Author: Irwin Collier

Categories
Exam Questions Harvard Labor

Harvard. Problems of labor. Description, enrollment, final exam. Ripley, 1909-10

In 1910 Harvard published 43 short bibliographies covering “Social Ethics and Allied Subjects”, about half of which were dedicated to particular topics in economics and economic sociology. The project was coordinated by Plummer Professor of Christian Morals, Francis G. Peabody. Trade Unionism was an “allied subject” covered in the bibliography provided by Professor William Z. Ripley that has been transcribed and posted earlier along with links to digital copies of the items found at archive.org, hathitrust.org, as well as at other on-line archives. It is a safe guess that the items there represent the core of required and suggested readings for Ripley’s  course on the Problems of Labor.

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Ripley’s Problems of Labor:
previous semesters

1902-03
1903-04
1904-05
1905-06
1906-07
1907-08
1908-09

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Course Teaching Assistant
1909-10

James Edwin Gardner.

A.B. Harvard, cum laude Economics 1908.
LL.B. Harvard, 1910.

Born 21 Jan 1887 in Norfolk, Virginia.
After Harvard, he practiced law in Louth, Minnesota.
Died 2 January 1957 at Rose Valley Farm, Spotsylvania County Va.

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Course Announcement,
Description
1909-10

9a 1hf. Problems of Labor. Half-course (first half-year); Th., and (at the pleasure of the instructor) Sat., at 1.30. Professor Ripley and an assistant.

This course will deal mainly with the economic and social relations of employer and employed, with especial reference to legislation. Among the topics included will be, — collective bargaining; labor organizations; factory legislation in the United States and Europe; strikes, strike legislation and legal decisions; conciliation and arbitration; employers’ liability and compulsory compensation; compulsory insurance with particular reference to European experience; the problem of the unemployed; apprenticeship, and trade and technical education.

Each student will make at least one report upon a labor union, from the original documents. Two lectures a week, with one recitation, will be the usual practice.

Source: Official Register of Harvard University, Vol. VI, No. 29 (23 July 1909). History and Political Science Comprising the Departments of History and Government, and Economics, 1909-10, pp. 58-59.

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Course Enrollment
1909-10

Economics 9a 1hf. Professor Ripley, assisted by Mr. J. E. Gardner. — Problems of Labor.

Total 64: 2 Graduates, 16 Seniors, 31 Juniors, 5 Sophomores, 3 Freshmen, 7 Others.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College, 1909-1910, p. 44.

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ECONOMICS 9a1
Mid-Year Examination, 1909-10

  1. One of the main criticisms of trade unionism is that it tends to reduce all men to a dead level of mediocrity of performance. What are two possible answers to this contention?
  2. Webb says: “Collective bargaining thus implies, in its fullest development, compulsory Trade Unionism.” Yet the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers, the most powerful union in America, enforces no closed-shop policy. The United Garment Workers seek to do so. How do you reconcile these differences of statement and of fact?
  3. What positive result has followed the reduction of hours of labor by law in Massachusetts, (a) in methods of manufacture; and (b) in quality of work people?
  4. Membership in the hat-makers’ union is highly concentrated geographically; that of the plumbers’ union is widely scattered. How would you expect to find this difference reflected in their constitutional organizations? What devices might be employed to overcome the difficulty in the second union?
  5. Piece work “is in appearance a system of rewards, but it is in fact a system of punishments, and worse still, a system of punishments for doing well.” What does this mean? Is it true?
  6. How does the “premium plan” of paying for labor propose to meet this difficulty above mentioned?
  7. Justice Holmes, in Plant vs. Woods, says: “Organization and strikes may get a larger share for the members of an organization, but, if they do, they get it at the expense of the less organized and less powerful portion of the laboring class. They do not create something out of nothing.” Criticise this statement.

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University, Examination Papers, 1873-1915. Box 9, Bound vol. Examination Papers 1910-11; Papers Set for Final Examinations in History, Government, Economics,…,Music in Harvard College (June, 1910), pp. 45-46.

Categories
Chicago Economists UWash

Chicago. Economics Ph.D. alumnus. Shirley Jay Coon, 1926

The work for this post was begun under a wrong assumption. I thought that the Chicago economics Ph.D. (1926) Shirley J. Coon was a woman and I quite honestly expected to add another PhD trained woman economist to the alumnae list of Economics in the Rear-view Mirror. The portrait of Shirley J. Coon from the University of Washington yearbook from 1931 and the discovery that “J” stood for “Jay” forced me to update my Bayesian prior in the matter of Shirley’s identity.

The post turns out to be rather short as I have been unable to find many footprints left in the sands of time by Dean Shirley Jay Coon. A dissertation on the economic development of Missoula, Montana seems as inauspicious a topic as one could imagine, even for the German Historical School, so Coon’s academic obscurity comes as little surprise one century after his dissertation year at the University of Chicago.

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Shirley Jay Coon
Timeline

1887. Born 16 June in Walworth, Wisconsin.

1909. Beloit College undergraduate.

1915. M.A., Ohio State University

1915-19. Member of the department of economics and business administration at Ohio State.

Price expert for the Ohio food administrator during WWI

1919-1927. On the faculty of Montana State University.

1920-27. Dean of the Business School, Montana State University.

1925-26. Sabbatical to complete Ph.D. at Chicago.

1926. Ph.D. University of Chicago. “Economic Development of Missoula, Montana,” unpublished doctoral dissertation.

1927-1938. Professor of Economics at the University of Washington.

1931-38. Dean of the college of economics and business at University of Washington.

1938. Resigned due to ill health.

1938. Died 4 October in Seattle, Washington.

Sources: Obituary in The Daily Missoulian (Missoula, Montana) · Oct 5, 1938 and University of Washington yearbooks.

Image Source: University of Washington yearbook TYEE 1931, p. 38.

Categories
Development Economic History Exam Questions Harvard Suggested Reading Syllabus

Harvard. Economic Development of China and Japan. Readings and Exam. Rosovsky and Perkins, 1966-1967

Henry Rosovsky

True confession: today’s post was inspired by something less than the purest of motives to advance our understanding of the history of economics. Indeed current events inspired me to check my files of Harvard educational materials to see if I had anything related to Henry Rosovsky who rose from mild-mannered economics professordom to the status of an academic mover-and-shaker at the pinnacle of the Harvard administrative hierarchy. But wait, there’s more. Like pre-President Donald J. Trump, Dean Rosovsky was among the contributors to the 50th Birthday Album of Jeffrey Epstein and it is there that we find the specially commissioned piece of art of Annie Sprinkle, “Tit Print ’2002”.

Image from House Oversight The First Fifty Years, pp. 167-168.
“Request No. 1.pdf” as long as supplies last.

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Now that Economics in the Rear-view Mirror’s click-bait has you on its line, read on to find something about the course on the economic development of China and Japan jointly offered by Henry Rosovsky and his colleague Dwight Perkins during the fall term of 1966-67 at Harvard.

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Memorial Minute —
Faculty of Arts and Sciences
Henry Rosovsky, 95

At a meeting of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences on May 2, 2023, the following tribute to the life and service of the late Henry Rosovsky was spread upon the permanent records of the Faculty.

Henry Rosovsky, Lewis P. and Linda L. Geyser University Professor, Emeritus, died on Nov. 11, 2022, at the age of 95.  Twice dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS), twice acting president of the University, and the only active faculty member to serve on the Harvard Corporation since the 1880s, Henry was one of Harvard’s great leaders in the 20th century and probably the most important dean of the FAS ever.

Born in 1927 in the Free City of Danzig, Henry fled the Nazi occupation and arrived in America in 1940. Immediately following the war, he served in the U.S. Army Counterintelligence Corps in occupied Germany, where he interviewed former Wehrmacht officers under the Allied-imposed denazification program and attended the Nuremberg trials.  Returning to the U.S., he graduated from William and Mary on the G.I. Bill.  Returning to the army, he served in wartime Korea and then in occupied Japan, where he learned Japanese and had his interest piqued by the country’s economic and cultural modernization.

After his second army stint, Henry entered graduate school at Harvard to study economics and was elected to the Society of Fellows.  Writing his dissertation on Japanese capital formation between the Meiji Restoration and World War II, he earned his Ph.D. in 1959 and joined the Department of Economics at Berkeley.  Dismayed by Berkeley’s student unrest, however, in 1965 he returned to Harvard as a professor of economics.

Back at Harvard, Henry played an increasingly central role within the FAS.  In 1968 he chaired a committee that recommended a program to grant degrees in African and Afro-American Studies.  The next year he became chairman of the Department of Economics.  In 1973 President Derek Bok appointed him Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.

For Henry, serving as dean was akin to an art form.  His approach to the job was intensely personal.  He understood that he was managing not Ford or IBM but a medium-sized (just over 400 tenured professors) collection of highly motivated individuals.  He spent his time engaging with his faculty, not his staff.  When he needed to make decisions regarding proposals not already within his sphere of direct knowledge, he would ask which half-dozen professors most wanted it to happen.  He figured he would already know some of them well enough to understand their motivation and would sit down over lunch to talk with the others; then he would decide.  He intuitively understood human aspirations and ambitions, and they fascinated him.  He saw his role as fostering his faculty’s individual aims and nurturing their talent, while, nonetheless, maintaining a harmonious setting for a group enterprise.

Crucially for Harvard at that time, this personal approach built trust among his faculty.  When Henry became dean, the divisions left from the 1960s student uprising were still bitter.  Within the FAS, separate liberal and conservative “caucuses” met regularly, and tension between them impeded progress on multiple fronts.  With Henry as dean, both groups soon disbanded.  As many faculty members explained, “We all trust Henry.”  Once the divisiveness dissipated, Henry was able to advance important educational reforms, most notably the Core Curriculum — the first restructuring of Harvard’s undergraduate General Education since its introduction in 1949.  Another key achievement was reducing graduate school admissions in response to the end of the extraordinary post-war growth surge in American higher education.

Part of what made Henry’s personal touch so effective was his keen awareness of his own unusual insider/outsider status: his experience of having had his life turned upside down; the humiliation of flight and refugee rejection; the irony of a Jew standing at the top of one of America’s premier bastions of WASP privilege.  In a story that he sometimes recounted, usually with a sardonic yet elegiac tone, one of the former Wehrmacht officers he interviewed after the war asked him, “Sergeant, where did they teach you German? You speak perfectly, but you have the vocabulary of a 10-year-old.”  It was vintage Henry: funny, yes, but aching with unspoken loss — of a civilization and the people who created it; of a refugee achiever who had lost a golden youth to hatred.

Another key trait of Henry’s leadership was courage.  The African and Afro-American Studies proposal was controversial enough within the academy, but also elicited passions, sometimes ugly ones, more broadly.  Al Capp, the newspaper cartoonist long associated with the Li’l Abner strip and a Cambridge resident, launched a vicious campaign to oppose Harvard’s initiative and, in the process, to vilify Rosovsky personally.  Henry did not cower before Mr. Capp.  His public bravery was a welcome mark of integrity and dedication on the part of American higher education.  Years later, when Henry returned as dean for President Bok’s last year, together they went to extraordinary efforts to make two distinguished appointments that cemented the department’s preeminence in the field.

Henry was exceptionally loyal to Harvard as well.  In 1977 he was offered the presidency of Yale.  At the time, to pick as president someone without a Yale degree — and a Jew besides — was unprecedented.  Yet Henry declined, choosing to remain at Harvard and complete the Core Curriculum review, which he guided to faculty approval the next spring.  Beyond loyalty, Henry had a deep and abiding love for Harvard, an infectious emotional pull that proved especially effective in his efforts as dean to recruit new faculty members.

Henry was also a stalwart supporter of Harvard’s Jewish community.  As dean he helped Harvard Hillel move from Bryant Street to Mount Auburn Street, first in a recently vacated building and then on a plot of open ground where in 1994 Hillel erected a new building: Rosovsky Hall.  As Henry famously put it, Hillel at Harvard thereby moved “from the periphery to the center.”  Some two decades later, Hillel launched its new capital campaign with a grand dinner celebrating Henry’s 90th birthday.

Henry was devoted to his family: Nitza, his wife of 66 years, who was born a seventh-generation Jerusalemite, and their children, Leah, Judy, and Michael.

Respectfully submitted,

Derek C. Bok
Henry Louis Gates Jr.
Michael McCormick
Benjamin M. Friedman, Chair

Source:  The Harvard Gazette, 4 May 2023.

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Meet Dwight H. Perkins

Dwight Heald Perkins’ Vita.

Dwight H. Perkins is the Harold Hitchings Burbank Research Professor of Political Economy of Harvard University, where he joined the faculty in 1963. Previous positions at Harvard include Harold Hitchings Burbank Professor of Political Economy, 1963-2006; Associate Director of the East Asian (now Fairbank) Research Center, 1973-1977; chairman of the Department of Economics, 1977-1980; Director of the Harvard Institute for International Development (HIID), the University’s former multi-disciplinary institute for research, teaching, and technical assistance on development policy,1980-1995; and Director of the Harvard University Asia Center, 2002-2005.

Source: Harvard Square Library. Digital library of Unitarian Universalist biographies, history, books, and media.

Dwight Perkins has authored or edited twelve books and over one hundred articles on economic history and economic development, with special references to the economies of China, Korea, Vietnam and the other nations of east and southeast Asia. Topics include the transition from central planning to the market, long-term agricultural development, industrial policy, the underlying sources of growth in East Asia, and the role of economic and legal institutions in East Asian growth. He has served as an advisor or consultant on economic policy and reform to the governments of Korea, China, Malaysia, Vietnam, Indonesia, and Papua New Guinea. He has also been a long-term consultant to the World Bank, the Ford Foundation, various private corporations, and agencies of the U.S. government, including the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (then chaired by Senator Henry M. Jackson). He has been a Visiting Professor or Scholar at Hitotsubashi University in Tokyo, the University of Washington, and Fudan University in Shanghai. He also served as a Phi Beta Kappa Lecturer at eight colleges and universities around the U.S. in 1993-94. In 1997 he taught for a semester at the Fulbright Economic Training Program in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, and has continued to teach in that program for several weeks each year since 1997. He and has given individual lectures to numerous audiences in the U.S., Asia, Europe, and elsewhere. Dwight Perkins served in the U.S. Navy (active duty 1956-58), received his B.A. from Cornell University in Far Eastern Studies in 1956, and his M.A. and Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University in 1961 and 1964. He is a member of the American Philosophical Society and of various professional organizations in the fields of economics and Asian Studies.

7/2006

Source: Harvard biography page for Dwight H. Perkins from 2016.

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Course Announcement and Description

Economics 146. The Economic Development of China and Japan

Half course (fall term). Tu., Th., S., at 9. Professor H. Rosovsky and Associate Professor D. H. Perkins.

Contrasting problems of economic development in China (pre-Communist and Communist periods) and Japan. Among the topics covered are the role of government in economic development, strategies of development, planning, measurement of national income, and the effect of monetary and fiscal policies on development.

Source: Harvard University. Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Courses of Instruction for Harvard and Radcliffe, 1966-1967, p. 113.

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Department of Economics
Economics 14

THE ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
OF CHINA AND JAPAN

Fall Term, 1966

Professor Henry Rosovsky
Professor Dwight Perkins

Students who haven’t taken Economics 1 or its equivalent or have not taken it recently should read B. Higgins, Economic Development, Chapters 1 and 8 (Section II); P. Samuelson, Economics: An Introductory Analysis (5th Edition), Chapters 32 (Section III), 11 (Section IV), 12, 13, 15, 16, 17 (Section IX); and C. P. Kindleberger, International Economics, Chapter 5.

I. STRATEGY OF DEVELOPMENT

READINGS

China

A. Eckstein, Communist China’s Economic Growth and Foreign Trade, pp. 1-86.

Japan

H. Rosovsky, Capital Formation in Japan, Chapter IV, pp. 55-104.

REFERENCES

China

C. M. Li, Economic Development of Communist China.

Y. L. Wu, The Economy of Communist China.

W. W. Rostow, The Prospects for Communist China (1954).

T. J. Hughes and D.E.T. Luard, The Economic Development of Communist China.

N. R. Chen, The Economy of Mainland China, 1949-1963: A Bibliography of Materials in English.

H. T. Patrick and P. Schran, “Economic Contrasts: China, India and Japan,” Journal of International Affairs, 1963, No. 2, pp. 168-184.

II. PREREQUISITES OF ECONOMIC GROWTH

A. The Role of Government

READINGS

China

P. Balazs, Chinese Civilization and Bureaucracy, Chapters 1, 3, 4, pp. 3-12, 28-54.

M. Wright, The Last Stand of Chinese Conservatism, Chapters 1, 2, 8.

A. Feuerwerker, China’s Early Industrialization, Chapters 1, 2, 4, 7.

Japan

W. W. Lockwood, The Economic Development of Japan, Chapters 1, 10.

D. S. Landes, “Japan and Europe: Contrasts in Industrialization,” in W. W. Lockwood, ed., The State and Economic Enterprise in Japan, pp. 93-182.

H. Rosovsky, “Japan’s Transition to Modern Economic Growth,” in Rosovsky, ed., Industrialization in Two Systems (1966).

T. C. Smith, Political Change and Industrial Development in Japan (1955).

R. P. Dore, Education in Tokugawa Japan (1965), Chapter X.

B. Entrepreneurship and Other Sociological Prerequisites of Economic Growth.

READINGS

China & Japan

M. J. Levy, “Contrasting Factors in the Modernization of China and Japan,” Kuznets et al., eds., Economic Growth: Brazil, India, Japan, pp. 496-536.

Japan

J. Hirschmeier, “Shibusawa Eiichi: Industrial Pioneer,” in Lockwood, ed., The State and Economic Enterprise in Japan, pp. 209-248.

T. C. Smith, “Landlords’ Sons in the Business Elite,” Economic Development and Cultural Change, IX, I, Part II, October 1960.

G. Ranis, “The Community Centered Entrepreneur in Japanese Development,” Explorations in Entrepreneurial History, December 1955.

K. I. Choi, “Tokugawa Feudalism and the Emergence of the New Leaders of Early Modern Japan,” Explorations in Entrepreneurial History, Dec. 1956.

REFERENCES

China

T. Metzger, “Ch’ing Commercial Policy,” Ch’ing-Shih Wen-t’i, February 1966.

Japan

W. W. Lockwood, ed., The State and Economic Enterprise in Modern Japan, Chapters I, IV, V, VIII.

C. D. Sheldon, The Rise of the Merchant Class in Tokugawa Japan (1958).

H. Passin, Society and Education in Japan (1965), Part II.

J. Hirschmeier, The Origins of Entrepreneurship in Modern Japan (1964).

Elichi Kiyooka (trans.) The Autobiography of Fukuzawa Yukichi.

III. EXTERNAL RELATIONS AND ECONOMIC GROWTH

READINGS

China & Japan

G. C. Allen, Western Enterprise in Far Eastern Economic Development, Part II.

China

C. M. Hou, “External Trade, Foreign Investment, and Domestic Development: The Chinese Experience, 1840-1937,” Economic Development and Cultural Change, Vol. X, No. 1, October 1961, pp. 21-41.

A. Eckstein, op. cit., pp. 135-182.

Japan

W. W. Lockwood, The Economic Development of Japan, Chapters 6, 7.

M. Shinohara, “Economic Development and Foreign Trade in Japan,” in C.D. Cowan, ed., The Economic Development of China and Japan.

REFERENCES

China

C. M. Hou, Foreign Investment and Economic Development in China, 1840-1937.

S. Ishikawa, “Strategy of Foreign Trade Under Planned Economic Development with Special Reference to China’s Experience,” Hitotsubashi Journal of Economics, January 1965, pp. 27-57.

IV. NATIONAL INCOME MEASUREMENT

READINGS

China

R. W. Campbell, Soviet Economic Power, Chapter 3.

T. C. Liu and K. C. Yeh, The Economy of the Chinese Mainland, pp. 17-70.

Japan

K. Okawa and H. Rosovsky, “A Century of Japanese Economic Growth,” in Lockwood, ed., The State and Economic Enterprise in Japan, pp- 47-92.

A. Maddison, “Japanese Economic Performance,” Banca Nazionale del Lavoro Quarterly Review, No. 75, December 1965.

REFERENCES

China

A. Eckstein, The National Income of Communist China (1952).

W. W. Hollister, China’s Gross National Product and Social Accounts 1950-1957.

K. Chao, The Rate and Pattern of Industrial Growth in Communist China.

C. M. Li, The Statistical System of Communist China.

S. Ishikawa, National Income and Capital Formation in Mainland China.

Japan

K. Okawa and H. Rosovsky, “Economic Fluctuations in Prewar Japan,” Hitotsubashi Journal of Economics, October 1962.

K. Okawa, The Growth Rate of the Japanese Economy.

H. Rosovsky, “The Statistical Measurement of Japanese Economic Growth,” Economic Development and Cultural Change, October 1958.

V. AGRICULTURE

READINGS

China

R. H. Tawney, Land and Labour in China (entire).

D. Perkins, Market Control and Planning in Communist China, Chapters III-IV, pp. 21-98.

Japan

K. Ohkawa and H. Rosovsky, “The Role of Agriculture in Modern Japanese Economic Development,” Economic Development and Cultural Change, Vol. IX, No. 1, October 1960, pp. 43-67.

W. W. Lockwood, ed., The State and Economic Enterprise…, Chapter VI.

R. P. Dore, “Agricultural Improvement in Japan, 1870-1900,” Economic Development and Cultural Change, IX, I, Part II (October 1960).

B. F. Johnston and R. W. Melor, “The Role of Agriculture in Economic Development,” American Economic Review, September 1961.

REFERENCES

China

K. R. Walker, Planning in Chinese Agriculture: Socialization and the Private Sector, 1956-1962.

Japan

T. C. Smith, The Agrarian Origins of Modern Japan.

R. P. Dore, Land Reform in Japan.

Japan FAO Organization, A Century of Technical Development in Japanese Agriculture.

VI. CAPITAL

READINGS

R. Nurkse, Problems of Capital formation in Underdeveloped Countries, Introduction, Chapters I-III.

Japan

G. Ranis, “The Financing of Japanese Economic Development,” Economic History Review, XI, 3 (1959), pp. 440-454.

H. Rosovsky, “Capital Formation in Prewar Japan,” in Cowan, ed., The Economic Development of China and Japan.

REFERENCES

China

W. W. Hollister, “Capital Formation in Communist China,” The China Quarterly, January-March 1954, pp. 39-55.

Japan

H. Rosovsky, Capital Formation in Japan, Chapters I-III.

J. C. Abegglen, The Japanese Factory.

T. Watanabe, “Economic Aspects of Dualism in the Industrial Development of Japan,” Economic Development and Cultural Change, April 1965.

VII. PLANNING

READINGS

R. W. Campbell, Soviet Economic Power, Chapter 5.

O. Lange and F. M. Taylor, On the Economic Theory of Socialism, pp. 55-129.

Chou En-lai, “Report on the Proposals for the Second Five-Year Plan for Development of the National Economy,” Bowie and Fairbank, eds., Communist China 1955-1959, Document 11, pp. 216-242.

Li Fu-chun, “On the Big Leap Forward in China’s Socialist Construction,” Bowie and Fairbank, eds., op. cit., Document 47, pp. 587-596.

D. Perkins, Market Control and Planning in Communist China, Chapters V-VI, pp. 99-135.

B. G. Hickman, ed., Quantitative Planning of Economic Policy, Chapters IX & X.

S. Tsuru, “Rapid Growth with Formal Planning Divorced from Action: Japan,” in E. E. Hagen, ed., Planning Economic Development.

REFERENCE

Japanese Government, Economic Planning Agency, New Long-Range Economic Plan of Japan, 1961-1970 (Doubling National Income Plan).

VIII. MONETARY AND FISCAL POLICY

READINGS

China

Chang Kia-ngau, The Inflationary Spiral, The Experience of China, 1939-1950, Chapters 1-5.

D. Perkins, Market Control and Planning in Communist China, Chapter VIII, pp. 154-176.

Japan

H. T. Patrick, “Cyclical Instability and Fiscal-Monetary Policy in Postwar Japan,” in Lockwood, ed., The State and Economic Enterprise…, pp. 555-618.

H. T. Patrick, “External Equilibrium and Internal Convertibility,” Journal of Economic History, June 1965.

REFERENCES

China

S. H. Chou, The Chinese Inflation, 1937-1949.

A. N. Young, China’s Wartime Finance and Inflation, 1937-1945.

F.H.H. King, Money and Monetary Policy in China, 1845-1895.

Japan

H. T. Patrick, Monetary Policy and Central Banking in Contemporary Japan.

IX. POSTWAR GROWTH IN JAPAN

READINGS

Ohkawa and Rosovsky, “Recent Japanese Growth in Historical Perspective,” American Economic Review, May 1963.

Lockwood, ed., The State and Economic Enterprise…, Chapter X.

REFERENCES

London Economist, Consider Japan.

G. C. Allen, Japan’s Economic Expansion.

Lockwood, ed., The State and Economic Enterprise…, Chapters XIII, XIV, XV.

S. B. Levine, Industrial Relations in Postwar Japan.

J. B. Cohen, Japan’s Economy, in War and Reconstruction.

Source: Harvard University Archives. Syllabi, course outlines and reading lists in Economics, 1895-2003. Box 9, Folder “Economics, 1966-1967”.

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Economics 146
Final Examination
January 1967

Part I

Answer either 1 or 2; 45 minutes

  1. Okawa and Rosovsky have made frequent use of the notion of a “differential structure”. Explain the meaning of the term, and critically discuss the explanatory value and empirical validity of the concept for Japanese economic growth in the twentieth century, and also in the future.
  2. “’There is nothing new under the sun’ does not apply to economics. What has happened to the Japanese economy in the post World War II period is in almost all respects ‘new’.” Discuss both the true and false aspects of this statement.
Part II

Answer question 3; no choice; 45 minutes

  1. The word planning covers many different ways of organizing and controlling an economy. In what sense are China and Japan’s post-war economies planned? How is balance (coordination of inputs and outputs) achieved in the two systems? How is efficiency (more output for a given input or less input for a given output) achieved in the two systems?
Part III

Answer question 4; no choice; 60 minutes

  1. Write an essay on the relevance of the Japanese developmental experience for China. Be specific and make reference to your readings, and make perfectly clear what historical periods are referred to for each country.
Part IV

Write a short paragraph on any four of the following; 30 minutes

    1. T’ung Chih Restoration
    2. Matsukata Deflation
    3. Economic Planning Agency (Keizai Kikaku-Cho)
    4. Rural People’s Commune
    5. Industrial and commercial tax, i.e., “turnover tax”
    6. Treaty Tariff (China)

Source: Harvard University. Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Papers Printed for Mid-Year Examinations. History, History of Religions, Government, Economics,…, January, 1967.

Image Source: “Henry Rosovsky, Former Harvard FAS Dean, Remembered for Contributions to Undergrad Education and African American Studies,” The Harvard Crimson, 5 December 2022. Cropped and polished by Economics in the Rear-view Mirror.

Categories
Exam Questions Harvard Money and Banking

Harvard. Description, enrollment and final exam for Banking and Banking Systems. Sprague, 1909-1910

Assistant professor of banking and finance, Oliver Mitchell Wentworth Sprague, was assisted by George Randolph Grua when he taught the second semester in the two term sequence in money and banking at Harvard in 1909-10. The course description says “The work is both historical and comparative in its methods,” unlike the bulk of contemporary money and banking courses that are locked into the here and now.

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Previous course materials for
Money and Banking 

1900-01(Meyer and Sprague)
1901-02 (Andrew, Sprague, Meyer)
1902-03 (Andrew’s money exam, Sprague’s banking exam)
1903-04 (Andrew and Sprague)
1904-05 (Andrew’s money exam, Sprague’s banking exam)
1905-06 (Andrew’s money and banking exams)
1906-07 (Andrew’s money and banking exams)
1907-08 (Andrew’s money and banking exams)
1908-09 (Wesley Clair Mitchell’s money and banking exams)
1909-10 (Davis Rich Dewey’s money exam)

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Course Description
1909-10

8b 2hf. Banking and the History of the leading Banking Systems. Half-course (second half-year). Mon., Wed., Fri., at 1.30. Asst. Professor Sprague, assisted by Mr. Grua.

In Course 8b, after a summary view of early forms of banking in Italy, Amsterdam, and Hamburg, a more detailed account is given of the development, to the middle of the nineteenth century, of the system of banking in which notes were the principal form of credit and the chief subject of discussion and legislation. The rise and growth of the modern system of banking by discount and deposit is then described. The work is both historical and comparative in its methods. The banking development, legislation, and present practice of various countries, including England, France, Germany, Scotland, and Canada, are reviewed and contrasted. Particular attention is given to banking history and experience in this country: the two United States banks; the more important features of banking in the separate states before 1860; the beginnings, growth, operation, and proposed modification of the national banking system; and credit institutions outside that system, such as state banks and trust companies.

The course of the money markets of London, Paris, Berlin, and New York will be followed during a series of months, and the various factors, such as stock exchange dealings, and international exchange payments, which bring about fluctuations in the demand for loans, and the rate of discount upon them will be considered. In conclusion the relations of banks to commercial crises will be analyzed, the crises of 1857 and 1893 being taken for detailed study.

Written work, in the preparation of short papers on assigned topics, and a regular course of prescribed reading will be required of all students.

The course is open to those who have taken Economics 1.

Source: Official Register of Harvard University, Vol. VI, No. 29 (23 July 1909). History and Political Science Comprising the Departments of History and Government, and Economics, 1909-10, p. 58.

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Course Enrollment
1909-10

Economics 8b 2hf. Asst. Professor Sprague, assisted by Mr. Grua. — Banking and Foreign Exchange.

Total 96: 3 Graduates, 20 Seniors, 49 Juniors, 17 Sophomores, 2 Freshmen, 5 Others.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College, 1909-1910, p. 44.

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ECONOMICS 8b
Year-end Examination, 1909-10

Answer nine questions.
  1. Give a short account of the London gold market.
  2. By what means and to what extent was the Second Bank of the United States able to control the expansion of credit by the other banks of the country?
  3. The bond secured notes issued by the national banks have not been a serious element of positive weakness in the working of our credit machinery. Explain.
  4. In what ways would savings departments with segregated deposits strengthen the national banks?
  5. If a central bank is established in the United States it is of the greatest importance that clearing house settlements should be made by means of transfers on its books. Explain.
  6. Give an account of the circumstances which led to the adoption of the device of the clearing house loan certificate.
  7. Consider the working of the Canadian banking system with reference to the borrower.
  8. Give a short account of the banking situation in the United States in 1860, outside of New England and New York.
  9. Criticise the banking proposals of the Indianapolis Monetary Commission.
  10. Is it possible to equalize rates for loans throughout the country by means of a central bank?
  11. Consider the policy of Secretary Shaw with reference to gold imports.

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University, Examination Papers, 1873-1915. Box 9, Bound vol. Examination Papers 1910-11; Papers Set for Final Examinations in History, Government, Economics,…,Music in Harvard College (June, 1910), p. 45.

Image Source: O.M.W. Sprague from Harvard Class Album, 1915.

Categories
Brookings Economists

Brookings. Economics Ph.D. alumnus. Dexter Merriam Keezer, 1925

Dexter Merriam Keezer in the Amherst 1917 yearbook

 

Dexter Merriam Keezer
(Brookings Ph.D., 1925)

BACKSTORY TO THIS POST

Just over one hundred years ago, the wife of the newly inaugurated fourth president of Cornell University, Margaret Kate Farrand (pronounced “Fair-And”) née Carleton, along with a first year graduate student in architecture, Charles Morse Stotz, the psychology professor Harry Potter Weld, and other co-conspirators, was able to pull off an academic hoax at the Cornell Women’s Cosmopolitan Club on December 3, 1921. News of the hoax was said to have even reached the ears of Professor Sigmund Freud of Vienna for his comment. The faux lecture with its slides (!) “The Freudian Theory with Later Developments” held by Professor Herman Vosberg, as performed by Charles M. Stotz has been transcribed and posted earlier:

The subject of this post, Dexter Merriam Keezer, was there and wrote about the event in his autobiography:

I expected the Cornell student newspaper, the Cornell Sun, would have a field day with the story but it printed nothing. And neither did any other local paper. So I wrote a story of Vosberg’s (and Mrs. Farrand’s) triumph and sent it to the New York World, where it ran as a column on the first page and on into the inner pages of the paper. The story was also picked up by some newspapers overseas. No one ever asked me if I wrote it and I never had occasion to tell anybody. I simply enjoyed the experience.

Source: Along an Entertaining Way: The Autobiography of Dexter M. Keezer, 1895-1991 (Kindle edition). 2019.

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The purpose of this post is to share more information about this Brookings economics Ph.D. alumnus (1925). Keezer recounted his experience as a graduate student at Brookings with an anecdote illustrating the administration of a Ph.D. reading exam in German thrown in to illustrate graduate student life as it was lived. The extract from Keezer’s autobiography is followed by a timeline of his life and career.

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Keezer on the Brookings Graduate School and his German reading exam

I soon found that the Brookings Graduate School had many interesting and admirable attributes, not least of which was what I understood to have been the primary purpose of Robert S. Brookings, for whom the school was named, in making it possible.

As chairman of the national board in charge of regulating prices during World War I, Brookings had been appalled by the low quality of advice available to the board from practitioners in economics and the other social sciences. So he decided to devote much of the fortune he had made as an eminently successful industrialist in St. Louis to helping supply the federal government with more competent social scientists and social science research. By 1916 he established in Washington the Institute for Government Research, the pioneer in national public policy research. It was followed in 1922 by the establishment of the Institute of Economics to concentrate on economic problems. And in 1924 the Brookings Graduate School was launched to increase the supply of those possessed of an appetite for public service and equipped with first-rate education in economics and political science to exercise it. Started as a part of Washington University in St. Louis, the school was subsequently transferred to Washington, where it was expected most of its graduates would have their careers.

When I got to the school it was in what was to prove a death struggle against being merged with the other Brookings creations and having its granting of graduate degrees discontinued. I promptly became involved in this struggle and became an ardent advocate of the school in its fight for existence, a very robust struggle. Harold Moulton, the head of the Institute of Economics, the leader of those who favored closing the school, concluded that while I was intense in my opposition to him I was fair-minded about it. This conclusion was subsequently to be a decisive factor in a major turning point in my working life.

One reason for not continuing the graduate school, it was reported, was that Robert Brookings, its principal financial benefactor, was disappointed that most of those who had studied at the school did not hurry to take government jobs but found more satisfying employment outside of its orbit. The irony of this, if true, is that when the country fell apart economically in 1929 and the Great Depression descended, those who had studied at the Brookings Graduate School flocked into the government and often secured posts.

The conflict over continuing the graduate school was, as is generally true of conflicts in higher education, conducted in terms of high principle. But it could have been, as I have found generally to be the case in such conflicts, that a clash of personalities was close to the root of it. Harold Moulton, the head of the Institute of Economics, and Walton Hamilton, the head of the school, had been the closest of friends and colleagues, but they came to have an intense disregard for each other and the institute-graduate school conflict intensified accordingly. One reason for my partisanship for the graduate school was that Hamilton was a great teacher of economics, a fact to which I have made reference elsewhere. One entry in my little daybook reads, “Prof. Hamilton is about the best teacher I have ever known. He even made a seminar in ‘research technique’ quite exciting today.”

…To get back to what I found notable characteristics of the Brookings Graduate School, one was its physical setting. On Northwest I Street a few blocks from the White House, a fine old townhouse provided spacious and inviting parlors, an attractive dining room, enough class room for the student body of about 35 and living quarters for part of them. It was an establishment which eased the rigors of graduate study by permitting and indeed encouraging some gracious living, an encouragement also given by the generous financial provision made by their fellowships.

The resident faculty was supplemented by visiting members who stayed for extended periods and by leading academicians from institutions around the country who paid briefer visits. The eminent British economist John A. Hobson came over from England for a semester while I was at the school. And great authorities in their fields such as Thomas Read Powell of Columbia, in constitutional law, and William E. Dodd of the University of Chicago, in history, joined the faculty more briefly. In the Washington governmental establishment and in the parade of business and industrial leaders descending on the capitol, the school had ready access to experts in almost everything and used it freely to provide a remarkably well stocked body of teachers.

My zest for the intensive course I had set for myself as a social scientist, with emphasis on the scientist, flagged a bit occasionally. Once after hearing one of his lectures had prompted me to read William E. Dodd’s “The Cotton Kingdom” I remarked in my little day book that “it seemed almost too interesting to be sound history, so great has been the influence of ‘science’ on my mind.” And after reading Bernard Shaw’s “Saint Joan” I noted in the little book that it was a “delightful relief from the dull discussions of economic problems. One who could long remain an economist and not become a boor would scintillate in any other field. Such are my reactions to the Brookings School today.” That was an off day, however. Most of the time I found what I was doing as a graduate student and otherwise interesting and enjoyable. And I made enough academic headway so that about a year after I arrived I was awarded a Ph.D. degree.

Mine was one of relatively few degrees that were awarded. The school was absorbed by the Brookings Institution two years later and its teaching and degree-granting operations were discontinued. Among the reasons given for this course was that, although he had endowed it generally, Robert Brookings was afraid that not enough money could be provided to be sure of continuing to be able to pay the imposing bills of a top-flight graduate school in economics and government. In getting money to finance research in these fields the consolidated Brookings Institution has had brilliant success and has carried out a large and influential program. One is permitted the suspicion, however, that it might have been a more vibrant enterprise if it had been able to continue the school.

The school’s student body while I was there included an international group of about 35 young men and women who, as they pursued their studies, continued to embrace about as many brands of political and economic philosophy – liberal, hardcore conservative, socialist, fellow traveler – as their number. Having them not only work together in the class and study halls but live together around the clock produced an often-seething amalgam calculated to invigorate any institution engaged in social science research. The inviting armchairs in the Brookings School’s parlors, part of its notable equipment, were occasionally used for slumber. But more often they were occupied deep into the night as flaming argument raged about the true gospel in the social sciences, a guaranteed tonic for those dedicated to finding out what the true gospel really is.

On my way to the degree I was required to demonstrate competence in reading the German language. I had somehow managed to get by in demonstrating such a competence at Cornell and a repeat performance was not a joyful prospect. In succeeding in meeting it, however, I had the sort of good luck which somehow accumulated when things are going well. I decided to give myself a tough training course for my German reading ordeal. I was told that an Austrian economist named [Eugen von] Böhm-Bawerk wrote remarkably refractory German so I decided to make one of his books my training field. I had only one small section of the book more or less mastered when the time for my examination arrived. It was given by Edwin Nourse who was subsequently to become distinguished as the first chairman of the newly created federal Council of Economic Advisors. Poking around for a book in his library on which to test my mastery of German, Nourse hit not only on the book by [Eugen von] Böhm-Bawerk on which I had been practicing but on one of the very passages with which I had struggled. I sailed right through the passage to certification that I had the German language very well under control. I was left with the suspicion that Edwin Nourse may have had knowledge in advance which enabled him to give me an especially merciful examination – a suspicion that was nourished by the feeling that he was much too kindly a gentleman to set me with wrestling with [Eugen von] Böhm-Bawerk with no previous exposure to his cruelly convoluted German. But I never tested my good luck to the extent of checking on my suspicion.

Source: Along an Entertaining Way: The Autobiography of Dexter M. Keezer, 1895-1991 (Kindle edition), 2019.

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The Life of
Dexter Merriam Keezer

1895. Born August 24 in Acton, Massachusetts.

1917-19. Service in the U.S. Army in World War I.

1919. Attended lectures at the Sorbonne.

1920. A.B. Amherst.

1920-21. Reporter at The Denver Times.

1922-23. Instructor in economics at Cornell University.

1923. A.M. Cornell.

1923-24. Assistant professor of economics at the University of Colorado.

1925. Ph.D. Brookings Graduate School of Economics and Government.

1926-27. Associate professor of economics at the University of North Carolina.

1927. Married Anne Mellett, June 22.

1927-28. Reporter at the Washington Bureau of Scripps-Howard newspapers.

1928-29. Visiting lecturer in citizenship at Dartmouth College.

1929-33. Associate editor of The Baltimore Sun.

1933-34. Executive director of the Consumer Advisory Board of the National Recovery Administration.

1934-42. President of Reed College.

1938. Bernard Moses Memorial Lecture held November 4 at the University of California, Berkeley. “The Problem of Controversial Issues in the Teaching of the Social Sciences.”

1938. LL.D. Amherst College.

1940. LL.D. Mills College.

1941. Chairman of a Commission set up by National Defense Mediation Board to study dispute between the Employers Negotiating Committee of Puget Sound lumber industry and the International Woodworkers of America.

Supplement to the Interdepartmental Report on the Douglas Fir Lumber Industry (November 1941).

1942-43. Deputy Administrator, Office of Price Administration.

Keezer, probably in his OPA office. From the Library of Congress, https://lccn.loc.gov/2017692864

1943. Economic advisor, U.S. Mission for Economic Affairs, London, England.

1944-45. Public member of the War Labor Board.

1945-1960. McGraw-Hill where he became director of the department of economics. His department developed annual surveys of capital spending and of research and development expenditures.
Vice-president, 1953-1960.

1955. L.H.D. Clarkson College of Technology.

1957. LL.D. Macalester College.

1959. LL.D. Elmira College. LL.D. Miami (Ohio) University.

1960-71. Economic adviser for McGraw-Hill.

1963-70. Trustee Elmira College.

1968-70. President of the Truro, Mass. Civic Association. In the mid-1970’s he campaigned against nude bathing at Brush Hollow Beach (Cape Cod).

1972-75. President of the Board of Directors of the Association for Improving Medical Resources of Outer Cape Cod

1991. Died of congestive heart failure on June 24 at the Orleans Nursing and Convalescent Center in Orleans, Massachusetts.

Selected Publications:

Problem Economics. With Addison Thayer Cutler and Frank Richardson Garfield. New York and London: Harper & Brothers, 1928.

The Public Control of Business. With Stacy May). Harper & Brothers, 1930.

The Light that Flickers: A View of College Education which Contrasts Promise and Performance and Suggests Improvements. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1947.

Making Capitalism Work. With members of the Department of Economics of the McGraw-Hill Publishing Company. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1950.

Editor and wrote the Introductory chapter to Financing Higher Education, 1960-70. The McGraw-Hill Book Company 50th Anniversary Study of the Economics of Higher Education in the United States. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1959.

New Forces in American Business, New York: McGraw-Hill, 1959.

Are We Slaves of Some Defunct Economist. Claremont Graduate School and University Center, 1963

Editor. The Performing Arts—Problems and Prospects, 1965.

A Unique Contribution to International Relations: The Story of Wilton Park, 1973.

Sources: 

Who’s Who in America. Chicago: A.N. Marquis, 1962, p. 1652. Who’s Who in America, Vol. XX, 1976, p. 1679.
Obituary in The New York Times, 25 June 1991, p. D24.

Image Source: Amherst College, The Olio 1917, p. 221..

Categories
History of Economics Princeton Suggested Reading

Princeton. Introductory lecture notes for history of economics. Baumol, 1979

With this post Economics in the Rear-view Mirror proudly adds the 1900th artifact to its collection of curated transcriptions of archival material.

I have chosen to post William J. Baumol’s lecture notes for his introductory lecture in his Princeton course on the history of economic thought because Economics in the Rear-view Mirror is, after all, in the same business of examining the evolution of economics. Baumol’s notes were typed using ALL UPPER-CASE letters which I have taken the liberty to tone down to a conventional mixture of upper- and lower-case letters for ease of reading. Also I have added boldface and italics, and paragraph formats have been tweaked for the same purpose. Links to the literature cited add a little jazz to the presentation of today’s artifact. Square brackets indicate material I have inserted.

Executive summary: Baumol began his course with warnings of five dangers to be avoided by prospective historians of economics.

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Previously posted course material
on the history of economics
taught by Wm. J. Baumol

_______________________

Revised February 1979

INTRODUCTION

      1. One Question Exam
      2. Choice of Papers
      3. When Due
      4. Will Concentrate on Smith, Ricardo, Marx

General References: J. Schumpeter, History of Economic Analysis, (Oxford, 1954); Mark Blaug, Economic Theory in Retrospect (Irwin, Homewood, 2nd ed., 1968).

Dangers in Doctrinal History

Favoritism: Schumpeter: Walras Sí, Ricardo No!

Reading into predecessors’ minds:

Example — Isnard 1781 (vs. Canard, 1801)

[Achille Nicolas Isnard. Traité des richesses. Tome I; Tome II; Tome III. London and Lausanne:  François Grasset, 1781]

[Nicolas François Canard. Principes d’économie politique. Paris: F. Buisson, 1801]

“Canard’s performance… is sometimes listed among early contributions to mathematical economics (on the strength of a few algebraic formulae that mean nothing) but would otherwise partake of the blessings of deserved oblivion, had not a misfortune befallen it. This misfortune consisted in its being ‘crowned’ by the same French Academy that later failed to extend any recognition to Cournot and Walras. And those Olympians who felt their neglect the more bitterly on account of the honour done to Canard visited him with a scathing contempt that bestowed upon him an unenviable immortality…”

([Precursors in Mathematical Economics, eds. William J. Baumol and Stephen M. Goldfeld, 1968], 155, quoted from Schumpeter, p. 499 [also cf. Schumpeter, p. 217])

“..we cannot help feeling that Schumpeter and Theocharis are somewhat over-enthusiastic. Schumpeter describes the following passages as ‘the crowning achievement of the epoch in this line [supply-demand] of analysis… in his not otherwise remarkable book…’ (p. 307); and Theocharis calls it ‘… one of the most important contributions in the history of the development of mathematical economics…. [He] conceived the idea of a general equilibrium and its determination.’” ([Reghinos D. Theocharis, Early Developments in Mathematical Economics, 1961] pp. 66-68)

Excerpts from Traité des Richesses
by A.N. Isnard
First Section
On the relationship of commodities in general
[Original]

“Here we will consider the direct exchange of commodities in general against other commodities at the same location, in order to investigate their values in terms of one another in the absence of any intermediary monies….

It is easy to see what will transpire in an exchange between two isolated proprietors of two commodities, for which the desire for the exchangeable surplus (superflue) of the one is equivalent to the desire for the surplus of the other. If one supposes, for example, that the surplus of the first is a quantity, a, of some commodity measured in (value) units, M, and that that of the second is a quantity b of some other item measured in units M’, if these are the only available goods, they cannot be exchanged for one another unless the quantity a of units M is equivalent to the quantity b of units M’—  thus we have the equation aM = bM’, and, consequently, M:M’,::(1/a):(1/b). The value of each unit is thus in inverse ratio to the quantity of the item which is offered for exchange.

If, instead of two items, one assumes that three or more commodities are traded, the same situation holds for the general value of the commodities. Each unit of a particular item will be equal in value to the sum of the supplies of units [of the item being evaluated], or, what amounts to the same thing, the values of the commodities are in direct proportion to the sum of the quantities [of other items] supplied and in inverse proportion to the number of [their] units. But since the quantities supplied consist of many heterogeneous commodities, it is not possible to deduce the exchange ratio of any two particular items from the equation which has just been discussed. To obtain the exchange rates of commodities taken two by two, it is necessary to formulate as many equations as there are commodities.”

Blowing small passages out of proportion —  authors probably would not have understood today’s interpretation.

Robertson: periodic requests by Pigou to explain “Pigou effect”.

Inconsistencies in predecessors: which passage in an author’s text should one interpret as “his view”?

“Early writers — Ricardo is a notorious case — say things and their opposites. Thus Galileo wrote that a freely falling object has (A) a velocity proportional to its distance fallen, and (B) a squared velocity proportional to its distance fallen. (A) is a mistake, (B) is right. After many years, Galileo went from (A) to (B). You would be just to criticize me if I kept attributing to Galileo (A): you could properly write to me ‘surely…” If Ricardo’s procedure were like Galileo’s, I’d concede all. But it isn’t. He went back and forth saying ‘Swans are white,’ ‘Swans are black.’ There is no progression in his view on the relation of short-run wage to long-run subsistence. It is bootless for us to vie in matching Ricardo’s quotation on swans’ color, the winner to be the one with the most passages on his side. I refuse to play that game, and I doubt that you care for such procedures. Perhaps we can both agree (?) on Stigler’s summary (JPE, 1952, 60, around footnote 37): ‘…The indefinitely prolonged excess [noted by Ricardo] of the market over the natural [“subsistence”] wage…must simply be recorded as correct views which Ricardo did not know how to incorporate in his theoretical system.’”

(Letter to Baumol from Paul Samuelson, June 17, 1977).

Carelessness: failure to read what author said.

Example: Marx interpreted to mean value = price.

Example: utility of money (Patinkin, “Relative Prices, Say’s Law, and the Demand for Money,” Econometrica 16 [April 1948], p. 140). Surely Patinkin is not justified in citing Walras as one of those to whom money has no utility. His only reference (indeed his only “damning” reference to Walras) is to the statement, “Soit (U) la monnaie que nous considérerons d’abord comme un objet sans utilité propre...” (Éléments, p. 303) This is hardly conclusive and it may well be meant to indicate no more than the author’s intention at that point to deal only with monies like paper rather than, for example, gold. In any case, it includes the phrase “d’abord” (to begin with). Indeed it would be most strange for one who has been hailed as a mighty protagonist of the cash balance approach, to find Walras denying utility to cash. But we have better evidence that this. In his Théorie de la Monnaie he makes it abundantly clear that he is most pleased that the theory of money provides such a fine and important application of the theory of marginal utility and more than once he speaks of the rareté of money after having pointed out that this is the term he had appropriated from his father to designate marginal utility.

Pareto is another of the five “classics” (Walras, Pareto, Wicksell, Cassel and Divisia) whose work is specifically cited by Patinkin as an example of the mishandling of monetary theory. As with Walras, Patinkin provides us with only one specific reference to prove that in the Paretian system money has no utility. But the choice of passage is here even more strange. The only reference to money on the page cited is the following: “la monnaie étant une marchandise doit avoir pour quelques individus une ophélimité propre; mais elle peut ne pas en avoir pout d’autres”. (Manuel, p. 593) Surely this is the contradictory of Patinkin’s allegation! Indeed, Pareto goes further — in effect reprimanding those others (?) who maintain that money has no utility: “La monnaie remplit deux rôles principaux: 1° elle facilite l’échange des marchandises; 2° elle garantit cet échange…C’est parce qu’on n’a pris parfois en considération que son premier rôle qu’n n’a vu dans la monnaie qu’un simple signe sans valeur intrinsèque.” (Manuel, p. 451)

Overall comments

  • Many but not all of predecessors wise men.
  • Understood surprisingly much of what we understand today.
  • But also missed a great deal.
  • Would be sad indeed if it were all contained in earlier work!
  • Do we have much to learn from them? — That you will have to judge for yourselves.
Author Year of Birth First Important Work
on the Theory of Value		 Year of Publication Age
Smith 1723 Wealth of Nations [Vol. I; Vol. II] 1776 53
Malthus 1766 Essay on the Principle of Population 1798 32
Ricardo 1772 Principles of Political Economy, and Taxation 1817 45
Cournot 1801 Recherches sur les Principes mathématiques de la Théorie des Richesses 1838 37
Dupuit 1804 De la mesure de l’utilité des travaux publics 1844 40
Mill, J. S. 1806 Principles of Political Economy [Vol. I; Vol. II] 1848 42
Von Thünen 1783 Der Isolierte Staat, Vol. II 1850 67
Gossen 1810 Entwickelung der Gesetze des menschlichen Verkehrs 1854 44
Marx 1818 Das Kapital 1867 49
Jevons 1835 Theory of Political Economy 1871 36
Menger 1840 Grundsätze der Volkswirthschaftslehre 1871 31
Walras 1834 Éleménts d’Économie Politique Pure 1874 40
Böhm-Bawerk 1851 Grundzüge der Theorie des Wirtschaftlichen Güterverkehrs [Part I; Part II] 1886 35
Von Wieser 1851 Der Natürliche Wert 1889 38
Marshall 1842 Principles of Economics 1890 48
Fisher 1867 Mathematical Investigations in the Theory of Value and Prices 1892 25
Wicksell 1851 Über Wert, Kapital und Rente 1893 42
Wicksteed 1844 The Co-ordination of the Laws of Distribution 1894 50
Pareto 1848 Cours d’Économie Politique, [Volume I; Volume II] 1896/97 58
Barone 1859 Studi Sulla Distribuzione
[Part I; Part II]		 1896 37
Clark 1847 The Distribution of Wealth 1899 52
Keynes 1883 General Theory 1936 53

Source: Duke University. David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library. Economists’ Papers Archive. William J. Baumol Papers, Box 20, Folder “History of Economic Thought (1979-1988) One of Two”.

Image Source:  Cropped from portrait of William J. Baumol in 1981 published in his obituary published in The New York Times, May 10, 2017.

Categories
Exam Questions Harvard Theory

Harvard. Graduate Economic Theory Exam. November 1961

Harvard Square in 1961

Edward Chamberlin was a member of the graduate examination committee of the Harvard economics department in the early 1960s and in his files I have found copies of theory exams from 1961, 1962, and 1963 along with a few memos that  circulated among members of the committee that together provide a description of the procedures used for grading.

_________________________________

Harvard Written Exams
in Economic Theory
Posted Earlier

April 14, 1960
November 3, 1960
April 11, 1961
April 10, 1962
November 13, 1962
April 8, 1963

___________________________

HARVARD UNIVERSITY
Department of Economics

Written Examination in Economic Theory
November 7, 1961

Answer six questions; all questions have equal weight.

  1. Describe and discuss Ricardo’s theory of economic growth; and discuss its relevance if any to problems now confronting ‘underdeveloped’ countries or economies.
  2. What are the chief differences in the conclusions reached by analyzing an area of the economy (say, an “industry”) under the assumptions of (a) pure competition, on the one hand, and (b) monopolistic competition on the other. Elaborate the explanation of one of the differences mentioned.
  3. To what extent may the concept of economic rent be generalized beyond its original application to land? Discuss fully, making clear what you mean by “rent” in each case.
  4. Identify and illustrate the main kinds of uncertainty that arise in economic decisions. Can problems of choice involving uncertainty be analyzed in terms of ordinal utility?
  5. Give an economic appraisal of the effects of “indivisibility” on the results of competitive resource allocation.
  6. Set up an example of a simple static general equilibrium system with three goods and two factors of production, for example, land and labor.
  7. How can technological change cause unemployment? What market forces tend to eliminate the unemployment? What factors may impede the operation of these forces?
  8. What is the theoretical justification of the “competitive ideal”? How is the validity of the argument that competition produces ideal results affected by recognition of the phenomenon of product differentiation?
  9. Describe the von Neumann Model of an expanding economy, and the principal results yielded by the model. Discuss the relevance of these results to real economic systems.
  10. Outline and criticize the theory of economic growth, of one of the following authors: Solow, Joan Robinson, Kaldor, Tobin.

Source: Duke University. Economists’ Papers Archive. David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library. Edward H. Chamberlin Papers, Box 17, Folder “Economics Department 1960-62”.

Image Source: Harvard Square, 1961. From the Cambridge Historical Commission, image in the Photo Morgue Collection. Online: Digital Commonwealth.

Categories
Exam Questions Harvard M.I.T. Money and Banking

Harvard. Course description, enrollment, final exam for Money course. Davis Rich Dewey, 1909-10

Davis Rich Dewey was a visiting lecturer in economics at Harvard in 1909-10 from M.I.T. who taught the Money course. His assistant was a recent Harvard graduate who continued on to become a lawyer who practiced law, among other things, in Maine.

Description, enrollment and final examination for Dewey’s money course are posted below.

________________________

Teaching Assistant
George Randolph Grua

1883. Born 6 November 1883 in Green Valley, South Dakota.
1909. A.B. Harvard.
1912. LL.B. Harvard.
1913-76. Among his activities in Livermore Falls, Maine: lawyer; insurance salesman; operated an apple orchard and apiary.
1939, 1941, 1943. Representative to the Maine Legislature.
1953. Appointed Judge at the Livermore Falls Municipal Court.
1976. Died 22 July in Livermore Falls, Maine.

Source: Obituary in The Lewiston Daily Sun, July 23, 1976. Also “Who’s Who: George R. Grua, Attorney” in The Lewiston Daily Sun, June 25, 1953.

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Previous course materials for
Money and Banking 

1900-01(Meyer and Sprague)
1901-02 (Andrew, Sprague, Meyer)
1902-03 (Andrew’s money exam, Sprague’s banking exam)
1903-04 (Andrew and Sprague)
1904-05 (Andrew’s money exam, Sprague’s banking exam)
1905-06 (Andrew’s money and banking exams)
1906-07 (Andrew’s money and banking exams)
1907-08 (Andrew’s money and banking exams)
1908-09 (Wesley Clair Mitchell’s money and banking exams)

________________________

Course Description
1909-10

8a 1hf. Money. — A general survey of currency legislation, experience, and theory in recent times. Half-course (first half-year). Tu., Th., and (at the pleasure of the instructor) Sat., at 9. Professor [Davis Rich] Dewey (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), assisted by Mr. [George Randolph] Grua.

The course begins with a brief history of the precious metals, which is connected, in so far as possible, with the history of prices and the development of monetary theory. The evolution of currency legislation in England and Europe and the United States is traced, involving a consideration of various aspects of the bimetallic controversy, and a study of the experiences of several countries with paper money. Attention is also given to the non-monetary means of payment and the questions of monetary theory arising from their use. Among other subjects treated are the several methods of measuring exchange value, the explanation of price movements, the relations between prices and the rate of interest, the effects of appreciation and depreciation, the criteria of an ideal standard, and the reasons for divergences in the value of money as between different countries.

Course 8a is open to those only who have taken Course 1.

Source: Official Register of Harvard University, Vol. VI, No. 29 (23 July 1909). History and Political Science Comprising the Departments of History and Government, and Economics, 1909-10, pp. 57-58.

________________________

Course Enrollment
1909-10

Economics 8a 1hf. Professor [Davis Rich] Dewey (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) assisted by Mr. [George Randolph] Grua. — Money. A general survey of currency legislation, experience, and theory in recent times.

Total 56: 4 Graduates, 15 Seniors, 29 Juniors, 4 Sophomores, 1 Freshman, 3 Others.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College, 1909-1910, p. 44.

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ECONOMICS 8a
Mid-year Examination, 1909-10

  1. State the various functions of money. Mention the different kinds of money in the monetary system of the United States, and describe the special functions performed by each kind.
  2. Describe the characteristics of inconvertible paper money. How are prices affected by its issue? Is such money ever worth its face value?
  3. Summarize the history of the debasement of the coinage in England, noting in particular:—
    1. The ways in which it was debased.
    2. Reasons for debasement.
    3. Recoinage of William III.
  4. Does an increased production of gold have any effect upon the rate of interest? Discuss.
  5. Explain the statement: The quantity theory is simply an application of the general principle that value is determined by demand and supply.
  6. Discuss the changes in prices due to causes connected with
    1. Commodities.
    2. Money.
  7. What influences affected the value of greenbacks during the Civil War period?
  8. Contrast the motives for the issue of government notes and of bank notes.
  9. Sketch the history of bimetallism in the United States.
  10. What was the Latin Union? State the results of its operation.

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University, Examination Papers, 1873-1915. Box 9, Bound vol. Examination Papers 1910-11; Papers Set for Final Examinations in History, Government, Economics,…,Music in Harvard College (June, 1910), p. 44.

Image Source: Portrait of Professor of Economics and Statistics Davis R. Dewey in M.I.T. Technique 1910, published April 1909, p. 14.

Categories
Economists Exam Questions Harvard Public Finance

Harvard. Public Finance. Course description, enrollment, final exam. Huse, 1909-1910

The recent Harvard economics Ph.D. alumnus (1907), Charles Phillips Huse, substituted for his thesis advisor, Charles Jesse Bullock, to teach the course on public finance in 1909-10 that was focussed on the theory and methods of taxation. We begin with Huse’s major life and career dates and follow that timeline with links to material from nearly a decade of courses on public finance taught at Harvard at the start of the 20th century. 

The new transcribed content of this post includes a course description, enrollment figures and the final examination questions.

P.S. Two impressions that he left on his students and included in the Boston University yearbooks of 1924 and 1927 have been appended to the timeline. Note the hint given to future cohorts of students: “…[Huse’s] unchanging method nets a return of old quiz questions yearly rejuvenated on each anniversary of their first propounding” 

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Charles Phillips Huse
Timeline

1883. Born March 3 in Worcester, MA. Attended Springfield High School. Springfield, MA.

1904. A.B. Harvard.

1905. A.M. Harvard.

1907. Ph.D. Harvard. Thesis: The Financial History of Boston from 1822 to 1859.

1908-09. Instructor in Economics, Dartmouth College.

1909-11. Instructor in Economics at Harvard.

1911-14. Assistant Professor of Economics, University of Missouri.

1914-20. Assistant Professor of Economics, Boston University.

1920-53. Professor of Economics, Boston University.

1958. Died July 13 in Belmont, MA.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

Professor Huse economizes on our nerves as he never did on ice cream or time. His peculiar humor relieves a mental struggle with Gresham’s Law, and his unchanging method nets a return of old quiz questions yearly rejuvenated on each anniversary of their first propounding. This holds true in the long run. That will be all for this time.

Source: Boston University Yearbook, The Hub 1924, p. 32.

One of the greatest and most worth while experiences in Dr. Huse’s life came in 1910 when he went to Washington to aid the National Monetary Commission. His task was to read the volumes written by the Commission and, as each volume was published, to prepare press statements for the newspapers. Partly as a result of the work of this Commission, the Federal Reserve Act was passed. While he was in Washington he had the opportunity of seeing the public buildings and of taking trips into the surrounding country to places of interest.

Source: Boston University Yearbook, The Hub 1927, p. 18.

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Some earlier public finance exams
at Harvard

1901-02. Economics 7a and 7b. Financial administration; taxation [undergraduate] taught by Charles Jesse Bullock

1902-03. Economics 7b. Theory and methods of taxation [undergraduate] taught by Edward Dana Durand.

1902-03. Economics 16. Financial History of the United States taught by Prof Henry Brayton Gardner of Brown University.

1903-04. Economics 16.  Financial history of the United States taught by Charles Jesse Bullock

1904-05. Economics 7a. Introduction to public finance [undergraduate] taught by Charles Jesse Bullock

1904-05. Economics 7b. Theory and methods of taxation [undergraduate] taught by Charles Jesse Bullock

1904-05. Economics 16. Financial history of the United States taught by Charles Jesse Bullock

1905-06. Economics 7.  Public finance [undergraduate] taught by Charles Jesse Bullock

1905-06. Economics 16. Public finance [advanced] taught by Charles Jesse Bullock

1906-07. Economics 16. Public finance and taxation taught by Charles Jesse Bullock

1907-08. Economics 16. Public finance and taxation taught by Charles Jesse Bullock

1908-09. Economics 7. Public finance [undergraduate] taught by Charles Jesse Bullock

1908-09. Economics 16. Public finance [advanced course] taught by Charles Jesse Bullock

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Readings in public finance
used at Harvard

From 1906: Selected Readings in Public Finance edited by Charles Jesse Bullock (Boston: Inn & Company).

From 1910: Short bibliography on public finance “for serious minded students” by Bullock

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Course Description
1909-10

7 2hf. Public Finance, considered with special reference to the Theory and Methods of Taxation. Half-course (second half-year). Mon., Wed., Fri., at 10. Dr. Huse and an assistant.

This course is for undergraduates exclusively, and cannot be elected by graduates. As stated in the title, much attention is given to the subject of taxation, which will occupy about one half of the time of the course and will be studied with special reference to federal, state, and local taxation in the United States. The remainder of the time will be given to such topics as governmental expenditures, governmental industries (including some study of the relation of the state to railways and other public-service industries), public debts, and financial administration.

The course may, with the consent of the instructor, be elected by students who are taking Economies 1 in the same year.

Source: Official Register of Harvard University, Vol. VI, No. 29 (23 July 1909). History and Political Science Comprising the Departments of History and Government, and Economics, 1909-10, p. 52.

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Course Enrollment
1909-10

Economics 7 2hf. Dr. Huse. — Public Finance considered with special reference to the Theory and Methods of Taxation.

Total 124: 1 Graduate, 28 Seniors, 37 Juniors, 33 Sophomores, 9 Freshmen, 16 Others.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College, 1909-1910, p. 44.

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ECONOMICS 7
Year-end Examination, 1909-10

  1. What has been the public land policy of the United States? Do you favor the retention of any part of the public lands? Give your reasons.
  2. Explain the two distinct grounds on which progression has been advocated, giving your opinion of each.
  3. Discuss the incidence of a tax on the net profits of a monopoly; on a good produced under competitive conditions; on real estate.
  4. Compare the British and Prussian income taxes, as to the method of assessment and the rate.
  5. What has been the experience of the United States with income taxes? Are you in favor of a federal income tax? If so, why? If not, why not?
  6. You are a resident of Boston. Your property consists of real estate worth $50,000, which is mortgaged for $10,000, and personal property amounting to $900,000, made up of the following items: shares in New Jersey corporations, $500,000; shares in Massachusetts corporations, $200,000; bonds of Massachusetts corporations, $200,000.
    1. Send the assessors a true declaration of your taxable property.
    2. Forget to send it. Tell what items are likely to be assessed and at what figures, giving your reasons in every case.
  7. —
Capital

$100,000

 Real Estate

$50,000
Debt

$100,000

 Machinery

$50,000
Merchandise

$100,000

$200,000

$200,000

You are a partner in this Massachusetts company. How is it taxed as a partnership? How would it be taxed as a Massachusetts corporation, assuming the market value of its stock to be $125,000? Would you advise incorporation?

  1. A war of long duration will begin in 1915. You are called upon now to reconstruct the federal tax system in preparation for the war and to finance it when it comes. Justify the policy you adopt.

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University, Examination Papers, 1873-1915. Box 9, Bound vol. Examination Papers 1910-11; Papers Set for Final Examinations in History, Government, Economics,…,Music in Harvard College (June, 1910), pp. 43-44.

Image Source: Boston University yearbook, 1927.

Categories
Brown Economists Exam Questions Finance Harvard Public Finance

Harvard. Enrollment and Exam for Topics in U.S. Financial History. Henry Brayton Gardner, 1902-03

In the first few years following the death of Charles Franklin Dunbar in 1900, two of his fields, public finance and taxation, were covered by visiting professors. This post provides the biographical timeline for the founder of the Brown University economics department, Henry Brayton Gardner, who covered one semester course “Selected Topics in the Financial History of the United States” in 1902-03. The course description, enrollment, and final exam questions immediately follow.

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Previous Guest Professors/Lecturers
on Public Finance

1901-02. Economics 7a and 7b. Financial administration; taxation [undergraduate] taught by Charles Jesse Bullock of Williams College.

1902-03. Economics 7b. Theory and methods of taxation [undergraduate] taught by Edward Dana Durand of the Federal Industrial Commission, formerly from Stanford.

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Henry Brayton Gardner
Timeline

1863. Born March 26 in Providence, RI.

1884. A.B., Brown University.

1888-90. Instructor in Political Economy, Brown University. Founder of the economics department. Sole teacher of economics at Brown until 1902.

1889. Statistics of Municipal Finance (Publications of American Statistical Association, New Series, Vol. 1, No. 6).

1890. Ph.D. Johns Hopkins University.

1896. Outlines of lectures in elementary economics, Brown University. Course I, Historical and Descriptive.

1890-98. Associate Professor of Political Economy, Brown University.

1898-1819 . Professor of Political Economy, Brown University.

1919. President of the American Economic Association

1819-1923. [First] Eastman Professor of Political Economy.

1928. Retired from Brown University.

1939. Died April 22 in Providence, RI.

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Course Description, 1902-03
Originally announced as omitted

[16 1hf. Selected Topics in the Financial History of the United States. Half-course (first half-year). Tu., Th., at 2.30.]

Omitted in 1902-03.

The first object of this course will be to investigate the process through which a system of federal finance was developed in the United States. This will involve a study of the finances of the American colonies, a consideration of the experiences of the Confederation, and a detailed examination of the financial legislation of the first three decades following the adoption of the constitution. Incidentally, it will necessitate some study of colonial monetary affairs and of the theories of taxation prevalent in the eighteenth century. The second topic for investigation will be the development of the finances of the states from 1775 to 1850, with special reference to the growth of state debts and the history of the general property tax. The final topic will be the development of federal taxation since 1820, particular attention being given to the history of the internal revenue system during the last forty years.

Course 16 is open to students who have taken Economies 1, and who take or have taken History 13.

Source: Harvard University. The University Publications, New Series, No. 55 (June 14, 1902). Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Division of History and Political Science Comprising the Departments of History and Government and Economics, 1902-03, p. 50.

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Course Enrollment, 1902-03

Economics 16. 2hf. Professor Gardner (Brown University). — The Financial History of the United States.

Total 28: 1 Gr., 11 Se., 13 Ju., 2 So., 1 Other.

Source: Harvard University. Annual Report of the President of Harvard College, 1902-03, p. 68.

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ECONOMICS 162
Year-end Examination

Answer any six questions.

  1. Contrast the achievements of Hamilton and Gallatin during their respective administrations of the treasury.
  2. During what periods has an internal revenue system been employed in the United States? Sketch the system employed during the Civil War. What portions of it were made permanent?
  3. Outline the history of the United States debt, showing periods of increase and decrease and describing briefly the refunding operations since the Civil War. On what ground was the refunding law of 1870 criticised?
  4. Describe briefly the main features of the financial management of the Civil War, and mention any points in which they seem to you open to criticism.
  5. Outline the course of events during the period 1866-1879 which finally resulted in the resumption of specie payments.
  6. Describe the course of public expenditures since the Civil War.
  7. Describe the course of events during the period 1890-1896. How far was the deficit in the revenue a factor in the troubles of the period?

Source: Harvard University Archives. Examination Papers 1873-1915. Box 6. Papers Set for Final Examinations in History, Government, Economics, History of Religions, Philosophy, Education, Fine Arts, Architecture, Landscape Architecture, Music in Harvard College, June 1903 (in the bound volume Examination Papers 1902-1903).

Image Source: Faculty portrait of Henry Brayton Gardner in the Brown University Yearbook, Liber Brunensis, Vol. XLV (1903).