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Chicago Exam Questions Theory

Chicago. Graduate preliminary examination in economic theory, incomplete. Winter, 1956

 

Artifacts displayed in museums, especially ancient artifacts, are perhaps more often as not, flawed. So too with the documentary record. Sometimes we have gaps. Rather than mourn the missing documents, we celebrate what we have gotten our hands and eyes on. And so this post gives us the True-False-Uncertains questions of the winter quarter 1956 economic theory prelim exam from the department of economics at the University of Chicago.

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Links to previously posted Chicago prelim exams.

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ECONOMIC THEORY
Preliminary Examination
Winter Quarter 1956
(incomplete)

Write your number, and not your name, on your examination paper.
Answer all questions.
Time: 4 hours.

  1. (40 points) True, False or Uncertain. Explain your answer.
    1. Since the costs of finding oil are virtually constant over the relevant range of exploration now going on, the depletion allowance which amounts to a subsidy to companies which extract the oil they find is purely a device which increases the profits of the oil companies at the expense of the taxpayer.
    2. A minimum wage law may reduce the demand for labor by some firms and may have no effect on the demand by other firms, but will never increase it.
    3. The sum of the income elasticities of demand for all commodities (by a single consumer) is unity, while the sum of their price elasticities is zero.
    4. If the marginal utility of each commodity diminishes with increases in the rate of consumption, then no commodity will be an inferior commodity.
    5. The fact that new commodities are typically introduced into a consumer’s budget when his income rises implies that the marginal utility of the commodities he was already consuming must have been falling.
    6. Although the demand schedule for a productive service by a firm buying competitively must have a negative slope, the demand schedule for a productive service by a monopsonistic firm may have either a positive or negative slope.
    7. The futures price of a commodity equals the current spot price plus the cost of storing the commodity for the length of the futures contract.
    8. The existence of effective rent control on old dwellings decreases the demand for new dwellings.
    9. Family size has declined in the United States from 1900 to 1950; yet per capita income has increased. If there were no change in tastes, this would imply that children are an inferior commodity.
    10. The existence of firms of different sizes in the same industry implies that there is a horizontal marginal cost curve for firms in the industry.
    11. Immigration to the United States of a million unskilled laborers from abroad would increase the average per capita income of everyone previously living in the United States.
    12. The fact that managers of many large corporations in the United States own a small fraction of the common stock of these corporations implies that the policies of these corporations are often not in the best interests of the stockholders.
    13. The figures for national income show that during the 20th century, per capita national income has grown at a faster rate in the United States than in India. This implies that Indians have been saving a smaller fraction of their incomes.
    14. If we replaced the income tax in the United States by a sales tax, the change would induce persons to shift away from occupations that have large nonpecuniary advantages.
    15. The competitive firm attempts to equalize marginal cost, average cost and price.
    16. When a firm’s average cost is decreasing, its marginal cost is decreasing and is less than average cost.
    17. Between 1951, and 1956 farm product prices (relative to prices paid by farmers) fell by about 20 percent; farm output increased by about 9 percent. This implies that the supply function for farm products is backward bending.
    18. If all firms paid each factor the value of its marginal product and if all product prices were equal to their respective marginal costs, it would not be possible to increase the output of one product without decreasing the output of some other product.
    19. Two products are produced in fixed proportions. An increase in the demand for one of the products would result in a fall in the price of the other product and, all other things constant, the fall in the price of the second product will be the greater, the greater the relative importance of the second product in the total receipts derived from producing the two joint products.
    20. The existence of overtime pay at premium rates proves that the supply of labor is backward bending.

Source: Harvard University Archives. Papers of Zvi Griliches. Box 129. Folder “Preliminary Examinations, 1955-1957”.

Image Source: Coat of arms of the University of Chicago.

The University Coat of Arms, a shield displaying the phoenix below and the book and motto above, was adopted by the Board of Trustees on August 16, 1910. The University motto Crescat scientia; vita excolatur was adopted by the Board on January 17, 1911 and added to the Coat of Arms on the pages of the open book.
The Coat of Arms was designed by Pierre de Chaignon la Rose, a heraldic specialist in Boston working under contract to the Board of Trustees. No surviving documents make clear precisely why the phoenix was adopted as the central element on the Coat of Arms, but the most probable assumption is that the phoenix can be seen as a symbol of the city of Chicago, which was seriously damaged by the great Chicago Fire of 1871 and then was successfully rebuilt, or reborn, within just a few years.

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Preliminary and Field Exams from the economics graduate program of the University of Chicago

Note: The chronological ordering of quarters at the University of Chicago during a calendar year goes Winter, Spring, Summer, Autumn. For this reason the following is arranged chronologically.

Categories
Chicago Exam Questions Theory

Chicago. Economic Theory Prelim. Parts I and II. Summer 1953

 

 

Links to previously posted Chicago prelim exams.

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Economic Theory, Part I

Written examination for the Ph. D. and A.M. Degrees,
Summer Quarter 1953

Answer all questions.  Time: 4 hours.

Question 1.

Each year large sums of public funds are spent to find and make known improvements in agricultural technology.  Most rationalizations for this practice picture it as “helping the farmer.”  To what extent and under what conditions can promotion of technical improvements –

(a) increase rent of land used for agriculture?
(b) increase net incomes of farmers who are tenants?
(c) increase gross receipts of farmers as a class?

Question 2.
    1. “If the purchase tax on new cars should be reduced in the coming budget, there will be a sharp drop in all second-hand prices to bring them into line with the reduced list prices of the new cars.”(Economist, March 21, 1953, p. 821.)  Discuss, including an analysis of the channels, if any, whereby the reduction in purchase tax (in our terminology, excise tax) would affect the prices of used cars.
    2. A monopolist is initially producing 1000 units of output which he sells for $30 per unit.Assume that conditions remain unchanged except for the government actions listed below.  What can you tell about the effects of each action on output, price paid by consumers, and the return (after tax) to the monopolist?  Consider the actions as separate alternatives, no two are in effect together.  If some answers depend on special assumptions make these explicit.
      1. A tax of $10 per unit is imposed on the first 500 units produced.
      2. A tax of $10 per unit is imposed on the first 1200 units produced.
      3. A subsidy of $10 per unit is granted on all units produced in excess of 500.
      4. A subsidy of $10 per unit is granted on all units produced in excess of 1000.
      5. The price is arbitrarily set at $28.  The government guarantees sale of the monopolist’s entire output.
Question 3.

The present value of a collection of assets equals the sum of discounted gross returns that the owner expects it to yield.  Explain the determination of the discount rate: how is it related to the owner’s tastes and opportunities and to the tastes and opportunities of other people?

Question 4.

Consider a firm using several factors of production and making several products.  “There is no reason why an equal proportional increase in all factors should not enable all products to be increased in the same proportion as the factors have been increased.”  But in this case “it is not possible for the price of one factor (or product) to change, there being no change in the prices of all other factors and products, without upsetting equilibrium altogether.  If the price of a product rises, output will become infinite; if the price of a factor rises, it will become zero…  Our analysis threatens to break down altogether.”  (Hicks).  Is this conclusion correct?  If so, show a) how it follows from the premises; b) how it can be reconciled with observed facts.  (Note: You may start with the case of one factor and one product.)

Question 5.

“The operatives are perfectly right in thinking that if all worked on Sunday, seven days’ work would have to be given for six days’ wages; but so long as the great mass of employments are suspended, the small number who for the enjoyment of others must still work, obtain a proportional increase of earnings; and they are not obliged to follow those occupations if they prefer leisure to emolument.”  (J. S. Mill, in “On Liberty.”)

      1. How would Mill have justified his conclusions in terms of the economic doctrines of his time? Indicate briefly the intellectual history of the relevant doctrines.
      2. Analyze his conclusions in light of current economic theory.
Question 6.

In economic theory, the indifference maps and opportunity (transformation) functions are stated to have certain properties. Which are these properties and how can they be inferred from factual evidence?

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Economic Theory, Part II

Written examination for the Ph.D. and A.M. Degrees,
Summer Quarter 1953

Answer all questions.  Time: 3 hours.

Question 1.

The income velocity of circulation appears to have been falling rather steadily in the United States over the past 100 years to about one-third its initial value.  What factors might in your view explain this secular decline?

Question 2.

Assuming continuing technological progress, suppose that the practice of negotiating for real rather than money wage rates spreads over all industries of the country.  What effect would this have upon price level, employment and the distribution of income, under various assumptions about monetary policy?

Question 3.

What are the principal “automatic stabilizers” of prices and business activity now operative?  In your view, what additional step is most needed to improve the prospect that automatic stabilization will work reasonably well? Explain.

Question 4.

Does it have any practical significance whether the maximum difference or the maximum ratio between the amount of currency in circulation and the Central Bank reserve (in metal or foreign exchange) is fixed?  Give historical examples of both kinds of rules.

Source: Hoover Institution Archives. Milton Friedman Papers, Box 76, Folder “76.10”.

Image Source:  Social Science Research Building (Lecture Hall 1). University of Chicago Photographic Archive, apf2-07482, Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library.

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Preliminary and Field Exams from the economics graduate program of the University of Chicago

Note: The chronological ordering of quarters at the University of Chicago during a calendar year goes Winter, Spring, Summer, Autumn. For this reason the following is arranged chronologically.

Categories
Chicago Exam Questions Theory

Chicago. Graduate Economic Theory Prelim Questions. Winter, 1953

 

Links to previously posted Chicago prelim exams.

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ECONOMIC THEORY I
Part I

Written examination for the Ph.D. and A.M. Degrees Winter Quarter, 1953
  1. I. —
    1. a. —
      1. 1.  [5 points] What will be the relation between the demand curve for a product at retail and the demand curve for the same product at the manufacturing level? Which would you expect to be the more elastic at the relevant equilibrium price and why?
      2. 2. [5 points] What, if anything, is implicitly assumed in the wording of the above question about the state of competition at either the retail or manufacturing level?
    2. b.  —
      1. 1.  [5 points] Draw a system of production indifference curves showing the alternative combinations of two factors of production (A and B) required to produce given outputs of X. What properties of the shapes of your curves can be justified in general.
      2. 2. [2 points] Show how to determine the combination of factors that will be used for a given relative price of A and B.
      3. 3. [3 points] Show how to determine the effect of changes in the relative price of A and B on the combination of factors.
  2. II.—
    1. a. [10 points] Consider two industries: X which is competitive, and Y, monopolistic. The supply curve in X is horizontal, the marginal cost curve of the monopolistic firm in Y is also horizontal (constant marginal cost). Demand declines by 25% in both industries in the sense that the quantity demanded at each price declines by 25%. The supply and cost curves are unaffected. What happens to price in X? In Y?
    2. b. [10 points]  “Rubber growers have long complained that American synthetic rubber, produced in government plants, is sold below its true cost, thus subsidising its consumption at the expense of natural rubber. Since the new Administration is expected to dispose of the synthetic plants to private owners, the growers are now hoping that an economic price will soon be charged for the product … The potential range of prices at which private industry might sell synthetic rubber … obviously … would depend to a considerable extent on the terms at which the American Government might transfer the plants. Mr. Heilman (in an article in Natural Rubber News) suggests that if the plants are leased, or sold at depreciated book values, the new operators would be able to sell ‘standard cold synthetic rubber’ at only 22 cents a lb, assuming that annual output did not exceed 600,000 tons. If the factories were to be sold at their full replacement cost, the selling price might be 25-26 cents a lb for output of up to 450,000 tons of cold rubber a year, rising to 28-30 cents a lb for output up to 600,000 tons.

“Whatever disposal arrangements are made, realistic provision against obsolescence, at replacement costs, would in Mr. Heilman’s opinion fix the long-term selling price between 25 and 30 cents … a lb.”
The Economist, January 24, 1953, p. 238 (underlinings added)

Do you agree with the underlined statement? Justify your answer.

  1. [20 points] In Chicago, as in most other large cities, taxicab fares are fixed by the municipality. Suppose, (though this is not the case), that anyone who wants to operate a taxi at these fares is automatically granted a license to do so, subject perhaps to some objective test of ability to drive, so that entry is essentially free. Analyze the equilibrium position corresponding to any given fare. Contrast the characteristics of this equilibrium position when the fare which is set relatively “high” and relatively “low”, in terms of number of cabs, income of cab drivers or owners, and any other relevant characteristics of the equilibrium.
  2. [20 points] Summarize briefly the principal contributions to economic thought of the following; indicating their approximate chronological order:
    1. Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk
    2. Leon Walras
    3. Wesley C. Mitchell
    4. Joan Robinson
    5. Irving Fisher
    6. Thorstein Veblen
    7. Francois Quesnay
    8. Johann von Thünen
    9. Antoine Augustin Cournot
  3. V. [20 points] It is argued by some that a permanent program of subsidies to farmers benefits farmers at the expense of the rest of the community. It is argued by others that it benefits no one, but simply imposes a loss on the community as a whole.
    Does the difference between these two reflect an error in analysis or a difference in empirical assumptions? Explain your answer.
  4. VI. [20 points] Keynes and Knight find it necessary to define the “marginal efficiency of capital” or the “rate of return on investment”, as the rate of return that makes cumulated costs equal to discounted returns. Why do they use this indirect procedure of solving an equation instead of the direct procedure used for labor, say, of calculating the rate at which total product changes per unit change in the amount of labor for given amount of the factors of production?

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ECONOMIC THEORY, PART II

Written examination for the Ph.D. and A.M. Degrees
Winter Quarter, 1953

Write on questions 1, 2, and 1 other.  Time: 2½ hours.

Do not place your name on your paper.  Give only your number.

  1. How are the following concepts related to each other and what role do they play in explaining the level of prices and of national income?
    1. Velocity of circulation
    2. Average proportion of individuals’ wealth held in cash
    3. Average ratio of individuals’ cash to their income
    4. Liquidity preference
    5. Effect of expected change in prices upon cash balances
    6. Effect of the interest rate upon cash balances
  2. What are the relative merits of a national monetary system with free exchange rates, and an international gold standard? Why should not each of the 48 states have its own monetary system?

Answer any one of the following:

  1. Discuss the points of view in the following statement on the decontrol of prices:

What the long-range effect of decontrol will be nobody knows. Some members of Congress say wage increases will now start another inflationary spiral, but others think the country’s productive capacity will effectively control prices unassisted by a tightening of government credit and money policies.

  1. There has been some agitation in recent years for raising the buying price of the U. S. Treasury for gold. What are the arguments in favor of such action? What would be the probable effects on the following countries: Great Britain, South Africa, the United States, Russia?
  2. Outline the outstanding monetary and banking legislation in the United States from 1861 to 1935.

Source: Hoover Institution Archives. Papers of Milton Friedman, Box 76, Folder “76.10”.

Image Source: Social Science Research Building. University of Chicago Photographic Archive, apf2-07490, Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library.

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Preliminary and Field Exams from the economics graduate program of the University of Chicago

Note: The chronological ordering of quarters at the University of Chicago during a calendar year goes Winter, Spring, Summer, Autumn. For this reason the following is arranged chronologically.

 

Categories
Chicago Exam Questions Theory

Chicago. PhD Exam in Economic Theory. Autumn 1946

 

Links to previously posted Chicago prelim exams.

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ECONOMIC THEORY

Written Examination for the Ph.D. Degree
Autumn Quarter, 1946

Ph.D. Candidates:  4 hours.  Answer all the questions.  Papers will be taken up after 10 or 15 minutes warning.

  1. Define or explain:
    1. Elasticity of Demand; point and arc elasticity; income elasticity; cross elasticity.
    2. Demand curve; utility curve; indifference curve; indifference map; marginal rate of substitution.
    3. Substitution effect and income effect.
    4. Complementary goods.
    5. Real vs. alternative cost.
    6. Price-determined vs. price-determining cost.
    7. Rent and quasi-rent.
    8. Profit.
  2. In what sense and under what conditions (if at all) does cost of production determine price, (a) in the long run, (b) in the short run.(If it never does, explain the fallacy.)
  3. Briefly describe the three or four main contributions (naming the chief author of each) to the development of the concept of capital and theory of interest, beginning with Ricardo and ending with what you consider “correct” doctrine.In each case bring out the relation of capital to other “productive factors” and to money, and that of its yield to other forms of income.
  4. —
    1. Define profit for the purpose of distribution theory.
    2. Discuss the social advisability of a legal limitation, in advance from the beginning, on the rate of return on investment in fields where it is highly uncertain (such as public utilities and explorative and development of natural resources – i.e. single tax).
    3. Comment on the ethics and policy of imposing such a limitation, by regulation or taxation, on enterprises already proven highly profitable.
  5. Discuss the wisdom of the policy described in the following quotation:

“In conversations with gold mining engineers a phrase glibly and frequently repeated is ‘sweetening the ore.’ By this phrase reference is made to the practice of diverting production in profitable periods to the poorer ores and perhaps restricting output in the richer fields. Under this practice the better ores are preserved for periods in which mining costs have risen so that over a long period of time output can be held more steady. Contributing also to a policy of sweetening the ores is the reluctance of producers to install capital equipment in a period in which the tendency is for mining expenses to increase with the general advance of wages and living costs. By the time the equipment is installed it might be expected that wages and price levels would be adjusted to the increased price of gold.”

Source: Hoover Institution Archives. Milton Friedman Papers, Box 76, Folder “76.2 “University of Chicago ‘Economic Theory’”.

Image Source: Detail from the Social Science Research Building. University of Chicago Photographic Archive, apf2-07448, Hanna Holborn Gray Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library.

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Preliminary and Field Exams from the economics graduate program of the University of Chicago

Note: The chronological ordering of quarters at the University of Chicago during a calendar year goes Winter, Spring, Summer, Autumn. For this reason the following is arranged chronologically.

Categories
Chicago Columbia Economist Market Economists

Columbia. Background inquiry regarding John Maurice Clark. Seligman, 1925

John Maurice Clark

Apparently what happened in Chicago didn’t have to stay in Chicago, judging from the casual background check on John Maurice Clark seen in the letter sent to the chairman of the political science department there, Charles E. Meriam (Columbia PhD, 1900), by Edwin R.A. Seligman, the executive officer [chairman] of the department of economics at Columbia. It would be interesting to know whether or what the colleagues at Chicago answered. In any event John Maurice Clark was appointed professor of economics as of the academic year 1926-27. I must say November 1925 seems rather late in the game to be making such discrete inquiries. Was Seligman looking to cover his backside or was he looking for evidence to possibly block Clark’s appointment. Under either interpretation, the matter would have been delicate.

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Cast of Characters

The economists have been introduced in other posts here at Economics in the Rear-view Mirror:

John Maurice Clark. …graduated from Amherst in 1905 and received his Ph.D. at Columbia five years later. He taught at Colorado College, Amherst and the University of Chicago before joining the Columbia faculty in 1926. He retired in 1956.

Source: From his obituary in the New York Times (June 28, 1963).
Incidentally, the biographical notes for Clark have incorrect dates for his professorship, but for the sake of completeness I include the link to the finding guide to his papers. Columbia University Libraries, Rare Book & Manuscript Library. John Maurice Clark papers, 1920-1963. Collection Overview.

Image Source: John Maurice Clark. University of Chicago Photographic Archive, apf1-0171.  Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library.

Edwin R. A. Seligman. Columbia A.B. 1879; A.M. 1884; L.L.B. 1884; Ph.D. 1885; L.L.D. 1904. Seligman served on the Columbia University faculty 1885-1931; the Tax Committee of New York City 1914-1916 and of New York State 1929-1931; the League of Nations committee on economics and finance 1922-1923; financial advisor to Cuba in 1931; editor of the Political Science Quarterly and the Encyclopedia of Social Sciences, among many other roles.

Source: Columbia University Libraries, Rare Book & Manuscript Library. Edwin Anderson Seligman papers, 1750-1939. Collection Overview.

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Ernst Freund, 1864-1932, was professor of law at the University of Chicago from 1902 to his death. Born in New York City during a brief visit by his German parents, Freund was raised in Dresden and Frankfurt-am-Main. He was educated at the Universities of Berlin and Heidelberg, receiving a Doctor of Law degree from the latter in 1884. Soon after, Freund immigrated to the United States where he practiced law in New York City. In 1892, he expanded his career by accepting a position as acting professor of administrative law at Columbia College. This position sparked an interest in teaching, which led Freund, in 1894, to abandon his law practice in order to accept a full-time appointment on the political science faculty at the University of Chicago as instructor of Roman law and jurisprudence. During his early years at Chicago, Freund pursued a part-time graduate career at Columbia, which awarded him a Ph.D. in political science in 1897.

Ernst Freund played a significant role in the founding of the University of Chicago Law School. William Rainey Harper’s original plan for legal education at Chicago was to integrate a research-oriented institute of jurisprudence into the graduate programs of the university proper. In spite of his interest in political science and jurisprudence, Freund urged Harper to develop instead a professional graduate law school whose standards would surpass those of Harvard and Columbia. It was Freund’s argument that legal research was already being conducted in the Departments of History, Political Science, Sociology, and Political Economy. If the new Law School attracted a quality faculty interested in the teaching of law, a research relationship would naturally develop. Freund’s idea of legal curriculum incorporated traditional methods with a new emphasis on the Law School’s responsibility to the University and community at large. In addition to standard courses, Freund advocated the teaching of constitutional and international law, administrative law, and various courses under the rubric of jurisprudence, which were then being taught in other departments of the University. This curriculum broke with the Harvard plan that stressed more strictly legal subjects which was then accepted as the model for American legal education. In spite of this concept of legal education, Freund turned to Harvard for leadership in organizing the new Law School. He recommended that Harper recruit Harvard’s Joseph H. Beale, one of the foremost legal scholars in the nation, on a two-year appointment to put the new school in order. Beale accepted Harper’s offer only after making it clear that Freund’s plan would have to be modified. The resulting curriculum is described by Frank Ellsworth in his Developments in American Legal Education at the Turn of the Twentieth Century (University of Chicago Ph.D. dissertation, 1976). Ellsworth writes:

By merging the traditional technical insight of Beale with the innovative ideals of Freund, a blend of the traditional and a farsighted curriculum occured and resulted in the first significant effort to liberalize the curriculum in legal education since Langdell’s work at Harvard.

Freund joined the faculty of the new Law School as Professor in 1902. He continued in that position until 1929 when he was appointed the first holder of the John P. Wilson Professorship in Law, a position he held until his death in 1932.

Freund’s career was composed of three basic parts: teacher, scholar, and advisor. In each of these areas, he integrated traditional legal scholarship, augmented by his experience in the German university, with a new emphasis on the interdisciplinary approach to legal education. Freund taught subjects which ranged from administrative law to social legislation and domestic relations. His scholarship rested on such significant contributions as The Police Power: Public Policy and Constitutional Rights (1904) and Standards of American Legislation (1917) for which he was awarded the James Barr Ames medal of the Harvard Law School. Along with these and other major works were numerous articles in the Social Science Review, Labor Legislation Review, and the Political Science Quarterly, which dealt with subjects that ranged from health insurance to illegitimacy. Freund played a major role as advisor to legislative agencies around the United States. He served as commissioner from Illinois to the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws. He drafted the act creating the Illinois State Immigrant’s Commission and served as president of the Immigrant’s Protective League. His devotion to these and other social welfare activities led Jane Addams to eulogize him as one who, “never once failed to be sensitive to injustice and preventable suffering.”

Source: Guide to the Ernst Freund Papers 1882-1934. University of Chicago Library, Hanna Holborn Gray Special Collections Research Center.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

Charles E. Merriam was a Political scientist and politician. A.B., Lenox College, 1893; A.B., State University of Iowa, 1895. A.M., Columbia University, 1898; Ph.D., 1900. Docent in political science, University of Chicago, 1900-1902; associate, 1902-1903; instructor, 1903-1905; assistant professor, 1905-1907; associate professor, 1907-1911; professor, 1911-1940; chairman, Department of Political Science, 1923-1940; Morton D. Hull Distinguished Professor of Political Science. Chicago alderman, 1909-1911 and 1913-1917. Candidate for mayor of Chicago, 1911 and 1919. Founder, Social Science Research Council, 1924.

Source: Guide to the Charles E. Merriam Papers 1893-1957, p. 8. University of Chicago Library, Hanna Holborn Gray Special Collections Research Center.

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What’s John Maurice Clark really like?… asking for a friend?

[Copy of typed letter]

Also to Professor Ernst Freund

November 4, 1925

Professor Charles E. Merriam,
University of Chicago,
Chicago, Illinois.

My dear Merriam:

            I am taking the liberty of writing to you on a very private and confidential matter and I hope that you will respond in an equally frank and confidential way. The point is this: we are thinking of adding to our corps of professors in the Faculty of Political Science (and we are on the lookout for the biggest man in the United States who is available). One of the two or three men that I have in mind is Maurice Clark, who of course I know very well as an old and excellent student. I want, however, to ascertain a little more about the following points:

1) Is it true, as is sometimes stated, that he is an exceptionally poor teacher and that he does not even interest the best graduate students, for the alleged reason that he is more of a closet philosopher who takes very little interest in human beings?

2) Is it true that he does not pull his oar in the ordinary departmental and faculty work and that he is of a rather non-cooperative disposition?

As to his brilliancy and creative power, I need no advice because those qualities are perfectly familiar to me, and while I am not at all sure that even if your answers to my questions were in the affirmative, those defects would outweigh his qualities, but I do count upon your giving me confidentially your opinion about these matters.

Of course it goes without saying that things are still in the embryo condition and that all I am trying to do now is to get a little more light on the situation so that I can bring it to the attention of my colleagues.

I am by no means sure that even if we should decide that Clark was the right man for us, he could be prevailed upon to leave the place where he is so happy as he is with you, — but all that is in the distant future.

With kind regards,

Faithfully yours,

P.S. Of course you will say nothing of this to anyone else.

Source: Columbia University Libraries, Manuscript Collections. Seligman, Edwin Robert Anderson Collection, Box 37 (Box 100: Columbia 1924-1930).

 

Categories
Chicago Exam Questions Microeconomics

Chicago. Price Theory Prelim Exam. Summer Quarter, 1968

by Roger Vaughan (Chicago PhD 1977)

 

Links to previously posted Chicago prelim exams.

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CORE EXAMINATION

Price Theory
Summer, 1968

Preliminary Examination for the Ph.D. Degree

WRITE THE FOLLOWING INFORMATION ON YOUR EXAMINATION PAPER:

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

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

Answer all questions.  Time: 3 hours.  [Handwritten: Return question sheets with blue books.]

  1. (70 points) Indicate whether each of the following statements is true, false, or uncertain, and explain briefly
    1. The competitive demand for an input to a production process is never more elastic than the demand for the product of the production process.
    2. An ad valorem tax on the sale of gasoline for highway use would produce a more stable flow of revenue for the state than does the (existing) specific tax.
    3. If the growers of oranges increase their own consumption of oranges more than they increase the total output of oranges when orange prices rise, oranges must be an inferior good.
    4. Because a monopolist has no supply curve, one cannot predict the effect of, say, a ten per cent tax on his output.
    5. In designing an investment project, the firm should attempt to maximize the internal rate of return.
    6. It is inconsistent to explain the rise in the price of a security by “heavier buying” and a fall by “heavier selling.”
    7. For an individual, the sum of the income elasticities of demand for all commodities is unity, and similarly, the sum of their price elasticities is zero.
    8. Within a crop season, September to September, it is impossible for the actual June price to be below the actual March price of wheat because of storage costs.
    9. One would expect the price elasticity of demand for food to be lower in poorer countries than in rich ones simply because food accounts for a larger fraction of the budget in the former.
    10. If the marginal product of labor depends only upon the ratio of labor to capital, and similarly with capital, the competitive firm will have constant returns to scale.
    11. No product can have an elasticity of demand of unity throughout its entire range because no one can pay the nearly infinite price for extremely small quantities.
    12. In order that the amount of food marketed by the agricultural sector be inversely related to price, it is required that the income elasticity of demand for non-food items in that sector be increasing with income.
    13. An excise tax collected from the buyer can never differ in its effect from the same tax collected from the seller.
    14. If production occurs under conditions of constant returns to scale, the marginal product of an input always declines as the relative quantity of that input increases, hence short-run marginal cost always increases with increases in output.
  2. Essay Questions [Handwritten: “Part II. Answer all questions.”]
    1. (25 points)
      Ronald Coase has argued, in an important article on “The Problem of Social Cost” that in the absence of transaction costs, there would be no external economies: every one affected by an action would enter a contract to alter the action. Monopoly behavior has external diseconomies: the costs are borne by the customers but the benefits accrue to the monopolist. How, in the absence of transaction costs, would the monopolists and their customers behave?
    2. (30 points)
      Recent federal legislation authorizes a regulatory body to require various changes in automobiles to increase safety. The cost of the requirements for 1967-68 model cars is estimated at $50 to $100 per car, or $500 million to $1 billion in the aggregate.

      1. How will these regulations affect the prices of used automobiles?
      2. Assuming buyers of automobiles act “rationally” and with full information, are there any safety devices that are in the social interest that will not be installed in response to consumer demand?
      3. If automobile producers were made liable for all damages to occupants of automobiles in accidents, would the socially optimum amount of safety be built into automobiles?
    3. (25 points)
      Suppose that the armed forces wishes to recruit a given number of men. One alternative would be to set a wage such that the number of volunteers equaled the number desired. Another way would be to set a lower wage and to draft a number of men equal to the difference between the number wanted and the number volunteering. In the latter case, assume that each person receiving a draft call would be permitted to hire a substitute for himself or to sell himself as a substitute for some other person. Compare these two schemes in terms of the number of personnel secured, the total pay received by the men, and the sources of this pay. Do not concern yourself with either the existing scheme or probable changes therein.
    4. (30 points)
      The English are much concerned about a “brain drain,” that is, the emigration of highly educated workers. Answer the following questions, assuming constant returns to scale.

      1. Is there any difference, in the effects on the per capita income of those remaining behind, between the emigration of a professional worker and the emigration of a non-professional worker who takes an equivalent amount of capital with him?
      2. Suppose one unskilled worker emigrates with £100 (his per capita share of England’s capital). Will the per capita effects be different–on those who remain–than if one-third of the English labor force migrates?
      3. Reverting to the “brain drain,” will it make any difference–to those who remain–whether the education of the skilled emigrants was paid for by themselves or subsidized by the state?
      4. How will the immigration of these workers into the United States affect U.S. skilled and unskilled workers?

Source:  Harvard University Archives. Papers of Zvi Griliches, Box 130, Folder “Preliminary Examinations, 1965-1968.”

Image Source: “The School of Chicago 1972” by Robert Vaughan at theHarvard University Archives. Papers of Zvi Griliches, Box 129. Folder “Posters, ca. 1960s-1970s”.

__________________________

Preliminary and Field Exams from the economics graduate program of the University of Chicago

Note: The chronological ordering of quarters at the University of Chicago during a calendar year goes Winter, Spring, Summer, Autumn. For this reason the following is arranged chronologically.

Categories
Chicago Exam Questions Theory

Chicago. Economic Theory Prelim Exam. Summer Quarter, 1958

Element from Social Science Research Bldg at U of Chicago

 

Links to previously posted Chicago prelim exams.

___________________________

ECONOMIC THEORY PRELIMINARY EXAMINATION

SUMMER, 1958
AUGUST 1, 1958

ANSWER ALL QUESTIONS

The true-false-uncertain questions, as a group, and the essay questions, as a group, are to be given equal weight in grading the examination.

GROUP I

Indicate in the space provided the correct answer–True (T), False (F), or Uncertain (U). Explain your answer in the space provided on the pages following. Do not write more than can be included in the space provided. [Note: four T-F-U questions fit on a single page]

True (T), False (F), Uncertain (U)

  1. _____ A negative income elasticity of demand implies a positive price elasticity.
  2. _____ The demand curve for leisure is upward sloping.
  3. _____ Steel prices and output usually move together during business cycles. This means that the income effect of a rise in price is greater than the substitution effect.
  4. _____ If the price elasticity of demand is -1.0 each for commodities A and B separately, then the price elasticity of A and B taken together, the price elasticity of the joint demand for A and B, can be higher than -1.0 in absolute value.
  5. _____ When average costs are increasing, marginal costs are also increasing.
  6. _____ Prices that change only rarely constitute evidence of monopoly power.
  7. _____ A proportional income tax will have no effect on occupational choice, while a progressive income tax (same total revenue) does have an effect.
  8. _____ The price elasticity of demand for an input depends mainly upon the elasticity of demand for the final product and the relative share of total costs represented by payments for the specific input.
  9. _____ Inputs A and B are used in the production of the same product. An increase in the price of A (due to a shift in the supply function for A) will result in a decline in the price of B.
  10. _____ If the rate of interest is stable over time, firms may change the ratio of machines to labor.
  11. _____ When the borrowing and lending rates facing a firm differ, a firm may make the appropriate investment decision by maximizing the present value of the firm.
  12. _____ If the amount of capital which a firm can invest is fixed, it will choose the same investment whether it maximizes the average internal rate of return or the present value of the investment.
  13. _____ The long-run elasticity of supply of labor per person (supply measured in hours of work per lifetime) cannot exceed unity numerically.
  14. _____ The white persons who gain the most by market discrimination against Negroes are those with the greatest tastes for discrimination against Negroes.
  15. _____ If a union succeeds in raising wages, it will cause the ratio of the costs of the union labor to total costs to rise.
  16. _____ An effective minimum wage law will tend to cause labor to move out of employments having relatively great net non-pecuniary advantages.
  17. _____ Since the marginal productivity of labor rises as the ratio of capital to labor rises, wages will be higher in industries with high capital-labor ratios than in industries with low capital-labor ratios.
  18. _____ Long-run marginal cost cannot exceed short-run marginal cost.
  19. _____ If the price of wheat in market A is $2.00 per bushel and the cost of transporting a bushel of wheat from market A to market B is $0.10, the price of wheat in market B is $2.10.
  20. _____ If equal percentage changes in labor and land lead to the same percentage change in the output of wheat, and if labor yields increasing average products, the world’s wheat could be grown in a flower pot, if the pot were small enough.

GROUP II

  1. Describe briefly the major contributions of the following economists:

(1) W.S. Jevons
(2) A.A. Cournot
(3) V. Pareto
(4) Irving Fisher

  1. —
    1. The demand function for a product is P = 115-Q. The total cost of producing Q units in one plant is given by
      TC = 40Q – 10Q² + Q³. Only one-plant firms are allowed.

      1. What is the long run competitive solution (price and quantity)? [Handwritten margin note: “…and the number of firms in the industry”]
      2. What would be the approximate price charged and the quantity produced if there was only one one-plant firm and it maximized its profits. (Work only with round figures.) How much profit would it make?
    2. Assume now that a firm may have more than one plant. What is the monopoly solution? [Handwritten addition: “How much profit will it make?”]
  1. The C.E. Company, a mining company, currently operates a commissary at which employees of the company may obtain free of charge a variety of food and clothing items. The amount of each item that an employee may obtain per week may not exceed a specified amount (ration), the same for all employees. The company proposes to close the commissary next month and simultaneously to give the employees an increase in weekly wages equal to half the market value of the ration. The company, learning that you are an economist, has asked you whether the putting into effect of their proposal would increase, decrease, or leave unchanged the real weekly wages of its employees.
    1. Could you give them a definite answer without additional information? Explain.
    2. If your answer to (A) is “no”, what additional information, if any, would enable you to be certain that their proposal would decrease real weekly wages? Would increase real weekly wages? Would leave real weekly wages unchanged? Explain your answers.
  2. A study of the relationship between changes in employment by industry groups and changes in wage rates for the period from 1929 to date in the United States does not reveal a significant positive relationship between the two variables, i.e., larger changes in employment were not associated with larger changes in wage rates.
    Comment on this result in terms of the degree of competition in labor markets and the effect of wage differentials in inducing labor transfers.
    What would have been the implications if there had been a positive correlation between the variables? If there had been a negative relationship?

Source:  Harvard University Archives. Papers of Zvi Griliches, Box 130, Folder “Preliminary Examinations, 1957-1965.”

Image Source: University of Chicago Photographic Archive, apf2-07449, Hanna Holborn Gray Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library.

__________________________

Preliminary and Field Exams from the economics graduate program of the University of Chicago

Note: The chronological ordering of quarters at the University of Chicago during a calendar year goes Winter, Spring, Summer, Autumn. For this reason the following is arranged chronologically.

 

Categories
Chicago Exam Questions Microeconomics

Chicago. Price Theory Prelim Exam. Winter Quarter, 1968

Links to previously posted Chicago prelim exams.

___________________________

PRICE THEORY

Preliminary Examination
for the Ph.D. and the A.M. Degree
Winter Quarter, 1968

WRITE THE FOLLOWING INFORMATION ON YOUR EXAMINATION PAPER:

Your code number and NOT your name
Name of examination
Date of examination

Results of the examination will be sent to you by letter

Answer all questions.  Time: 3 hours

  1. Indicate whether each of the following statements is True (T) or False (F), and justify your answer briefly.
    1. ________ Consider a competitive firm’s demand for a factor of production as a function of the factor price for given prices of other factors. In case A, also hold output fixed. In case B, instead hold the price of the product fixed. The elasticity of demand is greater for B than A.
    2. ________ Firms will devote no more resources to accident prevention when they pay the costs of employees injured by industrial accidents than they would if the employees bore the costs.
    3. ________ The demand elasticity for Ford cars is -4.2; the elasticity for Chevrolet cars is -3.0. If Ford’s market share is 1/3 and Chevrolet’s is 2/3, then the elasticity of both brands together is -3.4.
    4. ________ If Congress passes safety legislation outlawing the use of automobiles over 7 years old, in the long run, the number of automobiles on the road will be decreased but the annual purchases of new automobiles will be increased.
    5. ________ Nightclubs often have an admission or cover charge in addition to the price of food or drinks. This implies the absence of marginal cost pricing.
    6. ________ A patent usually entitles the owner of an invention to charge as much as he wishes for the right to use his invention. Hence, a patented cost-reducing invention will not affect the price of the product because the optimal royalty rate will just equal the cost reduction.
    7. ________ A rational person may gamble at unfair odds.
    8. ________ Since we observe that competitive firms operate their plants at a higher rate at business cycle peaks than at business cycle troughs, they must be operating in the range of rising short-run marginal costs.
    9. ________ The recent rise in the postage rate was accompanied by a “shortage” of stamps, providing us with an example of the Giffen paradox.
    10. ________ “Time is money,” hence an invention which decreased the hours required for sleep would lead to a rise in real income as conventionally measured.

II. —

    1. How is it possible for coffee beans of the same brand and same freshness to sell at a higher price per pound than the same coffee ground and canned?
    2. The same typewriter could have recently been bought at $130 from Toad Hall, $125 from Sears under its own label, and for $117 from a mail-order discount house (Monroe). Does this mean that the retail typewriter market is very imperfect?
    3. Some years back, when the Federal campaign against cigarette smoking was beginning, Time reported that “when someone offers a cigarette to pipe-puffing Surgeon General Luther Terry, he always grabs it. ‘Every one I accept I tear up,’ he says. ‘That way there’s one less cigarette.'”
      Analyze the economics of the Surgeon General’s policy. In doing so, assume, of course, that a substantial class of people with similar beliefs behave the same way, so the effect is at least potentially appreciable. Would it contribute to his objective of reducing smoking? If so, through what channels?
  1. Suppose a traffic department enforcing parking regulations in the business section of a large city has a fixed force available to it which means an approximately constant probability p that an illegally parked car will be ticketed. Assume that each person has the choice of parking legally at X dollars per day or illegally, paying a fine of F dollars each time his car is ticketed.
    1. Assume first the sole aim of the traffic department is to discourage illegal parking. Assume that all drivers have constant marginal utility of income and try to maximize expected money income (i.e., minimize their expected loss from parking). What fine F should the traffic department impose on parking in order to achieve its aim?
    2. If all drivers maximized expected utility, had diminishing marginal utility of income, and experienced neither utility nor disutility from obeying the law, how would this affect your answer to a? If they had increasing marginal utility of income?
    3. Suppose the traffic department received all the fines and desired to maximize its expected revenue. How should it set the fine F? Indicate what additional information, if any, it needs in order to do so.
  1. Assume that production functions are Cobb-Douglas of the first degree and that competition reigns. Let there be only two factors, say, labor (L) and capital (C).
    1. What is the Cobb-Douglas form?
    2. Show that the share of wages in the total output is independent of the quantity of labor, and equal to the exponent of labor, say, a.
    3. Let there be one additional worker.
      1. Because wages are equal to marginal product, he gets the whole of what he adds to output.
      2. Yet by (b), labor gets only the fraction a of the additional output.

How do you reconcile (i) and (ii)?

  1. “The exemption of college students from the draft has been attacked as discrimination in favor of middle and upper income classes. Yet a cold-blooded economic analysis shows that in fact it promotes greater equality in the distribution of income, and so benefits the lower-income classes.”
    Provide the “cold-blooded economic analysis.”

Source:  Harvard University Archives. Papers of Zvi Griliches, Box 130, Folder “Preliminary Examinations, 1965-1968.”

__________________________

Preliminary and Field Exams from the economics graduate program of the University of Chicago

Note: The chronological ordering of quarters at the University of Chicago during a calendar year goes Winter, Spring, Summer, Autumn. For this reason the following is arranged chronologically.

 

Categories
Agricultural Economics Chicago Policy

Chicago. Agricultural political economy of the Marshall Plan. T.W. Schultz, 1948

The first of the two newspaper clippings below was found in the economics department file in the papers of the University of Chicago president Robert M. Hutchins. Owning Harvard appears to have worked as click-bait in Chicago for quite some time.

__________________________

U.C. Professor Tells Off Harvard
On Marshall Plan

BY GEORGE WELLER
Daily News Foreign Service

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — A farm-bred teacher from the University of Chicago boldly gave Harvard the hotfoot on the Marshall plan last weekend.

Charging in substance that the Marshall plan has become a gigantic export racket, Prof. Theodore Schultz, head of Chicago’s department of economics, provided Harvard’s dominantly pro-Marshall faculty and students with their stiffest criticism in months.

Schultz’s challenge, that the Marshall plan is actually an adventure in state-trading contrary to American principles, has set Cambridge buzzing.

Sees Profit Motive

The Chicagoan told meetings of both students and professors that well-heeled lobbies of industrialists and farmers were backing the European recovery program for profits rather than for European recovery.

The Marshall plan in operation, if not in inspiration, is prolonging artificial ‘prosperity’ by government buying of surpluses at inflated prices, Schultz charged.

The views of this Midwesterner, who is known for leading the ‘oleomargarine revolt’ at Iowa State University [See: Paul B. Burnett (2011) “Academic Freedom or Political Maneuvers: Theodore W. Schultz and the Oleomargarine Controversy Revisited”.], broke with star-shell effect at Harvard because only Communist or Wallace opposition to the Marshall plan has so far gained much hearing.

The ambassadors of France, Britain and the Netherlands are lecturing here in favor of European aid.

“Dumping Operation”

Schultz threw discord into this chorus of agreement by charging that the Marshall plan is actually a vast dumping operation aimed to relieve a glut of farm and industrial products and head off price declines.

Schultz agreed with Harvard’s distribution expert, Prof. Seymour Harris, that many American middlemen, besides manufacturers and farmers, are planning to get their slices of Marshall money before aid leaves American shores.

Advance Orders

The Chicago teacher said he knew cases where European governments had placed advance orders with American exporters for filling only if Marshall aid is voted. Such conditional orders encouraged lobbies to push the Marshall plan through Congress, he suggested.

The Marshall plan is causing another split in American foreign policy, Schultz pointed out.

While American delegates at the Havana world trade conference are fighting subsidies and dumping, the Marshall plan is promoting state-supported exports on a colossal scale, Schultz warned.

Source: Chicago Daily News, Tues., March 2, 1948.

__________________________

Foreign Aid Held Possible Price Lever

The Marshall plan may be used by the government as a tool for keeping commodity prices high, Dr. Theodore Schultz, chairman of the University of Chicago department of economics, said yesterday. He also asserted food prices would have been 30 per cent lower in 1946 and 1947 if all food exported in those years had been retained in this country.

Schultz addressed the frozen food industry convention in the Stevens hotel sponsored by the National Association of Frozen Food Packers. He warned that the United States is in danger of drifting into a policy of dumping food supplies.

Plan “Misuse Likely”

“We are likely to misuse the European recovery program in this way by using it to support the existing commodity price policy,” he said. “When prunes or other commodities fall to the support level specified by parity, the Commodity Credit corporation will go into action and buy, routing its purchases to the European program. What could be simpler.”

In the few years immediately preceding World War II, 97.4 per cent of the United States’ food supply, including food imported as well as that produced in this country, was consumed domestically, said Schultz. In 1946 and 1947 only 90 per cent of the supply was made available to people in the United States. Had that 7.4 per cent difference been kept at home, it would have been enough to lower food prices approximately 30 per cent, he asserted.

Predicts Price Drop

Schultz predicted that most farm commodity prices would recede to 10 per cent below parity in three to five years, and assailed the parity system as obsolete. He said if the government maintains commodities at floor levels (10 per cent below parity on most) in a depression, it will “clog channels of trade” and make food prices higher than they otherwise would be.

Source: Chicago Daily Tribune. 18 March 1948.

Image Source: Theodore W. Schultz. University of Chicago Photographic Archive, apf1-07484. Hanna Holborn Gray Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library.

Categories
Chicago Economics Programs Faculty Regulations

Chicago. Requirements for M.A. and Ph.D. Degrees in Economics, 1934-35

The requirements for a graduate degree in economics at the University of Chicago in 1934-35 are transcribed below. First we have general Division requirements. These are followed by the specific requirements determined by the economics department.

Earlier, Economics in the Rear-view Mirror has transcribed the analogous requirements at Harvard University in 1934-35 and those for Columbia University in 1934-35.

Chicago, 1892.
Chicago, 1903.
Chicago, 1904-05 (with thick course descriptions)

_______________________

[DIVISION] REQUIREMENTS
FOR HIGHER DEGREES
UNDER THE OLD PLAN
[pp. 7-9]

In order to avoid misunderstandings, candidates for higher degrees should consult their Deans concerning all technical requirements for such degrees, including foreign language examinations, and requirements for the final oral examinations, before application is made for admission to candidacy. In all cases candidates should consult early with the chairman of the department of specialization.

Degrees will not be conferred under this plan after the Summer Quarter, 1935.

THE MASTER’S DEGREE

Two degrees are conferred, viz., Master of Arts and Master of Science.

  1. Candidacy. —Any student who has been in attendance one quarter or more, whose undergraduate course is equivalent to that required for a corresponding Bachelor’s degree in the University of Chicago,* and whose dissertation subject has been approved by the department of specialization, may, on recommendation by the department and approval of the divisional faculty, be admitted to candidacy for a Master’s degree. The student should consult his dean with reference to the requirements for admission to candidacy. The application must be on file in that office at least two months before the degree is conferred.
  2. Requirements.—-Students thus accepted as candidates will be given a Master’s degree on fulfilment of the following requirements:
    1. At least 8 courses of satisfactory advanced work taken in residence at the University of Chicago, of which not more than the equivalent of three courses may be taken as half-courses. These 8 courses need not be all in one department, but are selected from courses taken in residence at the University of Chicago according to some rational plan approved by the chairman of the department and by the Dean at least six months before the degree is conferred.
      At the discretion of the department concerned, and corresponding registration in advance with the Deans, wide reading or other special work carried out by the student under the supervision of the department and subject to such tests as the department may prescribe, may be accepted as one or more courses of the required work.
    2. A satisfactory dissertation on a subject approved by the head (or chairman) of the department at least three months (earlier at the option of the department) before graduation.
    3. The delivery of three printed or typewritten copies of the dissertation together with a certificate signed by the chairman of the department, that the work, as submitted, is accepted as the candidate’s dissertation for the Master’s degree to Cobb Lecture Hall, Room 203, at least two weeks before the Convocation at which the degree is to be conferred.
    4. Subsequent to admission to candidacy, a satisfactory final examination on the work taken for the degree. When the examination is oral, the candidate must file six copies of a summary of his dissertation and six copies of the list of courses submitted for the examination in the office of the Dean ten days before the date of examination.
    5. Additional qualitative and specific requirements for the degree may be prescribed by any department or faculty.

[Note]

*Attention is particularly called to the fact the term “equivalent” in this connection refers to quantity only. It does not affect the question of the specific Master’s degree (Arts or Science) to which a given student’s work would lead. In case the candidate did not obtain his Bachelor’s degree at the University of Chicago, he will present to the Director of Admissions on blanks furnished for the purpose a detailed statement of his undergraduate work. The Director of Admissions cannot always report upon these statements during the opening week of the quarter.

THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

The degree of Doctor of Philosophy is given in recognition of high attainments and ability in the candidate’s chosen field, shown, first, by a dissertation evincing power of independent investigation and forming an actual contribution to existing knowledge; and, secondly, by passing an examination covering the general field of the candidate’s subject. It is to be understood explicitly that this degree is not conferred on the completion of a specified number of courses, or after a given period of residence.

  1. Candidacy.—Any student of graduate status in the University, who has been in attendance one quarter or more (one month, in the case of a student entering with two years of residence graduate credit from another institution), whose thesis subject has been accepted by the head (or chairman) of the department, and who has a reading knowledge of French and German, may, on recommendation of the department and approval of the divisional faculty, be enrolled as a candidate for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. On recommendation of a department, approved by the Dean, any other Germanic language may be substituted for German and any other Romance language for French. A reading knowledge of the foreign languages must be certified by the appropriate departments and the application for admission to candidacy must be filed by the applicant at the Dean’s office on the blank provided for that purpose not fewer than eight calendar months before the final examination for the degree. Responsibility for admission at the proper time rests with the student.
  2. Requirements.—Students accepted as candidates will be given the Doctor of Philosophy degree upon the fulfilment of the following requirements:
    1. Normally three years of residence work in pursuance of an accepted course of study, at least three full quarters of which shall be in residence at the University of Chicago.
    2. The work offered in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in any department is outlined by that department and approved by the Dean, for each candidate, not later than the first quarter of his last year of residence work. The work required includes such courses in allied departments as may be deemed necessary by the department of specialization. The work is selected with regard to the needs of the individual student, with the double purpose (1) of giving him a knowledge of the relations of his subject to cognate branches of learning, and (2) of preparing him for productive scholarship.
    3. The presentation of a satisfactory dissertation upon a subject which has been approved by the chairman of the department.
    4. A satisfactory final oral examination on the subject presented for the degree.
  3. Dissertation.—
    1. Each candidate prepares a dissertation upon some topic connected with the subject of his specialization. This production constitutes an actual contribution to knowledge. Its subject is submitted for approval to the head (or chairman) of the department concerned at least twelve months before the date of the final examination.
    2. The dissertation is submitted to the Department in typewritten form at least one month before the date of the final examination, unless otherwise recommended by the Department.
    3. Three weeks before the Convocation at which the degree is to be conferred, unless the candidate is prepared to deposit 100 bound copies of the complete dissertation, he must deliver at the Dissertation Desk, Cobb Lecture Hall, Room 203, three printed or typewritten copies of the dissertation, together with a certificate signed by the chairman of the department that the work, as submitted, is accepted as the candidate’s dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and approved for publication without alteration.
    4. For details concerning the publication and distribution of dissertations, the candidate is referred to the Handbook of the Divisions and the Professional Schools, obtainable at the office of the Dean.
  4. Final examination. —After admission to candidacy the student may present himself for the final oral examination as soon as he has fulfilled the other general and departmental requirements. The candidate prepares a typewritten or printed brief of his work, including an analysis of the dissertation, and files six copies of the same with his Dean ten days before the time set for the examination.
    The examination for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy shall be taken at least ten days before the Convocation at which the degree is to be conferred
  5. Non-resident work.—After being admitted to graduate status, the student, in some cases, may be allowed to substitute non-resident work for resident work to a limited extent, under conditions to be arranged in consultation with the Dean and the heads of the departments concerned.
  6. Work done in other universities.—Graduate work done in another university will be accepted as equivalent to resident work in the University of Chicago, provided the institution in which the work was done is of high standing, and adequate evidence is furnished that the work done there was satisfactorily performed. Graduate work done in other institutions, and credit allowed for non-resident work, cannot reduce the residence requirement at the University of Chicago to a period of less than one year (three full quarters), during which the major part of the student’s time will be spent in the department in which he expects to take his degree.

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

ECONOMICS, HIGHER DEGREES
[ DEPARTMENT REQUIREMENTS]
[pp. 282-284]

The Department expects that students who are candidates for the Master’s or the Doctor’s degree in Economics will observe the special departmental requirements set forth below, in addition to the general regulations of the Division, stated on pages 274-75 of the Announcements.

THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS

Candidates for the Master’s degree should file with the Departmental Examiner, on or before the opening of their second quarter of residence, a complete statement of the work they intend to offer. The Examiner will submit this schedule to the Department for approval.

The specific requirements for the Master’s degree are:

  1. A minimum of 8 courses, or their equivalent (of which at least 6 must be in Grades II and III above). At some previous time the candidate should have covered the substantial equivalent of the requirements for the Bachelor’s degree in Economics. This equivalence may be shown by courses taken or by examination. The candidate must also have the preparation in the other social sciences required for the Bachelor’s degree at the University.
  2. A thesis involving research of at least semi-independent character. The thesis should be completed and three copies delivered to the office of the Department for examination at least six weeks before the Convocation at which the degree is to be conferred.
  3. A final examination. This may be either oral or written as decided by the Depart-ment. The examination will be on the thesis and its field; and one other field proposed by the candidate and approved by the Department.
  4. All candidates for the Master’s degree, whether or not courses in general economic theory are included among the courses specifically offered for the degree, are expected to show, in examination and throughout their work, ability to think clearly and effectively on abstract economic questions, and familiarity with the terms and common concepts of economic science.
THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

A candidate for the Doctor’s degree in Economics is expected to have a reading knowledge of French and German, or one of these languages and a second modern language approved by the Department, the preparation in the other social sciences required for the Bachelor’s degree at the University, and such grounding in other technical, scientific, or philosophical subjects as may be necessary for an intelligent pursuit of the studies in which he proposes to specialize. He should have covered the substantial equivalent of the requirements for the Bachelor’s degree in Economics at the University, and must be able to deal on a graduate level with the range of material covered in the sequence for that degree. The following courses or their equivalents should be included as part of his preparation: 209, “Intermediate Economic Theory”; 210, “Introduction to Accounting”; 211, “Introduction to Statistics”; 220, “Economic History of the United States”; 221, “Economic History of Classical and Western European Civilization”; and 230, “Introduction to Money and Banking.”

The candidate is expected to have general training in the important fields listed below and to specialize in three fields, one of which must be Economic Theory, including Monetary and Cycle Theory, and another must be the field of his thesis. The fields to be chosen (in addition to Economic Theory) may be taken from (1) Statistics; (2) Accounting; (3) Economic History; (4) Finance and Financial Administration; (5) Government Finance; (6) Labor and Personnel Administration; (7) Trusts and Public Utilities; (8) International Economic Relations; (9) some other field proposed by the candidate. A field proposed by the candidate may be in Economics or in another social science, the arrangement in either case being made with the Department of Economics. It is desired to develop that program of work which best meets the needs of the individual student. This usually involves the election of some courses in other departments and possibly the development of a field in another social science as a substitute for one of the fields in economics.

The candidate’s grasp of his three fields of specialization is tested by preliminary written examinations which must be passed to the satisfaction of the Department before admission to candidacy. The final oral examination is on the field of concentration and on the thesis. The written examinations can be taken in one quarter or they can be divided between two quarters, not necessarily consecutive quarters, at the option of the candidate. The written examinations are given in the sixth, seventh, and eighth weeks of the Autumn, Spring, and Summer quarters. The written examination in general economic theory, including monetary and cycle theory, is in two parts and will require five hours in all. The written examination in each of the other fields requires from three to four hours. Notice of intention to take any written examination must be filed with the Department at least three weeks before the examinations begin. In written examinations for the doctorate the questions cover both the theoretical and administrative aspects of the field.

The thesis must indicate power of independent investigation and form a significant contribution to existing knowledge.

The final examination for the Doctor’s degree is an oral examination in the field of the student’s special work and on the thesis. The purpose of this examination is to test the quality of the candidate’s scholarship as evidenced by his mastery of his special field and by his ability to deal originally, critically, and authoritatively with problems in that field. He is expected to show a discriminating acquaintance with the literature and with both the historical and theoretical aspects of his subject, and to have intelligent opinions on current events within the range of his special knowledge. He will not be expected at the final examination to answer detailed questions on subjects not immediately related to his specialty.

It is the desire and policy of the Department that advanced students, in planning their studies, should not confine their attention to courses of formal instruction. Students of proved ability are so far as is practicable relieved from the routine requirements of ordinary courses of instruction and given large opportunities for individual reading and inquiry in connection with special courses of research.

Source: The College and the Divisions for the Sessions of 1934-35 in Announcements [of] the University of Chicago, Vol. 34.

Image Source: Coat of arms of the University of Chicago.

The University Coat of Arms, a shield displaying the phoenix below and the book and motto above, was adopted by the Board of Trustees on August 16, 1910. The University motto Crescat scientia; vita excolatur was adopted by the Board on January 17, 1911 and added to the Coat of Arms on the pages of the open book.
The Coat of Arms was designed by Pierre de Chaignon la Rose, a heraldic specialist in Boston working under contract to the Board of Trustees. No surviving documents make clear precisely why the phoenix was adopted as the central element on the Coat of Arms, but the most probable assumption is that the phoenix can be seen as a symbol of the city of Chicago, which was seriously damaged by the great Chicago Fire of 1871 and then was successfully rebuilt, or reborn, within just a few years.