts:	Which reminds me of my 1944 paper, but that is of course a secondary issue given the gravity of the problems which we now face. While I can’t formally defend the following equation to my own satisfaction, I think that it does make some economic sense. But first I should say that things will be getting much worse before they will get better, I can give you the latest predictions…..
King:	(fuming through all of the above) Bind the bearer of bad tidings or he’ll talk us to death…
Knave of Clubs:	But what shall we bind him with?
King:	Bearer bonds, naturally!
	(The Knaves come out of the jury box and use first-aid gauze to tie the knave of Hearts by body and legs & gag him—leaving only one arm free. Knave of Hearts has been talking with his hands throughout his testimony, and he continues gesturing with his free hand while occasional grunts can be heard under his gag.)
King:	May it be noted that in the tradition of Wonderland jurisprudence we have left the defendant with one degree of freedom in spite of his lack of respect for this court. Are there any witnesses?
Mad Hatter:	I am.
King:	Take the stand.
Knave of Clubs (to Mad Hatter):	Did the defendant do it?
Mad Hatter:	Certainly not.
Knave of Spades:	And you witnessed this with your own eyes?
Mad Hatter:	And I didn’t hear or smell him do it either.
Knave of Diamonds:	But how strong was your prior?
Mad Hatter:	Well, I don’t like to boast but when I was a young man working for the OSS during the War, I once spent a week in bed with a….
Knave of Clubs:	No, no, no. How much could new data affect your prior beliefs, and if considerably, what was your posterior judgment?
Mad Hatter:	I don’t now, that’s a good one. But I’ve got one for you. What weighs 12,000 pounds and has a twice differentiable indifference map over hay and peanuts?
King:	That’s irrelevant!
Mad Hatter:	That’s right.
King:	Give your evidence, or I’ll cut your grant off on the spot!
Mad Hatter:	(stutters) I’m a poor man your majesty.
King:	You’re a very poor speaker. (knaves laugh) I thought that was a pretty good one too. I’m in the mood for a few laughs (to White Rabbit) Call in the Joker.
White Rabbit:	The Joker.
(Enter Joker, attended by secretary, fans seeking autographs, and reporters taking pictures)
Joker:	It’s great to be back in Wonderland folks. A funny thing happened on my way…
King:	(interrupting) You have been called here to testify. What is the Keynesian viewpoint?
Joker:	As Uncle Miltie Friedman would say, only blindmen use Keynes. Hey, that’s a pretty good one. (To secretary) Write that down for my textbook—Better yet, put out a new edition. But, seriously folks just the other day I was leafing through a volume of Ricardo’s letters in the Sraffa collection when I came across a letter from Ricardo to James Mill describing the following encounter between Thomas Malthus and David Ricardo. Ricardo was walking down the street one day when he ran into the good Reverend who was, much to Ricardo’s surprise, sporting a banana in his left ear. Ricardo was surprised because Malthus was always the last of the political economists to adopt a new fashion. Finally Ricardo’s curiosity got the better of him and he asked, “I say Tom, why is that banana in your ear?” Malthus didn’t seem to understand—but that was hardly unusual as Malthus, more often than not, couldn’t understand what his friend was saying. In fact, old Malthus personally thought that Ricardo couldn’t optimize his way out of a paper sack, much less a Lambert space. Finally Malthus said, “I’m sorry Dave, but I can’t hear you, you see, I have this banana in my ear.” (everyone in the courtroom is sleeping) And now….ahem…ahem (everyone wakes up). A few of your favorite impressions: Francois Quesnay! (He covers his face with his hands; removes hands; expression unchanged) Böhm-Bawerk! (same routine)
King:	Enough!
Joker:	Nassau Senior! (same routine)
King:	Take him away. (White rabbit and knaves carry Joker off, still doing impressions. e.g. Stanley Jevons, Joseph Schumpeter, Vilfredo Pareto….)
King:	Who is the next witness?
Rabbit:	Alice!
Alice:	Here! (she goes to the witness stand)
King:	What do you know about this business?
Alice:	Nothing.
King:	If you say anything, I’ll give you part credit. Otherwise….
Alice:	But I don’t need part credit!
King:	Young lady, I’m growing impatient. Either tell us something about this business or I’ll cut off your grant.
Alice:	(crying) But I don’t have a grant.
King:	Then why are you so upset, indeed.
Alice:	What sort of….(alarm clock goes off in the jury box and the knaves wake up).
Knaves:	(in unison) Verdict time!!
Knave of Spades:	(To Knave of Diamonds) Do you have the coin?
Knave of Diamonds:	Yes I do. (to Spades). You’re innocence, (to Clubs) you’re guilt. Call it innocence. (he tosses the coin high in air)
Alice:	What kind of trial is this?
King:	Don’t be a stupid child. It’s a Bernoulli trial.
Knave of Spades:	Tails.
Knave of Diamonds:	Sorry it’s heads. He’s guilty!
Alice:	May I see the coin? (it’s tossed to her) This coin has two heads.
King:	Did anyone say p equaled one half?
	(Lights out. Everyone leaves but Alice. Lights on she has book and wakes up.)
Alice:	I’m glad I woke up before I had to take generals. (She leaves)
Audience:	(Deafening applause) Bravo. Cheers. Whoopee.

Source: Transcribed by Irwin Collier from personal copy.

Tags Abel, Aspe, Begg, Beleza, Bhagwati, Bishop, Bookstaber, Collier, Datcher, Daula, Desormeaux, Diamond, Domar, Donnelly, Duarte, Feiger, Frankel, Giavazzi, Hall, Halpern, Hausman, Helms, Hill, Kindleberger, Klorza, Krasker, Krugman, Malveaux, Meehan, Mincy, Modigliani, Mooney, Mork, Nagatani, Neuer, Samuelson, SmithDA, Stanley Fischer, Startz, Weitzman, Winicker

Economists Fields Harvard

Harvard. 13 Ph.D. Candidates, General or Special Examinations by Field, 1912-13

Post author By Irwin Collier
Post date 2017-09-01

For thirteen Harvard economics Ph.D. candidates this posting provides information about their respective academic backgrounds, the six subjects of their general examinations along with the names of the examiners, the subject of their special subject, thesis subject and advisor(s) (where available). This transcribed announcement is for the academic year 1912-13.

________________________________________

DIVISION OF HISTORY AND POLITICAL SCIENCE
EXAMINATIONS FOR THE DEGREE OF PH.D.
1912-13

Notice of hour and place will be sent out three days in advance of each examination.
The hour will ordinarily be 4 p.m.

Charles Edward Persons.

Special Examination in Economics, Wednesday, January 15, 1913.
General Examination passed February 25, 1909.
Academic History: Cornell College (Iowa), 1898-1903; Harvard Graduate School, 1904-05, 1906-09. A.B., Cornell, 1903; A.M., Harvard, 1905. Instructor in Economics, Wellesley, 1908-09; Preceptor in Economics, Princeton, 1909-10; Instructor in Economics, Northwestern, 1910-12; Assistant Director, St. Louis School of Social Economy, Washington University, 1913-.
General Subjects: 1. Economic Theory and its History. 2. Economic History to 1750. 3. Economic History since 1750. 4. Sociology and Social Reform. 5. Transportation and Foreign Commerce. 6. History of American Institutions.
Special Subject: Transportation.
Committee: Professors Taussig (chairman), Bullock, Ripley and Rappard.
Thesis Subject: “The History of the Ten-Hour Law in Massachusetts.”
Committee on Thesis: Professors Taussig, Bullock, and Ripley.

Clyde Orval Ruggles.

Special Examination in Economics, Friday, January 17, 1913.
General Examination passed May 20, 1909.
Academic History: Hedrick Normal School, 1895-96; Iowa State Normal School and Teachers’ College of Iowa, 1901, 1903-06; State University of Iowa, 1906-07; Harvard Graduate School, 1907-09. A.B., Teachers’ College, 1906; A.M., State University, 1907. Professor of Economics, State Normal School, Winona, Minn., 1909-13.
General Subjects: 1. Economic Theory and its History. 2. Sociology and Social Reform. 3. Statistics. 4. Economic History to 1750, with especial reference to England. 5. Money, Banking, and Commercial Crises. 6. History of American Institutions.
Special Subject: Money and Banking.
Committee: Professors Bullock (chairman), Sprague, Turner, and Dr. Day.
Thesis Subject: “The Economic Basis of the Greenback Movement in Iowa and Wisconsin.”
Committee on Thesis: Professors Sprague, Turner, and Dr. Day.

Harold Hitchings Burbank.

General Examination in Economics, Monday, April 28, 1913.
Committee: Professors Bullock (chairman), Channing, Taussig, Gay, and Dr. Day.
Academic History: Dartmouth College, 1905-10; Harvard Graduate School, 1911-13. A.B., Dartmouth, 1909; A.M. ibid., 1910. Instructor in Economics, Dartmouth, 1910-11; Assistant in Economics, Harvard, 1911-12; Instructor in Economics, 1912-13.
General Subjects: 1. Economic Theory and its History. 2. Economic History since 1750. 3. Money, Banking, and Crises. 4. Public Finance and Financial History. 5. Tariff History and International Trade. 6. History of American Institutions.
Special Subject: Taxation.
Thesis Subject: “The History of the General Property Tax in Massachusetts since 1775.” (With Professor Bullock.)

John Alvin Bigham.

General Examination in Economics, Wednesday, April 30, 1913.
Committee: Professors Carver (chairman), Bullock, Cole, Fite, and Dr. Copeland.
Academic History: University of Kansas, 1904-08; Harvard Graduate School, 1908-10, 1911-12. A.B., Kansas, 1908; A.M., Harvard, 1909. Instructor in Economics, St. Augustine’s School, Raleigh, N.C., 1910-11.
General Subjects: 1. Economic Theory and its History. 2. Economic History since 1750. 3. Sociology and Social Reform. 4. Public Finance and Financial History. 5. Economics of Agriculture. 6. History of American Institutions.
Special Subject: Economics of Agriculture, with especial reference to American conditions.
Thesis Subject: (undecided).

John Ise.

General Examination in Economics, Friday, May 2, 1913.
Committee: Professors Bullock (chairman), Wyman, Carver, Sprague, and Dr. Copeland.
Academic History: University of Kansas, 1904-11; Harvard Graduate School, 1911-13. MUS.B, Kansas, 1908; A.B., ibid., 1910; LL.B., ibid., 1911; A.M., Harvard, 1912. Assistant in Economics, 1912-13.
General Subjects: 1. Economic Theory and its History. 2. Economic History since 1750. 3. Sociology and Social Reform. 4. Public Finance and Financial History. 5. Money, Banking, and Crises. 6. Jurisprudence.
Special Subject: Public Finance.
Thesis Subject: “The Government Land Policy since 1880.” (With Professor Bullock.)

Lloyd Morgan Crosgrave.

General Examination in Economics, Wednesday, May 7, 1913.
Committee: Professors Taussig (chairman), Ripley, Bullock, Fite, and Dr. Copeland.
Academic History: Indiana University, 1905-09; Harvard Graduate School, 1910-13. A.B., Indiana, 1909; A.M., Harvard, 1911. Teacher of History, Decatur High School, Ill., 1909-10; Instructor in Economics, Harvard, 1912-13.
General Subjects: 1. Economic Theory and its History. 2. Economic History since 1750. 3. Statistics. 4. Public Finance and Railroads. 5. Labor Problems, including Social Reforms. 6. History of American Institutions since 1789.
Special Subject: Labor Problems.
Thesis Subject: “The American Glass Industry.” (With Professor Taussig.)

Lucius Moody Bristol.

Special Examination in Economics (Social Ethics), Thursday, May 8, 1913.
General Examination passed May 4, 1911.
Academic History: University of North Carolina, 1894-95; Boston University School of Theology, 1896-99; Harvard Divinity School, 1909-10; Harvard Graduate School, 1910-11. A.B., North Carolina, 1895; S.T.B., Boston University, 1899; A.M., Harvard, 1910. Assistant in Economics, Harvard, 1911-13; Instructor in Sociology and Applied Christianity, Tufts, 1910-12; Assistant Professor of Applied Christianity, Tufts, 1912-13.
General Subjects: 1. Ethical Theory. 2. Economic Theory. 3. Labor Problems. 4. Social Reforms. 5. Sociology. 6. Statistics.
Special Subject: Sociology.
Committee: Professors Carver (chairman), Taussig, Bullock, and Dr. Brackett.
Thesis Subject: “The Development of the Doctrine of Adaptation as a Theory of Social Progress.” (With Professor Carver.)
Committee on Thesis: Professors Carver, Sprague, and Dr. Brackett.

Yamato Ichihashi.

Special Examination in Economics, Friday, May 12, 1913.
General Examination passed May 1, 1912.
Academic History: Leland Stanford Junior University, 1904-08; Harvard Graduate School, 1910-12; A.B., Leland Stanford, 1907; A.M., ibid., 1908. Assistant in Economics, Leland Stanford, 1908-10.
General Subjects: 1. Economic Theory and its History. 2. Economic History since 1750. 3. Sociology and Social Reform. 4. Statistics. 5. Anthropology. 6. Labor Problems and Industrial Organization.
Special Subject: Labor Problems.
Committee: Professors Ripley (chairman), Taussig, Carver, and Dr. Day.
Thesis Subject: “Emigration from Japan, and Japanese Immigration into the State of California.” (With Professor Ripley.)
Committee on Thesis: Professors Ripley, Turner, and Carver.

George Henry von Tungeln.

General Examination in Economics (Social Ethics), Wednesday, May 14, 1913.
Committee: Dr. Ford (chairman), Professors Taussig, Turner, R.B. Perry, Drs. Brackett and Foerster.
Academic History: Central Wesleyan College, 1904-06, 1907-09; Northwestern University, 1909-10; Harvard Graduate School, 1911-13. Ph.B., Central Wesleyan, 1909; A.M., Northwestern, 1910.
General Subjects: 1. Ethical Theory. 2. Economic Theory. 3. Poor Relief. 4. Social Reforms. 5. Sociology. 6. Criminology and Penology.
Special Subject: Criminology and Penology.
Thesis Subject: “Boston Juvenile Offenders in their Economic and Moral Relations.” (With Professor Peabody and Dr. Ford.)

Eliot Jones.

Special Examination in Economics, Thursday, May 15, 1913.
General Examination passed May 19, 1910.
Academic History: Vanderbilt University, 1900-07; Harvard Graduate School, 1907-10, 1911-12; A.B. Vanderbilt, 1906; A.M., Harvard, 1908. Austin Teaching Fellow, 1909-10, 1911-12; Instructor in Economics, 1912-13.
General Subjects: 1. Economic Theory and its History. 2. Economic History since 1750. 3. Statistics. 4. Money, Banking, and Industrial Organization. 5. Transportation and Foreign Commerce. 6. History of American Institutions.
Special Subject: Railroad Transportation.
Committee: Professors Ripley (chairman), Carver, Sprague, and Dr. Copeland.
Thesis Subject: “The History of the Anthracite Coal Industry, with especial reference to the Development of Combination.” (With Professor Ripley.)
Committee on Thesis: Professors Ripley, Taussig, and Sprague.

Joseph Stancliffe Davis.

Special Examination in Economics. Friday, May 16, 1913.
General Examination passed May 17, 1909.
Academic History: Harvard College, 1904-08; Harvard Graduate School, 1908-12; A.B., 1908. Assistant in Economics, 1908-10, 1911-12; Instructor in Economics and Sociology, Bowdoin College, 1912-13.
General Subjects: 1. Economic Theory and its History. 2. Economic History since 1750. 3. Sociology and Social Progress. 4. Money, Banking, and Industrial Organization. 5. History of American Institutions, especially since 1783. 6. Anthropology, especially Ethnology.
Special Subject: Business Corporations, with especial Reference to the Development of Corporate Enterprise in the United States.
Committee: Professors Bullock (chairman), Ripley, Carver, and Schaub.
Thesis Subject: “Corporations in the American Colonies.” (With Professor Bullock.)
Committee on Thesis: Professors Bullock, Channing, and Taussig.

Ralph Emerson Heilman.

Special Examination in Economics (Social Ethics), Monday, May 19, 1913.
General Examination passed May 11, 1911.
Academic History: Morningside College, 1903-06; Northwestern University, 1906-07; Harvard Graduate School, 1909-13; Ph.B., Morningside, 1906; A.M., Northwestern, 1907. Instructor in Economics, 1912-13.
General Subjects: 1. Ethical Theory. 2. Economic Theory and its History. 3. Poor Relief. 4. Social Reform. 5. Sociology. 6. Labor Problems.
Special Subject: The Control of Municipal Public Service Corporations.
Committee: Professors Taussig (chairman), Ripley, Sprague, and Dr. Copeland.
Thesis Subject: “Chicago Traction—A Study in the Efforts of the City to Secure Good Service.” (With Professor Taussig.)
Committee on Thesis: Professors Taussig, Ripley, and Munro.

Rufus Stickney Tucker.

General Examination in Economics, Wednesday, May 28, 1913.
Committee: Professors Bullock (chairman), Turner, Ripley, Sprague, and Dr. Gray.
Academic History: Harvard College, 1907-11; Harvard Graduate School, 1911-13. A.B., 1911; A.M., 1912.
General Subjects: 1. Economic Theory and its History. 2. Statistics. 3. Money and Banking. 4. Economic History since 1750. 5. History of American Institutions. 6. Public Finance.
Special Subject: Public Finance.
Thesis Subject: “The Incidence of Real Estate Taxation.” (With Professor Bullock.)

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University, Examinations for the Ph.D. (HUC 7000.70), Folder “Examinations for the Ph.D., 1912-13”.

Image Source: Harvard University, card catalogue in Widener Library (ca 1915). Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.

Tags Bigham, Bristol, Burbank, Crosgrave, DavisJS, Heilman, Ichihashi, Ise, JonesEliot, PersonsCE, RugglesCO, TuckerRS, vonTungeln

Chicago Courses Cowles

Cowles Commission’s List of Univ. of Chicago Courses, 1952

Post author By Irwin Collier
Post date 2017-08-31

This listing of certain courses by the Cowles Commission offered at the University of Chicago ca. 1952 is probably more interesting as to what was not included, namely applied fields with the possible exception of international economics (though probably what was meant there was only the theory of international trade and payments). Otherwise the list and course descriptions seem completely contemporary…without either the word microeconomics or macroeconomics being used!

___________________

Courses at the University of Chicago in Econometrics, Mathematical Economics, Economic Theory, and Statistics*

* Not all of these courses are offered in any one academic year.

National Income and Related Aggregates. Survey of the sources and methods involved in estimating the economic structure. National income, capital formation, balance of payments, and the components of the input-output analysis. Formulation of national economic programs. Aggregates arc related to the data and methods of both business and government accounting. Attention is given to students’ practical work.

Price Theory. A systematic study of the pricing of final products and factors of production under essentially stationary conditions. Covers both perfect competition and such imperfectly competitive conditions as monopolistic competition, oligopoly, and monopoly.

Welfare Economics. Description of conditions defining production and utility “possibilities.” Implications of these conditions for appraising economic policies affecting resource allocation, income distribution, and the level of employment. Special applications are made in the appraisal of imperfect competition, various government fiscal policies, and alternative economic systems.

Allocation of Resources in Production. Criteria for optimal resource allocation. Prices are introduced as marginal rates of substitution under efficient allocation of resources. The use of prices as guides to allocative decisions. Applications to a variety of production and pricing problems, including those of the transportation industry, and problems of industrial location.

Choice and Possibilities in Economic Organization (with particular application to agriculture). Economic development. Economic fluctuations.

The Theory of Income, Employment, and Price Level. Government policies and other factors determining the employment of resources, the national income and its use, and the levels of prices, wage rates, and interest rates. These problems are linked with the behavior of individual firms and households.

Economics of Uncertainty. Probabilistic vs. deterministic social science, normative and descriptive. Optimal strategies under complete and incomplete information. Applications to private and public policy; choice of assets (liquidity, inventories, diversification); versatility.

Monetary Aspects of International Trade. Foreign payments and receipts. Classical and modern theories of adjustment of the balance of payments. Theories of exchange rates. Capital movements in the balance of payments. Postwar monetary plans.

Economic Aspects of International Relations. Price theory and international trade; the gains from international specialization. International trade and the distribution of income. Historical and theoretical discussion of the theory of tariffs. Commercial policies of particular countries, including the United States, the United Kingdom, and France. Commodity agreements and cartels. The growth of state trading. The new mercantilism.

Seminar on Modern Developments in Economic Theory. Discussion of selected topics from recent literature.

Seminar in Monetary Dynamics. The dynamic adjustment of the economy as a whole, with special emphasis on the role of the monetary and banking system. Student discussion of theoretical issues and empirical studies in this general field.

Scope and Method of the Social Sciences. The first of this sequence of three courses is an introduction to statistical methods as used in the social sciences.

Statistical Inference (sequence of three courses). The first two courses survey the principles of statistical inference. Among the subjects treated are: elements of probability; concepts of population sample, and sampling distribution; choice of estimates in the light of their sampling properties; testing hypotheses with reference to specific alternatives; principles of sampling and sample design; analysis of proportions, means, and standard deviations; simple, partial, and multiple regression and correlation. In the third course of the sequence students may carry out a statistical investigation; published statistical studies may be analyzed in detail; or some special field of application may be studied.

Introduction to Econometrics. Some properties of vectors, matrices, systems of linear equations. Analysis of simple economic models.

Statistical Problems of Model Construction. Discussion of problems arising when inference processes are directed to a postulated structure underlying the probability distribution of observed variables. Problems of identification of structural characteristics in a given model, of estimation of identifiable parameters, of estimation bias arising from incorrectly specified models, and of testing the specifications that define a model. Examples are drawn from econometrics, factor analysis, latent attribute analysis, and from the study of errors of observation.

Statistical Methods of Measuring Economic Relations.

Time Series. Stochastic difference equations, trends, moving averages, tests for randomness, correlograms, periodograms.

Sample Surveys. Theory of sampling from finite populations and especially its application to human populations.

Markov Processes. Three types of Markov process: discrete in space and time; discrete in space and continuous in time; continuous in both space and time. Use of certain of these processes as models in, e.g., genetics, evolution, diffusion, and communication.

Analysis of Variance and Regression. Algebra and geometry of vector spaces systematically applied to theory and application of subjects known variously as linear hypotheses, regression, analysis of variance, and least squares.

Estimation and Tests of Hypotheses. General methods, especially the theories of Neyman, Pearson, and Fisher.

Sequential Analysis. The sequential probability ratio test and its operating characteristics and average sample number functions; application to standard distributions; double dichotomies; sequential estimation; special problems.

Statistical Theory of Decision-Making. Critical review of modern statistical viewpoints, emphasizing general ideas as opposed to techniques. Interpretations of probability; the probabilistic utility theory; critique of Bayes’ theorem; methods proposed for avoiding Bayes’ theorem, especially Wald’s theory of minimum risk and the Neyman-Pearson theory; randomization; sufficient statistics and likelihood ratios; de Finnetti’s theory of personal probability.

Mathematical Statistics. An introduction to the theories of mathematical statistics that include discussions of point estimation, set estimation, and the testing of hypotheses.

Theory of Minimum Risk. Where practical, illustrations are drawn from standard statistical tests and estimates, but the treatment is for the most part on an abstract level. Existence theorems; general techniques of solution; simple dichotomies; asymptotic point estimation; symmetrical problems; sequential decisions.

Multivariate Analysis. The multivariate normal distribution. Related distributions such as the Wishart distribution and its noncentral analogue, and the distribution of the roots of determinantal equations. Hotelling’s cannonical correlations. Associated tests and estimation functions and the problem of classification.

The Design of Experiments. Design of experiments with special reference to the analysis of variance. Interaction and its exploitation in design, and the analysis of covariance. Numerical methods, analysis in the case of missing observations, and the effects of departure from the underlying assumptions of the analysis of variance are touched upon.

Non-Parametric Inference.

Econometrics Seminar. Reports by staff members, students, and visitors.

Statistics Seminar. Reports by staff members, students, and visitors.

Source: Cowles Commission for Research in Economics. Economic Theory and Measurement. A Twenty Year Research Report, 1932-1952 (University of Chicago, 1952), pp. 177-180.

Image Source: Cowles Foundation website: Social Science Building at the University of Chicago.

Columbia Economists

Columbia. Arrow on the Subordination of Price Theory, 1940-42

Post author By Irwin Collier
Post date 2017-08-30

Reading this account by Kenneth Arrow, I wondered why the lecturer in his history of economic thought course was not identified by name and who the lecturer was. In the Arrow papers at Duke’s Economists’ Papers Archive one finds his notes to John Maurice Clark’s course “On Current Types of Economic Theory” so for now I’ll presume that the son of the great John Bates Clark was the unknown lecturer of Arrow’s anecdote.

_________________________

Kenneth Arrow Recalls the Subordination of Price Theory at Columbia

The intellectual environment at Columbia University when I was a graduate student in 1940-1942 was far different from that in which the modern graduate student in economics finds himself. Neoclassical price theory now holds pride of place, as all students will acknowledge, some joyfully, some ruefully. But at Columbia at that period there was no required course in price theory. Indeed there was no course at all offered which gave a systematic exposition of microeconomics, except for Harold Hotelling’s one term offering of mathematical economics, the content of which would today be more or less standard for a general course but which was then regarded as highly esoteric indeed. The one required course which was most nearly equivalent to price theory was a course on the history of economic thought, where the lecturer gave potted summaries of everyone from the mercantilists on. Walras was barely mentioned and certainly was much less prominent than H. J. Davenport. Keynes was not mentioned (for that matter the General Theory was not mentioned even in the course on business cycles, though there were some glancing references to the Treatise on Money).

But the work of Thorstein Veblen was indeed prominently displayed in the course on economic thought, and it was no accident. The corrosive skepticism of Veblen towards “received” theory had, belatedly and even posthumously, under mined the never-very-secure hold of neoclassical thought on teaching of American economics. Of course he was not alone in effecting the change; the more benign, but equally negative, judgments of John R. Commons, in whose name we are gathered, shaped a generation of economists trained under him at the University of Wisconsin. At Columbia, the channel of influence was Wesley C. Mitchell, creator of the National Bureau of Economic Research. His version of the attack upon neoclassical economics was an insistence on the large-scale accumulation of data. It was in large part his direct influence plus the general background created by Veblen and Commons that led to the subordination of price theory at Columbia.

Source: From Kenneth J. Arrow, “John R. Commons Award Paper: Thorstein Veblen as an Economic Theorist.” The American Economist 19, no. 1 (1975): 5-9.

Image Source: Kenneth J. Arrow as Guggenheim Fellow (1972) John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.

Tags Arrow, Commons, Davenport, Hotelling, Mitchell

CORE EXAMINATION Price Theory Winter, 1964

Preliminary Examination for the Ph.D. and A. M. Degrees

TRAVELS WITH CHARLIE

John Christopher Ise 1996 Inductee of the Osborne County Hall of Fame

JOHN ISE MEMORIES OF MY FATHER

Excerpt from Edward S. Mason’s Autobiography

Ise’s account (1922) of the undergraduate principles of economics course

Kansapedia article [Yes, there is a Kansapedia]

John C. Ise

From: John Ise Papers at the University of Kansas

Course Description

First Week: Introduction Kaplan’s notes to Viner’s lectures

Oct. 7

I. Changes in econ. theory in last 10 years.

II. Most of econ. propositions are quantitative in nature, mathematical

III. Two types of analysis:

IV. Marshallian approach is a static equilibrium approach.

Oct. 8

I. We ordinarily assume a stationary economy in some sense (something not changing through time) in orthodox theory.

II. [Meaning of stable equilibrium]

III. Theorists are tending to work from individuals to aggregate rather than vice versa.

IV. Neo-classical theory is criticized as being abstract.

V. 4 kinds of purposes in economic analysis.

VI. Econ. is criticized for assuming the rationality of man

Oct. 9

I. Assumption of rationality.

II. [When the “means” themselves are “ends”]

III. What is rational attitude towards risk taking?

IV. Even Classical did not always assume rationality:

Suggested/Required Course Readings Compiled from Kaplan’s notes Notes on these readings ( made by Kaplan

Demand & Supply: Cost of Production

On Cobweb Adjustment

Empirical Analysis

Austrian Theory of Value

Joint Demand & Joint Supply.

Monopoly Value.

Distribution Theory

Some items mentioned as suggested readings

Not recorded as assignments in lecture notes, but reading notes were taken by Kaplan

Course Exams

ECONOMICS 301 [Perhaps midterm: Kaplan answers only for 1-3]

ECONOMICS 301 Thursday [December 18, 1941]

ECONOMICS 301 Friday [December 19, 1941]

LLOYD A. METZLER 1913-1980 by Edward S. Mason

ON LLOYD METZLER by Evsey D. Domar

LLOYD METZLER (April 3, 1913—October 26, 1980) by Paul A. Samuelson

[Excerpts]

Columbia President Butler Requests E.R.A. Seligman to Propose Names of Distinguished Economists for a British Chair in American History

Columbia University in the City of New York President’s Room

Copy of Seligman’s Response to Butler’s Request

First Year Economics Graduate Students, 1974-75 M.I.T. (Spring 1975)

ANALYSIS IN WONDERLAND

Composed and performed by the first-year economics graduate students at M.I.T. Second term, 1974-75

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

ACT I

ACT II

ACT III

ACT IV

DIVISION OF HISTORY AND POLITICAL SCIENCE EXAMINATIONS FOR THE DEGREE OF PH.D. 1912-13

Charles Edward Persons.

Clyde Orval Ruggles.

Harold Hitchings Burbank.

John Alvin Bigham.

John Ise.

Lloyd Morgan Crosgrave.

Lucius Moody Bristol.

Yamato Ichihashi.

George Henry von Tungeln.

Eliot Jones.

Joseph Stancliffe Davis.

Ralph Emerson Heilman.

Rufus Stickney Tucker.

Courses at the University of Chicago in Econometrics, Mathematical Economics, Economic Theory, and Statistics*

Kenneth Arrow Recalls the Subordination of Price Theory at Columbia

CORE EXAMINATION
Price Theory
Winter, 1964

John Christopher Ise
1996 Inductee of the Osborne County Hall of Fame

JOHN ISE
MEMORIES OF MY FATHER

Kansapedia article
[Yes, there is a Kansapedia]

First Week: Introduction
Kaplan’s notes to Viner’s lectures

Suggested/Required Course Readings
Compiled from Kaplan’s notes
Notes on these readings ( made by Kaplan

Not recorded as assignments in lecture notes,
but reading notes were taken by Kaplan

ECONOMICS 301
[Perhaps midterm: Kaplan answers only for 1-3]

ECONOMICS 301
Thursday [December 18, 1941]

ECONOMICS 301
Friday [December 19, 1941]

LLOYD A. METZLER
1913-1980
by Edward S. Mason

ON LLOYD METZLER
by Evsey D. Domar

LLOYD METZLER
(April 3, 1913—October 26, 1980)
by Paul A. Samuelson

Columbia University
in the City of New York
President’s Room

First Year Economics Graduate Students, 1974-75
M.I.T. (Spring 1975)

Composed and performed by the first-year economics graduate students at M.I.T.
Second term, 1974-75

DIVISION OF HISTORY AND POLITICAL SCIENCE
EXAMINATIONS FOR THE DEGREE OF PH.D.
1912-13