Author: Irwin Collier

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Chicago Cornell Economists Germany Harvard

Chicago. Economics Ph.D. alumnus, later Cornell professor, Newman Arnold Tolles, 1932

 

Tracking the careers of Ph.D. trained economists at Economics in the Rear-view Mirror has not been limited to the handful of tournament winning, prize economists of past times or even the prominent gatekeepers of orthodoxy. Our series “Meet an economics Ph.D. alumna/us” includes both those who have moved and shaken their local academic communities without leaving much of a footprint in the sands of the history of economics and those who have constituted the vast majority of economists who have survived the demands of the graduate economics programs of their times and then modestly contributed to the pool of our collective economic knowledge during the course of their professional careers.

Today’s economics Ph.D. alumnus, Newman Arnold Tolles (University of Chicago, 1932), achieved considerable professional success during his lifetime, though he is unlikely to ever be found in the syllabi of present and future histories of economics. Tolles is however worthy of nomination as one of a myriad poster-children representing mid-20th century U.S. economics. 

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Newman Arnold Tolles

Sept. 21, 1903. Born in New York City.

1923. B. Phil in economics, School of Commerce, University of Chicago.

1924. M.S.,University  of Chicago.

1925. Recent Literature on British Unemployment Insurance. Quarterly Journal of Economics. Vol. 39, No. 4 (Aug., 1925), pp. 651-662.

1926. A.M.,  Harvard.

1925-27. Study at the London School of Economics.

1929-35. Assistant Professor Mount Holyoke and part-time at Smith College in 1931-33.

1932, Autumn. Ph.D. U of Chicago (diss: Economic Aspects of Unemployment Insurance in Great Britain, 1911-31. Published Chicago: University of Chicago libraries, 1935).

1935-1945. Government service (1935-38 as economist with the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1938-40 as assistant director and director of research in the US Dept of Labor’s new Wage-Hour Division., 1940-45 chief of the Working Conditions Branch at BLS).

(with Louis M. Solomon) Earnings in Eastern and Midwestern Airframe Plants, 1942 : Bulletin of the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics, No. 728.

(with Robert Julius Myers) Income From Wages and Salaries in the Postwar Period : Bulletin of the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics, No. 845.

Spendable Earnings of Factory Workers, 1941-43 : Bulletin of the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics, No. 769.

(with Louis M. Solomon) Wage Rates in the California Airframe Industry, 1941 : Bulletin of the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics, No. 704.

(with Theodor Winter Reedy) Wage Stabilization in California Airframe Industry, 1943 : Bulletin of the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics, No. 746.

1945-47. Professor and chairman of the graduate department of economics, American University.

1947. appointed Professor at Cornell’s newly-established New York State School of Industrial and Labor Relations to retirement July 1969.

1951. (with Earl Brooks and Richard F. Dean) Providing Facts and Figures for Collective Bargaining—The Controller’s Role. Ithaca: New York State School of Industrial and Labor Relations, Cornell University.

1952. (with Robert L. Raimon) Sources of Wage Information: Employer Associations. Ithaca: Cornell Studies in Industrial and Labor Relations, no. 3.

1953-54. Fulbright guest professorship in Munich and Kiel.

1957. New York State Department of Labor. Chairman of the minimum wage board for the cleaning and dyeing industry.

1959. American Minimum Wage Laws: Their Purposes and Results. Ithaca: New York State School of Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell University, no. 95.

1960. The Purposes and Results of U.S. Minimum Wage Laws. Monthly Labor Review, Vol. 83, No. 3 (March 1960), pp. 238-242.

1961. (assisted by Betti C. Goldwasser) Labor Costs and International Trade (Washington, D.C.: Committee for a National Trade Policy).

1964. Origins of Modern Wage Theories (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall).

1965 study of salaries of professional economists for the American Economic Association [published AER Vol. 58, No. 5, Dec. 1968, Supplement, Part 2. Studies of the Structure of Economists’ Salaries and Income.]

1966. Weathering Layoffs in a Small Community: Case Studies of Displaced Pottery and Carpet-Mill Workers. Washington, D.C.: Bulletin of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1516.

1965-1969. Two terms as Ithaca city alderman as a Democrat.

1969. Lost race for mayor of Ithaca.

Two years after retirement part-time teaching at Cornell also teaching at State University College at Geneseo (economics department).

July 1971. Becomes emeritus professor at Cornell.

Apr. 10, 1973. Died from a heart attack while teaching his class at Geneseo State Teachers College.

Sources:

Cornell University Faculty Memorial Statement by Robert H. Ferguson, Vernon H. Jensen, Robert L. Aronson.

“Arnold Tolles Dead; Served County, City with ‘Compassion’”, The Ithaca Journal, April 11, 1973, p. 3.

Guide to the N. Arnold Tolles Papers. Kheel Center for Labor-Management Documentation and Archives, Cornell University Library

Image Source: From Tolles’ obituary printed in The Ithaca Journal, April 11, 1973, p. 3.

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All the World’s a Stage
Tolles @ Center Stage

Photograph of a scene from the 1932 faculty show. Verso reads: A Scene from Faculty Show, presented once every four years at Mount Holyoke College by members of the Administration and Faculty. They present ‘A Hard Struggle’ by Westland Marston, Esq., as a curtainraisser. Left to right: Miss Ruth Douglass of the department of Music, Leslie Burgeivin of the department of English Literature, Miss Dorothy Graves of the department of Art; N. Arnold Tolles of the department of economics; Miss Elizabeth Doane of the department of French; and Bernard Bloch of the department of English.

Source:  https://compass.fivecolleges.edu/object/mtholyoke:24371

 

 

 

 

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Exam Questions M.I.T.

M.I.T. General Examinations in International Economics. Feb/May 1966

 

The following general exams for the field of international economics in 1966 at M.I.T. cover mainly topics related to international payments and finance as opposed to pure trade theory and commercial policy. 

The general exams in international economics from 1959 have been posted earlier.

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General Examination in International Economics
February 9, 1966

  1. Make the case for or against economic integration, as you define it, in Europe, in a particular corner of the world, or more widely.
  2. Working Party 3 of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development has been assigned the topic of balance-of-payments adjustment policy. Write a sketch of the line it should take, in your estimation, regarding speed of adjustment, approved mechanisms, responsibilities of surplus countries, etc.
  3. In the wide ranging controversy about the adequacy of international monetary reserves, where do you inscribe yourself, and why?
  4. Discuss the theory of international trade in terms of the empirical support which various theories have been able to muster. Does one theory survive this testing better than others?
  5. Explain why, if it be true, that foreign trade was an effective engine of economic growth in the 19th century, but is not in the 20th.

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International Economics General Exam
May 1966

Write three essays, of one hour each, on Topic 1, and one each out of Groups 2 and 3 (but excluding the combination of #3 (United States) and #5).

Group 1

  1. The Relevance of the Theory of Comparative Advantage to Problems of Development in Less Developed Countries Today

Group 2

  1. The Role of Technological Change in Balance-of-Payments Disequilibrium
  2. Specific Policy Recommendations (with appropriate analysis) for the Balance-of-Payments Problem of the United Kingdom, the United States, or a developing country such as India

Group 3

  1. The Costs and Benefits of Well-Functioning International Capital Markets
  2. International Monetary Arrangements Today

 

Source: Institute Archives and Special Collections, MIT Libraries. Charles Kindleberger Papers, Box 22, Folder “Examinations International Economics 1959-75”.

Image Source: Boston Public Library, Tichnor Brothers Postcard Collection. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Mass. Tichnor Bros. Inc., Boston, Mass., 1930.

Categories
Economics Programs Harvard

Harvard. Galbraith’s Proposal to Split the Economics Department, 1973

 

During the early 1970s the Harvard economics department went through an identity crisis in which the orthodox mainstream was challenged by a not-so-silent minority of proto-heterodox economists and a dissatisfied graduate student body. The following three artifacts from the discussion of that time come from John Kenneth Galbraith’s papers. I would not exclude the possibility that some/much of the December 26, 1972 memo from the dean of the faculty of arts and sciences was inspired, if not directly penned, by Galbraith.

Galbraith was incapable of writing even an intrauniversity memo without flashes of wit as both the draft and final versions of his memo clearly demonstrate. And yet, there remains an overwhelming pathetic, quixotic note to his proposal of dividing the economics department in order to save its diverse, social elements.

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When the Dean Asks
How to Fix the Harvard Economics Department

December 26, 1972

From: THE DEAN OF THE FACULTY OF ARTS AND SCIENCES

To: THE CHAIRMAN OF THE DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMICS

Re: TERMS OF REFERENCE FOR A STUDY OF AND RECOMMENDATIONS ON THE DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMICS

Recent developments and discussions suggest problems of some concern in the Department of Economics. In the belief that such problems, if attacked in timely fashion and a spirit of goodwill, will be more readily resolved than if allowed to persist and be aggravated, I am proposing action which I trust will meet with the approval of all concerned. I shall first identify those matters on which, I believe, there will be general agreement and then suggest terms of reference for the appropriate action.

  1. The Department of Economics has become very large. In the current catalogue I count 25 tenured members, 56 non-tenured members, 5 visiting professors and 13 economists in associated departments principally the Kennedy School, in addition to the large force of teaching assistants. It is not surprising that so large a body should have problems in maintaining a sense of common purpose and identity.
  2. There has of late been a deep difference of view on appointments in the Department. This has led to the suggestions that the Department, its size notwithstanding, is not emphasizing an adequate representation of diverse, socially unpopular or methodologically different positions, and that standards for promotion operate to exclude or minimize the representation of such views.
  3. There will be agreement that a majority may be less urgently seized of the need for representation of a minority view than the minority.
  4. In recent years there has been dissatisfaction among students, principally graduate students, with instruction in the Department. Again I state the fact without passing on the merits of the position. I do note that, historically, students have found satisfaction and pride in their association with the Department.
  5. The question has been raised whether some appointments are being appraised in accordance with contribution or non-contribution to or effect on corporate profit-making which, however useful and legitimate, is external to the scientific work and teaching of the Department.

In light of the foregoing I propose to ask the three past presidents of the American Economic Association together with the two American Nobel Prize winners who are engaged in active teaching (one of whom is also current President of the American Economic Association), together with the Chairman of the Department of Economics to examine the Department as a matter of urgency and to report. The following are the terms of reference for this examination:

  1. The group shall be denoted the Special Study Committee, and hereafter as the Committee.
  2. In its deliberations the Committee will consult to the fullest extent with students of the Department as well as with tenured and non-tenured members of the Department, and will discuss its provisional findings with students and faculty.
  3. The Committee will consider and report on whether the present personnel of the Department reflects an appropriately broad spectrum of method and view and, as necessary, on corrective steps. Corrective steps may specifically include recommendations for change in past action.
  4. The committee will consider whether the present teaching of economics is sufficiently broad, and specifically whether there should be a second and alternative track to a doctorate in economics embracing both course work and examinations and in which the primary emphasis would be on history of economic thought, institutional economics and socialist thought, or subject matter disciplines not required by the present framework.
  5. The Committee shall consider possible division or subdivision or other reorganization of the Department to provide greater knowledge of candidates for appointment or promotion, greater corporate responsibility for instruction and other possible gains from smaller size. In this connection special attention should be given to the relationship with the Kennedy School of Government.
  6. The effect of external corporate or other activities of Departmental members as these may bear on appointments, teaching or research, shall be examined with recommendations.
  7. The report of the Committee shall be made public and, in the absence of specific and fully-supported objection, it is my hope that its conclusions will be found acceptable to the Department. There is no intention to alter the constitutional arrangements by which tenured members, as now or in a suitably reorganized or subdivided Department, if that is the decision, are responsible for appointments and instruction.

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Galbraith Draft Statement (undated)
[handwritten additions in bold italics]

Draft #2

MEMORANDUM

MEMO:

The President
The Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences
Members of the Department of Economics

From: John Kenneth Galbraith

 

In these last weeks tensions long present in the Department of Economics at Harvard have come to the surface. The consequences are attracting interest and discussion well beyond the confines of the Department and the University. It is doubtful if anyone, and certainly any active participants, can state the issues with complete impartiality but some of the basic circumstances admit of agreement. They are.

(1) The Department has become very large—the current catalogue lists twenty-five regularly tenured professors, thirty-five nontenured professors, thirteen members in an adjunct relationship from other parts of the University and five visiting professors. In addition there are a large number of teaching assistants. The Department has become a parliamentary and not a corporate body. Long before the recent explosion I expressed my concern not only to my colleagues but also to the top management over our increasingly ungainly and ineffective mass and its dangers. I encountered little or no disagreement.

(2) The Department has for some years been deeply divided in its views. There has been an ineffective and mostly unchanging minority, and an effective and largely unchanging majority.

(3) While the basis of the division is diverse, including the polemical folk-tendencies of academic life, our learned delight in self assertion, our sensitivity to the intellectual shortcomings of others, differences in reaction to change, political attitudes, it is also a difference in the view of economics. I doubt that any statement of this difference can avoid prejudice. I shall content myself with being dull. It partly involves the acceptance or rejection of the established economic institutions; partly acceptance or rejection of accustomed preconceptions of economic thought, partly the trade-off between precision in established modalities and lesser precision in more innovative, critical or experimental work; partly it has to do with the degree of commitment to measurement and mathematics.

(4) While the underlying fact is a difference in the view of the subject (including the importance of representing the minority views) the argument over appointments invokes competence. Each side with no slight sense of moral righteousness defines competence in its own image. What is unscientific or soft to one side is irrelevant or unreal or unuseful to the other. Certainty in these positions is enhanced by the effect of professional esteem on ego. The members of the majority rightly reflect on the high regard in which precision and excellence of their work is held in their particular spheres of econometric, mathematical or applied work. The members of the minority rejoice similarly on their standing in the profession generally. Given these attitudes, the likelihood that one side will yield gracefully to the other is (if possible) even further reduced. Thus the absolute certainty of continued conflict.

(5) The difference comes to a head over appointments. This reflects a clear view of the reality. It is recognized by all that it is people who determine what is taught and investigated—and wholly so in such an unstructured environment as Harvard. The majority, not unnaturally, has prevailed. In this context a minority should not be expected to acquiesce. To do so is to accept eventual extinction. No one who is serious about his views or methods should countenance that.

(6) The students, once pridefully associated with the Department, are discontented. Their affiliation is largely, although by no means completely, with the minority. As a consequence some members of the majority hold or harbor the thought that the minority is acting less out of conviction than a desire to seek popularity or appease student opinion. Members of the minority react with a strong (and in my own case previously undisclosed) concern for the quality of our institution.

(7) There is a question as to the bearing of subjective judgments formed in connection with the business activities of members—or in consequence of those activities—on promotion of those whose disposition or work leads to criticism of cherished and remunerative economic institutions.

Aggravated problems sometimes allow of simple choices. This is so in the present case. One course is to continue as now, and enjoy the acrimony and continue to invite, by our public bickering, disesteem for the subject, the Department, the University, our students and ourselves. The other is to move to the obvious and forthright resolution, on which will be to the benefit of all concerned.

The solution is to divide the present vast Department into two parts. One part, a Department or Division of General Economics*, would reflect the specialized interests and scientific purpose of the majority, including those whose identification with the minority has been based not on identity of professional interest but concern for academic diversity. A second part would be the Department of Social Economics. This initially much smaller Department would consist of those tenured and untenured members whose active identification with the social issues of planning, economic structure, criticism, or socialism or institutionalism leads them to make the transfer. The new Department, born out of a need to ensure diversity, would itself be under the normal academic obligation to perpetuate diversity. It would develop an undergraduate and graduate curriculum and degree requirements compromising nothing in depth and rigor, in accordance with the interests of its members and of students. Subject to established ad hoc procedures—and its resources—it would make its own promotions and appointments.

*No difficulty should be made over a name. The parent Department could be called the Department of Economics.

The initial resources of the new Department would consist of the present financial commitment to those making the change. There would, some minor administrative costs apart, be no added burden on the University budget. I would make the transfer and make the revenues from the Paul M. Warburg Professorship, including the supporting research revenues (on neither of which I have drawn in net amount in recent years) available for a new professorial appointment. I believe, not without knowledge, that money for one or two added professorships as well as for research could be raised from sources not presently open either to the University or the Department. Scholarship funds would be divided in accordance with student demand. I am willing to commit a good share of personal time in the next year to money raising, a task in which, unlike my economics, my competence has been sufficiently established.

May I note in summary the advantages of the foregoing proposal.

(1) The basic cause of distress and conflict in the present Department of Economics would be removed. Each of the new Departments or Divisions will be in a position to develop the subject in full accordance with its own lights. Neither will be in the academically repellant position (however agreeable in practice) of imposing its standards or preferences on the other.

(2) The problem of excessive scale and consequent diminution in sense of communal responsibility for teaching, research and appointments is solved in the case of the new small Department or Division. It is alleviated for the larger parent Department.

(3) The Department of Social Economics if it is to attract, retain and place its graduate students, will have to demonstrate itself in competition with its older and more prestigious parent. This competition will be exceedinglyhealthy for both. This is an appealing point. While businessmen favor competition more often in principle than in practice, this is not an error into which any good economist will allow himself to fall.

(4) Undergraduate instruction in the new Department will benefit no alone from the members’ commitment to their subject matter but also from the greater sense of community as between teaching assistants, tenured and non-tenured faculty in a much smaller department and the present Department will be better. In the present Department not even all tenured and untenured members are known to each other. Teaching assistants are known only to a fraction of the faculty members and even less is known about their performance. And again in undergraduate teaching the vigorous competition of the new Department will be good for the older one.

(5) Problems associated with the corporate business activities of professors will be at least partly resolved. No question of concern for attitudes of business clients, however subjective, will be thought to influence those who are passing on appointments in the new Department. Subject no doubt, to appropriate safeguards the activities of present members of the Department with their potential for useful employment, income and information could perhapsremain.

(6) The two Departments through a coordinating committee might [illegible word] combine for the time being on the elementary course.

(7) The creation of the new Department with an admixture of old and new members intent on developing both old and new lines of inquiry will affirm, as nothing else, Harvard’s avidly proclaimed commitment to free inquiry by people of the highest calibre and to whatever result.

(8) Nothing is forever. If, after say ten years, there is demand for reunification, why not.

With so much to be gained—and also so much trouble to be avoided—I hope that we can proceed to consider this solution with a minimum of delay. Needless to say—perhaps on the basis of past departmental performance it is very necessary that I say—I am ready at any notice to lend a hand.

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Memo On Splitting the Harvard Economics Department
[Apparent Final Draft]

June 18, 1973

From:  JOHN KENNETH GALBRAITH

To:

PRESIDENT DEREK C. BOK
DEAN-DESIGNATE HENRY ROSOVSKY
PROFESSOR JAMES S. DUESENBERRY
MEMBERS OF THE DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMICS

Re: THE DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMICS

The Department of Economics is, I would judge, entering into a period of considerable calm and tranquility. The older dissidents and heretics in the Department will, with one or two exceptions, soon be retiring. And, in any case, they are now a harmless minority. Within a year or so the younger generation of dissidents will be safely gone. Thus the expectation of a period of scholarly calm.

My purpose in this memorandum is to suggest that the prospect is not as happy as these developments imply. And it is to suggest some steps which, without unduly disturbing the equanimity of the situation, the Department and the Administration would be wise to consider. May I note that these are matters on which I have no personal, as distinct from general, professional concern. I am one of those who will be contributing, however modestly, to a more seemly, tranquil and comfortable life by a comparatively early departure.

The problems remaining after the prospective changes are two. There is first the fact that, while faculty affairs have been generally arranged to the satisfaction of all, the students remain deeply dissatisfied. Let no one doubt this or seek, by the usual academic rationalizations, to explain it away. I was much exposed to this in the special seminar last autumn; I determined then to inform myself in a minor way during the spring, which I have done. The students, over a wide political spectrum, deeply dislike their work and the Department. This is especially true of the first-year students who, in a puzzling exercise in public relations reflecting an odd attitude toward education, are now blithely told at the outset to expect the worst year of their lives. Those who have been here two or three years also look back with discontent on their educational experience. My first year of graduate work was one of the most vital and interesting of my life. So, I believe it was with most of my generation.

The complaint of the students is straitforward. They are squeezed, especially in their first year but increasingly as a test in later work, into a narrow model-building, problem-solving, quasi-mathematical routine that they find boring and unrelated to the world in which they live. The emasculated careerist may accept the routine and do well. The student who thought that economics was a window on the problems of the world is abjectly disappointed.

These student reactions are heavily discounted by most although not all of the senior faculty. The rationalization is that such student attitudes are inevitable—that the modern student is inherently lazy, feckless, radical and dissatisfied. It is even suggested, not without scholarly vigor, that those who express concern about students are courting a student popularity in a sadly unscholarly tradition. As I say, this rationalization seems to me unwise and something that very soon will have a more practical consequence. A bad reputation in these matters is not easily kept a secret. It could happen that eventually the Department will have very few graduate students of indigenous origin of any consequence, a few committed careerists, mathematicians and model-builders apart. Numbers and quality of applicants will decline. In consequence, the ratio of faculty to active, teachable graduate students, which is now approaching one to one, will pass that point and will widen as a ratio of students to teachers. This is not hyperbole. A course was recently described to me by a graduate student in which he was the only participant along with three faculty members. We have a fair number of seminars with only a handful of students, sometimes but one. Faculty life will continue in comfort. Workshops will serve, as already now, to disguise the shortage of students. But still there will be nervousness.

There is another and more subjective danger. The harmony which one now foresees is based on a general commitment to neoclassical economics or its applied refinements. Accomplishment in model-building and refinement is, I think nearly all will agree, an increasingly stern requirement. We would not again hire a labor economist who, like Professor Dunlop or Professor Slichter, made his career out of a practical association with the unions and the problems of labor mediation. Professor Leontief, were he now showing the experimental tendencies that marked his early career, would be in trouble. Even his work, when firmly established, was not strongly supported. We would not have an economist who was too much preoccupied with the practical details of tax reform—unless he protected his flank by suitable theoretical or econometric exercise. My own past tendencies would certainly not be acceptable for promotion—although on the merits of this, with characteristic tact, I disqualify myself. What is not in doubt is that we are now very strong in the journals but much less strong in the obscenely practical matters on which many people, including many students, expect economists to be useful. This could be damaging to the reputation of the Department. The latter has always depended in appreciable measure not on the great scientists but on its vulgar practitioners.

Now let me say a word on reform. Mention of reform leads to thoughts of reform of the Department—so it is with faculty and also students. The present course of instruction is wrong. Let us find the right one. The problem is that no one line of graduate economic instruction can now serve all interests, reflect all points of view. Nor does it deal with the highly important fact that instruction is far less important than the inclination of the people who guide it. The Department is now a vast parliamentary body. So long as there is only one educational track, as a matter of course it will reflect the preferences of the majority. All of us, in the oldest of academic traditions, appraise excellence using ourselves as the yardstick. Reform requires that we begin to provide real choices as to teachers and as to work. Three possibilities occur to me:

  1. We should have in the Department of Economics two tracks to two Ph.D.’s. One of these would be in economics, another in (say) social economics. Professors in the Department would be grouped into two broad Executive Committees around these tracks. And each of these two Executive Committees would have responsibility not only for developing graduate work in its track and for examination therein but also for recruitment and promotion. This would broaden the choice for students; would mean that we would have two more nearly corporate bodies rather than one parliamentary body to guide instruction and appointments; would foster the kind of competition which all economists intrinsically and devoutly applaud; and would reduce by half the present parliamentary tendency to exclude the minority view. The first track would continue the present program with all of its neoclassical and model-building rigor. The second track would be experimental, humane and with a much stronger orientation to the emerging issues of our time. It would not, and this must be emphasized, involve any less effort.
  2. The second possibility would be to establish within the Department an institute—an Institute for Economic Innovation. This would enlist the members of the senior faculty so inclined, would develop a program purely of graduate instruction and would lead also to a degree which would reflect its own course of instruction. The purpose of constituting this as an institute would be twofold: to get the energy and attention of one man who would see the institute as the projection of his own efforts, and to use the institute as a device for raising new funds for both chairs and research. It is my near certainty, based on some experience as a medicant, that this enterprise, properly presented, would be very attractive to donors. I am not sure, however, that given the present size of the Department, it would not be wiser simply to allot some Graustein appointments to the Institute for the next few years.
  3. The third and final possibility would be to have two Departments of Economics—one Department of Economics and one Department of Social Economics. There are advantages to this—again the healthy competition in which all economists theoretically rejoice, elimination of the present diseconomies of scale, the much more clearly defined differentiation of purpose. It would not be as difficult a solution as seems at first glance. Those who approve of the Department as it is would remain with the Department of Economics. The rest would make the new Department. It would form its character from those who join it in the feeling that a more strongly innovative, humane and applied—in the modern sense—approach to economics is in order. The problem is, of course, that it involves the largest disruption in established institutional arrangements. That is not something to be undertaken lightly. Sometimes, though, that is good.

I am persuaded that in one or another of the above arrangements lies the only hope for a satisfactory future. For a while the tranquility that is in prospect will be greatly enjoyed. Given the sterile tendencies of the accepted economics and the attitudes of the students, it will be, if not the tranquility of the tomb, certainly that of a kind of somnambulant decay.

J.K.G.

Source: John F. Kennedy Presidential Library. John Kenneth Galbraith Personal Papers. Series 5. Harvard University File, 1949-1990. Box 526. Folder “Memorandum on Reorganization of the Department of Economics”.

Image Source: Harvard Class Album 1958.

Categories
Columbia Cornell Duke Economists

Columbia. Economics PhD alumnus, later first Duke grad school dean, William Henry Glasson

 

Today’s post, another in the series “Meet an economics Ph.D. alumnus/a…”, comes from a tip provided Economics in the Rear-view Mirror by friend of the blog, Roy Weintraub of Duke University. William Henry Glasson received his Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1900 and was appointed professor of political economy and social science at Trinity College in 1902. When Trinity College evolved into Duke University in the 1920s, Glasson played a pivotal role in establishing graduate education in Durham, North Carolina. 

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Miscellany

  • Acknowledgements in Glasson’s thesis: Professor J. W. Jenks of Cornell University who suggested the subject of military pension legislation. Thesis advisers Professsor H. R. Seager of the University of Pennsylvania and Professor F. J. Goodnow of Columbia University.
  • William H. Glasson. “Some Economic Effects of the World War” in Proceedings of the Nineteenth Annual Session of the State Literary and Historical Association of North Carolina, Raleigh, N.C. (November 20-21, 1919), pp. 96-104.

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Short Biographical Note

William Henry Glasson was born in Troy, NY. on July 26, 1874. He received his Ph.B. from Cornell University in 1896 and his Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1900. Glasson was head of the Dept. of History and Civics at the George School (Newton, Pa.) from 1899-1902. He came to Trinity College in 1902. During this tenure at Trinity and Duke University, Glasson was instrumental in the development of the Dept. of Economics and the Graduate School. He was Professor of Political Economy and Social Science from 1902-1940; appointed in charge of the establishment of the retirement annuity plan for the faculty and administration; the head of the department of economics and business administration; chairman of the faculty committee on graduate instruction; and Dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences from 1926-1938. Glasson was secretary of the Phi Beta Kappa Society for the South Atlantic district; editor of the South Atlantic Quarterly from 1905-1909; and a member of the Durham Board of Education.

Source:  Duke University. Duke University Archives. David M. Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library. William Henry Glasson papers, 1891-1946.

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William Henry Glasson, 1874-1946

William Henry Glasson (26 July 1874-11 Nov. 1946), economist, first dean of the Duke University Graduate School, author, and editor, was born in Troy, N. Y. A first-generation American whose parents had emigrated from England shortly before his birth, he was the son of John Glasson, a native of Cornwall, and Agnes Allen Pleming Glasson, the daughter of a master tailor in Probus. He received the Ph.B. degree from Cornell University in 1896, the Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1900, and the LL.D. from Duke University in 1939.

Glasson began his professional career as a fellow in political economy and finance at Cornell (1896-97), Harrison Fellow of Economics, University of Pennsylvania (1897-98); and fellow in administration, Columbia University (1898-99). From 1899 to 1902 he was head of the history and civics department in the George School, Newtown, Pa. He became professor of political economy and social science at Trinity College in 1902; was appointed chairman of the faculty committee on graduate instruction in September 1916, when the college had only six graduate students; and was named the first dean of the graduate school of arts and sciences at Duke University in 1926, in which capacity he served until 1938. By that time 249 graduate students were enrolled. Glasson continued to teach at Duke until 1940. He was also professor of economics during the summer session at Cornell University in 1907, acting professor of economics and politics at Cornell in 1910-11, nonresident lecturer at Johns Hopkins University during the spring of 1913, and professor of economics at the University of Virginia during the summer quarter of 1928.

In addition to his teaching and administrative responsibilities, he was coeditor of the South Atlantic Quarterly with Edwin Mims (1905-9); and both joint editor with President William P. Few, of Trinity College, and managing editor of the Quarterly (1909-19). He also served as advisory editor of the National Municipal Review (1912-22). From 1940 to 1945 he was a director of the South Atlantic Publishing Company. An authority on the U.S. pension system, Glasson was the author of History of Military Pension Legislation in the United States (1900) [Columbia University Ph.D. thesis] and Federal Military Pensions in the United States (1918) [published by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Division of Economics and History], as well as a contributor to The South in the Building of the Nation (1910) and the Cyclopaedia of American Government (1913). Many of his articles appeared in the South Atlantic Quarterly(1905-19), Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, National Municipal Review, Review of Reviews, Survey, the publications of the American Economics Association and of the North Carolina Literary and Historical Association, and other economic and historical periodicals. He contributed poetry to various newspapers and magazines, and in 1945 was a feature writer for the Cornell Countryman.

His influence extended far beyond university campuses and scholarly publications. When he gave up the deanship of the graduate school in 1938, A. A. Wilkinson, director of the Duke University News Service, wrote: “It is entirely no coincidence that Dean Glasson’s years of activity have paralleled development in the educational, economic, and social life of the South: he has had a definite part in those phases of life that have come within the range of his participation.” His academic and other achievements were often so closely interwoven that they cannot be easily separated.

Glasson’s first experience in helping to mold public opinion came with his involvement in the famous Bassett case, which centered national attention on Trinity College and, in particular, John Spencer Bassett, who was being excoriated by much of the southern press for an opinion he had stated in the South Atlantic Quarterly of October 1903. The affair was concluded when Trinity College took a strong, unequivocal stand on academic freedom. Glasson served on the committee that wrote the memorable document on the subject which was duly signed by the faculty and accepted by the college trustees on 1 Dec. 1903.

As early as 1909 he was an advocate of the Australian ballot in North Carolina elections. Also in 1909, he was appointed by President William H. Taft to serve as the supervisor of the U.S. Census of 1910 for the Fifth District of North Carolina. He resigned after a few months, however, because of the political opposition of John Motley Morehead, Republican congressman from the district. (His objection was that Glasson had not been born and reared in the state.) During 1913-18 Glasson was a collaborator in the division of economics and history of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Soon after World War I Mayor John M. Manning appointed him a member of the Durham City Housing Commission; from 1919 to 1923 he was on the City Board of Education. For many years he was a director of the Home Building and Loan Association and of the Morris Plan Industrial Bank. Because of his early interest in medical insurance, he became one of the first directors and vice-president of the Hospital Care Association of North Carolina (1933-35). In the summer of 1934 he visited Germany on the Carl Schurz goodwill tour, visiting a number of cities including those in the Saar district. He was appointed by Governor J. C. B. Ehringhaus to serve as a member of the North Carolina State Commission for the Study of Plans for Unemployment Compensation or Insurance (1934-35).

Glasson was a Methodist and a Republican. He was a member of Phi Beta Kappa (charter member and president of the Trinity chapter when it was installed on 29 Mar. 1920, and secretary for the South Atlantic District 1925-37); Kappa Delta Pi; American Economics Association (member of the executive committee, 1916-18); Conference of Deans of Southern Graduate Schools, 1927-37 (an organizer of the conference and, in 1929, president); and Quill and Dagger, Cornell University.

On 12 July 1905, he married Mary Beeler Park, a native of Speedwell, Ky., and a 1902 graduate of Cornell. They were the parents of four children: Lucy (Mrs. Harold Wheeler), Mary (Mrs. Thomas Preston Brinn), Marjorie (Mrs. Norman Ross), and John, M.D. While returning from a meeting in Raleigh on 9 Dec. 1934, he was seriously injured in an automobile accident. After years of invalidism, he died at his home in Durham and was buried in Maplewood Cemetery. His papers and a portrait by Irene Price are in the William R. Perkins Library, Duke University.

Esther Evans

SEE: Durham Morning Herald, 12 Nov. 1946; William H. Glasson File, Duke University News Service (Durham); Greensboro News, 28 Aug. 1938; Raleigh Christian Advocate, 17 Apr. 1913; Who Was Who in America, vol. 2 (1950).

Source:  William Henry Glasson, 1874-1946 page from the website Documenting the American South. Original source: Dictionary of North Carolina Biography edited by William S. Powell. University of North Carolina Press, 1979-1996.

Image Source:  William Henry Glasson portrait by Irene Roberta Price.

Categories
Chicago Economists Exam Questions

Chicago. Preliminary Examinations in Economic Theory. Friedman, chair. 1952

 

Today’s post includes not only the questions for the economic theory preliminary examinations (Part I and Part II) from the summer quarter of 1952 at the University of Chicago, but also some interesting background material. From Milton Friedman’s papers at the Hoover Institution archives I have transcribed copies of the entire schedule of preliminary examinations for summer 1952 along with the correspondence between Friedman, Frank Knight and the departmental secretary. We can compare Friedman’s suggested questions with the questions that were actually used for the exam along with Friedman’s rankings of the anonymous examinations. Two sentences in Frank Knight’s letter to Friedman (after the grades had been compared among the graders and the veil of ignorance regarding the identities of the examinees was lifted) is definitely worth considering in light of current discussions about systemic elements of racism in the discipline of economics.

“I feel that these Negroes are in the same position as the Chinese students only more so in that they compete in a completely different market, and they are never really compared with our “full fledged” Ph.D. graduates. (Besides, between you and me, I have attended 4 or 5 Ph.D. exams this summer and thought very few of them ought to pass but they all did).”

I have gone on to track down the top eight examinees as ranked by Milton Friedman. Fun facts: Gary Becker won the bronze medal and Abba Lerner’s son, Lionel Lerner, placed fourth.

The summer 1951 theory preliminary exams were posted earlier.

_________________________

Schedule for the Preliminary Examinations
Summer 1952

July 15, 1952

To: Committee members of Preliminary examinations
From: J. Barker, Departmental Secretary
Re: Schedule and committees for Preliminary Examinations, Summer Quarter, 1952.

Date Examination Committee Registration
Tues., July 29 Economic Theory I M. Friedman, Chr.,
F. H. Knight
G. Tolley		 26
Thurs., July 31 Economic Theory II (as above) 4
Tues., July 29 Government Finance P. Thomson, Chr.
H. Lewis		 1
Thurs., July 31 Industrial Relations F. Harbison, Chr.
A. Rees
M. Reid		 1
Tues., Aug. 5 Money, Banking & Monetary Policy L. Mints, Chr.
E. Hamilton
J. Marschak		 21
Tues., Aug. 5 Statistics T. Koopmans, Chr.
W. Wallis		 4
Thurs., Aug. 7 Agricultural Economics D. Johnson, Chr.
T. Schultz
P. Thomson		 8
Thurs., Aug. 7 International Econoics L. Metzler, Chr.
C. Hildreth
H. Lewis		 9

_________________________

Friedman to Knight and Tolley
Carbon copy

Orford, N.H.
July [19 or 20], 1952

F. H. Knight
G. Tolley

Dear Knight and Tolley:

I have just received word from Miss Barker that I am chairman of the Theory prelim committee for this summer, that you are the other members, and that the exams are to be in her hands by July 22.

I wish you could join me here for a session to get out the exams—and I am sure you do too if what we have been hearing about the weather in Chicago bears any resemblance to the truth.

Since you cannot, I enclose some suggested questions for both Part I and Part II. I wonder if the two of you could get together and combine these or such of them as you think worthy of retention with your own questions. Time does not permit of rechecking with me and I assure you I shall be more than satisfied with whatever decisions the two of you make.

As to the papers, have them sent to me at any stage that suits your own plans best, since mine are very flexible. I shall try to read them promptly and return them promptly. If I send you in my grades, perhaps the two of you can combine them with your own. I realize this puts more of the work on you, but I know not what else to do. I do hope we can get the grades in reasonably promptly, and certainly before the end of the quarter, which also means before I return.

Many thanks, and apologies. Best regards too.

Yours,

_________________________

Friedman’s proposed theory exam questions
Summer 1952

M. Friedman

Suggested Questions for Theory Prelim, Summer, 1952

Part I

  1. Define the following terms precisely and indicate briefly the use made of each in economics:
    1. Demand
    2. Supply
    3. Equilibrium
    4. Indifference Curve
    5. Marginal
    6. Rate of Substitution
    7. Marginal value product
    8. Marginal efficiency of capital
    9. Production function
    10. Time preference
    11. Profit
    12. Rent
    13. Run
    14. Net advantages
    15. Variable Costs
  2. (a) “I wouldn’t take it if you paid me”. Draw the consumption indifference curves implied by this statement. (You may find it helpful to suppose first that there is some finite minimum price per unit at which the speaker would take “it”; then approach the limit implied by the quotation.)
    (b) “I’ve reached the point of diminishing returns, so I better quit”. Analyze, indicating under what conditions and for what definition of diminishing returns this is a valid inference from the conditions for a maximum.
  3. (a) Complaints are often heard about the “high” incomes of bootleggers in dry states, or gamblers where gambling is illegal, or smugglers, etc. Are high incomes in such cases evidence of the success or the failure of the laws? Explain your answer.
    (b) A man buys a ticket in a lottery and wins. View this as a business transaction. How much, if any, of his prize is properly regarded as “profit”? Does your answer use the concept of “profit” implicit in the common statement “entrepreneurs seek to maximize profit”? Justify your answer and indicate the difference, if any, between the two concepts.
  4. (a) Outline the theory of joint supply
    (b) What factors determine the elasticity of the derived supply curve of one of a pair of jointly supplied items? Show the direction of influences and prove your statements graphically or otherwise.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

M. Friedman

Suggested questions for theory prelim, Summer, 1952

Part II

  1. During every hyper-inflation there are always recurrent complaints of a “shortage of money.” How do you explain this phenomenon?
  2. The following quotation is from an article on the illicit gold traffic:
    “Traffic on the Asian gold-smuggling trails has doubled since Korea…Meanwhile savings which could be productively invested by banks lie idle; paper money is snubbed for gold, depreciates with every rise in the gold price, and becomes a weaker and weaker factor in national economies.” (H.R. Reinhardt, The Reporter, July 22, 1952, p.21).
    Analyze this quotation. Precisely what effect would the willingness of people to hold bank deposits instead of gold have on productivity or productive investment, and through what channels? What of sense and what of nonsense is there in the statements after the semi-colon?
  3. There has been much talk of the so-called “wage-price spiral.” What is generally meant by this term? Give a theoretical analysis of the so-called spiral, indicating under what circumstances you think it could or could not arise.

_________________________

Actual Economic Theory Preliminary Examination Questions
Summer, 1952

Summer, 1952

ECONOMIC THEORY I

Time: 4 hours

Answer all questions.

  1. Define the following terms precisely and indicate briefly the use made of each in economics:
    1. Demand
    2. Supply
    3. Indifference Curve
    4. Rate of Substitution
    5. Marginal value product
    6. Marginal efficiency of capital
    7. Production function
    8. Time preference
  2. (a) Outline the theory of joint supply
    (b) What factors determine the elasticity of the derived supply curve of one of a pair of jointly supplied items? Show the direction of influences and prove your statements graphically or otherwise.
  3. Assume that Crusoe is interested in economizing the use of his resources and that during the period in question there is no change in his knowledge of production techniques. How does capital and interest theory aid in explaining the following observations?

(a) After several years, Crusoe begins to obtain berries by planting and cultivation rather than simply by picking them as he had done previously.
(b) After an additional number of years, he reverts to picking wild berries.

  1. What theories do you offer to explain the following phenomena?

(a) During a prolonged rise in the general level of prices, the price of soft drinks remained at five cents with no change whatsoever in the physical characteristics of the product.
(b) During a prolonged rise in the general level of prices the price of candy bars remained at five cents, at the same time, however, as the size of the bars decreased.

  1. Using diagrams, briefly discuss the long-run cost curve for a competitive industry. Indicate, with diagrams, the response to be expected from (a) an expansion of demand, (b) a decrease of demand, within periods too short for a significant change in the fixed investment.
  2. Briefly state the main changes in the body of accepted price theory at the turn from “classical” to “Austrian” (the subjective-value school), i.e., at the “revolution” of the 1870’s. Similarly describe the transition from Austrian to “New-classical” (Marshallian) doctrine.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

Summer, 1952

ECONOMIC THEORY II

Time: 2 ½ hours

Answer all questions.

  1. During every hyper-inflation there are recurrent complaints of a “shortage of money.” How do you explain this phenomenon? Compare the situation during acute depression.
  2. A part of the nation’s productive capacity is destroyed, say by a war. Ignoring any possible expectational and distributive effects, how will this affect: (a) the division of the national income between consumption and investment? and (b) the income-velocity of money. How, if at all, does your answer depend on whether wealth is a variable which influences behavior?
  3. There has been much talk of the so-called “wage-price spiral.” What is generally meant by this term? Give a theoretical analysis of the so-called spiral, indicating under what circumstances you think it would or would not arise.

_________________________

Theory Prelim, Summer, 1952, Part I. Grades by M. Friedman

General notes:

  1. I have classified the papers into five groups.

P—clear pass for the Ph.D. (7 papers)
P(?) Questionable pass for Ph.D. (5 papers)
A.M. Pass for a.M./questionable fail for Ph.D. (5 papers)
F(?) Questionable fail for A.M., clear fail for Ph.D. (4 papers)
F Clear fail for both (4 papers)

Should emphasize that as always this is somewhat arbitrary. In particular, difference between two fail classes is particularly small in this batch.

  1. In addition to the above class mark, Igive the ranking by my numerical grades. 1 is the best paper, 2, the next best, etc., to aid in seeing whether any differences among members of the committee reflect differences in absolute or relative grading.
# of candidate. Class grade Rank Remarks
1 AM 16
2 F 24
3 P 6
4 P(?) 8
5 P 5
6 F(?) 21
7 AM 14
8 P(?) 11
9 AM 15
10 P 4
11 P(?) 12
12 F 25
13 P 2 This and 15 distinctly the two best papers
14 F(?) 18
15 P 1 See under 13
16 AM 13
17 AM 17
18 F 23
19 F 22
20 P 7
21 P 3
23 F(?) 19
25 P(?) 10
26 F(?) 20
27 P(?) 9

 

PART II OF THEORY PRELIM

Not one of the three papers submitted on this part seems to me satisfactory. #1 is the best of the three, though not by much, and might deserve a questionable pass. Both of the others seem to me clear failures.

_________________________

 

THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO
Chicago 37, Illinois
Department of Economics

September 8, 1952

Mr. Milton Friedman
Orford
New Hampshire

Dear Milton:

Tolley and I have just gone over our three reports and find them fairly well in agreement. The most serious exception is #7—John J. Klein, whose paper you marked passable for the A.M. only, while both Tolley and I gave him a clear pass. Your rank was 14, as you probably have the record to show. What do you suggest? It will be no great hardship to us to re-read the paper, and we shall do so with the next day or so. Do you want to see it again? Or what can we report?

Another questionable case is Adolph Scott (Colored). Here I am the odd man, as I marked him passable, while you ranked him 23 out of 25, and Tolley ranked him 24. I yield as far as passing him for the Ph.D. is concerned but wondered what you would think about passing him for the A.M. He seems to have squeezed through in International Trade at the A.M. level. This would allow him to get the Master’s degree. I feel that these Negroes are in the same position as the Chinese students only more so in that they compete in a completely different market, and they are never really compared with our “full fledged” Ph.D. graduates. (Besides, between you and me, I have attended 4 or 5 Ph.D. exams this summer and thought very few of them ought to pass but they all did).

On Part II there is also some discrepancy. I had Mints read these papers, and he and I agree that #2, Mrs. Mullady, was passable. But you and Tolley both wrote failure and as she failed “flat” on Part I and has also failed a second time in another field, it looks as though that disposes of her case. This leaves S. Smidt who has your vote, a questionable pass, Tolley’s a clear pass, and Mints and I though a very very [sic] dubious pass. But Smidt passes Part I with colors flying. I am perfectly willing and in fact disposed to yield on him and pass him as I don’t feel competent to grade these Part II papers anyway.

Cordially,

(Dictated but not read)
Frank H. Knight

Source: Hoover Institution Archives. Milton Friedman Papers. Box 76. Folder 2 “University of Chicago ‘Economic Theory’”.

_________________________

Identities of eight examinees given passing grades
by Milton Friedman by rank

First place

Seymour Smidt. University of Chicago Ph.D. (1954). Dissertation: “Efficient Management for Government Wheat Stocks”.

Second place

Conrad Jan (Coen) Oort. University of Chicago A.M. (1954). Doctor of Economics, University of Leiden (1958).

Professor economics, U. Utrecht, The Netherlands, 1960-1971; professor economics, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 1956-1957; treasurer-general, Treasury, The Hague, The Netherlands, 1971-1977; managing director, Algemene Bank Nederland Bank (now Algemene Bank Nederland-AMRO), Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 1977-1989; non-executive director various companies, The Netherlands, since 1989; professor economics, Maastricht, The Netherlands, since 1986. Chairman KLM, Amstelveen, Netherlands, 1992, Robeco Group, Rotterdam, Netherlands, 1989. Vice chairman Aegon Insurance, The Hague, 1990.
Source: Prabook webpage for Conrad Jan Oort.

Third place

Gary S. Becker. University of Chicago Ph.D. (1953). Dissertation: “The Economics of Racial Discrimination”.
The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 1992.

Fourth place

Lionel John Lerner. [son of Abba P. Lerner and Alice Sendak]. University of Chicago A.B. (1950) and A.M. (1952). Johns Hopkins University Ph.D. (1955). Dissertation: “Theories of Imperialist Exploitation.”
Source: Johns Hopkins University, Sheridan Libraries, Special Collections. Commencement Program 1955, p. 19.

Fifth place

Edward J. Kilberg. Hofstra University B.A. (1949). Duke University A.M. (1952). University of Chicago A.M. (1957).
Apparently Kilberg was never awarded a Ph.D. in economics by the University of Chicago for his dissertation “Commercial bank holdings of cash and liquid items”. Most likely reason is that he died in the crash of a Northeast airliner at Nantucket Airport on August 15, 1958. Kilberg left a research job at the Mutual Life Insurance Company in 1957 to go to the NBER where he worked as assistant to Arthur F. Burns for the book Prosperity Without Inflation (1958).

Sixth place

Hugh Roy Elliott. In the list of economics Ph.D. dissertations kept by the department of economics at the University of Chicago we find “Hugh R. Elliott. Dissertation: Savings Deposits as Money (Summer 1964)” which seems rather late in the game. But then we see: AER Sept. 1957, p. 838 “Hugy [sic] R. Elliott, B.A. Harvard 1950; M.A. Chicago 1952.” Thesis in preparation at Chicago “Savings deposits as money”.

Seventh place

Irwin Ira Baskind. I have found the following item “Baskind, Irwin. Postwar Monetary Policy in Belgium (Ph.D., Chicago)” from U.S. State Department, Bureau of Intelligence and Research. External Research. A List of Studies Currently in Progress, Western Europe, ER list no. 5.14 (April 1960), p. 9. Note: Baskind’s name does not appear in the list of economics Ph.D.’s kept by the Chicago department of economics.

Eighth Place

Paul Gabriel Keat. Baruch School of the City University of New York B.B.A. (1949). Washington University A.M. (1950). University of Chicago A.M. (1952, 1956). University of Chicago Ph.D. (1959). Dissertation: “Changes in Occupational Wage Structure 1900-1956”.

Keat, Paul G. PhD 88, passed away on April 2, 2014.Born in Prague, Czechoslovakia May 2, 1925. A WWII vet who served in Ardennes, Normandy and Rhineland. Decorated with the European African Middle Eastern Services Medal, Good Conduct Medal and WWII Victory Medal. Discharged 1946. Graduated 1959 from the University of Chicago with an M.A. and PhD in economics. Student of his cherished professor, Dr. Milton Friedman. Earned B.B.A. in accounting from Baruch School of the City University of New York and M.A. from Washington University. Paul’s work with IBM was extensive in both the United States and in the European headquarters based in Paris. He taught both finance and economics at the graduate level in numerous universities including Syracuse University, Washington University, the City University of New York, Iona College and the Lubin Graduate School of Business at Pace University. In 2013 he co-authored and published the seventh edition of his textbook “Managerial Economics”.
Source: Arizona Republic, Phoenix. April 13, p. F9.

Images: The economic theory prelim examiners, Friedman, Knight, and Tolley. From the University of Chicago Photographic Archive.

Categories
Funny Business M.I.T.

MIT. Faculty Christmas Party Skit. Seven Stages of a Student, 1964

 

The following faculty skit from the M.I.T. economics department apparently had multiple authors. The last act was penned by Robert Solow–it was the only part of the script that was written in long-hand and only Act VI of this skit is found in Robert Solow’s papers in the Duke archives). Unfortunately Act V “The Thesis Defense” was not included in the Graduate Economics Association (1961-67) folder of the Economics Department Records at the M.I.T. Archives.

Attempts at racial, ethnic and gendered humor need no further comment than to note their respective shelf-lives expired two generations ago.

____________________________

GEA Christmas party 1964

Appetite of a Man; Income of a Boy
(The Seven Stages of a Student)
a play in six acts

Cast

Student—played by [blank]
Registration Officer—played by [blank]
Other students, professors, deans, etc.

Act I—The Admission Interview
Act II—Registration
Act III—Talk to the First-Year Class
Act IV—The General Examination
Act V—The Thesis Defense
Act VI—Employment: Going out into The World

TO THE CAST: IF YOU DON’T LIKE A LINE, IMPROVE ON IT.

 

Act I: The Admission Interview—Student and Admissions Committee

Student Applicant: Sir, I believe you have an economics department here at MIT. Can you tell me why?

Prof. 1: Why does a dog have fleas? To keep things stirred up. But how did you hear about it?

Student: Oh, I follow the basketball scores very closely. If this is the Admissions Committee, I’d like to apply.

Prof. 2: How did you do in college?

Student: I averaged 27 points a game.

Prof. 3: No, we want to know how you did in your college work. Tell us something about your grades, about your preparation, especially in economics and mathematics.

Student: We’ll get to that jazz in due course. But let me remind you, I am interviewing you, not you me. You tell me about fellowships, about student loans, and about parking stickers, how are the students fixed for the things that count.

Prof. 2: Well, you can get a Woodrow Wilson.

Student: If I was going to deal with Woodrow Wilson, I’d have gone to Princeton where they have the school and $35 million, to say nothing of $5.3 million on the side in history.

Prof. 1: There’s the National Science Foundation.

Student: Whose got the balance-of-payments disequilibrium. I am talking of how much money you are going to give me, not how much money I am going to bring to you. Now get this straight: I have expenses. These Triumphs cost money to maintain, and my girl likes steak. I also want refinance my stock market operations from my broker’s 6% to what I understand are your 2% loans for students. You give me tuition plus $5,000, plus another $5,000 loan, plus a ticket to park my car inside the Grover C. Hermann Building, or I’m on my way to Yale on a NASA.

Chorus: Nasa’s in the cole, cole groun. [Song by Stephen Foster “Masa’s in the Cold, Cold Ground”]

 

Act II—Registration

Reg. Off.—This stuff is pretty cut and dried: 14.121 Bishop, if you’re strong enough to turn the crank and carry the script; 14.451, mathematics, statistics, and a course like history, labor, trade, money.

Student: Whoa, back. Not so fast. First, let’s worry about the languages. There’s Spanish.

Reg. Off. We don’t let students take Spanish unless they are interested in development in Latin America, and have a need to read the limited literature.

Student: I guess I prefer Portugese.

Reg. Off. Development in Brazil.

Student: The Bossa Nova. But after the language, I think I’ll start on the minor: some of the 15 courses: Social Distance and Proximity during and After the Office Party, that sounds interesting; and maybe Design Packaging, how to get a nickel’s worth of stuff into a buck’s package; and Engineering Social Change for Chemical Engineers, or what to do after the Stink Bomb drops by mistake.

Reg. Off. And 14.121

Student: and some courses in the soft option: what is it this year, trade, labor, development? What about that course I heard about in which the students all graded each other on how they related to one another—a children’s party with an A for each kid.

Reg. Off. And 14.121.

Student: And a course at Harvard with real razz-matazz: Lady Jackson [Barbara Mary Ward, Baroness Jackson of Lodsworth, a development economist], and Man Galbraith, and Senor Chenery, and Don [here the honorific title for a nobleman] Hirschman.

Reg. Off. Look pal. Everybody takes 14.121.

Student: You can’t mean that we do too, those of us here on athletic scholarships.

 

Act III—Reg. Off. To the First-Year Class.

Student 1 whispering to Student 2: They say it’s a terrible experience. Students faint and dragged out. Chills come over them. There’s a lot of talk of Cs and Ds, and fellowships being taken away, and students walking the plank.

Student 2, whispering to Student 1: Naw, it’s no worse than a bad cold, and you’re not a man until you’ve had it.

Reg. Off. “Look to the right of you, look to the left of you. Of the three of you, only one will be here next term.” What famous book on economics started that way and the edition had to be suppressed. You students really have it made. Appetite of a man; income of a Boy. How much better you are off than my older colleagues, with their income of a man, and appetites of a boy.

Student: What about Grades?

Reg. Off. Grades? Grades? Who pays any attention to grades? Grades are trivial; the second order of smalls; a mere epsilon, nothing. Of course you need one A to get tuition money for the second year, and a second A for every $100 of coffee-and-cakes money. But grades? Who needs ‘em? They’re for undergraduates, for grade hounds, for Phi Beta Kappa or College-Bowl kids. Concentrate on higher things like saying Stolper-Samuelson and not (repeat not) Samuelson-Stolper.

 

Act IV: The General Examination

Prof 1: Good morning, Mr. Mittlablook.

Prof 2: Good morning, Mr. Pswoom.

Prof 3: Good morning, Mr. Pixyquicksel

Student (aside): Isn’t it lovely, they all know my name after two years.

Prof 1: Let’s get down to business.

Student: Must we?

Prof 2: What would you like to be examined in first? I see we have economic theory, economic history, and textbook writing and consulting fees.

Student: I am afraid I am not responsible for any of those.

Prof 3: We would all like to say the same.

Student: I was told when I came that I could be examined in comparative economic systems, the difference between capitalist and socialist economies, and free enterprise sink or swim.

Prof 1: Those fields were discontinued this morning.

Prof 2: Yes, I am afraid you’ll have to take the exam in economic theory and history.

Student: I think that is dreadfully unfair.

Prof 3: Well let me start you off by asking you a question in economic history. Consider the period which used to be known as the industrial revolution. This was accompanied, as you know by a large population explosion. Would you discuss the relative roles of (a) men and (b) women, in this development?

Student: Well, I suppose you could say that they each contributed something but the truth lies somewhere in between.

Prof 1: Wrong; you are supposed to say that the roles are neither reflexive, symmetric, nor transitive.

(STAGE DIRECTION: The last time we tried that line we stepped on it. It should be read with greater expression.)

Prof 2: That question was meant to combine economic history and economic theory. Let me ask you one about the history of economic theory. Name a business cycle theorist who was also a Russian cowboy.

Student: Evsey Domar.

Prof 3: Wrong again; Tugan Baranowsky. (general groans)

Prof 1: Now we come to your third field which is, I understand, professor imitating.

Student: Yes, I have learned to make noises like a professor now and then.

Prof 2: That will be no doubt fascinating at the Christmas Party.

Prof 3: Imitate a professor.

Student: How can I imitate a professor when I am a professor imitating a student?

Prof 1: Imitate a professor imitating a student imitating a professor.

Student: I am not responsible for infinite sequences.

Prof 2: Could you leave the room while we discuss you please. You’ll hear from us in about three years Thursday. (student leaves)

Prof 3: Well, what shall we do? He is a bright boy but he didn’t do too well.

Prof 1: On the other hand, I thought he was a stupid boy but did very well.

Prof 2: I see that as usual we are in complete agreement.

Prof 3: There is only one thing we can do. Give him an excellent plus and tell him not to write his thesis.

END OF SCENE.

 

Act V. The Thesis Defense
[missing]

 

Act VI. Employment

[Handwritten mimeo, author: Robert Solow]

Student sitting grandly in chair, feet on table, cigar? Del Tapley shows in two interviewers, I1 and I2.

D.T.: Mr. Auster, sir, these servile wretches represent Princeton and the University of Minnesota. They have an audience, I mean appointment, with you.

  1. Come in chaps. Sorry to have to see you two at the same time like this, but my schedule is very crowded. I have to squeeze in the rest of the Big Ten this morning; and this afternoon I’m seeing Yale, Chicago, and a representative of the Free Speech Movement at Berkeley.

I1: You mean…

A: Yes. Radner almost made it with that beard. But somehow he was just a little too much Commander Whitehead [president of Schweppes U.S.A. and featured in the Schweppes advertisements] and not enough Fidel. Anyhow, he’s been dropped. The FSM [Free Speech Movement] has eliminated the middleman. Mario [Savio, a leader of the Free Speech Movement] may come himself. We’re sending a delegation to meet him, at the B&A [Boston and Albany Railroad] yards. Must remind Marcelle and Cynthia not to comb their hair. But what can I do for you, or vice versa?

I2: Well, we do feel Minnesota has a lot to offer a young man…

A: Stop feeling and start offering.

I2: Sorry, sir. Our special CRAP salaries…

A: What?

I2: Charles River Assistant Professorships—they start at $17,500. Unfortunately since Walter [Walter Heller] got back they’re only allowed to go up at 3.2% a year, but we try to make it up in sly ways. That’s for 9 months, of course…

A: Nine months?

I2: Well, not nine full months—we do have a special slush fund to cover the week between terms. And we send you all expenses paid to the annual Christmas meeting any time it is in Miami. Of course if it’s not in Miami, we just send you to Miami.

A: Only fair. Pretty cold out there. Of course Adelman goes to the Virgin Islands every winter.

I1: I’ve heard that Solow curls up in a hollow tree in Concord and hibernates.

A: How can they tell? Never mind. Seventeen-five sounds reasonable. What about the teaching load?

I2: Teaching load? I didn’t realize you were actually willing to do any teaching. In that case you begin at 20,000, naturally. What were you thinking of teaching?

A: Why near-decomposability, of course. Is there anything else? By the way, do you have a Community Antenna Television Association [CATV]?

I2: No, but…

A: No buts. I’m not interested. But you ought to see Bridger Mitchell [MIT graduate student, a telecommunications expert with Charles River Associates] while you’re here—I understand he won’t go to any university within 100 miles of a CATV. Tell me about Princeton.

I2: But I haven’t told you about the 13/9th summer pay, or the every-other-year sabbatical, or how you get Leo Hurwicz for a research assistant, and girls, girls, girls,…

A: Sorry. Not interested. Actually, I’m not anxious to leave the East coast anyway. To tell you the truth, I’m not even sure how to do it. Tell me about Princeton.

I1: I do hope you will think seriously about Princeton, sir. We’re rather different from this Johnny-come-lately place, you know. More like a way of life. Gentlemen-scholars. Culture. Charm[?] Ivy. Yet intellect. We did have Einstone, you know.

A: You mean Einstein?

I1: Well, we suggested he change his name. Don’t think we’re stuffy, however Princeton had a Negro student as long as 30 years ago. And one of these days we’re going to have another one. Our salaries may not be so high nor our teaching loads as light as those cow colleges’, but we’ve got class.

A: Even if I don’t take the job, I’ll put a tiger in my tank. But just how big is the teaching load?

I1: Eleven hours.

A: Eleven hours a month isn’t too bad—after all, I run out of material on near-decomposability after 22 hours. But throw in a few trips to Washington, a week or two at the Bureau for decompression, Christmas in Miami, and the term is over.

I1: The Princeton faculty doesn’t go to Miami. I’m afraid it’s eleven hours a week?

A: You are kidding. How can anybody teach eleven hours a week and still keep up his ONR [Office of Naval Research] project, his NSF [National Science Foundation] grant, and his consulting for oil companies?

I2: The whole Minnesota department doesn’t teach 11 hours a week. Don’t be hasty, sir. We’ll buy you a Community Antenna Television set-up.

I1: Don’t listen to him. You don’t have to lecture for 11 hours a week. You can work off some of it by discussion with graduate students.

A: I don’t see why Princeton graduate students should be treated better than MIT students. What’s the pay?

I1: Eighty-five hundred.

A: Eighty-five hundred! Is that in 1954 dollars or something?

I2: In Berkeley a teaching assistant gets 8500 just for picketing.

A: You’re having [?] me on.

I1: I can see you’re not the Princeton type. Hardly anyone is.

A: How clever can you get? Well, gentlemen, thank you for dropping in. I’ll let you know in due course. Don’t call me, I’ll call you.

I2: By the way, could you tell me what you’re writing your thesis on and how far you’ve got?

A: None of your goddamn business. But if you must know, Kuh once said that one regression is worth a thousand words. I figure 35,000 words makes a pretty fair thesis, so I’m doing 35 regressions.

I1: On what?

A: On a computing machine, you dope. Now I’m afraid I have another appointment. I suppose some of the other students have agreed to see you. Miss Tapley will show you the way.

D.T.: Your next appointment is ready. The gentlemen from Harvard and Yale are waiting, the Wharton School has sent Albert Ando and two other people he claim are named Flend [Irwin Friend] and Klavis [Irving Kravis], there is a man from Northwestern who drove up in a Brink’s armored car he says is full of bills in small denominations, and the New York Knickerbockers claim they’ve picked the whole class in the draft.

 

Source: M.I.T. Libraries, Institute Archives and Special Collections. MIT Department of Economics Records. Box 2, Folder “GEA 1961-67”.

Image Source: “From the Flying Car to the Giant R2-D2: The Greates MIT Hacks of All-Time“, by Robert McMillan. Wired, March 20, 2013.

“Boston’s Harvard Bridge is 364.4 Smoots long. And the fact that anybody would remember this in 2013 was probably the furthest thing from MIT freshman Oliver Smoot’s mind on the October 1958 night that he lay himself down, time and again, along the bridge, allowing his fraternity brothers to measure its length (each Smoot is about 5 feet, 7 inches). It was a fraternity prank, but the next year the bridge’s Smoot markers were repainted. Thus, an MIT landmark — and a unique unit of measurement — was born.

Smoot himself went on to become a board member of the American National Standards Institute — a standards man through and through.”

Categories
Exam Questions Johns Hopkins

Johns Hopkins. Graduate economics exams, M.A. and Ph.D., 1933

 

 

This post began innocently enough as simple transcriptions of the single A.M. and the two Ph.D. examinations in political economy for 1933 from the Johns Hopkins Archives. Because the names of the examinees are included on the typed carbon copies of the examination questions, I dug a little bit deeper to find out more about these degree candidates. From the official commencement programs, we are able to determine that these written examinations were in almost all cases administered as “exit examinations” a month before the degrees were actually awarded, so the exams were not “prelim” exams to establish degree candidacy and also not part of a dissertation defense. This seems late in the game for a final hurdle of this nature.

The commencement programs provide the titles of the theses/dissertations submitted for the degrees. Digging further, I was even able to find pictures of all the examinees.

________________________

The Graduate Degree Examinees
Johns Hopkins University, May 1933

Lawrence Nelson Bloomberg, of Virginia, A.B. University of Richmond 1930. Political Economy.
A.M. Johns Hopkins University, Thesis.“Goodwill: Its Nature and Valuation.” [p. 8 of 1933 Commencement program]
PhD Dissertation. “The Investment Value of Goodwill.” [p. 11 of 1934 Commencement program]

Born September 27, 1909 in Richmond, Virginia; died August 13, 1989.
1940 worked in Washington, DC at the American Bankers Association.

Image Source:  Senior year photo of Lawrence Nelson Bloomberg in the University of Richmond yearbook, The Web–1930.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

Roy Johnson Bullock, of Maryland, A.B. Doane College 1925; M.B.A. Harvard University 1927. Political Economy. Ph.D. dissertation “A History of the Chain Grocery Store in the United States.” [p. 11 of 1933 Commencement program]

Born October 5, 1903 in Crete, Nebraska; died in Marco Island, Collier County, Florida Feb. 14, 1980.
1940 Census: teacher at Johns Hopkins University.
1942: worked in the Office of Price Administration, Washington, DC.
1961: senior staff consultant to the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs. Also, the commencement speaker at Doane College’s 1961 commencement. Awarded honorary doctor of laws degree.

Image Source: Portrait of Roy Johnson Bullock (approximately 30 years old).  Johns Hopkins University. Sheridan Libraries. Special Collections. Johns Hopkins University graphic and pictorial collection.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

Abner Komaroff, of Palestine, B.V.A. American University of Beirut 1930.
Ph.D. Dissertation, “The Foreign Trade of the United States in Citrus Fruits.” [p. 12 of Commencement program 1933]

Image Source: Portrait of Abner Komaroff (approximately 20 years old).  Johns Hopkins University. Sheridan Libraries. Special Collections. Johns Hopkins University graphic and pictorial collection.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

Harold Edwin Peters, of Maryland, A.B. Johns Hopkins University 1930.
Ph.D. Dissertation, “The Foreign Debt of the Argentine Republic”. [p. 13 of Commencement program 1934]

Born October 15, 1908 in Baltimore,   died February 22, 1978 in Baltimore.
Apartment developer since the mid-1930’s, after teaching economics for a year at the College of Charleston. (Graduate of Calvert Hall College, then Johns Hopkins where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa in 1930).

Image Source: Portrait of Harold Edwin Peters (approximately 25 years old).  Johns Hopkins University. Sheridan Libraries. Special Collections. Johns Hopkins University graphic and pictorial collection.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

Evelyn Ellen Singleton, of Maryland, A.B. Goucher College 1930. Political Economy.
PhD dissertation, “Workmen’s Compensation in Maryland”. [p. 13 of Commencement program 1933]

Born October 9, 1909 in Lancaster, PA; died May 29, 2002.
Married Robert William Thon, Jr. (see next graduate) April 1, 1936 in Elkton, MD.

Image Source: Portrait of Evelyn Ellen Singleton (approximately 20 years old).  Johns Hopkins University. Sheridan Libraries. Special Collections. Johns Hopkins University graphic and pictorial collection.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

Robert William Thon, Jr., of Maryland. Political Economy. PhD Dissertation “Mutual Savings Banks in Baltimore.” [p. 14 of 1933 Commencement program]

Born Dec. 23, 1908 in Richmond, VA; died September 1983 in Baltimore MD.
Occupation: banker

Image Source: Portrait of Robert William Thon, Jr. (approximately 50 years old).  Johns Hopkins University. Sheridan Libraries. Special Collections. Johns Hopkins University graphic and pictorial collection.

________________________

EXAMINATION IN POLITICAL ECONOMY
for Master of Arts Degree
May 18, 1933

Mr. Bloomberg

  1. Discuss Adam Smith’s canons of taxation.
  2. Describe Malthus’ principle of population and the changes which it underwent.
  3. What arguments are used to justify the sale of a manufactured article at a lower price abroad than at home?
  4. What are the advantages and disadvantages of the general Property Tax?
  5. Explain and criticize the quantity theory of money.
  6. How are freight rates determined?

 

 

EXAMINATION IN POLITICAL ECONOMY
(Economic Theory)
May 18, 1933

Miss Singleton
Messrs. Thon, Bullock, Peters, Komaroff

  1. What is the relation of Political Economy to economic history in scope and in method of investigation?
  2. What important economic doctrines had been clearly formulated prior to the year 1800?
  3. Discuss the personal contacts and doctrinal contrasts of Quesnay and Adam Smith.
  4. Contrast the theories of distribution formulated by (a) Adam Smith, (b) David Ricardo, (c) Alfred Marshall.
  5. What has been the development of the principle of population since the time of Malthus?
  6. Discuss the origin and development of the wage fund theory.
  7. What have been the most important contributions of the Austrian economists?
  8. Discuss the law of increasing returns and its application to modern business.
  9. Criticize the various theories of entrepreneur profits that have been proposed.
  10. What are the present conspicuous gaps in economic theory and by what means are they to be repaired?

 

EXAMINATION IN POLITICAL ECONOMY
(Applied Economics)
May 19, 1933

Miss Singleton
Messrs. Thon, Komaroff , Bullock, Peters

  1. Discuss the history, theory, incidence and the defects of the General Property Tax.
  2. Discuss modern industrial combinations in the light of: (1) An assignable limit to the growth in the size of the modern industrial unit; and (2) the imminence of Socialism.
  3. Discuss the policy of selling protected manufactures in foreign markets at less than domestic prices.
  4. Is a compulsory Board of Arbitration practicable, and what principles should govern its decisions?
  5. Criticize the principle of fixing railway rates according to “What the traffic will bear”, in the light of the recent tendency towards cost of service rate.
  6. Outline the history of (a) metallic and (b) paper money in the United States since the adoption of the Federal constitution.
  7. Discuss the use of the chief forms of averages; for example, the mean, the median and the simple average.
  8. Outline the history of English legislation relating to joint stock companies.
  9. State the chief points in controversy between the Banking School and the Currency School.
  10. Discuss the economic justification for the chief forms of labor legislation.

Source: Johns Hopkins University. Eisenhower Library. Ferdinand Hamburger, Jr. Archives. Department of Political Economy. Series 6/Series /, Subseries 1, Box 3/1, Folder “Department of Political Economy, Graduate Exams 1933-1965”.

Image Source: Johns Hopkins University yearbook, Hullabaloo 1951.

Categories
Exam Questions Harvard Suggested Reading Syllabus

Harvard. Syllabus and Final Exam for Economic Development of China. Paauw, 1955

 

Douglas Seymour Paauw was a Harvard economics Ph.D. (1950) who taught courses on the economies of East Asia. Like many area specialists of his generation, he acquired his foreign language skills during his military service in World War II. He lived to the age of 98 and died in February, 2020. His Seattle Times obituary is followed by the syllabus, reading list and final examination for his 1955 course at Harvard on Chinese economic development.

      ___________________________

Earlier post on the Chinese Economy

Harvard. Readings for Chinese Economic Problems, 1947

           ___________________________

Obituary

Douglas S. Paauw was born December 13, 1921 in Hancock, MN and passed away peacefully at the age of 98 at home in Bellevue, WA on February 17, 2020. He grew up in Holland, MN and graduated from Pipestone High School in 1939. He received a BA degree from Calvin College in Michigan.

In 1948 he married Kaye Horan, daughter of long-time Congressman Walt Horan of Wenatchee, WA. This union produced two sons, Scott & Doug.

During World War II he served as a Chinese interpreter after receiving training in Chinese at Harvard University. Following his WWII service, he received a Master’s degree from the University of Washington (1949) and a PhD in economics from Harvard (1950).

He taught at Harvard until 1956, after which he taught at Lake Forest College (1956-1959), Nommensen University in Indonesia (1960-1961), Yale (1961-1963), University of the Philippines (1965-1967), and Wayne State University where he served as Chairman of the Department of Economics (1970-1987). He also served as Director of Research at the National Planning Association in Washington, D.C. for seven years.

Dr. Paauw became known as one of the world’s top experts on economic development in Southeast Asia. He worked in Indonesia, spending a total of ten years there after his first visit in 1954. He is the author of several books and many articles on Southeast Asian economic development.

Since retirement in 1990, he lived in Bellevue, WA. He was devoted to family, friends, his adopted country of Indonesia, and the game of tennis, which he actively played until age 90.

He is survived by his son and daughter-in-law, Doug and Kathy Paauw of Redmond, WA, three grandchildren Alan Paauw, Carly Paauw Jerome, and Cindy Paauw, and two great-grandchildren, Aurora Kilcer and Violet Jerome. He is predeceased by his wife of 65 years, Kaye Horan Paauw, and his son, Scott, who both passed away in 2014.

Source:  Seattle Times, February 23, 2020.

___________________________

From the Calvin College Archives

Douglas Seymour Paauw was born in Stevens, Minnesota on December 13, 1921. He received his B.A. degree from Calvin College and his M.A., Ph.D. from Harvard University. Paauw married Helen Kathleen Horan on September 10, 1948. He worked as a developmental economist and worked with government planning associations. Paauw’s work allowed him and his family the unique opportunity to live in interesting locations like Indonesia and the Philippines. Paauw eventually moved to the United States and settled in Detroit, Michigan where he accepted the position of Chairman of the Economics Department at Wayne State University. Douglas Seymour Paauw reached the status of Professor Emeritus of Economics.

Source:  Archival Record at Calvin College.

___________________________

Douglas Seymour Paauw
Harvard Economics Ph.D., 1950

Douglas Seymour Paauw, A.B. (Calvin Coll.) 1946, A.M. (Harvard Univ.) 1949.
Subject, Economics. Special Field, Public Finance. Thesis, “Chinese Public Finance during the Nanking Government Period.”

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College 1949-1950, p. 198.

___________________________

Course Enrollment

[Economics] 113a Economic Development in the Far East: China. Dr. Paauw, Half course. (S)

Total 16: 7 Graduates, 3 Seniors, 3 Juniors 2 Sophomores, 1 Radcliffe

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College 1954-55, p. 89.

___________________________

HARVARD UNIVERSITY
Department of Economics
Economics 113a

Tentative Lecture Subjects, Spring Term, 1954-1955

Introduction

  1. Introductory Lecture
  2. A Birdseye View of the History of the Chinese Economy

The Supply of Factors

  1. The Supply of Factors: Land
  2. The Supply of Factors: Population
  3. The Supply of Factors: Labor
  4. The Supply of Factors: Capital
  5. The Supply of Factors: Entrepreneurship

The Utilization of Factors

  1. The Size of the Chinese Economy
  2. The Use of Factors: Agriculture
  3. The Use of Factors: Industry
  4. The Use of Factors: Industry (Manchuria)

The Institutional Setting

  1. The Development of Financial Institutions
  2. The Development of Fiscal Institutions
  3. The Development of Other Institutions (Markets, etc.)

External Relationships

  1. Foreign Trade
  2. Foreign Investment

The Development of the Chinese Economy

  1. Early “Industrialization Efforts
  2. Kuomintang Planning
  3. Inflation, Disruption and Collapse, 1939-1949
  4. Communist Rehabilitation of the Economy
  5. Communist Agricultural Policy
  6. Communist Economic Planning
  7. The Financing of Recent Economic Development
  8. Assessment of Economic Growth

___________________________

HARVARD UNIVERSITY
Department of Economics
Economics 113a

Reading List, Spring Term, 1954-1955

Wittfogel, K. A., “Foundations and Stages of Chinese Economic History”, Zeitschrift für Socialforschung, 1935 (in English).

Allen, G. C., and Donnithorne, A. G., Western Enterprise in Far Eastern Economic Development, Chapter 15.

Rostow, W. W., et al., The Prospects for Communist China, Chapter 12.

Abramovitz, M., “Economics of Growth”, A Survey of Contemporary Economics, Vol. II (B. F. Haley, editor), pp. 132-182.

Bergsmarck, D. R., Economic Geography of Asia, Chapters 23, 24, 25 (to p. 523), 26.

Usher, A. P., “The Resource Requirements of an Industrial Economy”, Journal of Economic History, Supplement, VII, 1947, pp. 35-46.

Jaffe, A. J., “A Review of Censuses and Demographic Statistics of China”, Population Studies, Vol. I, No. 3, December 1947, pp. 308-337.

Ta Chen, Population in Modern China, Chapters 1 and 5.

Spengler, J. J., “The Population Obstacle to Economic Betterment”, Proceedings, American Economic Review, Vol. 41, No. 2, May 1951, pp. 343-358.

Levy, M. J., and Shih, K. H., The Rise of the Modern Chinese Business Class.

Allen, G. C., and Donnithorne, A. G., op. cit., Chapters 1 and 2.

Liu Ta-Chung, China’s National Income (emphasize Chapters 1, 2, and 5).

Ou Pao-San, “A New Estimate of China’s National Income”, Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 54, No. 6, December 1946, pp. 547-554.

Chang Pei-Kang, Agriculture and Industrialization, Chapters 2, 4, and 5.

Buck, J. L., Land Utilization in China, Chapter 1.

Chiu, A. K., “Agriculture”, Chapter in China (H. F. McNair, editor).

___________________________

HARVARD UNIVERSITY
Department of Economics
Economics 113a

Reading List, Spring Term, 1954-1955
Part II

Ou Pao-san and Wang Fo-shen, “Industrial Production and Employment in Pre-war China,” Economic Journal, Vol. 56, September 1946, pp. 426-434.

Hubbard, G. E., Eastern Industrialization and its Effect on the West, pp. 181-205, 222-228.

Schumpeter, E. B., The Industrialization of Japan and Manchukuo, pp. 376-418.

Chang, Kia-ngau, “China’s Need for Transport,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 23, No. 3, April 1945, pp. 465-475.

Tamagna, F. M., Banking and Finance in China, Chapters 6 and 7, pp. 121-223.

Ting, L. G., “Chinese Modern Banks and the Finance of the Government and Industry,” Nankai Social and Economic Quarterly, Vol. 8, No. 3, pp. 578-616.

Paauw, D. S., “Chinese National Expenditures in the Nanking Period,” Far Eastern Quarterly, Vol. 12, No. 1, Nov. 1952, pp. 3-26.

Li Cho-ming, “International trade” in H. F. McNair, China, pp. 492-506.

Remer, C. F., Foreign Investments in China, Chapters 5, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14.

Wu Yuan-li, “Communist China and Trade with the West,” Pacific Spectator, Vol. 7, No. 4 Autumn, 1953, pp. 404-418.

Fong, H.D., “Toward Economic Control in China,” Nankai Social and Economic Quarterly, Vol. 9, No. 2, pp. 296-397.

Li Choh-ming, “Wartime Inflation in China,” Review of Economic Statistics, Vol. 23, No. 1, pp. 23-33.

Rostow, W. W. et al., The Prospects for Communist China, Ch. 13, pp. 237-255.

Paauw, D. S., “Economic Principles and State Organization,” Annals of the American Academy, Vol. 227, Sept. 1951, pp. 101-112.

Hsia, Ronald, Price Control in Communist China, Introduction, Chapters 1 through 8.

Chao, K. C., “Current Agrarian Reform Policies in Communist China,” Annals of the American Academy, Vol. 227, Sept. 1951, pp. 113-123.

Schwartz, B. I. and Paaw, D. S., “David Mitrany’s Marx Against the Peasant: Two Comments on its Implications for the Far East,” Far Eastern Quarterly, Vol. 12, No. 1, Nov. 1952, pp. 47-50.

Barnett, A. D., “China’s Road to Collectivization,” Journal of Farm Economics, Vol. 35, No. 2, May, 1953, pp. 188-202.

Rostow, W. W., et al., The Prospects for Communist China, Ch. 14 and 15, pp. 256-295.

 

Source: Harvard University Archives. Syllabi, course outlines and reading lists in Economics, 1895-2003. Box 6, Folder “Economics, 1954-1955”.

___________________________

1954-55
HARVARD UNIVERSITY
ECONOMICS 113A
[Final examination. June, 1955]

  1. (2 hours) Answer two of the following:
    1. Prior to the Communist Period Chinese industrialization efforts were characterized by a series of stops and starts, backing and filling, advance and retrogression. Give the history of these efforts and the reasons for their failure to achieve the objectives of economic development.
    2. Given an analysis of the prospects for Chinese economic growth under the Communist growth model, including all relevant factors which you can draw from your study of the Chinese economy. The strengths or weaknesses of the models discussed in the course should be presented to support your conclusions.
    3. Outline the important changes which have taken place in the Chinese economy during the past 100 years, giving your analysis of the factors which precipitated these changes, their impact on general economic welfare and the structure of the economy and their implications for the rate and costs of economic progress.
  2. (1 hour) Discuss one of the following basing your discussion mainly on required course reading on the subject. You are expected to refer to the major sources supporting your discussion.
    1. Problems of developing “Westernized” business entrepreneurship in China.
    2. The growth and development of fiscal, monetary and banking institutions.
    3. Transition in the agricultural sector during the Communist period.

Source: Harvard University Archives. Papers Printed for Final Examinations [in] History, History of Religions, … , Economics, … , Naval Science, Air Science, June, 1955. Included in bound volume Final Exams, Social Sciences, June, 1955 (HUC 7000.28, Vol. 110).

Image Source: Harvard Square from the Tichnor Brothers Collection of postcards. Boston Public Library, Print Department.

Categories
Exam Questions Harvard Socialism Suggested Reading Syllabus

Harvard. Economics of Socialism, Syllabus and Final Exam. O.H. Taylor, 1953

Joseph Schumpeter’s shadow was still cast over “his” Economics of Socialism course that was taken over by Harvard’s historian of political-economy, O. H. Taylor. This post provides the syllabus and final exam for Taylor’s course as taught in the  second term of the 1952-53 academic year. The syllabus from the spring term of 1955 was posted earlier. 

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Course Announcement, 1952-53

Economics 111. Economics of Socialism.

Half-course (spring term). Mon., Wed., and (at the pleasure of the instructor) Fri., at 10. Dr. O. H. Taylor.

A brief survey of the development of socialist groups and parties; pure theory of centralist socialism; the economics of Marxism; applied problems.

Source: Harvard University Archives. Courses of Instruction, Box 6, Announcement of the Courses of Instruction Offered by the Faculty of Arts and Sciences for the Academic Year, 1952-53, p. 99.

_______________________

HARVARD UNIVERSITY
Economics 111—Economics of Socialism
Spring Term, 1952-53

OUTLINE

  1. January 28-February 13: Socialist Thought Before Marx, and the Doctrines of Marx.

Reading:
1. H. Laidler, Social-Economic Movements, Chapters 8-16.
2. Burns, Handbook of Marxism, Chapter 1.
3. G. H. Sabine, History of Political Theory, Chapters on Hegel and Marx.
4. J. A. Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy, Part I.
5. P. M. Sweezy, Theory of Capitalist Development, Parts I and II.

Lectures:
Introduction. Pre-history of the socialist vision. Some “utopian” socialists. Hegel and Marx, philosophies of history. Marx’s economic interpretation of history. Ricardo and Marx, economic theories of production, class roles and incomes, value, and economic development.

Discussion: February 13.

  1. February 16-27: Marx, continued; and History of German and Other Continental European Socialism (Parties, Movements, and Ideas) to the First World War.

Reading:
1. P. M. Sweezy, Theory of Capitalist Development, Part II (continued).
2. Joan Robinson, Essay on Marxian Economics.
3. O. H. Taylor, “Schumpeter and Marx”, Quarterly Journal of Economics, November 1951.
4. H. Laidler, Social Movements, Chapters 19-23.

Lectures:
Marx’s economics (continued)—theory of capitalism’s (the economy’s) working, evolution, dilemmas, and degeneration, or life-cycle. Marx’s program—strategy and tactics—for the social movement, and ideas of the revolution and its sequel—stages of creation of the socialist society. Lasalle and Marx, and the German Social Democratic Party in the Age of Bismarck. Later history of the German party—Bernstein’s revisionism vs. Marxist orthodoxy. Other Continental European movements, parties, and ideas.

Discussion: February 27.

  1. March 2-13: Varieties of Socialist Thought and Effort, and the Labor Movement in England from 1815 to 1914.

Reading:
1. Max Beer, History of British Socialism, [Volume I] Part 2; [Volume II] 3, 4.
2. G. D. H. Cole, A Short History of the British Working Class Movement, Part I, Chapters 5-9; Parts II and III.
3. The Fabian Essays.

Lectures:

Early Nineteenth Century English radicalism and its varieties—Benthamism, Ricardian socialism (before Marx), Owenism, Chartism. The Christian socialists. Evolution of the trade unions. The Fabians and their philosophy and program. Other socialist societies and creeds. Formation and early history of the Labor Party and its program.

Discussion: March 13.

  1. March 16-27: The Internationals, the First World War, the Russian Revolution, Lenin, and Communism.

Reading:
1. H. Laidler, Social-Economic Movements, Chapters 24-27.
2. G. H. Sabine, History of Political Theory, Chapter “Communism”.
3. Burns, Handbook of Marxism, Chapters 22, 26, 29, 30.
4. P. M. Sweezy, Theory of Capitalist Development, Part IV.

Lectures:
The old socialist internationals; socialist internationalism and pacificism, the German and other parties, and the first World War. Czarist Russia, its radical parties, Lenin and the Bolsheviki, and the Russian Revolutions of 1917-18. Lenin’s policies and the early evolution of the Soviet regime; and Lenin’s theories, or “development” of Marxism. Theory of capitalism and imperialism. Modern Communist Marxism vs. democratic socialism.

Discussion: March 27.

Spring Recess

  1. April 6-17: Economic Theory and the Problems of Planning and Policy in a Socialist Economy.

Reading:
1. Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy, Part IV.
2. Lange-Taylor, Economic Theory of Socialism.
3. M. Dobb, Soviet Economic Development since 1917, Chapters 1, 13.

Lectures:
“Rational economic decisions” in competitive capitalism and in a socialist society; historic, intellectual background and development of the study of this problem. The Lange model of a liberal, competitive-market socialism. Dobbs and others on problems neglected in the Lange model. Critical remarks on the whole discussion—doubts of relevance for socialism of the bourgeois aim at “rational economy.”

Discussion: April 17.

  1. April 20-29: Economic Policies in Soviet Russia, and in England Under the Last Labor Government.

Reading: [blank]

Lectures: [blank]

Discussion: April 29.

 

Source: Syllabi, course outlines and reading lists in Economics, 1895-2003. Box 5. Folder “Economics, 1952-53 (1 of 2)”.

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1952-53
HARVARD UNIVERSITY
ECONOMICS 111

[Final examination. May, 1953]

  1. Discuss the implications, and degrees of validity if any, of Marx’s description of the “socialisms”” of Fourier, Owen, etc. as “Utopian,” and of his own system as “scientific socialism.”
  2. Give a general account and discussion of one of the following “parts” of Marx’s system of thought:
    1. His general theory of the dynamics of all history: “materialism,” the dialectic, the economic interpretation of history, the class struggle theory.
    2. His theory of value and surplus value—or value, wages, and capitalist incomes—in the capitalist economy.
    3. His theory of the capital-accumulation process—its causes, motives, and results—and the dynamics, and predicted course, of the evolution of the capitalist economy.
  3. Describe and discuss the character, and some of the main elements or tenets, of Fabian socialist thought. (The reference is only to the original Fabian group, the Webbs, Shaw, etc.)
  4. “Throughout the histories of the German and English socialist movements, the German socialists have been hampered by their excessive burden of dogmatic theory, and the English, by their lack of theory.”
    Comment, in the light of what you know of the actual histories; giving brief accounts of particular episodes or developments—at least one in the history of the German and one in that of the English movement—which might be held to illustrate the statements, and discussing the question, whether and how far they do so.
  5. Choose and discuss one or more of the important theoretical problems to be “solved” in developing any sound, useful structure of economic theory, for use in socialist economic planning and the construction and operation of a socialist economy.
  6. On any one of the important, general topics considered in New Fabian Essays, describe (summarize) the views or opinions expressed therein, and discuss them critically.

 

Source: Harvard University Archives.  Final Exams—Social Sciences, June 1953 (HUC 7000.28, vol. 99).

Image Source: O.H. Taylor in Harvard College, Class Album 1952.

Categories
Chicago Exam Questions

Chicago. Graduate Preliminary Examination, Money and Banking, 1967

 

This copy of the 1967 Money and Banking prelim exam comes from Milton Friedman’s papers and has Milton Friedman’s name noted. So we may strongly presume that Friedman was in fact on the Money and Banking prelim committee as he was on the Income, Employment, and Price Level prelim committee that year.

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Previous posts with University of Chicago preliminary examinations for Ph.D. and A.M.  degrees:

Preliminary Exam (Economic Theory I) 1955

Preliminary Exam (Money and Banking) 1956

Preliminary Exam (Economic Theory) 1957

Preliminary Exam (Money and Banking) 1959

Preliminary Exam (Economic Theory, Old Rules) 1960

Preliminary Exam (Price Theory) 1964

Preliminary Exam (Income, Employment and Price Level) 1967

Preliminary Exam (Price Theory) 1969

Preliminary Exam (Macroeconomics) 1969

Preliminary Exam (Money and Banking) 1969

Preliminary Exam (International Trade) 1970

Preliminary Exam (Price Theory) 1975

Preliminary Exam (Industrial Organization) 1977

Preliminary Exam (History of Economic Thought) 1989

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[Handwritten note, top of page: “Mr Friedman”]

MONEY AND BANKING
Preliminary Examination for the Ph.D. and A.M. Degrees
Summer, 1967

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—ALL QUESTIONS HAVE EQUAL WEIGHT

  1. —
    1.    “The fallacy in the quantity theory of money is that it allows for the circulation of money but not the circulation of goods. A correct theory would have a velocity of circulation of goods to parallel the velocity of circulation of money.” Discuss.
    2. According to one writer, one of the “fundamental laws of economics” is that “the inflation rate is approximately equal to the interest rate when averaged over several decades.”
      (Andre Gleyzal, “Theory of Money in a Free Economic System.” Discuss (and do not dismiss out of hand).
  2. —
    1. What is the “Phillips Curve”?
    2. Give the theoretical analysis on which it rests. Do you regard it as valid? If so, defend it; if not, why not?
    3. What is its relation to the notion of a “trade-off” between unemployment and inflation?
    4. What is your understanding of the present state of the empirical evidence on the Phillips curve?
  3.   —
    1.    Expand the standard analysis of the IS-LM (or EEL) curves to include foreign trade and the balance of payments when all economies are operating with fixed exchange rates under a pure gold standard.
    2.   Would this analysis be any different under
      i) fixed exchange rates with national currency standards?
      ii) floating exchange rates?
      Why, or why not?
  4.   —
    1.    A once and for all change in the money supply is expected to affect only the price level and not any real economic magnitudes. Yet some economic theorists who accept the neutrality of money in this sense argue that a sudden decrease (say) in the money supply will cause unemployment. How do you reconcile these two positions?
    2.    Assume that a country is operating on a classical gold standard. It has a central bank but the bank does not engage in open market operations. It confines its policy to setting an interest rate (discount rate) at which it lends freely. Let important gold discoveries be made in that country such that, at the prevailing price of gold, the rate of gold production increases. Does the neutrality of money still hold true in the long run? Will the increased rate of gold production affect only the price level and not the level of real income in the given country?
  5.    Most empirical studies of the demand for money that use time series data take the real stock of money as the dependent variable and take measures of real income or wealth and of the interest rate as explanatory variables. However, most monetary theorists treat the nominal stock of money as exogeneous. This appears inconsistent with the empirical work. Can you describe a sensible economic model to defend the choice made by the empirical investigators? Assume it is your purpose to predict the increase in the demand for real money balances resulting from an increase in real income. For simplicity, assume that current real measured income is the relevant income variable. Do not discuss the econometric theory of identification, etc. Focus your attention on the economic hypotheses in terms of the price level, the nominal money stock, interest rates, and nominal income. Would it be better to treat real money balances as an explanatory instead of as a dependent variable in estimating the demand for money?
  6.    Comment on the following proposition:
    In the portfolios of banks, private loans and government bonds are alternatives. The smaller the quantity of loans that banks make (i.e., the tighter the supply of bank credit), the greater must be the quantity of government bonds the banks are holding in their portfolios. But the total supply of government bonds is fixed, and so this implies that the tighter is bank credit, the smaller the supply of government bonds available to the non-bank public to hold in their portfolios. But the smaller the quantity of government bonds available to the non-bank public, the greater the quantity of other assets they will hold. In other words, the tighter is bank credit, the greater the supply of private credit from non-bank holders of wealth, and the portfolio behavior of banks is largely irrelevant in determining the total supply of private credit.

Source:  Hoover Institution Archives. Papers of Milton Friedman. Box 77, Folder 8 “University of Chicago Econ. 331”.

Image Source:  “Money Talks” from the cover of Puck, Vol LX, No. 1541 (September 12, 1906). Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.  “William Randolph Hearst sitting with two large, animated, money bags resting on his lap, with arms and legs, and showing two large coins as heads; on the floor next to Hearst is a box labeled ‘WRH Ventriloquist’.”