Category: Exam Questions

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Exam Questions Harvard Philosophy Social Work

Harvard. Description, enrollment and exam for Social Ethics. Peabody, 1908-1909

At the turn of the 20th century social policy at Harvard was a subject for the department of social ethics located at the intersection of economics and philosophy. It was taught as a subfield of philosophy (Social Ethics) by divinity professor Francis Peabody together with a changing cast of junior instructors to assist him.

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Exams from past years

Exam questions  this course from the late 19th century have been transcribed and posted: 1888-1889; 1889-1890; 1890-1891; 1892-1893; 1893-1894; 1894-1895; 1895-1896.

1902-03. Listed as Philosophy 5. Taught by Peabody and Ireland.

1904-05. Listed as Philosophy 5 and Ethics 1. Taught by Peabody and Rogers.

1906-07. Taught by Peabody and Rogers.

1907-08. Taught by Peabody and Rogers.

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Francis Greenwood Peabody. The Approach to the Social Question. New York: Macmillan, 1912. “The substance of this volume was given as the Earle Lectures at the Pacific Theological Seminary in 1907.”

Peabody’s own short bibliography on the Ethics of Social Questions was published in 1910.

Another post provides the history of Harvard’s Department of Social Ethics up through 1920.

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DR. RAY MADDING McCONNELL

Harvard Instructor in Social Ethics Had Made Long Study of Important Problems

Dr. Ray Madding McConnell, long active in educational work, died early this morning at a private hospital in Cambridge. Dr. McConnell, who was a graduate of Harvard, class of 1902, was born in Tennessee in 1875, and had been since his college days a great student of sociological problems and recently instructor in social ethics at Harvard.

Dr. McConnell received numerous honorary degrees, including his A.B. from Southern University in Alabama, in 1899, his S.T.B. from Vanderbilt University in Tennessee in 1901, his A.M. from Harvard in 1902, and from that university his Ph.D. in 1908. He was a writer on the subject to which he had given so many years of earnest study and research, and last year his book on “The Duty of Altruism” was brought out and he had at this time another book in preparation, “Philosophy of Crime.” He had contributed frequently to the International Journal of Ethics, and at Harvard he had given courses of lectures on “Moral Obligations of the Modern State.”

Dr. McConnell was married, in 1907, to Miss Phoebe Estes Bedlow of Ithaca, N.Y., by whom he is survived, as well as by a young son, Frank McConnell.

Source: Boston Evening Transcript (June 24, 1911), p. 14.

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Course Description
1908-09

  1. Social Ethics. — The problems of Poor-Relief, the Family, Temperance, and various phases of the Labor Question, in the light of ethical theory. Lectures, special researches, and prescribed reading. Tu., Th., Sat., at 10. Professor Peabody assisted by Messrs. [Ray Madding] McConnell [d. 1911 of thematic fever and pneumonia], [James] Ford, and [Robert Franz] Foerster.

            This course is an application of ethical theory to the social problems of the present day. It is to be distinguished from economic courses dealing with similar subjects by the emphasis laid on the moral aspects of the Social Question and on the philosophy of society involved. Its introduction discusses various theories of Ethics and the nature and relations of the Moral Ideal [required reading from Mackenzie’s Introduction to Social Philosophy, and Seth’s Study of Ethical Principles]. The course then considers the ethics of the family [required reading from Bosanquet’s The Family]; the ethics of poor-relief [required reading from Devine’s Principles of Relief]; the ethics of the labor question [required reading from Adams and Sumner’s, Labor Problems]; and the ethics of the drink question [required reading from The Liquor Problem; a Summary of Investigations]. In addition to lectures and required reading two special and detailed reports are made by each student, based as far as possible on personal research and observation of scientific methods in poor-relief and industrial reform. These researches are arranged in consultation with the instructor or his assistant; and an important feature of the course is the suggestion and direction of such personal investigation, and the provision to each student of special literature or opportunities for observation.

            Rooms are expressly assigned for the convenience of students of Social Ethics, on the second floor of Emerson Hall, including a large lecture room, a seminary-room, a conference-room, a library, and two rooms occupied by the Social Museum. The Library of 1800 volumes is a special collection for the use of students of Social Ethics, with conveniences for study and research. The Social Museum is a collection of graphical material, illustrating by photographs, models, diagrams, and charts, many movements of social welfare and industrial progress.

Source: Announcement of the Divinity School of Harvard University, 1908-09, p. 24.

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Course Enrollment
1908-09

Social Ethics 1. Professor Peabody, assisted by Dr. McConnell and Messrs. Ford and Foerster. — Social Ethics. The problems of Poor-Relief, the Family, Temperance, and various phases of the Labor Question, in the light of ethical theory.

Total 136: 3 Graduates, 23 Seniors, 65 Juniors, 29 Sophomores, 6 Freshmen, 10 Others.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College, 1908-1909, p. 68.

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SOCIAL ETHICS 1
Year-end Examination 1908-09

This paper should be considered as a whole. The time should not be exhausted in answering a few questions, but such limits should be given to each answer as will permit the answering of all the questions in the time assigned.

  1. The place in the modern labor question of:—

Leclaire.
Lassalle.
Conseils des Prud’hommes.

  1. Discuss the following:—

“Labor is the original source of all value.”
“Property is robbery.”
“Surplus-value.”

  1. What is:—

“Economic determinism”;
“A class-conscious conflict”;
“Collective bargaining”?

  1. Ruskin’s criticism of the economists, and his own theory of value. [“Unto this Last” by John Ruskin]
  2. The evidences of progress on the part of the working-classes since the introduction of the factory-system. (Adams and Sumner, pp. 502-526.)
  3. The legal aspects of strikes. (Adams and Sumner, p. 187 ff.)
  4. The development in England of the principle of Employer’s Liability.
  5. The prospects of Industrial Co-operation in Great Britain and in the United States. The relative advantage of Federalism and of Individualism applied to Coöperation.
  6. The Pennsylvania Railroad Relief-Department; its organization, operation, and the criticisms which it encounters.
  7. The physiological action of alcohol and its relation to intellectual work. (Lectures, and The Liquor Problem, pp. 19-42.)
  8. The Scandinavian Liquor-System. (The Liquor Problem, p. 153ff.)

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University, Examination Papers, 1873-1915. Box 8, Bound vol. Examination Papers 1908-09; Papers Set for Final Examinations in History, Government, Economics,…,Music in Harvard College (June, 1909), p. 69.

Image Source: Harvard University Archives.  Francis Greenwood Peabody [photographic portrait, ca. 1900], Colorized by Economics in the Rear-view Mirror.

Categories
Chicago Exam Questions Microeconomics

Chicago. Price Theory Core Examination. Summer 1961

 

Another gap just filled in a quarter century of University of Chicago graduate qualifying exams in price theory.

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Chicago Price Theory
Preliminary/Core Exams
Previously Posted

Summer 1949
Summer 1951
Summer 1952
Winter 1955
Summer 1955
Winter 1957
Winter 1958
Summer 1960
Winter 1961
Summer 1962
Winter 1963
Winter 1964
Winter 1965
Winter 1969
Summer 1975

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ECONOMIC THEORY (Old Rules)
Summer 1961

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

WRITE THE FOLLOWING INFORMATION ON YOUR EXAMINATION PAPER:

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

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

Answer all questions. Time: 4 hours.

  1. Indicate whether statement is true, false, or uncertain, and briefly give your reason.
    1. A firm has a monopoly in its home market and also sells in a perfectly competitive world market; if its home-market price is 50% above the world market price, the elasticity of demand in the home market must be 3.
    2. If a multiplant firm has to produce a given quantity of output, it will never pay it to produce in more than one of its plants if that plant has decreasing marginal costs.
    3. The development of more rapid urban transport will inevitably raise the aggregate rental value of urban residential property.
    4. If the number of acceptable applicants for admission to medical schools is less than the number that could be accepted, the medical profession cannot be raising its earnings by artificially restricting entry.
    5. The rate of interest is determined by the marginal productivity of capital.
    6. If a particular commodity is subject to a special tax not imposed on other commodities, removal of that tax will always increase economic welfare.
    7. If the supply curve of a competitive industry has a positive slope, it means that the industry is subject to decreasing returns to scale.
    8. If wage rates, on the average, increase at the same rate as average product per worker, this means that the marginal return on investment declines over time.
    9. Entrepreneurs in a competitive industry may realize short term gains or profit as a result of an increase in the price of an input (due to a shift in the supply function for the input), even if the demand curve for the industry remains unchanged.
  1. A. A drug manufacturer stated that the prices of drugs sold in England were priced at about one half the price of similar drugs in the United States. The reason given for the price difference was that per capita incomes were much lower in England than in the United States and the English could not afford to pay as much for the drugs.
    Accept the factual statements as valid. Discuss the statement in terms of:

    1. Demand functions for drugs in the two countries (income and price elasticities).
    2. Whether the manufacturer could be maximizing his profits.
    3. International trade restrictions on drugs in the two countries.
  1. B. In a given competitive industry, both price and output increase between two time periods. Indicate why each of the following statements is consistent or inconsistent with the observed changes in price and output or is simply irrelevant:
    1. The industry has a perfectly elastic supply curve.
    2. The demand curve has shifted to the right.
    3. The factor supply curves are upward sloping.
    4. The industry is subject to diminishing returns.
    5. Total revenue has increased because the price elasticity of demand is greater than unity.
    6. Rents and quasi-rents have increased.
  2. A. In the effect of union-produced wage increases on prices, one economist says,

“A competitive industry (with a horizontal long run supply curve] will eventually pass all of a wage increase on to consumers in higher product prices” but “a monopolized industry, if it maximizes profits both before and after the wage increase, will not pass on the full amount of the wage increase in prices.”

Assume that the monopolized industry, like the competitive, operates under long-run constant costs.

    1. Explain precisely what “pass all of a wage increase on to consumers in higher prices” means.
    2. Is the statement for the monopolized industry correct? If so, prove it. If not, state why not and indicate any additional conditions required to make it true.
  1. B. This economist also says that the competitive industry “will regain its normal rate of profit”, whereas, in the monopolized industry, “the wage increase will lower monopoly profits”
    1. What does the word “profit” mean in these statements? in the phrase “maximizes profits” of the preceding question?
    2. Do the two statements imply a difference in results in the sense that the monopolized industry will not regain “its normal rate of profit”?
    3. Indicate briefly what other meaning or meanings, if any, does the term “profit” have in economic theory.
  2. Discuss the relation between forward (and/or futures) prices and spot prices on commodity markets and foreign exchange markets and the role of “speculators” and “hedgers” in these markets. State some of the leading theories about this relationship and discuss the kinds of evidence used in testing them.

Source: Harvard University Archives. Papers of Zvi Griliches. Box 129. Folder “Preliminary Examinations, 1957-1965”.

Categories
Exam Questions Harvard Theory

Harvard. Graduate Economic Theory Exam. April 1960

 

Another one of the graduate theory exams from the Harvard economics department from the papers of Professor Edward H. Hastings in the Economists’ Papers Archive at Duke University. Clearly the 1960s required less technical virtuosity at finger exercises. I would love to see what the actual bluebooks of students (and the corresponding grades awarded) look like. Perhaps some day, in some archive…

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Harvard Written Exams
in Economic Theory
Posted Earlier

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

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HARVARD UNIVERSITY
Department of Economics

Written Examination
in Economic Theory
April 14, 1960

WRITE LEGIBLY

PART I
2 ½ Hours

Answer all the questions, spending approximately 50 minutes on each:

  1. Write an essay on the explanation and function of (a) profits or, (b) wages in economic theory from the classical period to the present time.
  2. Explain the distinction between the general equilibrium and the partial equilibrium approaches and the relation between them. Give specific examples of the application of both.
  3. Discuss the relation of the quantity of money to the level of production and employment from the Keynesian and neoclassical points of view.

PART II
1 ½ Hours

Answer 3, and only 3, of the following questions:

  1. Demonstrate that from the point of efficiency completely discriminating monopoly is superior to single price monopoly.
  2. Compare the views of Marshall, Ricardo, and Jevons or the Austrians on the relation of cost of production to value.
  3. What makes a satisfactory theoretical solution of the oligopoly problem so difficult? Illustrate by a critical analysis of one or more particular theories.
  4. Discuss the differences and similarities between the loanable funds and liquidity preference theories of interest.
  5. Compare the explanation of factor prices in terms of linear programming theory and marginal productivity theory.

PLEASE RETURN THIS EXAMINATION PAPER WITH YOUR BLUEBOOK.

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

Categories
Exam Questions Harvard Theory

Harvard. Graduate Economic Theory Exam. November 1960

This particular addition to the series of written economic theory exams in the Harvard graduate program reveals that in 1960 aspiring economics Ph.D. candidates were still expected to know something about what Ricardo, Malthus, and Marx thought. Somewhat amusing is the reference to the “so-called Cobb-Douglas production function”. As opposed to what might we ask … “Chuck & Paul’s neat little production function”?

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Harvard Written Exams
in Economic Theory
Posted Earlier

April 11, 1961
April 10, 1962
November 13, 1962
April 8, 1963

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PLEASE WRITE LEGIBLY

HARVARD UNIVERSITY
Department of Economics

Written Examination
in Economic Theory
November 3, 1960

PART I
Two hours

Answer all the questions.

  1. Discuss the arguments for or against Say’s Law advanced by Ricardo, Malthus, Marx, and Keynes. Synthesize.
  2. “The equilibrium concept is meaningful only in the context of a dynamic theory.” Discuss that proposition, illustrating your argument with specific examples.
  3. Describe the general theoretical properties of the so-called Cobb-Douglas production function. Explain its use (a) in the analysis of income distribution, and (b) in the analysis of technological change.
  4. Under what assumptions with respect to the flexibility of prices, the shape of the investment demand function, and the shape of the demand for money function will a “liquidity preference” theory of interest lead to the same result as a “neo-classical” theory of interest?
PART II
Two hours

Answer three out of five questions.

  1. “The subjective value theory of Jevons and the Austrians diverted economics from the classical tradition to which it returned only in recent years.” Discuss the validity of this statement.
  2. Describe the meaning and the significance of the so-called “duality theorem” of linear programming when it is interpreted in terms of economic analysis.
  3. Can a price ceiling imposed on the production of a monopolist induce him to produce and sell (a) a smaller or (b) a larger amount than that he would have produced and sold without such limitation? Explain your answer for either case.
  4. Give a theoretical explanation of the demand for labor (i.e., of the number of workers hired) by (a) an enterprise which pays its workers hourly wages, and (b) an enterprise which remunerates its workers on the straight piece-work basis.
  5. Economists frequently despair of the possibility of measuring the stock of capital, but do not raise similar problems with respect to measurement of the stock of labor or real output. Discuss.

PLEASE RETURN THIS EXAMINATION PAPER WITH YOUR BLUEBOOK.

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

Image Source: Original black and white images from Amherst College, Digital Collections. Amherst College Yearbook, Olio1926: Charles W. Cobb on p. 34; Paul H. Douglas on p. 36. Colorized at Economics by Economics in the Rear-view Mirror.

Categories
Chicago Exam Questions Microeconomics

Chicago. Price Theory Core Examination. Summer 1962

What would your reaction be to the remark in your exam “Remember that you are writing an examination in economic theory”? But, hey, Chicago, you do you.

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Chicago Price Theory
Preliminary/Core Exams
Previously Posted

Summer 1949
Summer 1951
Summer 1952
Winter 1955
Summer 1955
Winter 1957
Winter 1958
Summer 1960
Winter 1961
Winter 1963
Winter 1964
Winter 1965
Winter 1969
Summer 1975

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CORE EXAMINATION
Theory
Summer 1962

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

WRITE THE FOLLOWING INFORMATION ON YOUR EXAMINATION PAPER:

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

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

Answer all questions. Time: 3 hours. The suggested times for the various questions are guides to their weights in the grading.

  1. (60 minutes) True-False. State very briefly the reason for your answer to each question.
    1. The cross-elasticity of demand of left shoes with respect to the price of right shoes is zero.
    2. A competitive firm buying electrical equipment was not injured by the collusion of the producers (General Electric case) even if the collusion raised prices above the competitive level.
    3. If a consumer’s income rises in the same proportion as a Laspeyres index of his cost of living, his real income is rising.
    4. Duopolists with different costs cannot achieve a monopoly price without transfer payments between the firms.
    5. The marginal utility of income is not constant for a worker who increases his hours of work when the wage rate rises.
    6. If two goods are substitutes in consumption, a 10 cent fall in the price of either good will lead to the same increase in the consumption of the other good.
    7. A minimum wage law may increase the demand for labor by some firms.
    8. A competitive firm will have a more elastic demand function for a factor of production than a monopsonist.
    9. If a firm is operating in the region of falling marginal costs it must be making losses, since marginal cost is then less than average cost.
    10. A multiplant firm will schedule its output so that marginal costs are equal in all plants.
  2. (30 minutes) The stock market break of May 28 elicited many explanations. Comment upon the relevance of each of the following explanations.
    1. Stock prices had previously been too high.
    2. There was a holding back by big buyers.
    3. Inflation was no longer feared.
    4. Sellers became panic-stricken.
    5. The gold outflow, it was feared, would lead to exchange controls.

Remember that you are writing an examination in economic theory.

  1. (30 minutes) Capital formation may be defined as the use of current resources in such a way as to increase future income, and on this definition capital formation includes investments in equipment, human beings, and discovery of new knowledge. Discuss the problem of the meaning of the marginal product of capital, and whether capital as defined is subject to diminishing returns.
  2. (20 minutes) Each firm in an industry is given a license to operate, and no new firms are allowed to enter. The value of a license rises over time — does this prove that firms operate subject to diseconomies of scale?
  3. (40 minutes) It appears that the Federal Communications Commission will be given the power to compel manufacturers of television sets to build them in such a way that they will receive ultra-high frequency broadcasts (at an additional cost of about $25 per set). Then every community can have (say) a dozen channels. Will consumers be benefitted?

Source: Harvard University Archives. Papers of Zvi Griliches. Box 129. Folder “Preliminary Examinations, 1957-1965”.

Image Source: The School of Chicago (1972) as drawn by Roger Vaughan.

Categories
Exam Questions Money and Banking UCLA

UCLA. PhD Qualifying Exam, Money. May 1980

This post adds a fourth Ph.D. qualifying exam for the field of monetary economics at UCLA found in the papers of Robert W. Clower at the Economists’ Papers Archive at Duke University. 

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UCLA Qualifying Exams, Money
Previously posted

May 1971
May 1973
May 1974

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Ph.D. Qualifying Examination
Four Hours

MONEY

Spring Quarter 1980
May 19, 1980

INSTRUCTIONS: Answer all of the following eight questions. Be as specific and concise as possible. There is plenty of writing time to answer all of the questions satisfactorily, so try to spend some time thinking about each question before beginning to write an answer to it. Irrelevant material presented, however correct it may be, will be penalized.

  1. —
    1. Outline a proof of Patinkin’s proposition that real balances are indeterminate under a classical dichotomy between real and monetary sectors.
    2. Why is the proof inappropriate in a classical money economy, one with competitive banking and convertibility of paper money into a real commodity?
  2. —
    1. What special problem(s) does a limited horizon create for an inconvertible paper money system in which the money supplier is not committed to retire the issue?
    2. If we assume an unlimited horizon (a positive probability that the economy will last forever) do some problems still remain? If so, could governmental suppliers of money avoid such problems? Could a private money supplier?
  3. —
    1. What is the statically optimal rate of inflation in a competitive economy with a noninterest-bearing fiat money?
    2. Would you recommend adoption of this rate of inflation as a long-run policy guideline for the U.S. economy? Explain.
  4. In the standard Walrasian model of General Equilibrium an efficient allocation of resources is achieved without the use of any device called “money.” Yet the introduction and use of money is usually presumed to generate economic gains. How would you resolve this apparent conflict? Be specific in defining what you think “money” is and in identifying possible sources of economic gains.
  5. On the basis of arguments by Mickey Mouse and other leading economists, Congress in 1980 terminated all open-market operations by the Federal Reserve System and declared fine tuning through the use of monetary policy to be the moral equivalent of aggravated assault. Discuss the probable implications of this action for
    1. The rate of inflation
    2. Rates of interest
    3. Unemployment
    4. Government expenditure during the decade of the 1980’s.
  6. A few years ago an economist wrote a letter to the Wall Street Journal complaining that much discussion of how to control inflation was based on a neo-quantity theory that emphasized “the quantity of money” but ignored “the quality of credit.” The Federal Reserve System was established, he noted, to regulate commercial bank assets, but current discussion (and policy) concentrated on the liability side of the commercial bank balance sheet and entirely ignored the asset side. The economist maintained that if, for example, commercial banks were forced to limit their lending activity to short-term, self-liquidating business loans, as initially contemplated in the Federal Reserve Act of 1913, inflation would quickly be controlled. Evaluate this argument.
  7. When bank credit cards were initially spreading through the U.S., many people argued that their use would contribute to inflation because retailers would pass on — through higher prices — the charges that they had to pay to banks for credit sales. Some people argued, however, that prices would fall because the use of credit cards would reduce overall transactions costs. Yet others argued that prices might rise or fall, depending upon the precise effects of the use of such cards upon sales volumes and upon the velocity of money. Critically assess each of these arguments.
  8. It is customary for economic theorists to distinguish in their work between “barter” and “monetary” economies, and also between “value theory” and “monetary theory.”
    1. On what basis are these distinctions made (give specific references to the literature if you can)?
    2. Do you believe the distinctions are useful? If so, explain why; if not, explain why not.

Source: Duke University. Economists’ Papers Archive. David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library. Robert W. Clower papers, Box 4, Folder “Monetary Economics PhD exams. Reading list, exams UCLA 1971-1988”.

 

Categories
Agricultural Economics Exam Questions Harvard

Harvard. Final Exam for Economics of Agriculture. Carver, 1908-1909

 

In 1911 Harvard economics professor Thomas Nixon Carver published a textbook Principles of Rural Economics  that undoubtedly encompassed the content of his course on agricutural economics first taught in 1903-04. Carver’s book is prefaced with an eight page bibliography.

The eight question final exam for this semester course from 1908-09 is found below.

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Earlier material

ca. 1904 Problem set
1903-04 Final exam
1905-06 Final exam

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Course Enrollment
1908-09

Economics 23 2hf. Professor Carver. — Economics of Agriculture, with special reference to American conditions.

Total 25: 2 Graduates, 10 Seniors, 7 Juniors, 4 Sophomores, 2 Others.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College, 1908-1909, p. 68.

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Course Description
1908-09

[Economics]23 2hf. Economics of Agriculture, with special reference to American conditions. Half-course (second half-year). Tu., Th., at 2.30. Professor Carver.

A study of the relation of agriculture to the whole industrial system, the relative importance of rural and urban economics, the conditions of rural life in different parts of the United States, the forms of land tenure and methods of rent payment, the comparative merits of large and small holdings, the status and wages of farm labor, the influence of farm machinery, farmers’ organizations, the marketing and distribution of farm products, agricultural credit, the policy of the government toward agriculture, and the probable future of American agriculture.

Source: Official Register of Harvard University, Vol. V, No. 19
(1 June 1908). History and Political Science Comprising the Departments of History and Government, and Economics, 1908-09, p. 56.

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ECONOMICS 23
Year-end Examination, 1908-09

  1. Into what periods would you divide the agricultural history of the United States, and what are the leading characteristics of each period?
  2. What are the chief reasons for the fact that the urban population of the United States is growing more rapidly than the rural population?
  3. Does the law of diminishing returns as applied to agriculture give rise to national problems different from those to which it gives rise in manufacturing? Explain.
  4. Discuss the question: Is further immigration desirable in the interests of American agriculture? State clearly the point of view from which you approach the question.
  5. What agricultural improvements do you associate with the following names: Townsend, Bakewell, Robert Colling, Benjamin Tompkins, Jethro Wood.
  6. What are the chief difficulties in the way of the organization of farmers and farming interests?
  7. What, in your opinion, are the most important things now being done for agriculture by the Federal Government of the United States?
  8. State briefly the chief advantages of large-scale farming; also of small-scale farming.

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University, Examination Papers, 1873-1915. Box 8, Bound vol. Examination Papers 1908-09; Papers Set for Final Examinations in History, Government, Economics,…,Music in Harvard College (June, 1909), p. 51.

Image Source: “Picking cranberries.” Card. [ca. 1850–2001]. Digital Commonwealth, https://ark.digitalcommonwealth.org/ark:/50959/fx71c322q  (accessed June 02, 2025).

Categories
Exam Questions Harvard Theory

Harvard. Graduate Economic Theory Exam. April 1962

These posts are unlikely to threaten the popularity of Wordle, but letting graduate prelim exams in economics of yore test one’s wits or perhaps amuse by their presumption is possibly a better use of time for anyone from wannabe economist to crusty old emerita/us in the field.

So with little ado, Economics in the Rear-view Mirror adds Harvard’s April 1962 graduate exam in economic theory to its collection of artifacts. 

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Other Harvard Written Exams
in Economic Theory

April 11, 1961
November 13, 1962
April 8, 1963

_____________________________

PLEASE HAND IN THE EXAMINATION TEXT WITH YOUR BLUEBOOK
HARVARD UNIVERSITY
Department of Economics
WRITE LEGIBLY

Written Examination
in Economic Theory
April 10, 1962

All students must answer Part I; choose four questions from Part II.

Part I (one hour)

State whether each of FOUR of the following statements is true or false, justifying your answer in each case:

  1. The principle that a firm is maximizing its profits when marginal cost equals marginal revenue does not apply to oligopolistic firms.
  2. If a firm’s average cost curve in always decreasing, that firm will lose money if it sets its price equal to its marginal cost.
  3. If the price of a commodity rises, the demand for that commodity may rise too and the quantity offered for sale may fall.
  4. If production of the purely competitive firm is subject to constant returns to scale, a firm will not be minimizing cost unless it is producing in the range where every factor is subject to non-increasing returns.
  5. If a monopolist sells in two separated markets with different demand curves, in order to maximize his profits he must charge a lower price in the market where the elasticity of demand is lower in absolute value.

Part II (three hours)

  1. Keynes stated that from a policy viewpoint everything that can be done by money wage cuts can be done more effectively through monetary policy.
    1. Is this statement compatible with the theoretical framework of the General Theory?
    2. If a Haberler-Pigou-Patinkin real balances effect was of significant quantitative importance, would this change your conclusions about the two policies?
  2. Discuss the relative merits of financing a new superhighway by tolls or by gasoline taxes.
  3. “The theory of the competitive market system’s pricing of all products, allocation of resources, and distribution of income through payments for the factors of production, seemed to many nineteenth-century economists the main part of all economic theory, because it seemed to best demonstrate the desirability of the liberal, competitive regime.”
    Discuss the implications and validity of the statement, and support your points by considering as cases any two (your own choices) of the “many” theorists presumably referred to.
  4. Using a two commodity model, show that, with independence of utilities and an assumption of diminishing marginal utility for each good, there can be no “inferior” good.
  5. In different contexts the Stockholm school, exemplified by Ohlin, and post-war economists like Harrod have proposed theories of the dynamic instability of economies. Sketch these two types of theory with particular emphasis on the differences between them.
  6. Would there be time preference or waiting in a static state? A “marginal productivity” of capital? Liquidity preference? Interest? Discuss the issues in each case. Be sure your own answers are consistent with each other.
  7. The possibility of “excess capacity” under monopolistic competition has been vigorously defended and categorically denied. State and defend your own views, with some discussion of both sides of the question.

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

Source: Harvard University. From the cover of the Class Album 1946.

Categories
Chicago Exam Questions Microeconomics

Chicago. Preliminary Graduate Examination in Economic Theory. Winter Quarter, 1961

Detail of Friedman and Stigler in Vaughan's "The School of Chicago 1972"

Two things perhaps worth noting for this post. (1) The winter 1961 examination is for Economic Theory. The title of the prelim exam only morphs to Price Theory in the 1962-63 academic year, coinciding with the publication of Milton Friedman’s text “Price Theory: A Provisional Text”; (2) this exam has one, and only one, equation:

q = 100 – p.

Sputnik was lauched less than four years before these questions were written. While economic theory had not yet attained the status of “rocket-science” in 1961, let’s not fool ourselves, this is an exam designed to make or break character!

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Chicago Price Theory
Preliminary/Core Exams
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Summer 1960
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CORE EXAMINATION
ECONOMIC THEORY
Winter 1961

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

WRITE THE FOLLOWING INFORMATION ON YOUR EXAMINATION PAPER:

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

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

Answer all questions. Time 3 hours.

  1. (1 hour) Answer each question “true” or “false” and explain your answer very briefly.
    1. It is a tautology that the average costs of all firms are equal in equilibrium in a competitive industry.
    2. A cartel which allows its members to buy and sell output quotas will have a larger net profit for all firms combined than one which does not.
    3. Since all firms in a competitive industry have the same marginal costs, it is meaningless to speak of more and less efficient firms.
    4. A fall in the price of houses will increase the sales of doorbells; a fall in the price of doorbells will not increase the sales of houses; therefore Slutsky’s equation is wrong.
    5. The average size of farm has risen in recent decades in the United States and Canada. This shows that the farm enterprise is typically subject to increasing returns to scale.
    6. A specialized machine has a life of 5 years. Total returns to it in periods of less than 5 years are quasi-rents.
    7. Assume that the world demand elasticity for tin is -2, and that Bolivia produces 1/3 of the world’s tin. Therefore, the elasticity of demand for Bolivia tin is at most -6. 0.
    8. If factors of production are used in absolutely fixed proportion in the production of a particular product, the demand for each of the factors by the producers of the product will be completely inelastic with respect to price.
    9. A supply curve is a curve displaying the quantities which will be supplied at all possible prices. It follows that there is no supply curve under monopoly.
    10. If a firm is operating in the region of falling marginal costs, it must be making losses because marginal cost is then less than average cost.
  1. (40 minutes)
    1. The long run demand function for a commodity is
      q = 100 – p. The price has been $30 for several years; it now drops to $20. Half the consumers react to the new price immediately; the other half (due to habit, etc.) do not adapt until a year later. Calculate the elasticity of demand at a price of $20 (1) the first year, and (2) the second year after the price reduction.
    2. A consumer assures you that his indifference curves intersect each other. You have an unlimited number of observations on his purchases at various incomes and prices. What tests can you make of the alleged intersections?

III. (40 minutes)

    1. It has often been suggested that the demand for a durable good could be increased if “something were done about the large number of used items on the market” The practical suggestions usually are (1) a government regulation forbidding the use of items older than some specified age, e.g. declaring all pre-1950 cars as “unsafe” and withholding license plates from them or (2) “the manufacturers should buy up the used items and destroy them or export them at a loss. [sic, closing quotation marks missing in original] Discuss the consequences of these two types of policies on (a) the demand for new durable equipment and (b) the profitability to the industry of the two policies.

IV. (40 minutes)

    1. “The first impact of this policy (tight money) is the higher interest rate. Plainly the impact of this will be very different on a firm that has control over its prices and hence can pass along this higher cost as compared with the firm whose prices are given and which, accordingly, must bear the cost itself. The point need not be labored.
      “The U.S. Steel Corporation justified its price increase of 2 weeks ago by the contention that its cost had risen. In doing so it not only conceded its ability to pass higher costs, including higher interest charges, to the consumer but based its policy on the need to do so. But no such opportunity is open to the farmer or to the smaller businessman. They cannot raise their prices, for they are market-determined. They shoulder themselves the costs of this policy.”
      Analyze and evaluate this statement. Disregard the peculiar problems of monetary policy. Treat it as a question about the differential impact of a change in any factor price on a competitive firm or industry as against the impact on a monopolistic firm. Does a change in factor cost “hurt” less in one case than in the other? What do you understand by “passing the cost on to the consumer” and how does the distinction between a monopoly and a competitive industry affect this? Assume the same cost curves and the same shifts in both cases.

Source: Harvard University Archives. Papers of Zvi Griliches. Box 129, Folder “Preliminary Examinations, 1957-1965.”

Image Source: Roger Vaughan’s classic drawing “The School of Chicago 1972”.

Categories
Columbia Exam Questions Germany

Columbia. German language exam to satisfy the economics foreign language requirement. Kullmer, 1966

An economics graduate student hoping to pass the German language exam at Columbia in 1966 was required to translate the following one page selected from an article published in German in 1965. Or perhaps the student was expected to read the article and then answer questions posed by the examiner to test the reading comprehension?

Lore Kullmer (née Poschmann, b. 1919; d. 2011) translated Richard Musgrave’s The Theory of Public Finance into German. Shortly thereafter (1967) she was called to an economics professorship at the University of Regensburg.

Columbia. Allowing math to substitute for second foreign language, 1950

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GERMAN LANGUAGE EXAM
February 1966

DIE PRAKTISCHE BEDEUTUNG DER
STEUERPROGRESSION FÜR DIE GRÖSSE DER
AUFKOMMENSELASTIZITÄT EINER STEUER

Bemerkungen zu Ausführungen R. A. Musgraves
in seiner „Theory of Public Finance“
von
LORE KULLMER*

Kompensatorische Effekte zur Beseitigung von Störungen des wirtschaftlichen Gleichgewichts im privaten Sektor lassen sich u.a. durch die Anwendung des finanzpolitischen Instrumentariums, d.h. konkret durch Änderung des Steuer- und Ausgabenparameter, erzielen. Allerdings erfordert der Zeitbedarf einer mittels diskretionärer Maßnahmen durchgeführten Stabilisierungspolitik ein genügend langsames Fortschreiten der autonomen Änderungen der zu beeinflussenden Faktoren, wenn die Maßnahmen im gewünschten Sinne wirken sollen. Es sind Situationen denkbar in denen eine wirksame Stabilisierungspolitik mit diskretionären Maßnahmen nicht möglich erscheint und jeder Versuch dazu die Abweichungen von Gleichgewichtseinkommen nur ungenügend verringert oder u.U. sogar verstärkt. Hinzu kommt, dass in bestimmten Fällen die Variation finanzpolitischer Maßnahmen überhaupt nicht (oder nicht im notwendigen Umfang) vorgenommen werden kann und/oder sich aus politisch/psychologischen Gründen die häufige Änderung von Steuer- und Ausgabenparametern verbietet.

Die Erkenntnis dieser Zusammenhänge hat die bei entsprechender Ausgestaltung der Instrumente des Finanzsystems in gewissen Umfang vorhandene automatische und unverzüglich wirkende Reagibilität auf Schwankungen des Volkseinkommens im Sinne einer Milderung dieser Schwankungen in den Mittelpunkt des Interesses gerückt und den Ausbau dieses Instrumentariums attraktiv erscheinen lassen.

Der Umfang dieser als built-in flexibility der Budgetgrößen bezeichneten Reagibilität (d.h. die Größe der Anpassung des Aufkommens bestimmter Steuern und der Adaptierung bestimmter Ausgabenverpflichtungen der öffentlichen Hand) kann — von statistischen Daten ausgehend — als Verhältnis der Schwankungen des Finanzsystems zu den Schwankungen des Volkseinkommens gemessen werden.

[Original Source: Public Finance Vol. 20(1965), 1/2, pp. 137-149]

Source: Columbia University Libraries, Manuscript Collections. Columbia University Department of Economics Collection. Carl Shoup Materials. Box 11, Folder “Economics — Memoranda”.