Category: Syllabus

Harvard. Program for the Sophomore Tutorial. Sept 1965

Post author By Irwin Collier
Post date 2025-12-10

For the previous post Economics in the Rear-view Mirror transcribed the reading lists and semester exams for the two semester Principles of Economics course (Economics 1) taught at Harvard in 1965-66. A biographical sketch of the faculty member responsible for coordinating the content and organizational structure of the instruction (some lectures, but mostly work in smaller sections), Richard T. Gill, can be found in that post too.

No less important for the course was the position of Head Tutor which was newly filled by Lars G. Sandberg (Harvard A.B. 1961; Harvard Ph.D. 1964), who was presumably the author of the “A Program for Sophomore Tutorial” (fifteen pages!) that Economics in the Rear-view Mirror has transcribed and included below. The program as outlined was designed for those Harvard undergraduates who were taking Economics 1 in their sophomore year, as opposed to their freshman year. Perhaps a document will turn up with information about the sophomore tutorial groups in economics offered to the students who had taken Economics 1 in their Freshman year.

The sophomore tutorial was a component of the larger tutorial system at Harvard College. The junior [Economics 98a and 98b] and senior [Economics 99] tutorial seminars were instituted to prepare for the departmental general examinations. [See the post on the 1964-65 junior tutorial led by Richard Caves: the post on the 1960-61 junior tutorial of Smithies and Chamberlin.]

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Origin of Tutorial Instruction in Economics, 1915-16

The Division of History, Government, and Economics introduced an new examination for A.B. candidates with a concentration chosen in the Division.

This examination was devised “not in order to place an additional burden upon candidates for the A.B., but for the purpose of securing better correlation of the student’s work, encouraging better methods of study, and furnishing a more adequate test of real power and attainment.” In their preparation students have from the beginning of the Sophomore year special tutorial instruction.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College 1915-1916, pp. 75-76.

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Obituary of Lars Gunnarsson Sandberg
(1939-2020)

Lars Gunnarsson Sandberg, 81, of Dublin, a 48-year resident of Upper Arlington, died at Riverside Methodist Hospital on September 29, 2020, with his family at his side.

He was born June 20, 1939, in Uppsala, Sweden, and emigrated to New York City in 1948. He graduated Summa Cum Laude from Harvard College in 1961, where he was awarded the John H. Williams Prize for the top graduating student in Economics, and earned a Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1964. He taught Economics at Harvard and Dartmouth College before becoming a tenured full professor at The Ohio State University from 1970 – 1995. He continued to teach after retirement as an adjunct professor at OSU and Uppsala University. He was an avid reader and spent much of his time in libraries. He enjoyed the arts as much as sporting events, and rarely missed a Masterpiece Theatre show or an OSU football game. He loved boats, and enjoyed many sailing trips with his family on the east coast of Sweden. He was well known for his intelligence, his sharp wit, his down-to-earth nature, and his complete devotion to his family. He will be sadly missed.

He is preceded in death by his parents, Gunnar and Laila Sandberg. He is survived by his wife of 57 years, Joyce Bigelow; son, Per Larsson (Sharon Knight) of San Francisco; daughters, Kerstin Margareta and Elisabet Katarina of Columbus; grandchildren, Erik and Elin; brothers, Bengt (Beatrice Helbling) Sandberg of Oberuzwil, Switzerland, and Per (Karin) Sandberg of Stockholm, Sweden, and many nieces and nephews.

Due to Covid-19, a memorial service will be announced at a later date. Interment is planned in Lunenburg, MA, and Uppsala, Sweden. In lieu of flowers, donations in his memory may be made to PBS or to Friends of the Upper Arlington Public Library.

Source: Dignity Memorial Website.

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Course Announcement

Economics 1. Principles of Economics

Full course. Indivisible. M., W., F., at 12. The major part of the course is conducted in sections. Throughout the year, however, there will be lectures, generally on W., at 12. M., W., and F., at 12 will be the normal hour for section meetings, but sections will be scheduled at other hours. Professor Dunlop, Drs. R. T. Gill, Sanberg and other Members of the Department.

The Department encourages students considering concentration to take this course in their freshman year.

Designed to introduce students to the methods of economic analysis that bear on the issues which confront this country and the world. Will thus serve the needs both of those students who plan no further work in Economics and those who desire to obtain the groundwork for more advanced courses in the field.

Source: Harvard University, Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Courses of Instruction for Harvard and Radcliffe, 1965-1966, p. 102.

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Harvard University
Department of Economics
Tutorial Office
September 25, 1965

A Program for Sophomore Tutorial

The attached list of readings is the suggested list for sophomore tutorial groups comprised of students taking Economics 1 during the coming year. The list was prepared at the request of the Department’s Committee on Undergraduate Instruction for the purpose of providing a tutorial program to deepen and enrich the impact of Economics 1.

The suggested program has five sections, corresponding to major sections of Economics 1. Sections one and two are generally designed for the first term and sections three, four and five for the second term. Readings for each of the sections were chosen so as to provide somewhat more material than would be required for three two-hour tutorial meetings. The excess material within each section should provide flexibility in adapting to the needs of individual tutorial groups.

Papers and problem sets of the tutor’s own devising are optional with the suggested program. In planning for these, it should be recalled that tutees are required to prepare a Sophomore Essay during the Spring Term.

Brief comments on a suggested approach to each section have been provided.

SECTION I
Economic History

Henri Pirenne, The Economic and Social History of Medieval Europe.
The Economic Effects of the Navigation Acts on the American Colonies and Their Relationship to the American Revolution
1. Bernard Bailyn, “Communications and Trade: The Atlantic in the Seventeenth Century,” in H. Scheiber ed., US Economic History: A Reader, pp. 30-40, or JEH, XIII, Fall 1953, pp. 378-87.
2. Oliver Dickerson, The Navigation Acts and the American Revolution, chap. 1-9, 11.
3. Lawrence Harper, “The Effects of the Navigation Acts on the Thirteen Colonies,” in Scheiber, op. cit., pp. 41-70, or R. Morris ed., The Era of the American Revolution, pp. 3-39.
4. Curtis P. Nettels, “British Mercantilism and the Economic Development of the Thirteen Colonies,” JEH, XII, Spring 1952, pp. 105-114.
The Effects of Slavery on the Economic Development of the South
1. Alfred Conrad and John Meyer, The Economics of Slavery, pp. 43-99, 223-233. Pages 43-99 also appear in the JPE as pp. 95-130, April 1958, and pp. 440-443, October 1958.
2. Eugene Genovese, “The Significance of the Slave Plantation for Southern Economic Development,” in Scheiber, op. cit., pp.149-161 or Journal of Southern History, Nov. 1962, pp. 422-37.
3. E. Moes, “Absorption of Capital in Slave Labor in the Ante-Bellum South and Economic Growth,” American Journal of Economics and Sociology, October 1961, pp. 535-542.
4. Robert R. Russel, “The General Effects of Slavery Upon Southern Economic Progress,” JSH, February 1938, p. 34-54.
The Role of the Government in the Development of the US Economy — Especially Transportation Part I — The Ante-Bellum Period
1. Thomas C. Cochran, “Land Grants and Railroad Enterprise,” JEH, Supplement X, 1950, pp. 53-67.
2. Carter Goodrich, Government Promotion of American Canals and Railroads, chap. 1-4.
3. K. Henrich, O. Handlin, L. Hartz and M. S. Heath, “”The Development of American Laissez Faire,” Journal of Economic History, Supplement, 1945, pp. 51-100.
4. Milton S. Heath, “Public Railroad Construction and the Development of Private Enterprise in the South Before 1861,” JEH, Supplement X, 1950, pp. 40-53.
5. Edward Mason, Economic Planning in Underdeveloped Areas, chap. 2, “Government and Business in 19th Century Development.”
Part II The Post-Bellum Period
1. Robert Fogel, The Union Pacific: A Case of Premature Enterprise.
2. Goodrich, op. cit., chap. 5-8.
The Effects of Improved Transportation on US Economic Development
1. Robert Fogel, Railroads and American Economic Growth, chap. I and VI.
2. George Taylor, The Transportation Revolution, chap. I-XI, XV, XVI.

Section I places emphasis on problems in American economic history. Pirenne is included because it is so well liked by experienced tutors and because it has been removed from the Economics I reading list within the last few years. It should, if it is at all possible, be used during the first few weeks of the term.

The readings in part B include varying estimates of the costs and benefits to the American Colonies resulting from the Navigation Acts and related British legislation. This problem is important both as history and as an example of commercial policy.

The question of Southern slavery also generates a considerable amount of dispute. Among the suggested readings, Genovese and Moes argue that slavery seriously retarded the economic development of the South, while Conrad, Meyer and Russel remain skeptical. The Conrad and Meyer study is also of considerable interest as a prototype of the “new,” quantitative economic history.

Parts D and E might well be handled in one meeting, half the tutorial group being assigned to the ante-bellum period and the other half to the post-bellum period. There should then be plenty of opportunity to “compare and contrast” policy in the two periods. The most interesting readings from an analytical point of view are the articles on “The Development of American Laissez Faire” and Fogel’s short book on the Union Pacific. The rest of the readings tend to be more descriptive in nature.

Part F uses the introduction and conclusion of Fogel’s rather complex book downgrading the importance of railroads and a standard exposition of US economic history to generate some debate on the role of transport, and therefore government support of transport development, in US economic development. Some attempt might also be made to consider this question in the context of currently underdeveloped countries.

SECTION II
Competition and Modern Industrial Organization

The Concept and Function of the Entrepreneur
1. Joseph Schumpeter, The Theory of Economic Development, pp. 74-94.
2. Alfred P. Sloan, Jr., My Years with General Motors, Introduction and pp. 3-168.
3. Carl Kaysen, “A Hero of Our Time,” New Republic, February 29, 1964, pp. 21-23; mimeo. available in University Hall 9.
4. Symposium on Corporate Capitalism, QJE, February 1965, pp. 1-51 and August 1965, pp. 492-499.
Advertising

A supplement containing suggested readings on this topic will be mailed out during October.

Business in Difficulties
1. Richard Austin Smith, Corporations in Crisis, pp. 13-26, 63-96. (“Introduction” and “General Dynamics: A Crisis of Control” — the Convair 880 case).
2. John Brooks, The Fate of the Edsel and Other Business Adventures, pp. 17-75. (“The Rise of the Edsel” and “The Fall of the Edsel”).
3. Ibid., pp. 137-164. (“The Impacted Philosophers” — The GE-electric industry price fixing case.)
4. Richard Harris, The Real Voice. (Senator Kefauver, The Drug Industry and Legislation).

The purpose of Section II is to illustrate the complex and uncertain environment in which business enterprise must operate. This basic approach has been selected as a counterweight to the relatively abstract treatment of the theory of the firm provided in Economics 1.

The readings in Group A concentrate on the problem of the entrepreneur. The first Schumpeter reading presents his classic theory of the entrepreneurial function. Sloan’s book describes a famous entrepreneurial task: the development of the management system of General Motors. The QJE symposium deals mainly with the relation between corporate control and organization, on the one hand, and corporate behavior on the other.

The Smith reading and the first Brooks’ reading in Group C deal with serious mistakes in business judgement, the former, after a general introduction, with the case of General Dynamics and the Convair 880, and the latter with the failure of the Edsel. The Smith reading is the more analytical. Harris’ book and the second selection in Brooks deal with problems of business ethics. Harris describes the events leading up to the Drug Amendments Act of 1962, and Brooks deals with General Electric’s position in the electric industry conspiracy case.

SECTION III
Policy Problems

The Role of Government
1. Milton Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom
2. J. K. Galbraith, The Affluent Society

The issues which Friedman and Galbraith discuss may be treated individually and in greater detail.

Equality —The Progressive Personal Income Tax
1. Milton Friedman, “The Distribution of Income,” Capitalism and Freedom, pp. 161-76.
2. Walter Blum and H. Kalven, The Uneasy Case for Progressive Taxation, pp. 104.
3. Richard Goode, The Individual Income Tax, chap. IV, X, XI, XII, pp. 58-75, 260-318.
Education
1. Milton Friedman, “The Role of Government in Education,” Capitalism and Freedom, chap. VI, pp. 85-107.
2. John Vaizey, “Education as Consumption or Investment — a Public or Private Good?” The Economics of Education, pp. 26-36.
3. Theodore Schultz, The Economic Value of Education, 70 pp.
4. R. S. Eckaus, “Education and Economic Growth,” in Economics of Higher Education, ed. by Selma Mushkin, pp. 102-128.
5. Henry Bruton, “The Training of Labor,” Principles of Development Economics, pp. 205-40.
The Costs of Racial Discrimination
1. Mary Jean Bowman, “Human Inequalities and Southern Development,” Education and the Southern Economy, Supplement to SEJ, July 1965, pp. 73-102.
2. Gary Becker, The Economics of Discrimination (avoid appendixes)
3. Barbara Bergman, “The Effect of Discrimination Against Negroes in Employment on the Size and Distribution of Personal Income,” (mimeo. available at University Hall 9)
4. CEA, “The Economic Cost of Discrimination,” (mimeo. available at University Hall 9)
5. Alan Batchelder, “Decline in the Relative Income of Negro Men,” QJE, November 1964, pp. 525-548.
6. Alan Batchelder, “Poverty: The Special Case of the Negro,” AER, May 1965, pp. 530-539.

Section III presents readings on policy issues concerning the degree to which the government should amend certain economic decisions reached in the market place.

The readings in Part A by Friedman and Galbraith are book length statements of two largely opposing viewpoints on this question. Each book covers a large number of issues. Tutors who use Part A should probably assign both books at once, but may wish to devote two meetings to discussing them.

If tutors prefer to focus on particular issues, they may use Parts Band C instead of (or in addition to) Part A. In Part B, the selection by Friedman attacks the progressive income tax; the book by Blum and Kalven dissects the various ‘economic’ arguments for progressivity that have been advanced and concludes that the case for progressivity rests on ethical or aesthetic grounds; the chapters from Goode discuss actual economic effects of the progressive income tax. In part C Friedman and Vaizey debate the economic case for compulsory education. The book by Schultze is a terse description of education as an economic good with many facets. Eckaus and Bruton describe how education and economic growth are related.

The readings on the economics of discrimination include a theoretical exposition of the problem, several articles describing the economic position of the U.S. Negro and finally two different, and differing, estimates of the social economic cost of discrimination.

SECTION IV
Economic Growth and Organization
in Other Countries

Part I: Economic Planning

Planning: Theory versus Harsh Reality
1. Oskar Lange, “On the Economic Theory of Socialism” in Oskar Lange and Fred M. Taylor, On the Economic Theory of Socialism, pp. 55-129.
2. Ely Devons, Planning in Practice
Planning: Country Studies
1. “Use of Models in Programming” and “Aims and Means of Programming” in Gerald Meier, Leading Issues in Development Economics, pp. 465-83.
2. Everett Hagen, “The Aims and Tools of Economic Development Planning,” in Everett Hagen (ed.), Planning Economic Development, pp. 7-19.
3. Louis J. Walinsky, “Burma,” and Claire Wilcox, “Pakistan,” in E. Hagen (ed.), Planning Economic Development, 26-51, 52-79.
4. [4a.] Paul Lemerle, “Planning for Economic Development in France,” in U.N. Planning for Economic Development, II, Studies of National Planning Experience, Part I, Private Enterprise and Mixed Economics, pp. 47-61.
5. [4b.] C.P. Kindleberger, “The Post-war Resurgence of the French Economy,” in Stanley Hoffman (et. al.), In Search of France, pp. 153-58.
6. [5.] Pieter de Wolff, “Planning for Economic Development in the Netherlands,” in U.N. Planning for Economic Development (etc.), pp. 133-42.
7. [6.] Gunnar Myrdal, Challenge to Affluence, Part I, esp. chap. 6 and 7.
Planning: How Pervasive?
1. Wolfgang Stolper, “Problems of Development Planning” and Gerald Meier, “The State of Development Planning — Note,” in Gerald Meier (ed.) Leading Issues in Development Economics, pp. 491-6, 561-4.
2. Everett Hagen, “The Nature of a Good Plan and the Machinery for Good Planning” and “Some Difficulties and Some Remedies,” Planning Economic Development, pp. 325-64.
3. A. Waterston, “Review of Hagen’s Planning Economic Development,” Economic Development and Cultural Change, July, 1965.
4. Peter Bauer and Basil Yamey, “General Appraisal of the Role of Government” and “Functions of Government,” in The Economics of Underdeveloped Countries, pp. 149-89.
5. Edward Mason, “Government Initiated Development,” in Economic Planning in Underdeveloped Areas, pp. 40-59.
6. Joel Dirlan and Andrew Watson, “The Impact of Underdevelopment on Economic Planning,” Quarterly Journal of Economics, May, 1965, pp. 167-94.

Section IV discusses economic planning in theory and in fact.

The reading by Lange in Part A is the classic statement on behalf of market socialism as a system of planning. Devons, on the other hand, describes the actual planning problems encountered in the British aircraft industry during World War II.

The readings in Part B consist of two brief statements of alternative approaches to planning and of six descriptions of how planning is (or might be) done in five countries. The planning practices differ sharply as do the circumstances of the countries described. Tutors may use these differences to illustrate how particular conditions condition the planning methods that are used. Care should be taken to try to define ‘planning.’

Part C contains readings of a more general nature on the question of how much governments in underdeveloped countries should control economic activity in order to promote economic welfare. The viewpoints range from a belief that government activity should be severely limited in principle (Bauer and Yamey), through practical concern about how planning works in practice (Meier, and Dirlam and Watson), to a belief that government planning is both inevitable and desirable (Mason) and feasible (Hagen).

SECTION V
Economic Growth and Organization
in Other Countries

Part II: The Economics of Underdevelopment

Trade and Development
1. Charles P. Kindleberger, Foreign Trade and the National Econom
Trade and Development
1. Gottfried Haberler, International Trade and Economic Development.
2. Ragnar Nurkse, Patterns of Trade and Development.
3. Werner Baer, “The Economics of Prebisch and ECLA,” Economic Development and Cultural Change, Jan. 1962, pp. 169-183.
4. H. W. Singer, “The Distribution of Gains Between Investing and Borrowing Countries,” American Economic Review, May 1950, pp. 473-494.
Trade and Development
1. Albert H. Imlah, Economic Elements in the Pax Britannica, chap. 5,6.
2. William Lockwood, The Economic Development of Japan, chap. 1,2,6,7.
Social and Political Aspects of Development
1. David C. McClelland, The Achieving Society, chap. 1-3, 6,7,10.
2. Exchange between Sayre [P.] Schatz and [David C.] McClelland, QJE, May 1965, pp. 234-247.
Social and Political Aspects of Development
1. Edward S. Mason, Economic Planning in Underdeveloped Areas.
2. Max F. Millikan and Donald L. M. Blackmer, The Emerging Nations.

Of the many possible subjects that could have been chosen for study under this general heading, two have emerged as perhaps most interesting. One is the relationship between international trade and development and the other is the importance of social and political factors in development. Material is provided for three meetings on trade and two on social and political aspects.

Group A consists exclusively of Kindleberger’s book on the relationship between trade and the domestic economy. While it does devote considerable space to the question of economic development, the book is more general than that. It can best be considered as a way of tying the theory of international trade with the nature, problems and progress of the domestic economy.

Group B deals with the theoretical debate concerning the effect of international trade on the underdeveloped countries. Haberler presents a concise and well reasoned defense of free trade and traditional trade theory. Nurkse, on the other hand, points out that this traditional theory is based on 19th century experience that may no longer be valid. The Baer article is a brief, and on the whole sympathetic, presentation of Prebisch’s argument concerning the worsening terms of trade faced by the underdeveloped countries. Singer’s article argues that foreign investment in the production of raw materials in underdeveloped countries is of little or no benefit to the recipient country.

The readings for Group C consist of two case studies. The first is a brief account of British experience with protection and free trade in the 19th century when she was the world’s leading industrial power. The second is a longer and more detailed study of the role of foreign trade in Japanese development up to 1938. These two case studies can be compared with each other and be interpreted in relation to the more theoretical material of Groups A and B.

McClelland’s book, in Group D, presents a sociological view of economic development. It emphasizes the importance of the psychological need for achievement in generating entrepreneurship, a key factor in economic development.

The works assigned in Group E are more general and cover a wider area than McClelland’s book. The Emerging Nations takes a social and political view of development and ends with an analysis of what American policy should be. Mason’s short book, on the other hand, concentrates on the problems of the underdeveloped countries, particularly the need for economic planning and control.

Source: Harvard University Archives. Syllabi, course outlines and reading lists in Economics, 1895-2003, Box 9; Folder: “Economics, 1965-66 (1 of 2)”.

Tags SandbergLG

Exam Questions Harvard Principles Suggested Reading Syllabus

Harvard. Reading Lists and Semester Exams for Principles of Economics. Dunlop, Gill and Sanberg. 1965-1966

Post author By Irwin Collier
Post date 2025-12-09

Richard T. Gill directed the Harvard economics department’s Juggernaut course Economics 1 (Principles of Economics) for eight years (1958/59-1966/67). He was followed in turn by Otto Eckstein, a.k.a. “Otto Ec-10” (1967/68-1983/84), Martin Feldstein (1984/85-2004/05), and Gregory Mankiw (2005/06-2018/19).

I suspect that the reason for Richard T. Gill’s giving the first six lectures in the Economics 1 (which was taught for the most part in smaller sections) was that an overview of economic history and the history of economics was better provided as a series of briefings than as socratic dialogues. Also few graduate students and junior faculty would have had even minimal exposure and/or interest in those subjects.

In this post we provide some background to Economics 1 à la Gill and a sketch of the stations of his eclectic career which are followed by the semester readings and exams for the Principles of Economics as taught in the Harvard economics department in 1965-66.

Bonus material: Joseph Shore & Richard T. Gill, Rigoletto — Quel vecchio maledivami & Pari Siamo (1979 recording). Joseph Shore wrote “Richard T Gill was the greatest Sparafucile I ever sang with and this is the best duet I sang in all my Rigoletto shows.”

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Ec 1: A Monster Becomes an Institution Everything About Ec 1 Pleases Gill Now Except Gen Ed Status

By Richard R. Edmonds
April 12, 1967

Economics 1 has never been unknockable. Students always moan a little about the ultra-general final exam questions and the obscurities of Dorfman’s price theory text. And all but the most even-tempered freshmen at times grow resentful of the inevitable calculus wonk who loudly corrects mistakes in his section man’s graphs. These are minor irritants though. The vast majority of students (95 per cent according to a 1962 Economics Department survey) end up satisfied with Ec 1 and the course hardly seemed a target for radical discontent.

So the prospect of a critique of Economics 1 by the Harvard-Radcliffe Young People’s Socialist League was a bit startling both to those who run the course and those who take it. The eight-page document, released last month, was an anti-climax. Though well-researched and well-written, it blunted the edge of its militancy with too much scholarly prose, and too little focus on how the course should change.

The critique drew mixed reviews. Arthur Smithies, Nathaniel Ropes Professor of Political Economy, thought it raised economic issues that deserved to be considered seriously. Several Ec 1 sectionmen and former sectionmen said they agreed completely with its criticisms of the course. But Richard T. Gill ’48, lecturer in Economics and administrative head of Ec 1 since 1959, didn’t like the critique at all, and his opinion was crucial.

Unruffled

Gill wasn’t ruffled by the sight of a pair of students telling him in print how the course should be run. And though he found the eight pages full of faulty economics, he wasn’t worried about the effect of these errors. What bothered him was what he considered the narrowness of the critique’s “new left” view of economics. The public “dialogue” its authors insistently demanded was just what Gill wanted to avoid. This is Gill’s final year as head of the course and he understandably does not want to leave it in a blaze of artificial controversy over issues he considers trivial.

A month after the critique was issued, it appears to have failed as an instrument of radical reform. At a March 6 Ec 1 staff meeting Gill asked if there was any sentiment for revising the course substantially; only a couple of hands went up. Several of the section men who liked the critique best didn’t even bother to attend. Whether the critique succeeded in exposing serious deficiencies in Economics 1 is still an open question.

Curiously the critique is more a reactionary than a radical document. Though the critique’s author Stephen Kelman ’70 and his confederates would deplore the suggestion that they wanted a return to the good old days, it is ironic that instituting all the practical changes their criticisms implied would make the course much as it was in the late 50’s.

Before Gill took over the course in the spring of 1959, he and three others in the Department submitted a massive plan for revising Ec 1 (their outline for the revised course was more than 20 pages long). Gill acted, he says, because “Economics 1 had settled into a rut; the focus was too much on the system in the United States here and now parts of the course got bogged down in diagramatics so that students were learning tools and not much else.”

During the late ’50’s both the number of students taking Ec 1 and the number concentrating in Economics were declining. Since Gill took over course enrollment has soared from 550 to this year’s all-time high of 829.

Gill made three big changes in Ec 1’s content. He added the section on British industrialism and the classical economists that now fills the first month of the course, as well as the chunk on the Soviet economy (being taught this week and next) and the exhaustive treatment of underdeveloped countries that occupies the rest of the spring.

To make room for the new material, three weeks on distribution (which the critique says is now inadequately treated by a few sentences in Dorfman) were trimmed and the material reinserted in other parts of the course. The other major casualty was a three week section on “alternatives to capitalism” that used to come during reading period, right after the course had developed micro-economic theory and applied it to American capitalism. (It was the critique’s final and most specific charge that socialism receives only “confusing attention” now in Ec 1.)

The history of economic theory is Gill’s special interest, but he says that “personal predilections” only partly explain how Ricardo and Arkwright found their way into an introductory economics course. The first month of Ec 1 is designed, says Gill, “to convey the relativity of present economic conditions to institutions and ideas of the past, to relate economics to the rest of the social sciences.”

The value may be here, but it escapes many students. A survey the Economics Department took in 1962 asked those who took the course whether there should be more or less on each of the 14 topics covered. The pollees voted for more of everything but economic history and Gill accordingly chopped out a third of the material. Some feel he should have gone farther.

“The course has to be introduced with a problem,” says one section man, “but the story of how England got to be the kind of economy it is, is not as germaine as it might be for the majority of students.” Another, who is in his third year teaching the course, says, “At first I couldn’t see any point to it, but now I’m starting to agree with Gill that it’s a good way to get people started.”

Behind the criticisms of Ec 1’s historical material and behind last month’s critique as well is the conviction that the course would be better if it were more political. “This is the only course most people take in economics,” says a section man, “so there ought to be more time on present problems and less on economic tools.” Kelman’s call for more “controversy” in Economics I was based on a similar idea — the course should be constantly examining both sides of economic questions instead of trying to develop an objective economic theory first.

The critique’s vision of an issues-oriented introductory course is not a new idea. In the late ’50’s and early ’60’s Harvard had a Gen Ed course called “Economics of the Citizen” which tried this approach. It never became as popular as the more rigorous Ec 1. Eventually it gained the reputation of being a gut of little substance that the self-respecting avoided. Gill argues that talking explicitly about controversy isn’t always the best way to equip students to talk about political problems — “you can’t just describe economics — you’ve got to get down to working those damn curves to understand the problems.”

Gill’s 1959 plan changed the structure of Ec 1 as well as the material it covers. In the old days Ec 1 lectures were strictly a star show-each of the Department’s great men mounted the podium once and talked for an hour to the crowds below. Though continuity may still be lacking, the lectures under Gill’s regime have a function. They come in blocks instead of being scattered sporadically throughout the term and the blocks give the course more structure than it once had by forcing section men to keep pace with upcoming lectures.

Lectures are scheduled on the kind of material that probably wouldn’t otherwise get covered — background to policy and development questions where vast amounts of knowledge have to be condensed and jammed into a single meeting. The section men are left with huge chunks of the course material — notably microeconomic theory for which they have to develop a teaching approach of their own. This ingenious division of labor, Gill’s biggest improvement, has made the monster course smooth and flexible.

Gill has been the influential figure in giving Ec 1 its present shape, but he doesn’t run the course by himself. Actually Economics 1 is governed like a Harvard in miniature — responsibility is scattered and different kinds of decisions are made at different levels. In the course catalogue, the Department chairman’s name always is listed first — even before Gill’s. Most years the chairman gets no closer to the mechanics of the course than providing section men and giving a couple lectures, but the listing indicates that… [article truncated here]

Source: The Harvard Crimson, 12 April 1967.

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Touching Basses: The Extraordinary Lives of Richard T. Gill
CLASS OF 1948

By Andrew K. Mandel, CRIMSON STAFF WRITER
June 1, 1998

What happens when you put a prizewinning pugilist, an economist, a world-renowned opera singer, a Harvard House master and a television personality in the same room?

Richard T. Gill ’48 stands alone.

A former Economics 1 professor who led Leverett for 16 years as senior tutor and then master, Gill has written books with Professors Nathan Glazer and Stephan Thernstrom, has sung with all Three Tenors and Beverly Sills, earned The Atlantic Monthly’s short story prize and won a few boxing matches along the way. This all began not long after he entered Harvard College–at age 16.

Gill’s sister says her brother has always been “phenomenal.”

And his wife cannot help but chuckle when she looks back on her “very fascinating, if at times hair-raising” life alongside her husband of 48 years.

Longtime Harvard administrator Fred L. Glimp ’50 says Gill is “as close to a Renaissance man as I’ve ever met,” calling his former colleague “the kind of a guy that–if he weren’t so nice and so kind and impressive in a human way–everybody would hate him because he’s so dog-gone good at almost anything he puts his hand to.”

With Honors

The Long Branch, N.J. native was a product of the Depression, the youngest of three children.

His father Thomas G. Gill worked for a billboard advertising firm hit hard by the economic crisis of the 1930s; Richard lived what he called a “tight, but very happy childhood,” drawn to vocal performance by his mother Myrtle, a music teacher.

Gill met his future wife Elizabeth at a community concert when they were both 15. Their relationship was “stormy off and on,” Elizabeth Gill says, “but ultimately it was on.”

Placing second out of more than 100,000 students in a national American Legion Oratorical Contest in high school, Richard Gill came to Harvard in 1944 and led the Debate Council as its president, winning the College’s Coolidge debate prize and delivering the Class Oration senior year.

A congenial man to interview, Gill was apparently quite the fighter–both behind the podium and in the ring–as an undergraduate.

After Gill accidentally broke someone’s nose in boxing class, the coach of the varsity boxing team approached Gill and encouraged him to fight for Harvard.

Gill also managed to find a niche as a soloist in the Glee Club, the editor of the Student Progressive, the head of the Liberal Union and a member of Phi Beta Kappa junior year.

“I was busy,” Gill acknowledges.

Called away from Cambridge after sophomore year, Gill spent time in the army stationed in Japan, and won the regimental boxing championship, in the middleweight division.

Once back in the Square, Gill graduated summa cum laude in economics, garnering the Palfrey Exhibition (awarded to the most distinguished graduating scholarship student) and a Henry Fellowship to study philosophy and psychology at Jesus College in England.

And though he later earned a Fulbright Fellowship for further study, Gill returned to the States after only a year abroad when his father became ill.

Mastering Harvard

At age 21, Gill became an assistant dean of the College, and claims to be the youngest “baby dean” in Harvard College history.

Awarded his Ph.D. in economics in 1956, Gill directed the largest course at the College, known now as Social Analysis 10: “Principles of Economics.”

And by 1963, after an eight-year stint as senior tutor, Gill and his wife Elizabeth were moving into the master’s residence at Leverett House.

Being administrators during the days of student protests was challenging, the Gills admit.

When strangers threw rocks through the windows of the Gill home and nearly injured their children, Elizabeth Gill was not sure if the protests were directed at her advocacy of increased diversity in Cambridge’s public school teaching staff–or at her husband’s “neanderthal” ideologies.

“It turns out they were my enemies,” she sighs.

Her husband’s commitment to freedom of speech was unpopular in the late ’60s, Gill says.

“I was very much a law-and-order type,” Richard Gill notes.

Gill says one of his Leverett students had interned for President Lyndon B. Johnson, and there was a good chance LBJ would agree to speak at the House senior dinner. (“Not even [famed Eliot House Master] John [H.] Finley [’25] could’ve topped that,” Gill laughs.)

Ultimately, Johnson declined the offer–and Gill, who faced “the sharpest of criticisms” from some Faculty members for extending an invitation to the commander-in-chief during the Vietnam War, concedes that the president’s arrival “would have caused a riot.”

The Making of a Star

At the same time protesting at Harvard had begun to take center stage, Gill found his way to the spotlight.

A heavy smoker for many years, Gill decided to quit in favor of private voice lessons, where he practiced furiously.

In May of 1967, Gill appeared as the Count in the Leverett House Opera’s The Marriage of Figaro. The production–“the most charming I have ever been a part of,” Gill beams–was organized by the student-directoral team of John Lithgow ’67 and John C. Adams ’69.

The Crimson review of Figaro was quite positive.

“Master Richard Gill, who plays the Count, would be well worth hearing by himself. His voice is as majestic as his hearing; he is at once dramatic and agile,” the student reviewer wrote. “If his tone quality were only a little more variable, if he could sound sweet and smooth when necessary, he would be unassailable.”

Spending a year on sabbatical in England, Gill sang regularly–away from the “fear of failure in front of my Harvard colleagues”–and was encouraged to perform professionally.

By 1971, he could not resist auditioning for the New York City Opera–just to see how good he was.

He was deemed extremely good–and eventually accepted a trial position as a basso with the Manhattan opera company in 1971.

The contract paid $75 a night, and Gill was guaranteed a grand total of two performances.

It was “risky” to say the least, but Gill says he and his wife agreed that they “had to just go for it.”

Armed with a sizable advance on a large economics textbook Gill was commissioned to complete, the couple announced their departure to nonplussed Dean of the Faculty John T. Dunlop in the spring.

Their three sons were supportive of the career change, and their youngest transferred high schools when the Gills moved to Allendale, N.J.

“We were sort of oblivious to the real risks he took,” says son Peter S. Gill ’78, who was unfazed upon noticing that his sixth-grade anthology of short stories contained works by James Thurber, Ogden Nash and Richard Gill. “We always thought this was typical for him.”

“If I failed, there was no way to return to Harvard,” says Richard Gill, noting he would have opted to teach in “somewhere like Honolulu or Wyoming” if he bombed in New York. “Harvard is no place to come after you stub your toe violently.”

Gill’s toe did just fine.

Earning the rare distinction of moving from the New York City Opera to the Metropolitan Opera by virtue of the Met’s invitation, Gill performed as a principal artist from day one.

The former Harvard House master became a world-class opera singer overnight, travelling from Pittsburgh to Amsterdam to Carcacas in a 14-year career spanning dozens of operas. His performance stirred Variety magazine to use the words “Richard T. Gill” and “tour de theatre” in the same sentence.

In the mid ’80s, Gill added another section to his resume. Combining the scholarship of his Harvard days with the glamour of the opera, Gill found a home in the television studio, helping to create ECONOMICS U$A, a 28-program public broadcasting television series for which he served as an on-air analyst.

The Encore Academic

By 1992, Gill had written several economic textbooks, as well as a sociological work entitled Our Changing Population with Professor of Education and Social Structure Emeritus Nathan Glazer and Winthrop Professor of History Stephan Thernstrom. His latest work, Posterity Lost: Progress, Ideology and the Decline of the American Family, was published last year.

Gill will discuss his book in one of the symposia planned for the class of 1948 on Wednesday.

But first, Gill will perform with the Boston Pops as their featured vocalist tomorrow evening.

“He’s Mr. Eclectic,” son Peter says.

When asked to explain his wild versatility, Richard Gill jokes that one must have “a certain limited intelligence to try so many things.”

Originally considering life as a lawyer, after serving a year in the Army as a teenager, “I had a reconsideration of my lifelong goals,” Gill says. “I can only applaud this decision in retrospect.”

Source: The Harvard Crimson, 1 June 1998.

_________________________

Course Announcement

Economics 1. Principles of Economics

The Department encourages students considering concentration to take this course in their freshman year.

Source: Harvard University, Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Courses of Instruction for Harvard and Radcliffe, 1965-1966, p. 102.

_________________________

ECONOMICS I
1965-66
Readings for the Fall Term

*To be purchased by students

Adams, W. (ed.), The Structure of the American Economy (Third Edition)

*Caves, R., American Industry: Structure, Conduct, Performance

Committee for Economic Development, An Adaptive Program for Agriculture

Council of Economic Advisers, Report to the President on Steel Prices

*Dorfman, R. The Price System

*Gill, R., Economic Development: Past and Present

Hanson, A., Business Cycles and National Income

Heilbroner, R., The Making of Economic Society (paperback)

Heilbroner, R., The Worldly Philosophers (paperback; revised edition)

Joseph, M.L., et.al., Economic Analysis and Policy

Koivisto, W.A., Principles and Problems of Modern Economics

Mantoux, P., The Industrial Revolution in the Eighteenth Century

Meier & Baldwin, Economic Development

Phelps, E.S., Private Wants and Public Needs

Rees, A., The Economics of Trade Unions

*Schultze, C.L., National Income Analysis

Smith, A., Wealth of Nations

* * * * * * * * * * *

ECONOMICS 1

All lectures will be given at 12 noon in Lowell Lecture Hall. Section assignments will be posted outside University Hall 9 at 9:00 a.m. on Thursday, September 30. If any conflicts develop, resectioning will be held in University Hall 9 on Monday, October 4, and Tuesday, October 5, from 2:00 to 4:00 p.m.

Lectures: Dr. Gill	Sections
Mon., Sept. 27	Fri. or Sat., Oct. 1 or 2
Wed., Sept. 29	Mon. or Tues., Oct. 4 or 5 Wed. or Thurs., Oct. 6 or 7
Fri., Oct. 8	Mon. or Tues., Oct. 18 or 19
Mon., Oct. 11
Wed., Oct. 13
Fri., Oct. 16

Hour Exam, Wed. Oct. 20 at 12 noon

Sections meeting at 12 noon will take the hour exam in their regular classrooms; sections meeting at other hours will take the exam in Lowell Lecture Hall at 12.

There will be occasional lectures later in the term which will be announced in sections and in the Crimson.

* * * * * * * * * * *

ECONOMICS I
Fall Term 1965-66

Introduction: Problems and Concepts (Sept. 27 to Oct. 2)

Reading:

Koivisto, Principles and Problems of Modern Economics, Chaps. 1 & 3

Historical Development and the Doctrine of Laissez-Faire (Oct. 4 & Oct. 19)
1. Historical Foundations of Industrial Society

Readings:

Gill, Economic Development, Chaps. 1-4

Heilbroner, The Making of Economic Society, Chaps. 1-3

Mantoux, The Industrial Revolution in the Eighteenth Century, Part II

1. The Classical Economists and the Doctrine of Laissez-Faire

Readings:

Heilbroner, The Worldly Philosophers (revised ed.), Chaps. 1-4, 6

Smith, The Wealth of Nations, Bk. I, Chaps. 1 & 2; Bk. IV, Chaps. 2 & 3, Part II

Meier & Baldwin, op. cit., Ch. I

October 20, Hour Exam on Parts I & II

Markets and Industrial Organization (October 22 to December 18)
1. Competitive Markets
  1. The Concept of the “Invisible Hand”
  2. Theory of the Firm
  3. Household Behavior
  4. Market Structure

Reading:

Dorfman, The Price System (last two chapters at the discretion of the instructor)

1. Modern Industrial Organization
  1. Introduction

Reading:

Caves, American Industry, Ch. I

1. 1. Market Behavior

Readings:

Caves, op. cit., Chaps. 2 & 3

Adams, Structure of the American Economy, Chaps. 5 & 10

Council of Economic Advisers, Report to the President on Steel Prices

1. 1. Market Regulation

Reading:

Caves, op. cit., Chaps. 4-6

1. 1. Unions and Collective Bargaining

Readings:

Koivisto, op. cit., Ch. 21

Rees, Economics of Trade Unions, Chaps. 3 & 4

Joseph, Economic Analysis and Policy, Sections 41-46

1. 1. Agriculture

Readings:

CED, An Adaptive Program for Agriculture

Joseph, op. cit., Section 38

The Economy in the Aggregate (Jan. 3 to Jan 28): Introduction to National Income Analysis
1. Business Fluctuations and Depressions

Readings:

Hansen, Business Cycles and National Income, Chaps. 1-2

Joseph, op. cit., Sections 13-16

1. The Determinants of National Income

Reading:

Schultze, National Income Analysis, Chaps. 2,3, & 4

Source: Harvard University Archives. Syllabi, course outlines and reading lists in Economics, 1895-2003, Box 9; Folder: “Economics, 1965-66 (1 of 2)”.

_________________________

1965-66
HARVARD UNIVERSITY
Midyear Examination
January 26, 1966

ECONOMICS I
(Three hours)

Answer all questions

(20 minutes)

The major classical economists opposed the Corn Laws. What arguments of classical economic theory could be used to defend this position? In what respects were these arguments particularly relevant to British conditions in the early 19th century?

(20 minutes)

The government decides to pay 20 percent of the cost of all food consumed.
(Do not worry about the source of the funds.) Illustrate the effects this policy would have on the consumption patterns and the standard of living of a typical consumer.

(30 minutes)

Suppose the government legislates a significant increase in the minimum wage for a given industry. Taking a typical profit-maximizing firm in an industry with freely competitive product and factor markets, initially in long-run equilibrium, trace the effects of this law on the use of labor, the use of other factors of production, the firm’s cost curves, and its output. What changes would one be likely to observe in the industry as a whole over a longer period of time? In what ways would such a policy affect the “efficient” allocation of resources in the economy?

(30 minutes)

Show how the following phenomena operate as barriers to entry:

1. scale economies
2. absolute cost barriers
3. product differentiation

Illustrate each of the above types of barriers to entry with references to the assigned reading.

(20 minutes)

The demand for labor is said to be derived from the demand for the products which it produces. Show in what sense this is true. How might knowledge of this demand relationship be useful to a union in determining its wage demands?

(20 minutes)

Using supply and demand analysis, discuss the operation of:

1. 1. an acreage limitation on a given agricultural commodity
  2. a law which requires that the commodity cannot be sold below a given price (which is higher than the present market price)
  3. a subsidy paid by the government to the farmer growing the commodity of a given number of cents per bushel grown

(40 minutes)

GNP-GNI	Personal Income	Disposable Income	Consumption	Corporate Profits	Indirect Taxes
300	240	200	190	36	24
350	280	233	220	42	28
400	320	267	250	48	32
450	360	300	280	54	36
500	400	333	310	60	40

Government spending is initially 80.
Private investment is 70.

1. Given the above information, determine the equilibrium level of GNP. Show how you arrived at your answer. In what sense is this an “equilibrium” level?
2. Why is Gross National Product (GNP) equal to Gross National Income (GNI)?
3. Must the income and expenditures of each major sector of the economy — private individuals, business, and the government — balance in equilibrium? How do they compare in the above example?
4. What is the Marginal Propensity to Consume out of GNP in the above example? What is the income multiplier?
5. Suppose that full-employment GNP is at a level of 450. What change in government spending is necessary to achieve it, it no other relationship in the economy changes? What would this do to the government balance (surplus or deficit) in the new equilibrium position?

Source: Harvard University, Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Papers Printed for Mid-Year Examinations [in] History, History of Religions, Government, Economics, … , Naval Science, Air Science. January, 1966.

_________________________

ECONOMICS I
1966
Readings for the Spring Term

*To be purchased by students

Agarwala & Singh, The Economics of Underdevelopment

Bergson, A., The Economics of Soviet Planning

*Campbell, R., Soviet Economic Power

Domar, E., Essays in the Theory of Economic Growth

*Duesenberry, J., Money and Credit: Impact and Control

“Eckstein, A., “On the Economic Crisis in Communist China,” Foreign Affairs, July 1964.

*Eckstein, O., Public Finance

Friedman, M., Capitalism and Freedom

*Gill, R., Economic Development

Goldman, M., “Economic Controversy in the Soviet Union,” Foreign Affairs, April 1963.

Goldwin, R., Why Foreign Aid?

Hirschman, A., The Strategy of Economic Development

*Johnson, L., The Economic Report of the President, 1966

*Kenen, P., International Economics

Krause, L., The Common Market

Kuznets, S., Postwar Economic Growth

Leeman, W., Capitalism, Market Socialism and Central Planning

Lewis, J., Quiet Crisis in India

Mason, E., Economic Planning in Underdeveloped Areas: Government and Business

Nurkse, R., Problems of Capital Formation in Underdeveloped Countries

Phelps, E., Private Wants and Public Needs

Rostow, W., The Economics of Take-off into Sustained Growth

*Schultze, C., National Income Analysis

* * * * * * * * * * *

ECONOMICS I
Spring Term 1965-66

The Economy in the Aggregate, Part II: Analysis of the Problems of Economic Stability and Growth (February 7 – April 1)
1. The Determinants of National Income – Review

Reading:

Schultze, National Income Analysis, Chs. 2-4 (review)

1. Public Finance and Government Expenditure

Readings:

Eckstein, Public Finance, Chs. 1-2, 5-8

Phelps, Private Wants and Public Needs, Chs. by Galbraith, Bator, Hayek, and Break.

1. Money and Monetary System

Readings:

Schultze, National Income Analysis, Ch. 5

Duesenberry, Money and Credit, Chs. 1-8

Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom, Chs. 3 & 5

1. The Dynamics of Growth

Reading:

Domar, Essays in the Theory of Economic Growth, Ch. 4
(also in American Economic Review, March 1947, pp. 34-55)

1. Economic Growth in Advanced Countries

Readings:

Schultze, National Income Analysis, Ch. 6

Kuznets, Postwar Economic Growth, Lecture II

1. International Trade

Readings:

Kenen, International Economics, Chs. 1-5

Krause, The Common Market, Introduction

1. Problems of Government and Economic Policy

Reading:

The Economic Report of the President, 1966

(Spring Recess April 3 – April 10)

Economic Growth and Organization in Other Countries (April 11 – May 19)
1. The Soviet Economy
  1. Introduction: The Theory of Planning

Readings:

Mason, Economic Planning, Ch. 3

Leeman, Capitalism, Market Socialism…, Ch. by Leontief

Bergson, The Economics of Soviet Planning, Ch. 14

1. 1. Growth and Organization of the Soviet System

Reading:

Campbell, Soviet Economic Power, Chs. 1-8

1. 1. Outlook for the Future

Readings:

Campbell, Soviet Economic Power, Ch. 9

Goldman, “Economic Controversy in the Soviet Union,” Foreign Affairs, April 1963

Kuznets, Postwar Economic Growth, Lecture IV

1. Economic Growth of Underdeveloped Areas
  1. The Underdeveloped Economy

Readings:

Gill, Economic Development, Ch. 5

Kuznets, “Underdeveloped Countries and the Pre-industrial Phase in the Advanced Countries,” in Agarwala & Singh

1. 1. The Process of Economic Growth

Readings:

Rostow, “The Take-off into Self-sustained Growth,” in Agarwala & Singh

Kuznets, “Notes on the Take-off,” in Rostow, Ch. 2

1. 1. Issues in How to Induce Economic Growth

Readings:

Nurkse, Problems of Capital Formation, Ch. 1

Hirschman, The Strategy of Economic Development, Chs. 2 & 4

1. 1. Case Studies — India and China

Readings:

Lewis, Quiet Crisis in India, Chs. 2, 3, & 6

Eckstein, A., “On the Economic Crisis in Communist China,” Foreign Affairs, July 1964

Gill, Economic Development, Ch. 6

1. 1. Foreign Aid and International Trade

Readings:

Goldwin, Why Foreign Aid?, pp. 10-32, 90-108, & 131-140

Kenen, International Economics, Ch. 6

Conclusion: Problems and Prospects (May 20 – May 23)

No Readings

NOTE: Resectioning to remove class conflicts will be held in University Hall 9 on Monday, February 7 and Tuesday, February 8 from 2:00 to 4:00 p.m.

Source: Harvard University Archives. Syllabi, course outlines and reading lists in Economics, 1895-2003, Box 9; Folder: “Economics, 1965-66 (1 of 2)”.

_________________________

1965-66
HARVARD UNIVERSITY
Final Examination
June, 1966

ECONOMICS I
(Three hours)

(60 minutes)

Suppose inflationary pressures lead to price increases in several sectors of the economy. What steps should the Federal Government take to restrain these inflationary pressures? How might other economic objectives be jeopardized by efforts to control the inflation? How might your views on the question of “social balance” of the public versus the private sector affect your policy proposals for dealing with the inflationary problem? If the country in question were the United States in 1966, would you have to take into account the balance of payments situation in making your policy decisions?

(30 minutes)

Define and relate four of the following five pairs of terms:

1. Full employment surplus – balanced budget multiplier
2. Preconditions – take-off
3. Allocational efficiency of taxation – equity of taxation
4. G.A.T.T. – E.E.C.
5. A budget deficit financed by Treasury sales of bonds in the open market – a Federal Reserve open market sale of bonds
(30 minutes)

In The Good Society (1936) Walter Lippmann wrote:

“It may be predicted confidently that if ever the time comes when Russia no longer feels the need of mobilization military build-up and forced industrialization), it will become necessary to liquidate the planning authority and to return somehow to a market economy.”

Do recent economic reforms in the Soviet Union support this statement? What advantages might an increased role of markets in the U.S.S.R. have for that economy?

(30 minutes)

“If one thing is certain it is that the path to development of the modern poor country will be very different from that of the earlier developers of the West. The problems are different and so also are the mechanisms for solving these problems.”
Discuss this question, giving specific examples to illustrate your points.

(30 minutes)

Choose one of the following questions:

1. Country X has three nationalized industries: railways, steel production, lighthouses.
  What should be the price and output policies of each industry if efficient allocation of resources were the national goal? How would each industry be financed? How would the results compare with a free market organization in these industries?
2. In Australia, with no foreign trade, wool costs $5.00 per unit and cloth costs $12.00 per unit. In India, with no foreign trade, wool costs 10 rupees per unit and cloth costs 12 rupees per unit.
  If the cost of shipping a unit of either wool or cloth from one country to the other is $2.00, would trade take place? Explain.
  If it costs $2.00 to ship a wool unit, what is the cost of shipping cloth at which there will no longer be any gain from trading?

Source: Harvard University, Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Papers Printed for Final Examinations [in] History, History of Religions, Government, Economics, … , Naval Science, Air Science. June, 1966.

Image Source: Master of Leverett House, Richard T. Gill in The Harvard Class Album 1966.

Tags Gill

Comparative Economic Systems Exam Questions Harvard Socialism Suggested Reading Syllabus

Harvard. Readings and Final Exam for Comparative Economic Systems. Bergson, 1968

Post author By Irwin Collier
Post date 2025-12-06

Who among us has not tried to sneak a little wit into the formulation of a final exam question? Abram Bergson was a very serious scholar who, the record has shown, was not endowed with a funny bone in his body. Still, he was capable of calling a theoretical market socialist community, “Shangri-Lange” in the exam for his course on comparative economic systems. At least he gave it a try.

___________________________

Miscellaneous Bergsonia

A photo of Abram Bergson when he was a teen-aged undergraduate at Johns Hopkins University.

1946-47 biographical note on Bergson who was a fellow of the Social Science Research Council.

Bergson’s reading assignments for his Columbia course Structure of the Soviet Economy in 1954-55.

Bergson’s reading lists and exams for “Normative Aspects of Economic Policy” at Harvard. Spring term 1959; Spring term 1960.

Bergson’s Harvard reading list for Economics of Socialism, Spring term 1977.

Paul Samuelson’s memorial biography of Abram Bergson for the National Academy of Sciences in 2004.

For Bergson’s work in Soviet Economic Studies see John Hardt, “Abram Bergson’s Legacy: 1914-2003”.

___________________________

HARVARD UNIVERSITY
DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMICS

Economics 131
Comparative Economic Systems
Spring Term, 1967-68

Part I
INTRODUCTION

Background
The Theory of Socialist Economics

Paul A. Samuelson, Economics, 6th ed pp. 17-24. 620-631.

Robert Dorfman, The Price System. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey. 1964, Ch. 6.

O. Lange, “On the Economic Theory of Socialism,” in B. Lippincott, ed., On the Economic Theory of Socialism, Minneapolis, 1938.

F. A. Hayek, Individualism and Economic Order, London, 1948, Ch. IX.

A. Bergson, Essays in Normative Economics, Cambridge, Mass., 1966, pp. 216-236.

Karl Marx, Critique of the Gotha Programme, International Publishers ed., New York, 1938, pp. 3-23.

W. N. Loucks, Comparative Economic Systems, 7^th ed., New York, 1965, pp. 108-120 (5^th ed., pp. 98-110; 6^thed., pp. 93-105.

Part II
SOCIALIST PLANNING IN THE USSR

Economics of the Industrial Enterprise

J. Berliner, “The Informal Organization of the Soviet Firm.” Quarterly Journal of Economics, August 1952; reprinted in F. Holzman, Readings on the Soviet Economy, Chicago, 1962.

A. Bergson, The Economics of Soviet Planning, New Haven, Conn., 1964, Ch. 5, and pp. 287-297.

General Planning

R. W. Campbell, Soviet Economic Power, 1^st ed., Cambridge, Mass., 1960, ch. 5.

A. Bergson, Economics of Soviet Planning, Chs. 1, 3, 7, 8, 13.

G. Grossman, “Scarce Capital and Soviet Doctrine,” Quarterly Journal of Economics, August 1953, reprinted in Holzman, Readings.

M. Bornstein, “The Soviet Price System,” The American Economic Review, March 1962; reprinted in M. Bornstein and D. Fusfeld. The Soviet Economy, Homewood, Ill., 1962.

A. Nove, The Soviet Economy, New York, 1961, ch. 3.

L. Smolinski, “What Next in Soviet Planning,” Foreign Affairs, July 1954

R. W. Campbell, “Marx, Kantorovich, and Novozhilov,” in Slavic Review, October 1961; reprinted in H. Shaffer, The Soviet Economy, New York, 1963.

M. Goldman, “Economic Controversy in the Soviet Union,” Foreign Affairs, April 1963; reprinted in M. Goldman, Comparative Economic Systems, New York, 1964.

A. Bergson. “The Current Soviet Planning Reforms,” in A. Balinky et al., Planning and the Market in the USSR, Rutgers, 1967.

Part III
EASTERN EUROPEAN VARIANTS

Economic Reform in Poland and Czechoslovakia

S. Wellisz, The Economics of the Soviet Bloc, New York 1964. Chs. 2 and 6.

L. Smolinski, “Reforms in Poland,” Problems of Communism, July-August 1966.

J. M. Montias, “Economic Reform in Perspective,” Survey, April 1966.

Market Socialism in Yugoslavia

J. M. Fleming and V. R. Sertic, “The Yugoslav Alternative,” International Monetary Fund Staff Papers, July 1962; reprinted in Goldman, Comparative Economic Systems.

E. Neuberger, “The Yugoslav Investment Auctions,” Quarterly Journal of Economics, February 1959.

A. Waterston, Planning in Yugoslavia, Baltimore, Md., 1962, pp. 50-82.

B. Ward, “The Nationalized Firm in Yugoslavia,” and comments on this by G. Macesich and H. G. Grubel, American Economic Review, May 1965, No. 2.

J. Vanek and J. M. Montias, “Planning in Yugoslavia,” in National Bureau of Economic Research, National Economic Planning, New York, 1967, pp. 379-381, 394-407.

Part IV
VARIETIES OF CAPITALIST EXPERIENCE

The Laissez-Faire Ideal

Milton Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom, Chicago, 1962, omitting Ch. IV.

The British Nationalized Enterprise

C. A. R. Crosland, “The Private and Public Corporation in Great Britain,” in E. S. Mason, The Corporation in Modern Society, Cambridge, Mass., 1959.

F. Cassell, “The Pricing Policies of the Nationalized Industries,” Lloyd’s Bank Review, October 1965; reprinted in A. H. Hanson, Nationalization: A Book of Readings, London, 1963.

French Planning

Pierre Massé, “French Methods of Planning,” Journal of Industrial Economics, November 1962; reprinted in M. Bornstein, Comparative Economic Systems, Homewood. Ill., 1965.

Vera Lutz, French Planning, American Enterprise Institute, Washington, D.C., May 1965.

A. Schonfield, Modern Capitalism, New York, 1965, Ch. VIII.

The Swedish Alternative

Alan G. Gruchy, Comparative Economic Systems, Boston 1966, pp. 357-375, 385-393, 395-416, 423-437.

Part V
COMPARATIVE PERFORMANCE

Inequality

A. Bergson, Essays in Normative Economics, Ch. 8.

A. Bergson, The Economics of Soviet Planning, Ch. 6.

Comparative Growth

A. Bergson, “Reliability and Usability of Soviet Statistics: A Summary Appraisal,” American Statistician, June-July 1953; reprinted in Holzman, Readings.

R. W. Campbell, Soviet Economic Power, 2^nd ed., Boston, Mass., 1966, Ch. 6.

A. Maddison, “Soviet Economic Performance,” Banca Nazionale del Laboro Quarterly Review, March 1965.

M. Ernst, “Overstatement of Industrial Growth in Poland,” Quarterly Journal of Economics, November 1965.

Y. Vanek, “Yugoslav Economic Growth and Its Conditions,” and connents by N. Spulber, American Economic Review, May 1963, No. 2.

A. Bergson, “The Great Economic Race: USSR v. USA,” Challenge, March 1963, reprinted in Goldman, Comparative Economic Systems.

Janet Chapman, Real Wages in Soviet Russia Since 1928, Cambridge, Mass.,1963, Chs, IX and X.

Economic Merit

A. Nove, The Soviet Economy, New York, 1961, Ch. 12.

A. Bergson, The Economics of Soviet Planning, Ch. 14.

O. Hoeffding, “State Planning and Forced Industrialization,” Problems of Communism, November-December 1959; re-printed in Holzman, Readings.

Jan Tinbergen, “Do Communist and Free Economies Show a Converging Pattern,” Soviet Studies, April 1961.

Peter Wiles, “Convergence: Possibility and Probability,” in Balinky et al., Planning and the Market in the USSR.

Source: Harvard University Archives. Syllabi, course outlines and reading lists in Economics, 1895-2003, Box 9; Folder: “Economics, 1967-68”.

___________________________

HARVARD UNIVERSITY
Department of Economics

Economics 131: Professor Bergson
Final Examination
June 3, 1968

Part I (counts 25%)

Answer one and only one of two.

In Marxiana, a socialist community, the economy is organized in accord with the Competitive Solution except in one particular: the Central Planning Board (CPB) seeks to apply the labor theory of value rather than western marginal theory. What operating rules might the CPB be expected to establish for the manager of an industrial enterprise? How might the managers’ behavior then differ from that under the unmodified Competitive Solution? What is implied for economic efficiency?
In the socialist community of Shangri-Lange, the Competitive Solution is applied without qualification. Discuss the possible economic consequences of a government decision to increase defense spending. Consider in particular the consequences for each of the following:
1. The government budget;
2. The rate of interest;
3. The general level of consumers’ goods prices;
4. Economic efficiency.

Part II (counts 50%)

Answer two and only two of four.

“As the Soviet experience shows, an interest rate is really not needed for investment project appraisal. So long as one selects the project that minimizes the cost of producing the desired output, there can be no economic waste, and this the Soviet project designers have sought to do from the very beginning of the Five Year Plans.” Discuss.
“That Soviet planning is highly inefficient becomes self-evident when we consider one simple fact: the gross national product per employed worker in the USSR in 1960 was but 24-40 per cent of that in the United States in the same year.” Do you agree? Explain your answer carefully.
“However much or little socialism and capitalism have converged generally, there can be no question that the Yugoslavs have by now practically reverted in all but name to a form of capitalism.” Discuss with special reference to Yugoslav enterprise management.
“French planning surely has been an unqualified success. The record of French post-war growth is itself sufficient evidence of this.” Discuss.

Part III (counts 25%)

Explain briefly four and only four out of seven items:
1. “Safety factor”; “simulation”
2. Indicative planning
3. Milton Friedman on government policy toward “technical (natural) monopolies”
4. “Occupational wage scale” in determination of Soviet wage differentials
5. Dynamic versus static efficiency
6. Average versus marginal cost pricing for coal under the British National Coal Board
7. “Horizontal” and “Vertical” Modernization Commissions in French Planning.

NOTE: Please indicate on outside cover of your first bluebook the numbers of the questions that you answer

Source: Harvard University, Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Papers Printed for Final Examinations [in] History, History of Religions, Government, Economics, … ,Aerospace Studies, June 1968.

Tags Bergson

Harvard Public Finance Syllabus

Harvard. Syllabus of public lectures on taxation by Simon Newcomb. December 1879

Post author By Irwin Collier
Post date 2025-12-05

The following outline of three lectures given by Simon Newcomb at Harvard in December 1879 was found in a grab-bag folder of undated course material from the department of economics. A quick plunge into the online newspaper archive newspapers.com was enough to find a public announcement of the lecture to nail down the date.

One of the missions of Economics in the Rear-view Mirror, is to enter such obscure artifacts into the digital record. For fun I try to imagine Newcomb giving a TED talk…or a TikTok dance video.

__________________________

Simon Newcomb’s Methodenstreit with Richard Ely in 1884 has been transcribed and posted earlier.

Links to works by Simon Newcomb can be found at The History of Economic Thought website.

Newcomb’s 1909 obituary in The Times provides a snapshot of his life.

The biographical memoir written by W. W. Campbell for the National Academy of Sciences in 1916 is of course more complete.

__________________________

HARVARD UNIVERSITY.
Lectures on Taxation.

Professor SIMON NEWCOMB of Washington will give three lectures on Taxation in Sanders Theatre, on MONDAY, Dec. 8, WEDNESDAY, Dec. 10, and FRIDAY, Dec. 12, at 7 ½ P. M.

The public is invited.

AMORY T. GIBBS, Secretary

Dec. 1, 1879.

Source: Boston Evening Transcript, 2 December 1879, p. 5

__________________________

SYLLABUS OF
MR. NEWCOMB’S LECTURES ON TAXATION.

LECTURE I

The object of the course is the study of the comparative effects of different methods of raising revenue. This study is to be conducted in the same way as if the operation of natural causes alone were to be considered.

The object of taxation is the diversion of a portion of the industrial activity of the country from private to public objects.

The questions involved are not those of the absolute merits of different systems, but only their relative merits.

The expenditure of revenue is necessarily connected with the subject, because the effect of a tax depends as much upon how it is to be expended, as upon how it is to be collected.

Distribution of Indirect Taxes

Relative advantages of direct and indirect taxation.

Problem: To what extent can a tax levied on the activities of one person be transferred by him to others with whom he exchanges services?

Classification of Taxes: —

(1.) On persons.

(2.) On Production.

(3.) On accumulated wealth.

Each of these three divisions subdivided into two classes.

(α.) Taxes on totals of persons or things.

(β.) Taxes on selected persons or things.

Taxes in class (α) whether (1) poll taxes, (2) income taxes, (3) uniform property taxes, not directly transferable, but must be borne by the payers. Hence,

Class (α) includes taxes which are commonly considered direct;

Class (β) those which are indirect.

CASE I. The full amount of a tax can be added to the price of commodities when this addition causes no falling off in the demand. Digression on relations of price and demand, and the conditions on which they depend. Put,

P, the supposed price at which an untaxed commodity C, may be sold,

Q, the corresponding demand, or quantity sold at the price P in a unit of time.

ΔP, an increment of price, added on account of the tax.

ΔQ, the corresponding decrement in the quantity which can be sold,
so that at the price P + ΔP can be sold Q – ΔQ.

If ΔQ is small compared with ΔP, we may call the commodity C insensitive; if large, sensitive.

CASE II. When the demand is sensitive to a rise of price, one of two results must follow.

(α.) Production diminished till price is restored.

(β.) Price raised by only part of the tax, and the latter divided between producer and consumer. The result which must follow depends upon how far the production is monopolized.

LECTURE II.

Digression on natural monopolies with respect to the distribution of taxation under Case II. of the preceding lecture.

Tax upon gross production reducible to an income tax.

An income tax is the fairest of all, could it be fairly assessed and collected. But, in practice, the difficulty of defining aggregate income is such that this tax is most unfair.

The ultimate general effect of taxation upon industry is nearly the same on whatever articles the tax is levied. But on special classes of persons and industries the effect may be different.

In general, the person who cannot change his employment or the articles he consumes will be most affected.

In order that the equilibrium may be least disturbed, commodities which may be substituted for each other should be equally taxed.

Is there any transfer of a tax upon a commodity beyond the producer and consumer? Answer: Not in general. A tax on tobacco, for instance, is paid entirely by the consumer of tobacco.

Taxes on Accumulation.

A tax on capital would be equivalent to one on total production if adjusted, not to the capital itself, but to the income derivable from it. But our actual taxes on capital are enormously greater than if thus adjusted.

Can a property tax be transferred? The answer is dependent on the law of accumulation of capital. Ultimately the tax is paid by the community through a discouragement of saving and a consequent raising of the rate of interest.

LECTURE III.

Hints on Systems of Taxation.

Popular delusion that a tax should be capable of being evaded because those who are least able to pay can then escape. No large class of articles consumed exclusively by the poor.

(1.) The great point in which our systems of state taxation differ from those founded on Adam Smith’s first principle is that, in the latter, ability is measured by revenue, whereas we measure it by accumulated wealth.

(2.) Abroad, municipal taxes are paid by the tenants, and not by the owners. But, owing to our short leases, it is better among us that the owner pay.

(3.) Personal property should not be taxed for municipal purposes. Is right that, in levying state taxes, general ability to pay should be considered. But our attempt to collect a uniform percentage on all kinds of property from every one is a failure.

(4.) Objects of taxation should be sought for which indicate the wealth of the owner. There is no inherent necessity that taxes should be proportioned to value.

Source: Harvard University Archives. Syllabi, course outlines and reading lists in Economics, 1895-2003. Box 10, Folder “Economics, undated (5 of 5)”.

Image Source: Simon Newcomb in Leading American Men of Science, David Starr Jordan, ed. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1910. Page 363.

Tags Newcomb

Exam Questions Microeconomics Princeton Suggested Reading Syllabus

Princeton. Value and Distribution Theory. Readings, Exams, Sample Questions. Baumol, 1976

Post author By Irwin Collier
Post date 2025-12-04

This post adds William J. Baumol’s reading list and examination questions to the stock of core economic theory material transcribed and posted here at Economics in the Rear-view Mirror. For a contemporary comparison I include links to the four half-semester courses of microeconomic theory required of my cohort at M.I.T. a half-century ago.

________________________

Cf. M.I.T. core microeconomic theory
1974-75

________________________

Core graduate economic theory courses
Princeton, 1976-77

Fall Term

Microeconomic Theory: Value and Distribution. Baumol (First class Sept. 14)
M 10:40-12:10 and Tu 10:40-12:10 in Rm 5 WWS

Macroeconomic Theory: Income Determination. Gersovitz.
W 10:40-12:10 and F 10:40-12:10 in Rm 5 WWS

Spring Term

Microeconomic Theory: General Equilibrium. G. Faulhaber
Tu 10:40-12:10 and Tu 1:00-2:30
Macroeconomic Theory: Inflation and Growth. D. Jaffee.
M 10:40-12:10 and F 10:40-12:10

________________________

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY
Department of Economics

ECONOMICS 501
Microeconomic Theory:
Value and Distribution

Fall Term 1976

Professor W. J. Baumol

*On Reserve

MAIN REFERENCES

Henderson, J. M. and Quandt, R. E., Microeconomic Theory, New York: McGraw-Hill, 1958.

Baumol, W. J., Economic Theory and Operations Analysis, Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1965. (ETOA)

Theories of Consumption and Demand

Henderson and Quandt, Chapter 2, Sections 1 through 8.

*Hicks, J. A., Value and Capital; 2nd Ed., New York: Oxford University Press, 1946, Chapters I, II, III, and pp. 302-314.

*_______, A Revision of Demand Theory, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1956, Chs. VII-IX.

*_______, Malinvaud, E., Lectures on Microeconomic Theory, Amsterdam: North Holland Press, 1972, Chapter 2.

ETOA, Chapters 9 and 10.

*Linder, S. B., The Harried Leisure Class, New York: Columbia University Press, 1970, Chapter VII and pp. 150-2.

Neumann-Morgenstern Utility Theory.

Henderson and Quandt, Chapter 2, Section 9.

ETOA, Chapter 22.

Theory of Cost and Production

*Viner, Jacob, “Cost Curves and Supply Curves,” in Stigler, G. J. and K.E. Boulding, Readings in Price Theory, Chicago: Irwin, 1952, pp. 198-232.

ETOA, Chapters 11, 12 and pp. 402-405.

Henderson and Quandt, Chapter 3.

Malinvaud, Chapter 3.

Market Structure and Market Behavior

*Chamberlin, E. H., The Theory of Monopolistic Competition, 5th ed. (or later). Cambridge:  Harvard University Press, 1942, Chapters III, IV, and V.

*Sweezy, P.M., “Demand Under Conditions of Oligopoly,” in Stigler, G. J. and K. E. Boulding, eds., Readings in Price Theory, Chicago: Irwin, 1952, pp. 404-409.

*Robinson, J., The Economics of Imperfect Competition, Chapters 2, 3, 6, 7. 11. 15. 16, and 18.

ETOA, Chapter 14.

Baumol, W. J., Business Behavior, Value and Growth, rev. ed., New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1967, Chapters 3, 6, 7, 8, and 10.

Elements of Distribution Theory

ETOA, Chapters 17, 18, 19.

*Robinson, Joan, “Capital Theory up to Date,” Canadian Journal of Economics, Vol. 3, 1970, pp. 309-17.

*Kaldor, Nicholas, “Alternative Theories of Distribution,” Review of Economic Studies, Vol. 23, No. 2, 1955-6, pp. 83-100.

*Samuelson, P. A., “Parable and Realism in Capital Theory: The Surrogate Production Function,” Review of Economic Studies, Vol. 39, 1962, pp. 193-206.

*_______, “A Summing Up,” Quarterly Journal of Economics, Vol. 80, 1966, pp. 568-83.

*Baumol, W., “The Transformation of Values: What Marx ‘Really’ Meant,” Journal of Economic Literature,Vol. 12, pp. 51-62.

Introduction to Welfare Theory

Henderson and Quandt, Chapter 7.

ETOA, Chapter 16.

Malinvaud, Chapters 4 and 9.

________________________

Economics 501

Fall Semester, 1976

Midterm Examination

—
1. Define a quasi-concave utility function.
2. Explain why the assumption of quasi-concavity is acceptable for ordinal utility analysis while concavity is not.
3. State and prove any theorem about quasi-concave functions.
Explain in economic terms the meaning of the result that an expenditure function is concave in prices and indicate why it is plausible.
—
1. Formulate precisely a definition of economies of scale for a firm producing n outputs y₁, … , y_n and
  using m inputs r₁, … , r_m.
2. Explain why it is difficult to define the concept of declining average cost for such a firm.

________________________

Economics 501

Fall Semester, 1976

Final Examination

Explain only one of the following:
1. The reason microeconomic analysis uses demand curves all of whose points refer to the same period of time.
2. The rationale of the total differentiation step in comparative statics method.
The price elasticity of a straight line supply curve through the origin is __________. Give a proof of your answer.
Using Shepherd’s lemma and whatever other theorems you need about expenditure functions, give a brief proof of the Slutsky theorem.
Suppose wheat is produced on three parcels of land, A, B and C, and let there be fixed coefficients in the production function so that each parcel can produce exactly 100 bushels. Let the cost of producing 100 bushels on parcel A be $3, on parcel B be $5 and on C be $9. Construct a table showing average and marginal costs with and without rent for three different levels of total output.
In words, explain briefly the economic rationale of the complementary slackness conditions u_iv_i = 0 and y_jl_j =0. That is, why would we expect them to hold in an optimal production program?
A farmer expects to harvest m bushels of wheat in August and m in September. He will sell x₁ in August and x₂ in September. The price in August is p₁ per bushel and in September it is p₂. He can also store wheat from August to September at a cost of w per bushel.
1. Assuming that the farmer wishes to maximize his profits and that p₁, p₂ and m are all positive, construct the appropriate model and prove that

x₂ ≥ m

p₂= v₂ (where v₂ is the second dual variable)

x₁ = m if p₁ > p₂ – w

x₁ < m if p₁ ≤ p₂ – w.

1. In one sentence each, give an economic interpretation of the four results.

________________________

Economics 501
Sample Exercises
[Undated]

—
1. Explain the term comparative statics.
2. In outline, briefly describe in words the steps of the mathematical method used to derive a comparative statics theorem indicating in each case the purpose of the step.
3. State (do not prove) one such theorem.
—
1. What is the basic premise of revealed preference theory?
2. Use that premise to derive the Slutsky theorem diagrammatically stating explicitly where the premise enters your proof.
Define:
1. identification
2. saddle point
3. gross and net complements
4. law of diminishing returns
5. substitution effect
6. Walras’ law
7. lexicographical ordering.
Prove that for a straight line demand curve the midpoint between its two intercepts is of unit elasticity.
Draw indifference maps showing equilibrium of the consumer’s demand in each of the following cases:
1. One of the two commodities is a diamond-studded bow tie. Our consumer doesn’t buy any.
2. Our consumer is given a fixed amount of money to spend either on his stamp or his coin collection. He decides it is better to end up with a one-good collection rather than two mediocre ones, and spends all the money on stamps.
3. The price of shoelaces is lowered, but the consumer buys no more laces than he did at the old price.
—
1. Given a nonlinear demand curve, illustrate graphically how the corresponding marginal revenue curve can be constructed (no verbal explanation necessary).
2. Give a rigorous proof of the validity of your construction procedure in a.
—
1. Define the substitution effect on x of a change in the price of x.
2. Prove the Slutsky Theorem about the sign of the substitution effect.
—
1. Define quasi concavity.
2. Use the definition to prove one of the following:
  1. The indifference curves corresponding to a strictly quasi concave utility function can have no linear segment.
  2. A consumer with a strictly quasi concave utility function who purchases in a competitive market can have at most one optimum.
—
1. Define: corner maximum, local maximum, interior maximum.
2. Explain the relevance of each of these for the useability of the standard tools of marginal analysis.
3. Relate each of these to the usual second order maximum conditions.
—
1. Show how from the shape of the offer curve one can determine the elasticity of the corresponding demand curve.
2. Discuss the statistical problems involved in the empirical estimation of the demand curve as defined in economic theory.
3. What is the identification problem?
A perfectly competitive firm wishes to maximize its total profits

T = pq – c₁x₁ – c₂x₂

subject to the production function constraint

q = f(x₁, x₂)

where q is the output quantity, x₁ and x₂ are the two input quantities, and p, c₁ and c₂are the (fixed) input and output prices.
Assume now that c₁, the price of the first input, changes. Use the comparative statics methods to show that dx₁/dc₁ < 0. Why is there in this case no income effect, only a substitution effect?

The elasticity of a straight line supply curve through the origin is ______________. Prove your answer.

Source: Duke University. David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library. Economists’ Papers Archive. William J. Baumol Papers, Box 20. Folder “Economics 506: History of Economic Thought (syllabi, book orders, library mtls. etc. 1968-1990” [Note: this folder has items such as transcribed here and not only materials for Economics 506].

Tags Baumol

Columbia Monetary economics Suggested Reading Syllabus

Columbia. Reading List for Monetary Economics. Angell, 1954-1955

Post author By Irwin Collier
Post date 2025-11-25

In 1954-55 the executive officer of the department of economics, Arthur R. Burns [not Arthur F. Burns], requested his colleagues provide current reading lists for their courses to Joseph Dorfman to arrange for the library to order as many titles as possible. James Waterhouse Angell (Harvard Ph.D., 1924) obliged for his courses on monetary economics (see below), international monetary policy, and income, employment and international trade.

_______________________________

Course Announcement

Economics 121-122—Monetary economics. Professor Angell.
M. W. 10. 310 Fayerweather.

The part played by money and banking operations in the structure and movements of the general economic system. The development of monetary theory. Saving, investing, and employment. Keynesian and neo-Keynesian analysis. Current problems of monetary and general fiscal policy.

Source: Columbia University, Bulletin of Information, 54^th Series, No. 23 (June 19, 1954). Announcement of the Faculty of Political Science for the Winter and Spring Sessions 1954-1955, p. 35.

_______________________________

December 15, 1954

TO: MEMBERS OF THE DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMICS

FROM: Arthur R. Burns

Will you please send to Professor Dorfman your lists of readings with recent amendments including optional readings, in order that he may endeavor to arrange for the library to have as many as possible of the books that are being recommended. Please also forward requests for future additions to the library to Professor Dorfman.

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

ECONOMICS 121-122
READING LIST
in
MONETARY ECONOMICS

Note: Eligible veterans may purchase at government expense any four books marked “V”.

1954

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

ECONOMICS 121
REQUIRED READING

(References are to numbered sections in Reading List.)

First Semester

Section:

I (If necessary)
II-1 (Outside reading)
IV-1 (Partly for discussion in class, as indicated)
V-1 (Outside reading)

Second Semester

Section:

III (Outside reading, as indicated)
IV-2 (Partly for discussion in class, as indicated)
V-2 (Outside reading)
VI-1 (Outside reading)
VII (Look into several of the books)

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

READING LIST IN MONETARY ECONOMICS

Required reading should if possible be read in the order in which the titles are presented.

I. INTRODUCTORY

(Students who have had little or no previous work in Money and Banking are advised to read at least one title in each group.)

1. General Texts

Chandler, L. V., Economics of Money and Banking (1953). “V”

James, F. C.: Economics of Money, Credit and Banking (3rd edition, 1940)

Kent, R. P.: Money and Banking (1951). “V”

Thomas, R. G.: Our Modern Banking and Monetary System (1950), Chapters 1-30. “V”

2. Other References

Chandler, L. V.: Introduction to Monetary Theory (1940)

Mitchell, W. C.: Business Cycles (Volume I, 1927) Chapter 2

Robertson, D. H.: Money (2nd edition, 1929)

II. MONETARY AND BANKING ORGANIZATION OF THE U.S.

1. Required Reading

Thomas, R. G.: Our Modern Banking and Monetary System (1950), Chapters 18, 19

Kent, R. P.: Money and Banking (1951), Chapters 20-22,26-28

Burgess, W. R.: The Reserve Banks and the Money Market (Revised edition, 1946)

Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, Banking Studies (1941), Chapters 3, 17

Angell, J. W.: The Behavior of Money (1936), Chapters 1-4

Goldenweiser, E. A.: Federal Reserve Objectives and Policies (AER, June, 1947)

Thomas, W.: The Heritage of War Finance (AER, Proceedings, May, 1947)

Board of Governors, Federal Reserve System: Federal Reserve Policy (Post-War Economic Studies, No. 8: 1947)

Goldenweiser, E. A., American Monetary Policy (1951)

2. Other References

Beckhart, B. H., ed.: The New York Money Market (4 volumes, 1931-32)

Board of Governors, Federal Reserve System: Federal Reserve Bulletin (current issues)

_________________: The Federal Reserve System (1939)

_________________: Post-War Economic Studies (published serially)

Crawford, A. W.: Monetary Management under the New Deal (1940)

Currie, L.: The Supply and Control of Money in the U. 5. (1934)

Dewey, D. R.: Financial History of the U. S. (1903)

Federal Reserve Bank of New York: Monthly Review

Hardy, C. O.: Credit Policies of the Federal Reserve System (1932)

Harris, S. E.: Twenty Years of Federal Reserve Policy (2 volumes, 1932)

Hepburn, A. B.: History of Currency in the U. S. (2nd edition, 1924)

Jacoby, N. H. and Saulnier, R. J.: Business Finance and Banking (1947)

Johnson, G. G., Jr.: The Treasury and Monetary Policy, 1933-38 (1938)

Macaulay, F. R.: Interest Rates, Bond Yields end Stock Prices in the U.S. Since 1856 (1938)

Mints, L. W., History of Banking Theory (1945) (U.S. and U.K.)

Mitchell, W. C.: History of the Greenbacks (1903)

National Monetary Commission: Reports (1910, 1911): includes volumes on various phases of money, banking and related legislation in the U.S.

Paris, J. D.: Monetary Policies of the U.S., 1932-1936 (1938)

Riefler, W. W.: Money Rates and Money Markets in the U. S. (1930)

Saulnier, R. J., and Young, R. A.: Finance and Credit in the American Economy, 1900-1944 (1946)

U. S. Government Printing Office: Federal Reserve Act of 1913, with Amendments and Laws Relating to Banking (1940)

Westerfield, R. B.: Historical Survey of Branch Banking in the U.S. (1939)

_________________: Our Silver Debacle (1936)

Whitney, C.: Experiments in Credit Control: The Federal Reserve System (1934)

III. MONETARY AND BANKING ORGANIZATION IN OTHER COUNTRIES

(Select and read enough to understand the general organization and history of at least one country.)

Andreades, A.: History of the Bank of England (2^nd edition, 1934)

Arnold, A.T.: Banks, Credit and Money in Soviet Russia (1937)

Bagehot, W.: Lombard Street (14th edition, 1915)

Brown, W. A., Jr.: England and the New Gold Standard (1929)

Clapham, Sir John: The Bank of England (1944)

Conant, C. A.: History of Modern Banks of Issue (6th edition, 1927)

Dacey, W. M.: The British Banking Mechanism (1951)

Dulles, E. L.: The French Frano, 1914-1928 (1929)

Dupriez, L. H.: Monetary Reconstruction in Belgian (1947)

Feaveryear, A. S.: The Pound Sterling (1931)

Flink, S.: The Geran Reichsbank (1931)

Harris, S. E.: Monetary Policies of the British Empire (1931)

Hawtrey, R. G.: A Century of Bank Rate (1936)

Higgins, B. H.: Canada’s Financial System in War (National Bureau of Economic Research, 1944)

Holladay, J.: The Canadian Banking System (1938)

Hubbard, L. E.: Soviet Money and Finance (1936)

King, W. T. C.: History of the London Discount Market (1936)

League of Nations: Gold Delegation: Reports, etc. (1930, ff.)

_________________: Money and Banking (periodically, 1931 ff.)

Madden, J.T., and Nadler, M.: International Money Markets (1935)

National Monetary Commission: Reports (1910, 1911): includes volumes on a series of foreign systems

Northrop, M. B.: The Control Policies of the German Reichsbank, 1924-1933 (1938)

Plumptre, A. F. W.: Central Banking in the British Dominions (1940)

Rogers, J. H.: The Process of Inflation in France, 1914-1927 (1929)

Sayers, R. S.; Modern Banking (1947). Chiefly on England

Shepherd, H. L.: The Monetary Experience of Belgium, 1914-1936 (1936)

Whale, P. B.: Joint Stock Banking in Germany (1930)

Willis, H. P.: Theory and Practice of Central Banking (1939)

Willis, H. P., and Beckhart, B. H., eds.: Foreign Banking Systems (especially on Great Britain and Canada) (1929)

IV. THE GENERAL RELATIONS BETWEEN THE MONETARY AND BANKING SYSTEM AND ECONOMIC ACTIVITY

1. Required Reading (First Semester)

(In approximate order. Titles marked with asterisk (*) should be prepared for discussion in class.)

*Layton, Sir W. T.: Introduction to the Study of Prices (3rd ed., 1938) (skim)

*Fisher, Irving: The Purchasing Power of Money (2nd ed., 1926) (skim)

*Keynes, J. M.: Monetary Reform (1924), Chapters 1 and 3 (Section 1)

Angell, J. W.: Theory of International Prices (1926), pp. 116-135, 178-186, 274-280, 308-312, 324-331

_________________: The Behavior of Money (1936), Chapters 5, 6

Ellis, H. S. German Monetary Theory, 1905-1933 (1934), Chapters 8-11

Hawtrey, R. G.: The Gold Standard in Theory and Practice (5th edition, 1947). “V”

*Hawtrey, R. G.: The Art of Central Banking (1932), Chapter 4

*_________________: Currency and Credit (3rd edition, 1927), Chapters 1-4, 10, 11

*Keynes, J. M.: Treatise on Money (2 volumes, 1930), Chapters 9-14, 30, 35-37

Klein, L. R.: The Keynesian Revolution (1947), Chapter l (on Keynes’ Treatise). “V”

Robertson, D. H.: Essays in Monetary Theory (1940), Chapters 1, 4-6, 11

*Hicks, J. R.: A Suggestion for Simplifying the Theory of Money (Economica, February, 1935) (Reprinted in Am. Econ. Assoc., Readings in Monetary Theory, 1951)

*Keynes, J. M.: The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1936). “V”

2. Required Reading (Second Semester)

Haberler, G.: Prosperity and Depression (1946), Chapter 8. 3^rd edition 1941. “V”

Hansen, A. H.: Full Recovery or Stagnation (1938), Part IV

*_________________: Fiscal Policy and Business Cycles (1941), Part III. “V”

Wilson, T.: Fluctuations in Income and Employment (1942), Part I

*Burns, A. F.: Economic Research and the Keynesian Thinking of our Times (National Bureau of Economic Research, 1946)

*Hicks, J. R.: Value and Capital (1939), Chapters 9-14, 19, 23. “V”

*Lerner, A. P.: The Economics of Control (1946), Chapters 21-25. “V”

*Angell, J. W.: Investment and Business Cycles (1941), Chapters 9-11, 13. “V”

*Hansen, A. H.: Economic Policy and Full Employment (1947); Chapters 11-19

Klein, L. R.: The Keynesian Revolution (1947), Chapters 3, 4 (only pp. 110-123), 6. “V”

Harris, S. E., ed.: The New Economics (1947), Chapters 4, 9, 14, 31, 37

Ellis, H. S., ed.: Survey of Contemporary Economics (1948), Chapter 9 (article by H. H. Villard, “Monetary Theory.”) “V”

Modigliani, F.: Fluctuations in the Saving-Income Ratio (in National Bureau of Economic Research, Studies in Income and Wealth, Vol. 11, (1949), Part V)

Samuelson, P. A.: Interactions of the Multiplier Analysis and the Principle of Acceleration (RES, May 1939; reprinted in Am. Econ. Assoc., Readings in Business Cycle Theory)

3. Other Preferences

American Economic Association, Readings in Business Cycle Theory (1944), especially Chaps. 5-9, 12, 15, 17

_________________: Readings in Monetary Theory (1951), especially Chaps. 7, 11, 13, 17. “V”

_________________: Readings in Price Theory (1952), especially Chaps. 14, 15

American Economic Review: Proceedings (May, 1948): papers on Keynes

Angell, J. W.: Keynes and Economic Analysis Today (Rev. Econ. Stat., November, 1948)

Clark, J. M.: Alternatives to Serfdom (1948), Chapter 4

_________________: Economics of Planning Public Works (1935)

Domar, E. D.: Expansion and Employment (AER, March, 1947)

_________________: The Problem of Capital Accumulation (AER, Dec. 1948)

Duesenberry, James F.: Income, Saving and the Theory of Consumer Behavior (1949)

Durbin, E. M.: Purchasing Power and Trade Depression (1934)

Eisner, R.: Underemployment Equilibrium Rates of Growth (AER, Mar. 1952). On papers by Domar and Schelling in this Section.

Ellis, H. S., ed.: Survey of Contemporary Economics (1948), Chapters 2, 5

Fellner, W.: Monetary Policies and Full Employment (1946)

_________________: The Robertsonian Evolution (AER, June 1952)

_________________: and Somers, H. M.: Alternative Monetary Approaches to Interest Theory (RES, Feb. 1941)

Gayer, A. D.: Monetary Policy and Economic Stabilization (2nd edition, 1937)

_________________, ed.: Lessons of Monetary Experience (1937)

Halm, G.: Monetary Theory (1942). Second edition 1946

Hansen, A. H., Monetary Theory and Fiscal Policy (1949)

Hart, A. G.: Anticipations, Uncertainty and Dynamic Planning (1940)

Hawtrey, R. G.: A Century of Bank Rate (1938)

Hayek, F.: Prices and Production (2nd edition, 1935)

_________________: The Pure Theory of Capital (1941)

Henderson, H. D.: The Significance of the Rate of Interest (Oxford Economic Papers, October, 1938). Also see articles in later issues on interest rates and liquidity preference.

Kuznets, S.: National Product Since 1869 (1946)

Lange, O.: Price Flexibility and Employment (1944)

_________________: The Theory of the Multiplier (Econometrica, July-October, 1943)

Lange, O., et al., eds.: Studies in Mathematical Economics and Econometrics (1942; in memory of Henry Schultz) papers by Lange, Mosak, Samuelson, Hart, Tinbergen

Lundberg, E.: Studies in the Theory of Economic Expansion (1937)

Machlup, F.: International Trade and the National Income Multiplier (1943)

Mack, R. P.: The Direction of Change in Income and the Consumption Function (RES, November, 1948)

Marshall, A.: Money, Credit and Commerce (1923)

Modigliani, F.: Liquidity Preference and the Theory of Interest and Money (Econometrica, January, 1944)

Myrdal, G.: Monetary Equilibrium (1939)

Niebyl, K. H.: Studies in the Classical Theory of Money (1946)

Nussbaum, A.: Money in the Law (1939). 1950 edition

Ohlin, B.: The Stockholm Theory of Savings and Investment (EJ, 1937; reprinted in Am. Econ. Assoc., Readings in Business Cycle Theory, 1944)

Pigou, A. C.: Employment and Equilibrium (1941)

_________________: Lapses from Full Employment (1945)

Robinson, Joan: Introduction to the Theory of Employment (1939; expanded 1949)

Robertson, D. H.: Banking Policy and the Price Level (2nd edition, 1932)

_________________: Saving and Hoarding (EJ, September, 1933)

Rueff, J.: The Fallacies of Lord Keynes’ General Theory (QJE, May 1947)

Samuelson, P. A.: The Principle of Acceleration and the Multiplier (JPE, Dec. 1939)

_________________: Interactions between the Multiplier and the Principle of Acceleration (RES, May, 1939; reprinted in Am. Econ. Assoc., Readings in Business Cycle Theory, 1944)

Saulnier, R. J.: Contemporary Monetary Theory (1938)

Schelling, T.: Capital Growth and Equilibrium (AER, Dec. 1947). On paper above by Domar

Schumpeter, J. A.: Theory of Economic Development (1934)

Symposium: Five Views on the Consumption Function (Rev. Econ. Stat., November, 1946)

Temporary National Economic Commission: Saving and Investment (Hearings, Part 9: 1939)

Terborgh, G.: The Bogey of Economic Maturity (1945)

Tinbergen, J.: Some Problems in the Explanation of Interest Rates (QJE, May, 1947)

Villard, H. H.: Deficit Spending and the National Income (1941)

Viner, J.: Studies in the Theory of International Trade (1937), Chapters 3-7

Wicksell, K.: Interest and Prices (English edition, 1936)

_________________: Lectures on Political Economy, Volume II: Money (1935); also VoI. I, Introduction

Williams, J. H.: An Appraisal of Keynesian Economics (American Economic Review, Proceedings, May, 1948)

Wood, E.: English Theories of Central Banking Control, 1819-1858 (1938)

Wright, D. McC.: The Economics of Disturbance (1947)

V. BUSINESS CYCLES

(Also see references in Section IV)

1. Required Reading (First Semester)

Mitchell, W. C.: Business Cycles: The Problem and Its Setting. Volume I (1927), especially Chapters 1, 2, and 5

Clark, J. M.: Strategic Factors in Business Cycles (1934), especially pp. 1-22, 96-123, 167-183

Ellis, H. S.: German Monetary Theory, 1905-1933 (1934); Part IV

Amer. Econ. Assoc.: Readings in Business Cycle Theory (1944), Chaps. 1, 15, 17, 21. “V”

Haberler, G.: Prosperity and Depression (1946), Part I

2. Required Reading (Second Semester)

Haberler, G.: Prosperity and Depression (1946), Part III

League of Nations: Economic Stability in the Post-War World (1945), Section I. “V”

Schumpeter, J.: Business Cycles (1939), Chapter 4

Hicks, J. R.: Value and Capital (1939), Chapter 24

Angell, J. W.: Investment and Business Cycles (1941), Chapters 7, 8, 12

Hansen, A. H.: Fiscal Policy and Business Cycles (1941), Parts I, III

Wilson, T.: Fluctuations in Income and Employment (1942), Part II (on the U.S. 1919-1937)

Metzler, L. A.: Business Cycles and the Modern Theory of Employment (AER, June 1946)

Burns, A. F., New Facts on Business Cycles (National Bureau of Economic Research, Annual Report, 1950), Part I

3. Other References

Achinstein, A.: Introduction to Business Cycles (1950)

Burns, A. F.: Production Trends in the U. S. since 1870 (1934)

Burns, A. F., and Mitchell, W. C.: Measuring Business Cycles (1946)

_________________: Hicks and the Real Cycle (JPE, Feb. 1952)

Frickey, E.: Economic Fluctuations in the U. S., 1866-1914 (1942)

Harrod, R. F.: The Trade Cycle (1936)

_________________: Notes on Trade Cycle Theory (EJ, June 1951)

Hicks, J. R.: A Contribution to the Theory of the Trade Cycle (1950)

Kaldor, N.: A Model of the Trade Cycle (EJ, 1940)

_________________: Mr. Hicks on the Trade Cycle (EJ, Dec. 1951)

Kalecki, M.: Essays in the Theory of Economic Fluctuations (1939)

Knight, F. H.: The Business Cycle, Interest and Money (RES, May, 1941)

Robbins, L.: The Great Depression (1934)

Röpke, W.: Crises and Cycles (1936)

Salant, W.: Foreign Trade Policy in the Business Cycle (in C. J. Friedrich and E. S. Mason, eds., Public Policy, 1940, vol. II)

Tinbergen, J.: Statistical Testing of Business-Cycle Theories (2 volumes, 1939)

Tinbergen, J., and Polak, J. J.: The Dynamics of Business Cycles (1950)

VI. CURRENCY AND EXCHANGE DEPRECIATION:
INTERNATIONAL MONETARY POLICIES

1. Required Reading

Gayer, A. D.: Monetary Policy and Economic Stabilization (2 ed., 1937), Chapters 1-8

Hansen, A. H.: Full Recovery or Stagnation? (1938), Chapters 10-15

Gilbert, M.: Currency Depreciation (1939), Chapters 3, 5, 6

League of Nations: Economic Stability in the Post-War World (1945), Chapter 17

Hansen, A. H.: America’s Role in the World Economy (1945), Apps. A and B. “V”

Nurkse, R.: Conditions of International Monetary Equilibrium (1945) (reprinted in Am. Econ. Assoc., Readings in Intl. Trade, 1948)

_________________: Domestic and International Economic Equilibrium (in S. E. Harris, ed., The New Economics, 1947)

Robinson, Joan: Introduction to the Theory of Employment (1939; reprinted 1947), Chapter on The Foreign Exchanges

2. Other References

Angell, J. W.: Theory of International Prices, Chapters 7, 17 (1926)

Bloomfield, A. I.: Operations of the American Exchange Stabilization Fund (RES, May, 1944)

Bresciani-Turroni, C.: The Economics of Inflation (1937) (On Germany, 1914-24)

Brown, W. A., Jr.: The International Gold Standard Reinterpreted, 1914-1934 (2 volumes, 1944)

Cassel, G.: The Downfall of the Gold Standard (1936)

_________________: Money and Foreign Exchange After 1914 (1922)

Dulles, E. L.: The French Franc, 1914-1928 (1929)

Dupriez, L. H.: Monetary Reconstruction in Belgium (1947)

Ellis, H. S.: Exchange Control in Central Europe (1941)

Graham, F. D.: Exchanges, Prices, and Production in Hyper-Inflation: Germany, 1920-1923 (1930)

Gregory, T. E.: The Gold Standard and Its Future (1932)

Hall, N. F.: The Exchange Equalization Account (London, 1935)

Harris, S. E.: Exchange Depreciation (1926)

Heilperin, M. A.: International Monetary Economics (1939), Chapters 3, 6, 9

League of Nations: The Course and Control of Inflation (1946) (Experience after World War I)

_________________: International Currency Experience (1944)

Leavens, D. H.: Silver Money (1939)

Li, C. M.: Theory of International Trade under Silver Exchange (QJE, Aug. 1939)

Patterson, G.: Survey of U. S. International Finance (annual, 1950 ff.)

Sayers, R. S.: Modern Banking (1947), Chapters 7, 8

Southard, F. A., Jr.: Some European Currency and Exchange Experiences, 1943-1946 (1946)

U. S. Tariff Commission: Foreign Trade and Exchange Controls in Germany (1942), pp. 1-34

U. S. Treasury Department: Articles of Agreement: International Monetary Fund and International Bank for Reconstruotion and Development (1944)

Waight, L.: The Exchange Equalization Account (1939)

Westerfield, R. B.: Our Silver Debacle (1936)

Whittlesey, C. R.: International Monetary Issues (1937)

Williams, J. H.: Post-War Monetary Plans (1944)

VII. CURRENT PROBLEMS IN THEORY AND POLICY

(These references are in large part supplementary to the more recent among the titles in Section IV, above. Look into a number of them, and read carefully what interests you.)

Beveridge, Sir W.: Full Employment in a Free Society (1945)

Board of Governors, Federal Reserve System: Post-War Economic Studies (published at intervals)

Brunner, K.: Inconsistency and Indeterminacy in Classical Economics (Econometrica, Apr. 1951). On Patinkin papers listed below

Buchanan, N. S.: International Investment and Domestic Welfare (1945)

Chandler, L. V.: Federal Reserve Policy and the Federal Debt (AER, 1949; reprinted in Am. Econ. Assoc., Readings in Monetary Theory, 1951)

Clark, C.: The Economics of 1960 (1944)

Cohen, M.: Postwar Consumption Functions (RES, Feb. 1952)

Fisher, A. G. B.: International Implications of Full Employment (1946)

Fisher, Irving: 100 Per Cent Money (2 ed., 1936)

Friend, Irving: Personal Savings in the Post-War Period (Survey Current Bus., Sept. 1949 and Suppl., 1950-51

_________________ and Bronfenbrenner, J.: Business Investment Programs and their Realization (Survey of Current Business, Dec. 1950)

Hansen, A. H.: Classical, Loanable-Fund and Keynesian Interest Theories (QJE, Aug. 1951)

_________________: Income, Employment and Public Policy (1948) (Essays in honor of Hansen)

Harrod, R. F.: Toward a Dynamic Economics (1948)

International Labor Office: Public Investment and Full Employment (1946)

Lerner, A. P.: The Economics of Employment (1951)

Liu, T. C. and Chang, C. G.: U.S. Consumption and Investment Propensities (AER, Sept. 1950)

Millikan, M. F., ed.: Income Stabilization for a Developing Democracy (1953)

Morishima, M.: Consumer’s Behavior and Liquidity Preference (Econometrica, Apr. 1952)

Norton, F. E.: Capital Theory and Progressive Equilibrium (AER, Papers and Proc., May 1951)

Oxford University, Institute of Statistics: The Economics of Full Employment (1944). A symposium

Patinkin, D.: Relative Prices, Say’s Law and the Demand for Money (Econometrica, Apr. 1948)

_________________: The Indeterminacy of Absolute Prices in Classical Economic Theory (Econometrica, Jan. 1949)

_________________: The Invalidity of Classical Monetary Theory (Econometrica, Apr- 1951)

Robinson, Joan: Collected Economic Papers (1951). Parts I-III

Rosa, R.: The Revival of Monetary Policy (RES, Feb. 1951)

Schelling, T. C.: The Dynamics of Price Flexibility (AER, Sept. 1949). And see replies by Patinkin and Klein in AER, Sept. 1950

Tobin, J.: Monetary Policy and the Management of the Public Debt: The Patman Inquiry (RES, May 1953)

Tsiang, S. C.: Accelerator, Theory of the Firm and the Business Cycle (QJE, Aug. 1951). On Kaldor and Samuelson

United Nations: National and International Measures for Full Employment (Report by a group of experts: 1949)

_________________: Measures for International Economic Stabilization (Report by a group of experts: 1951)

Williams, J. H.: Money, Trade and Economic Growth (1951). (Essays in honor of Williams) Part III

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

1954-55

ECONOMICS 121-122

Add the following titles:

Sec. II-2:

Bach, G. L: Federal Reserve Policy-Making (1950).

Brandt, Harry: U.S. Monetary and Credit Policies, 1945-50 (unpubl. Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia 1954).

U.S. Congress: Joint Committee on the Economic Report: Monetary, Credit and Fiscal Policies (1949: U.S. Cong. 81:1).The Patman-Douglas Report. On the Federal Reserve, esp. Chap. II; on fiscal policy, Chap. XI.

Sec. IV-2:

Hansen, A. H.: A Guide to Keynes (1953), Chap. 7.

Sec. VII:

Abramovitz, M.: Economics of Growth (in: Survey Contemp. Econ., vol. II; ed. B. F. Haley, 1952).

Ferber, R.: Aggregate Consumption Functions (Natl. Bur. Econ. Res., Tech, Paper #8; 1953).

Friedman, Milton: Essays in Positive Economics (1953), Part III.

Hubbard, J.C.: The Marginal and the Average Propensity to Consume (QJE, Feb. 1954).

Kalecki, M.: Theory of Economic Dynamics (1954).

Kuznets, S.: The Proportion of Capital Formation to National Product (AEA, Proc., May 1952).

Mack, Ruth P.: Economics of Consumption (Survey Contemp. Econ., vol. II; ed. B. F. Haley, 1952).

Yeager, L. B.: Some Questions about Growth Economics (AER, March 1954).

Source: Columbia University Libraries, Manuscript Collections. Joseph Dorfman Collection, Box 13 (Columbia University – teaching, etc.) in an unlabeled folder.

Image Source: Harvard Class of 1918, Twenty-fifth Anniversary Report. Cambridge: 1943, pp. 24-26.

Tags AngellJW, DorfmanJ

Exam Questions M.I.T. Social Insurance Suggested Reading Syllabus

M.I.T. Reading List and Final Examination for Social Insurance. Diamond and Summers, 1981

Post author By Irwin Collier
Post date 2025-11-19

The following reading list and final exam were found in the Peter Diamond papers at Duke University’s Economists’ Papers Archive. No instructor is named on either the reading list or the exam. While transcribing for this post, I thought I had better base the small detail of the course instructor on some evidence. Checking the published course catalogue for the 1980-81 academic year at M.I.T., I was able to confirm my suspicion that Peter Diamond was indeed a course instructor. Not surprising in hindsight was that the course was co-taught with Lawrence H. Summers (a.k.a. “Larry” Summers) of most recent infamy.

On Summers’ Jeffrey Epstein connection: see the series of articles in the Harvard Crimson by Dhruv T. Patel and Cam N. Srivastava, Exhibit #1, Exhibit #2, Exhibit #3 (with Elise A. Spenner).

Once I go to the trouble of preparing an artifact for posting, I cannot resist the compulsion to share it. I ask my visitors to accept this post as a tribute to Peter Diamond’s contribution to graduate economics education à la M.I.T. rather than a rehabilitative look at the young Larry Summers in the Rear-view Mirror.

The evil that men do lives after them; The good is oft interred with the archival records.

_____________________________

14.476 Social Insurance

Prereq.: 14.121, 14.122
Year: G (2)

Theory of social insurance and examination of some of existing and proposed US programs including some subset of Social Security, Unemployment Compensation, Worker’s Compensation, National Health Insurance.

P. A. Diamond, L. H. Summers

Source: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Bulletin 1980-81. Courses and Degree Programs Issue 1980-81, p. 513.

_____________________________

14.476 Social Insurance
Spring 1981

(x) – optional

Introduction
1. (x) H. Kunreuther et al, Disaster Insurance Protection, Chapters 1, 10.
2. (x) P. Diamond, “A Framework for Social Security Analysis,” Journal of Public Economics, 1977, 275-98.
3. (x) Debreu, G., Theory of Value, Chapter 7. Also in P. Diamond and M. Rothschild, Uncertainty in Economics.
4. (x) Feldstein, M., “The Theory of Social Insurance,” Public Policy, 1977.
5. (x) FTC Staff Report, “Life Insurance Cost Disclosure.”
Moral Hazard
1. (x) M. Pauly, “Overinsurance and Public Provision of Insurance,” Quarterly Journal of Economics, 1974, 44-54. Also in Diamond and Rothschild.
2. Shavell, “On Moral Hazard and Insurance,” Quarterly Journal of Economics, November 1979.
Adverse Selection
1. Diamond and Rothschild, Uncertainty in Economics, Chapters 14, 16.
2. Akerlof, “The Market for Lemons,” Quarterly Journal of Economics, 1970, 488-500. Also in Diamond and Rothschild.
3. Rothschild and J. Stiglitz, “Equilibrium in Competitive Insurance Markets,” Quarterly Journal of Economics, 1976, 269-650. Also in Diamond and Rothschild.
Property Insurance
1. Joskow, “Cartels, Competition and Regulation in the Property-Liability Insurance Industry,” Bell Journal, 1973, 375-427.
2. (x) Stone, J., “Opinion, Findings and Decision on 1978 Automobile Insurance Rates, Part II.” Also in Division of Insurance, Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Automobile Insurance Risk Classification: Equity and Accuracy.
3. Smallwood, D., “Competition, Regulation, and Product Quality in the Automobile Insurance Industry,” in A. Phillips, ed., Promoting Competition in Regulated Markets.
4. Shavell, “On Moral Hazard and Insurance,” mimeo version, Section 6, Experience Rating.
5. State Farm Insurance Company, Research Department, “The Effect of a Suburban Driving Population on Urban Auto Insurance Premiums.”
6. DuMouchel, “Computing Territorial Relativities which Include the Effects of Travel Between Territories on Claims Costs.”
Pension and Social Security
1. (x) Munnell, A., The Future of Social Security, Brookings.
2. (x) Boskin, M., ed., The Crisis in Social Security, 1977.
3. (x) Myers, R.J., Social Insurance.
4. Pellechio, A., “Social Security Financing and Retirement Behavior,” AER, May 1979.
5. Boskin, M., “Social Security and Retirement Decision,” Economic Inquiry, 1977.
6. Quinn, J., “The Early Retirement Decision,” Journal of Human Resources, Summer 1977.
7. Bulow, J., “Analysis of Pension Findings under ERISA,” mimeo, 1979, National Bureau of Economic Research working paper.
8. Hagens, J., “Social Security as Retirement Insurance,” mimeo.
9. Crawford and Lilien, “Social Security and the Retirement Decision,” mimeo.
10. Mirrlees, J., “Intended Labour Supply.”
11. Mirrlees J. and Diamond, P., “A Model of Social Insurance with Variable Retirement,” Journal of Public Economics, 1979, 295-336.
12. __________ and __________, “Payroll Tax Financed Social Insurance with Variable Retirement.”
13. __________ and __________, “Social Insurance where the Value of Retirement Varies.”
14. __________ and __________, “Social Insurance with Variable Retirement and Private Savings.”
15. HEW Task Force on the Treatment of Women Under Social Security, Report.
16. HEW, “Social Security and Changing Roles of Men and Women.
17. (x) 1979 Advisory Council on Social Security, Report.
18. (x) National Commission on Social Security, Report.
19. (x) President’s Commission Pension Policy, Interim Report.
Unemployment
1. (x) Unemployment Compensation: A Background Report, Background Paper 15, Congressional Budget Office, 1976.
2. (x) “The Economics of Unemployment Insurance: A Symposium,” Industrial & Labor Relations Review, 30:4, July 1977.
3. (x) Baily, M.N., “Unemployment Insurance as Insurance for Workers,” in J. Hight, ed., Symposium on the Economics of Unemployment Insurance.
4. (x) Shavell, S., and L. Weiss, “The Optimal Payment of Unemployment Insurance Benefits over Time,” Journal of Political Economy, December 1979.
5. (x) Hall, R., and D. Lilien, “Efficient Wage Bargains under Uncertain Supply and Demand,” AER, December 1979.
6. Feldstein, M., “Private and Social Costs of Unemployment,” American Economic Review, May 1978, 155-8.
7. Feldstein, M., “The Impact of Unemployment Insurance on Temporary Layoff Unemployment,” AER, March 1979.
8. Clark, K., and L. Summers, “Labor Market Dynamics and Unemployment: A Reconsideration,” BPEA, 1979:1.
9. Clark, K., and L. Summers, “Unemployment Insurance and Labor Market Transitions,” mimeo.
10. (x) Baily, M., “On the Theory of Layoffs and Unemployment,” Econometrica, 1977, 1043-64.
11. (x) Flemming, S., “Aspects of Optimal Unemployment Insurance, Journal of Public Economics, 1978, 403-425.
12. (x) Jovanovic, B., “Job Matching and the Theory of Turnover,” Journal of Political Economy, 1979, 972-990.
13. (x) “Firm-Specific Capital and Turnover,” Journal of Political Economy, 1979, 1246-1260.
14. (x) Burdett, K. and Mortensen, D., “Search, Layoffs, and Labor Market Equilibrium.”
15. (x) Holmstrom, B., “Equilibrium Long-Term Labor Contracts.”
16. (x) Akerlof, G. and Main, B., “Pitfalls in Markov Modeling of Labor Market Stocks and Flows.”
17. (x) __________, “Unemployment Spells and Job Tenures.”
18. (x) National Commission on Unemployment Compensation, Report.
19. Gustman, National Bureau of Economic Research working paper.
20. Nickell, S., “The Effect of Unemployment and Related Benefits on the Duration of Unemployment,” Economic Journal, 89, 1979.
21. Atkinson, A., “Unemployment Benefits and Incentives,” unpublished.

_____________________________

14.476
Spring 1981
Final Exam

Answer four questions. They all count equally.

“Unlike the case of adverse selection, with moral hazard but no adverse selection, competitive equilibrium is efficient.” Comment.
Using a two period model of labor supply with uncertain incidence of (unobserved) disability, explain the effect of private savings opportunities on the ability of the government to provide disability insurance.
Discuss the cases for and against cross-subsidization of different risk classes for automobile insurance (assuming that auto insurance as a whole breaks even).
Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of annual sharing of husband’s and wife’s earnings for Social Security purposes.
Discuss the determinants of the optimal waiting period for unemployment benefits. Be clear about the criteria you are using and the separate moral hazard problems affected by the waiting period.

Source: Duke University. David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library. Economists’ Papers Archive. Peter Diamond papers, Box 4. Folder “Teaching Material”.

Image Sources: Portrait of Peter Diamond (2003) by Donna Coveny/MIT in “An Interview with Peter Diamond”, Macroeconomic Dynamics, 11, 2007, 543-565. Portrait of Lawrence H. Summers (1982) from MIT Museum.

Tags Diamond, SummersL

Harvard Suggested Reading Syllabus

Harvard. Course Readings for Economics and Social Ethics, 1920-1921

Post author By Irwin Collier
Post date 2025-11-13

Old Gate at Harvard College (August 6, 1920)

The artifact transcribed and linked for this post was found in last of ten boxes in the Harvard Archives collection “Syllabi, course outlines and reading lists in Economics, 1895-2003”. I had worked through the previous nine boxes containing folders chronologically ordered by academic year. Box 10 contained five folders of poorly sorted course materials that were undated, requiring some effort to establish a probable time range for any of the artifacts.

In the first folder I found an eight page typed list of courses, with the names and assigned readings (for most of the courses offered to both undergraduate and graduate students, though no reading lists for the courses that were primarily offered for graduate students) which was relatively easy to date by looking at the course staffing announced in the annual catalogue for the Division of History, Government, and Economics, 1920-21. There is one reference to Taussig’s third edition (Dec. 1921) in the list which would suggest that the list was probably prepared for the 1921-22 or 1922-23 year using materials gathered from the earlier 1920-21 academic year. But the perfect correspondence of course staffing between the transcribed list below and the published announcement for 1920-21 is sufficient for me to assign the 1920-21 academic year to the post.

Square brackets […] have been used to distinguish additional information from the typed list. All explicit titles have been linked, increasing the value of this post considerably.

______________________

Course Descriptions for
Economics and Social Ethics,
1920-21

Division of History, Government, and Economics, 1920-21 published in the Official Register of Harvard University, Vol. XVII (May 22, 1920) No. 27.

______________________

One Harvard Graduate’s Memoir
of the 1920s

Carlson, Valdemar. “The Education of an Economist before the Great Depression: Harvard’s Economics Department in the 1920’s.” The American Journal of Economics and Sociology, vol. 27, no. 1, 1968, pp. 101–12.

______________________

ASSIGNED READINGS IN ECONOMICS

A. PRINCIPLES OF ECONOMICS

[Assistant] Professor [Harold Hitchings] Burbank and assistants

Readings:

Taussig, [Frank William], Principles of Economics

[First Edition (1911): Volume I; Volume II]
[Second Edition, Revised (1915): Volume I; Volume II]
[Third Edition, (Dec. 1921): Volume I; Volume II]
[Fourth Edition (1939) requires readers to set up an individual account at archive.org for temporary access: Volume I; Volume II]

[Questions on the Principles of Economics by Edmund Ezra Day and Joseph Stancliffe Davis (Revised for the thrid edition of Taussig’s Principles of Economics) edition, 1922.]

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

1a. ACCOUNTING

Asst. Professor [Joseph Stancliffe] Davis

Readings:

[none listed]

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

1b. STATISTICS

Asst. Professor [Joseph Stancliffe] Davis

Readings:

Secrist, Introduction to Statistical Methods, 1-77, 116-424

King, Elements of Statistical Method, pp.1-19, 64-82, 167-196

Elderton, W. P. and E. M., Primer of Statistics, ch. 1-4

U.S. Census, The Story of the Census, 1790-1915

Field, “Some Advantages of the Logarithmic Scale in Statistical Diagrams,” Journ. Pol. Econ., Oct. 1917

Persons, W. M., Measuring and Forecasting General Business Conditions

Joint Committee on Graphic Standards, Preliminary Report
[Publications of the American Statistical Association 14, no. 112 (1915): 790–97. https://doi.org/10.2307/2965153]

Additional;

Unprescribed portions of King and Secrist

List of references appended to chapters in King and Secrist

References for Statistical Work (Prepared for Economics 1b, 1920)

Questions and Exercises in Statistics (Prepared for Economics 1b, 1920)

The Review of Economic Statistics

Lists of references in specific fields

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

2a. EUROPEAN INDUSTRY AND COMMERCE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

Dr. [Edmund Earle] Lincoln

Readings:

See printed bibliography on file in Tutorial Library

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

2b. ECONOMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES

Dr. [Edmund Earle] Lincoln

Readings:

See printed bibliography on file in Tutorial Library

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

3. MONEY, BANKING, AND COMMERCIAL CRISES

Professor [Allyn Abbott] Young

Readings:

[none listed]

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

4a. ECONOMICS OF TRANSPORTATION

Professor [William Zebina] Ripley

Readings:

Ripley, Railroad Rates, vol. 1, (not vol. II)

Ripley, Railway Problems

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

4b. ECONOMICS OF CORPORATIONS

Professor [William Zebina] Ripley

Readings:

Ripley, Trusts, Pools, and Corporations

Haney, Business Organization and Combination

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

5a. PUBLIC FINANCE, EXCLUSIVE OF TAXATION

Asst. Professor [Harold Hitchings] Burbank

Readings:

Bastable, Public Finance

Bullock, Selected Readings in Public Finance
[Second edition, 1921]

Daniel [sic], Public Finance [Possibly: Winthrop More Daniels, Elements of Public Finance (1899)]

Adams, H. C., Public Finance [sic]
[Probably: The Science of Finance, An Investigation of Public Expenditures and Public Revenues (1912)]

Seligman, Essays in Taxation

Darwin, Municipal Trade

Stourm, The Budget

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

5b. THE PRINCIPLES AND METHODS OF TAXATION

Asst. Professor [Harold Hitchings] Burbank

Readings:

Bastable, Selections on Public Finance

Bullock, Selected Readings in Public Finance
[Second edition, 1921]

Seligman, Essays in Taxation

Means, Methods of Taxation

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

6a. TRADE-UNIONISM AND ALLIED PROBLEMS

Professor [William Zebina] Ripley

Readings:

Webb, Industrial Democracy

Commons, Trade Unionism

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

7a. THEORIES OF VALUE AND DISTRIBUTION

Professor [Edmund Ezra] Day

Readings:

Marshall, Principles of Economics

Carver, The Distribution of Wealth

Taussig, Principles of Economics (1921 edition)
[Third Edition, (Dec. 1921): Volume I; Volume II]

Clark, The Distribution of Wealth

Walker, Political Economy

Fisher, The Rate of Interest

Böhm-Bawerk, Capital and Interest

Fetter, Economic Principles

Davenport, Economics of Enterprise

Veblen, The Theory of Business Enterprise

Hobson, Work and Wealth

Anderson, Social Value

Anderson, The Value of Money

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

7b. SOCIALISM, ANARCHISM, THE SINGLE TAX

Professor [Thomas Nixon] Carver

Readings:

See printed circular on file in the Tutorial Library

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

8. PRINCIPLES OF SOCIOLOGY

Professor [Thomas Nixon] Carver

Readings:

Bristol, Social Adaptation

Carver, Sociology and Social Progress

Sumner, Folkways

Spencer, Principles of Sociology [Vol. 1, Vol. 2, Vol. 3]

Carver, Essays in Social Justice

Giddings, Sociology

Tardl [sic], Social Gains [sic] [Looks like a typographical error. Probably Social Laws, An Outline of Sociology by Gabriel Tarde (1899 translation from the French)[

Kidd, Social Evolution

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

9a. ECONOMICS OF AGRICULTURE

Professor [Thomas Nixon] Carver

Readings:

Carver, Principles of Rural Economics

Carver, Selected Readings in Rural Economics

Various bulletins and reports

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

9b. INTERNATIONAL TRADE AND TARIFF POLICIES

Professor [Frank William] Taussig

Readings:

Taussig, Free Trade, the Tariff and Reciprocity

Mill, Principles of Political Economy

Smith, Wealth of Nations

State Papers and Speeches on the Tariff

Taussig, Selected Readings (to appear shortly)

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

10. ECONOMIC THOUGHT AND INSTITUTIONS

Dr. [Arthur Eli] Monroe

Readings:

Aristotle, Politics, Bk. I, ch. 1-11; Bk. II, ch. 1-6; IV, ch. 11-13; V, ch. 1-9

Maine, Ancient Law, ch. 5-8

Ashley, Economic History of England, vol. I, ch. 3

Mun: England’s Treasure by Forraign Trade

Turgot, Reflections on the Formation and Distribution of Wealth

Smith, Wealth of Nations, Bk. I, 1-3, 5-9, 11 (secs. 1,2)

Smith, Wealth of Nations, Bk. II, 3-5; IV, 1, 2, 9

Malthus, Essay on Population, [Vol. I, 6th ed. ] Bk I, 1, 2; Bk. II, 13; [Vol. II, 6th ed.] III, 2, 3; Bk. IV, 1, 2, 3. (Or selections in Ashley’s Classics)

Mill, Political Economy [Vol. I], Bk. I, 5; Bk: II, 11; Bk. III, 1-5

Mill, Political Economy [Vol. II], Bk. IV, 3,4; Bk. V, 8, 10, 11 (sec. 1-9)

List, National System of Political Economy, Bk. II, 2-5, 7

Carlyle, Past and Present (selected chap.) or
Ruskin, Unto this Last, ch. 1, 3

Bücher, Industrial Evolution, chs. 3, 4

Ashley, Economic Organization of England, ch. 1-7

Wells, Mankind in the Making

(Several optional assignments to be announced later)

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

11. ECONOMIC THEORY

Professor [Frank William] Taussig
[“Maurice Beck Hexter’s notes from Harvard University, 1921-22” and “Supplemental notes from F.W. Taussig’s Course in economic theory with contributions by A.A. Young” edited by Marianne Johnson and Warren J. Samuels in Research in the History of Economic Thought and Methodology, Vol. 28-C (2010), pp. 11-176]

Readings:

Ricardo, Principles of Political Economy
[Third edition, 1821]

Mill, Principles of Political Economy

Marshall, Principles of Economics

Clark, Distribution of Wealth

Böhm-Bawerk, Positive Theory of Capital

Fetter, Principles of Economics

Hobson, Work and Wealth

Veblen, Theory of Business Enterprise

Divers separate articles and chapters in other books

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

9a. THE DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH

Professor [Thomas Nixon] Carver

Readings:

Carver, Distribution of Wealth

Marshall, Principles of Economics

Böhm-Bawerk, Positive Theory of Capital

Fisher, The Rate of Interest

Clark, The Distribution of Wealth

Taussig, Work [sic] and Capital [Wages and Capital]

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

14. HISTORY AND LITERATURE OF ECONOMICS TO THE YEAR 1848

Professor [Charles Jesse] Bullock

PRIMARILY FOR GRADUATES

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

15. MODERN SCHOOLS OF ECONOMIC THOUGHT

Professor [Allyn Abbott] Young

PRIMARILY FOR GRADUATES

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

31. PUBLIC FINANCE

Professor [Charles Jesse] Bullock

PRIMARILY FOR GRADUATES

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

32. ECONOMICS OF AGRICULTURE, WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO AMERICAN CONDITIONS

Professor [Thomas Nixon] Carver

PRIMARILY FOR GRADUATES

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

33. INTERNATIONAL TRADE AND TARIFF PROBLEMS

Professor [Frank William] Taussig

PRIMARILY FOR GRADUATES

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

34. PROBLEMS OF LABOR

Professor [William Ripley] Ripley

PRIMARILY FOR GRADUATES

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

35a. BUSINESS CORPORATIONS

Asst. Professor Davis

PRIMARILY FOR GRADUATES

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

35b. BUSINESS COMBINATIONS

Asst. Professor [Joseph Stancliffe] Davis

PRIMARILY FOR GRADUATES

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

36a. PUBLIC OWNERSHIP: HISTORICAL, THEORETICAL, AND PRACTICAL ASPECTS

Dr. [Edmund Earle] Lincoln

PRIMARILY FOR GRADUATES

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

36b. PUBLIC REGULATION AND CONTROL OF PRIVATE INDUSTRY WITH PARTICULAR REFERENCE TO PUBLIC SERVICE INDUSTRIES

Dr. [Edmund Earle] Lincoln

PRIMARILY FOR GRADUATES

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

37. COMMERCIAL CRISES

Professor [Warren Milton] Persons

PRIMARILY FOR GRADUATES

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

38. SELECTED MONETARY PROBLEMS

Professor [Allyn Abbott] Young

PRIMARILY FOR GRADUATES

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

[ASSIGNED READINGS]
IN SOCIAL ETHICS

1. SOCIAL PROBLEMS AND SOCIAL POLICY

Asst. Professor [Robert Franz] Foerster and Asst. Professor [James] Ford

Readings:

Booth, Life and Labour of the People of London, vol. 1 of Series 1, 3-8, 24-73, 131-171

Conklin, Heredity and Environment, rev. ed. pp.197-242, 256-258, 297-306, 416-456, 475-497

Dewey, and Tufts, Ethics, ch. 15, pp. 297-304; ch. 18-26, pp. 364-606

Flexner, and Baldwin, Juvenile Courts and Probation, Pts.1, 2, pp. 3-78

Oppenheimer, The Rationale of Punishment, pp. 1-4, 171-175, 234-295

Spencer, Principles of Sociology, vol. 1, pt. 3, ch. 9 and 12, pp. 686-724, 745-756

Warner, American Charities, 3rd ed., ch. 4, 6-10, 12, 14-15, 17-22, pр. 64-90, 113-225, 248-284, 305-346, 363-476

Wines, Punishment and Reformation, ch. 8, 10, 12-14 (3rd ed.) pp. 133-167, 199-234, 265-412

Committee of Fifty to Study the Liquor Problem, Summary of Investigations, pp. 15-134

Burritt, Dennison, Gay, Heilman, and Kendall, Profit Sharing, pp. 159-257

Commons and Andrews, Principles of Labor Legislation, pp. 1-414, 454-464

Fay, Cooperation at Home and Abroad, pp. 273-285, 310-354

Foerster, A Promising Venture in Industrial Partnership, Annals American Academy of Political and Social Science, Pub. 703, November 1912, pp. 97-103

Hoxie, Scientific Management and Labor, pp. 25-139

King, Industry and Humanity, ch. 7, 8, pp. 167-303; ch. 10, pp. 364-390

British Labor party, Sub-committee on Reconstruction, report, Labor and the New Social Order, reprint from the New Republic, Feb. 16, 1918, pp. 12

Lee, Play in Education, pp. 319-391, 423-494

Schaeffle, Quintessence of Socialism, pp. 39-127

Schloss, Industrial Remuneration, pp. 286-309

Spargo, Applied Socialism, pp. 87-325

Veiller, Housing Reform, pp. 3-190

Williams, Profit-sharing, pp. 17-42, 146-171

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

4. AMERICAN POPULATION PROBLEMS: IMMIGRATION AND THE NEGRO

Asst. Professor [Robert Franz] Foerster

Reading:

Byington, Homestead: The Households of a Mill Town, ch. 9-11, pp.131-157

Fairchild, Immigration, ch. 1-5, 7, 9, 10, 12-14, 16, pp. 1-105, 123-143, 163-212, 233-368, 393-415

Foerster, The Italian Emigration of Our Times, ch. 21-24, pp. 415-525

Ibid. Quarterly Journal of Economics, Aug.1913, Review of Hourwich’s book on immigration, pp. 656-671

Hourwich, Immigration and Labor, ch. 4, 5, 12-15, 18, 23, pp. 82-112, 284-352, 375-383, 489-501, 414-431 and in chapter 21, Report of the MASS. COMMISSION ON IMMIGRATION, 1914, pp. 54-104

Millis, The Japanese Problem in the United States, ch. 1, pp. 1-29

Reely, Selected Articles on Immigration (Debaters’ Handbook) pp. 131-134, 200-204, 219-222, 225-229

Roberts, The New Immigration, ch. 9, 11-13, pp. 124-138, 156-199

Ross, The Old World in the New, ch. 1-4, 6, 11, pp. 1-92, 120-140, 259-281

U. S. Immigration Commission, vol. 39, pp. 5-81, 127-129

Walker, Discussions in Economics and Statistics, vol. 2, pp. 417-426

Warne, Slav Invasion, pp. 28-38, 47-83

U. S. Immigration Commission, vol. 1, pp. 491-541; vol. 4, pp. 239-281, 337-348

Ovington, Half a Man, ch. 4-8, pp. 75-217

Shaler, The Neighbor, pp. 278-336

Stone, Studies in the American Race Problem, pp. 149-208

Tillinghast, The Negro in Africa and America, Amer. Econ. Review, May 1902, pp. 28-45, 60-79, 102-170

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

6. UNEMPLOYMENT AND RELATED PROBLEMS OF THE WORKING CLASSES

Asst. Professor [Robert Franz] Foerster

Readings:

Beveridge, Unemployment, pp. 1-237

Webb, Seasonal Trades, ch. 1, 2, pp. 1-90

U. S. Bureau of Labor, Report on Women and Child Wage-Earners, vol. 7, pp. 43-60, 64-67, 177-192

Barnes, The Longshoremen, pp. 55-92, 199-206, 210-227

Chicago, Report of the Mayor’s Commission on Unemployment, 1914, pp. 107-165

U. S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Bulletin 206, B. Lasker, British System of Labor Exchanges, pp. 1-56

Kellor, Out of Work, Ch. 6, pp. 157-193

Gibbon, Unemployment Insurance, pp. 187-203

Dawson, Vagrancy Problem, ch. 4, 11, pp.104-132; 229-249

Ibid. Social Insurance in Germany, ch. 2-4, 7-9, pp. 22-127,182-265

Gibbon, Medical Benefit …Germany and Denmark, ch. 2, 6, 9, 12, 18 pp. 10-14, 43-52, 81-106, 125-131, 192-203

Rubinow, Standards of Health Insurance, Ch. 5-9, pp.67-152

Belloc, The Servile State, pp. 155-189

24th Annual Report of the U.S. Commissioner of Labor, 1909, Vol. 2, pp. 1499-1530, 1540-1544

Foerster, The British National Insurance Act, Q. J. of Econ., Feb. 1912, pp. 275-298, 305-312

Bernhard, Undesirable Results of German Social Legislation, pp. 39-75

Mass. Commission on Old Age Pensions, 1910 Report, pp. 112-122, 164-203, 224-259, 268-284, 300-344

U. S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Bulletin 195, Unemployment in the United States, 1916

Source: Harvard University Archives. Syllabi, course outlines and reading lists in Economics, 1895-2003. Box 10, Folder “Economics, undated (1 of 5)”.

Image Source: Old Gate at Harvard College (Leon H. Abdalian, photographer). Boston Public Library Arts Department. [No Copyright – United States]

Tags Burbank, Carver, DavisJS, Day, Foerster, Ford, Lincoln, Monroe, Ripley, Taussig, Young

Exam Questions Harvard Suggested Reading Syllabus Theory

Harvard. Advanced Economic Theory. Reading lists and exams. Schumpeter, 1948-1949

Post author By Irwin Collier
Post date 2025-10-15

With the 2025 Nobel Prize in Economics honoring work that has expanded upon Joseph Schumpeter’s felicitous description of economic innovation as a process of “creative destruction”, Economics in the Rear-view Mirror is happy to add the following Schumpeter teaching artifacts from the 1948-49 academic year at Harvard from his course on advanced economic theory. Keeping on the subject of Nobel prizes, it is worth noting that nine future economics laureates were included in Schumpeter’s reading lists for the course.

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Previous Posts:
Schumpeter’s Courses on Economic Theory

Economics 11. Economic Theory, Second Semester, 1934-35. [taken by Wolfgang Stolper]

Economics 11. Economic Theory, 1935-36. [taken by Paul Samuelson]

Economic 101. Economic Theory, 1936-37. [formerly 11]

Economics 101. Economic Theory, 1937-38.

Economics 103. Advanced Economic Theory, 1941-42.

Economics 103b. Advanced Economic Theory, 1947-48. [103a taught by Gottfried Haberler]

_______________________

Course Enrollment
1948-49

[Economics] 203 (formerly Economics 103a and 103b). Advanced Economic Theory (Full Course). Professor Schumpeter

Fall Term:
Total 21. 17 Graduates, 2 Public Administration, 2 Radcliffe.

Spring Term:
Total 10. 8 Graduates, 2 Public Administration.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College, 1948-49, p. 77.

_______________________

1948-49
Economies 203a
Fall Term

The primary object of this course is to train the students in the art of conceptualizing the salient features of the economic process. But discussion of individual problems will give the opportunity of rehearsing critically large parts of traditional theory, old and new. The program for this term includes, first, a preliminary survey of certain fundamental nations, especially determinateness and stability, second, the general dynamics of economic aggregates, third, the general theory of the behavior of households and firms. Though some knowledge of the calculus and of differential equations is desirable, purely mathematical aspects will not be stressed.

The student is supposed to be familiar with such standard works as Marshall’s Principles, Wicksell’s Lectures, Vol. I, Keynes’ General Theory,* Chamberlin’s Monopolistic Competition, Hicks’ Value and Capital, and Fisher’s Theory of Interest (out of print). To these, which are also required in several other courses, and part of every student’s equipment, should be added.

*(not available until October 29)

E. Lundberg, Studies in the Theory of Economic Expansion (King & Son, 1937) and for students with adequate mathematical preparations.

P. A. Samuelson, Foundations of Economic Analysis, 1947.

Students must use their own judgments as regards the extent to which they will avail themselves of the following additional suggestions which also stand instead of reading-period assignments:

P. A. Samuelson, Statics, “Dynamics, and the Stationary State,” Review of Economic Statistics, February 1943.

J. Tinbergen, “Suggestions on Quantitative Business Cycle Theory,” Econometrica, July 1935.

F. Modigliani, “Liquidity Preference, Interest, and Money,” Econometrica, January, 1944.

Allen and Bowley, Family Expenditure, 1935.

Colin Clark, The Conditions of Economics Progress, 1940.

Arthur Smithies, “The Boundaries of the Production Function and the Utility Function” (in Explorations in Economics, Essays in Honor of F. W. Taussig, 1936, II, Ch. 11).

T. De Scitovszky, “Price under Monopoly and Competition,” Journal of Political Economy, October, 1941.

T. Haavelmo, “The Interdependence between Agriculture and the National Economy,” Journal of Farm Economics, November, 1947.

G. Cooper, “The Role of Econometric Models in Economic Research,” Journal of Farm Economics, February 1948.

M. Reder, “Monopolistic Competition and the Stability Conditions,” Review of Economic Studies, Vol. VIII, No. 2.

N. Kaldor, “A Classificatory Note on the Determinateness of Equilibrium,” Review of Economic Studies, Vol. I, No. 2.

Source: Harvard University Archives. Syllabi, course outlines and reading lists in Economics, 1895-2003. Box 4, Folder: “Economics, 1948-49 (2 of 2)”.

_______________________

HARVARD UNIVERSITY
ECONOMICS 203a
February 1949

One question may be omitted. Arrange your answers in the order of the questions.

Consider the concept of the Stationary State both as a state of society that is to be expected in the near or distant future and as a methodological tool. When considering it in the latter sense, contrast it with the concepts of Economic Statics and of Static Equilibrium.
Analyze the profit item of the usual income statement of a corporation.
State the theory of interest which you prefer to others and give your reasons for this preference; then discuss, from the standpoint of this theory, how “technological progress” affects the rate of interest.
Discuss Cournot’s Duopoly and explain the shortcomings of this schema.
What has been, in your opinion, the upshot of the recent controversy on the “marginal-productivity theory of wages?”
What are the reasons for expecting that monopoly prices are more “rigid” than competitive prices?

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University, Final examinations 1853-2001. Box 16, Bound volume Examinations, Social Sciences Feb. 1949.

_______________________

Spring Term
1948-49
Economics 203b

Reference is made to the Reading List for the preceding term, both as regards the general scope of this course and as regards certain fundamental works with which students are supposed to be, or to make themselves, familiar (Marshall, Wicksell, Keynes, Chamberlin, Fisher, Lundberg, and Samuelson) and all of which are available in the Harvard libraries, although sone are out of print. The topics to be dealt with in this term are grouped into four approximately equal parts, each of which is to cover about three weeks. Of the books and papers to be mentioned below, three are taken over from the fall term list.

Restatement, with some additions and further illustrative applications, of the essentials treated in the Fall Term.

American Economic Association, H. S. Ellis ed., Survey of Contemporary Economics, Chs. 10 (Samuelson) and 11 (Leontief).

The Process of Accumulation and the idea of Balanced Advance

R. F. Harrod, Towards a Dynamic Economics, 1948

R. G. Hawtrey, “Mr. Harrod’s Essay in Dynamic Theory,” Economic Journal, September, 1939

E. D. Domer, “Capital Expansion,” Econometrica, April, 1946

E. D. Domar, “The Problem of Capital Accumulation,” American Economic Review, December, 1948

H. Froehlich, “Income Determination and Investment,” ibid. March, 1948

T. C. Schelling, “Capital Growth and Equilibrium,” ibid. December, 1947

L. R. Klein, “Notes on the Theory of Investment,” Kyklos, International Review of the Social Sciences, Bern, Volume II, 1948, fasc. 2

J. M. Keynes, “The Process of Capital Formation,” Economic Journal, September, 1939

Money and Real Income. Wages and Employment

A. C. Pigou, Equilibrium and Employment, 1941.

S. C. Tsiang, “Professor Pigou on Real Wages and Employment,” Economic Journal, December 1944

T. Haavelmo et al., “Multiplier Effects of a Balanced Budget,” Econometrica, October, 1945, and April, 1946

H. M. Somers, “The Impact of Fiscal Policy on National Income,” Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science, August, 1942

J. L. Mosak, “Wage Increases and Employment,” American Economic Review, June, 1941

J. T. Dunlop, “The Demand and Supply Functions for Labor,” American Economic Review, May, 1948

J. T. Dunlop, “Productivity and the Wage Structure,” Income, Employment and Public Policy (Norton & Company, 1948)

H. W. Singer, “Wage Policy in Full Employment,” Economic Journal, December, 1947

N. Kaldor, “Stability and Full Employment,” Economic Journal, December, 1938

Transformation or Disintegration of Capitalism

C. Clark, The Conditions of Economic Progress, 1940

G. J. Stigler, Trends in Output and Employment (National Bureau Publ. 1947)

Source: Harvard University Archives. Syllabi, course outlines and reading lists in Economics, 1895-2003. Box 4, Folder: “Economics, 1948-49 (2 of 2)”.

_______________________

1948-49
HARVARD UNIVERSITY
ECONOMICS 203b

One question may be omitted. Arrange your answers in the order of the questions.

Prove and discuss Haavelmo’s theorem that the imposition of a tax may lead to an increase of gross national income by an amount exactly equal to the tax.
Discuss Kaldor’s proposition that a state of full employment is essentially unstable.
In what sense is it true (a) that capital accumulation tends to exhaust investment opportunities and (b) that exhaustion of investment opportunities induces not only stationary conditions but also depression (underemployment)?
Analyze the relation between employment and a general variation (e.g. an increase) of (a) money wage rates (b) real wage rates. What has either case to do with the so-called Ricardo effect?
Discuss Harrod’s “dynamical schema.”

Source: Harvard University Archives. . Harvard University, Final examinations 1853-2001. Box 16, Papers Printed for Final Examinations, History, History of Religions, Government, Economics,….June 1949.

Image Source: Joseph Schumpeter in his Harvard office published in the Harvard Class Album 1946.

Tags Schumpeter

Development Economic History Exam Questions Harvard Suggested Reading Syllabus

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

Post author By Irwin Collier
Post date 2025-09-14

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Respectfully submitted,

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

Source: The Harvard Gazette, 4 May 2023.

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Meet Dwight H. Perkins

Dwight Heald Perkins’ Vita.

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

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

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

7/2006

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

_________________________

Course Announcement and Description

Economics 146. The Economic Development of China and Japan

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

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

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

_________________________

Department of Economics
Economics 14

THE ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
OF CHINA AND JAPAN

Fall Term, 1966

Professor Henry Rosovsky
Professor Dwight Perkins

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

I. STRATEGY OF DEVELOPMENT

READINGS

China

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

Japan

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

REFERENCES

China

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

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

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

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

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

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

II. PREREQUISITES OF ECONOMIC GROWTH

A. The Role of Government

READINGS

China

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

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

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

Japan

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

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

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

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

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

B. Entrepreneurship and Other Sociological Prerequisites of Economic Growth.

READINGS

China & Japan

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

Japan

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

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

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

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

REFERENCES

China

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

Japan

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

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

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

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

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

III. EXTERNAL RELATIONS AND ECONOMIC GROWTH

READINGS

China & Japan

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

China

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

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

Japan

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

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

REFERENCES

China

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

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

IV. NATIONAL INCOME MEASUREMENT

READINGS

China

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

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

Japan

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

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

REFERENCES

China

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

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

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

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

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

Japan

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

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

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

V. AGRICULTURE

READINGS

China

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

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

Japan

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

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

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

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

REFERENCES

China

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

Japan

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

R. P. Dore, Land Reform in Japan.

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

VI. CAPITAL

READINGS

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

Japan

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

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

REFERENCES

China

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

Japan

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

J. C. Abegglen, The Japanese Factory.

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

VII. PLANNING

READINGS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

REFERENCE

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

VIII. MONETARY AND FISCAL POLICY

READINGS

China

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

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

Japan

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

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

REFERENCES

China

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

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

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

Japan

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

IX. POSTWAR GROWTH IN JAPAN

READINGS

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

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

REFERENCES

London Economist, Consider Japan.

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

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

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

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

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

____________________________

Economics 146
Final Examination
January 1967

Part I

Answer either 1 or 2; 45 minutes

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

Part II

Answer question 3; no choice; 45 minutes

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

Part III

Answer question 4; no choice; 60 minutes

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

Part IV

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

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

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

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

Tags Perkins, Rosovsky

Origin of Tutorial Instruction in Economics, 1915-16

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Economics Undergraduate Program Undergoes Extensive Re-evaluation

Ec Dept. Appoints New Head Tutor; Lars Sandberg to Replace Wilkinson

Obituary of Lars Gunnarsson Sandberg (1939-2020)

Course Announcement

Economics 1. Principles of Economics

A Program for Sophomore Tutorial

SECTION I Economic History

SECTION II Competition and Modern Industrial Organization

SECTION III Policy Problems

SECTION IV Economic Growth and Organization in Other Countries

SECTION V Economic Growth and Organization in Other Countries

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Touching Basses: The Extraordinary Lives of Richard T. Gill CLASS OF 1948

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Economics 1. Principles of Economics

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1965-66 HARVARD UNIVERSITY Midyear Examination January 26, 1966

ECONOMICS I (Three hours)

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ECONOMICS I Spring Term 1965-66

1965-66 HARVARD UNIVERSITY Final Examination June, 1966

ECONOMICS I (Three hours)

Miscellaneous Bergsonia

HARVARD UNIVERSITY DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMICS

Economics 131 Comparative Economic Systems Spring Term, 1967-68

HARVARD UNIVERSITY Department of Economics

Economics 131: Professor Bergson Final Examination June 3, 1968

HARVARD UNIVERSITY. Lectures on Taxation.

SYLLABUS OF MR. NEWCOMB’S LECTURES ON TAXATION.

LECTURE I

LECTURE II.

LECTURE III.

Cf. M.I.T. core microeconomic theory 1974-75

Core graduate economic theory courses Princeton, 1976-77

Fall Term

Spring Term

ECONOMICS 501 Microeconomic Theory: Value and Distribution

Midterm Examination

Final Examination

Economics 501 Sample Exercises [Undated]

Other blog posts for James Waterhouse Angell

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ECONOMICS 121-122 READING LIST in MONETARY ECONOMICS

1954

ECONOMICS 121 REQUIRED READING

READING LIST IN MONETARY ECONOMICS

IV. THE GENERAL RELATIONS BETWEEN THE MONETARY AND BANKING SYSTEM AND ECONOMIC ACTIVITY

V. BUSINESS CYCLES

VI. CURRENCY AND EXCHANGE DEPRECIATION: INTERNATIONAL MONETARY POLICIES

VII. CURRENT PROBLEMS IN THEORY AND POLICY

ECONOMICS 121-122

14.476 Social Insurance

14.476 Social Insurance Spring 1981

14.476 Spring 1981 Final Exam

Course Descriptions for Economics and Social Ethics, 1920-21

One Harvard Graduate’s Memoir of the 1920s

ASSIGNED READINGS IN ECONOMICS

[ASSIGNED READINGS] IN SOCIAL ETHICS

Previous Posts: Schumpeter’s Courses on Economic Theory

Course Enrollment 1948-49

1948-49 Economies 203a Fall Term

HARVARD UNIVERSITY ECONOMICS 203a February 1949

Spring Term 1948-49 Economics 203b

1948-49 HARVARD UNIVERSITY ECONOMICS 203b

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

Meet Dwight H. Perkins

Course Announcement and Description

Department of Economics Economics 14

THE ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT OF CHINA AND JAPAN

I. STRATEGY OF DEVELOPMENT

II. PREREQUISITES OF ECONOMIC GROWTH

B. Entrepreneurship and Other Sociological Prerequisites of Economic Growth.

III. EXTERNAL RELATIONS AND ECONOMIC GROWTH

IV. NATIONAL INCOME MEASUREMENT

V. AGRICULTURE

VI. CAPITAL

VII. PLANNING

Ec Dept. Appoints New Head Tutor;
Lars Sandberg to Replace Wilkinson

Obituary of Lars Gunnarsson Sandberg
(1939-2020)

SECTION I
Economic History

SECTION II
Competition and Modern Industrial Organization

SECTION III
Policy Problems

SECTION IV
Economic Growth and Organization
in Other Countries

SECTION V
Economic Growth and Organization
in Other Countries

Touching Basses: The Extraordinary Lives of Richard T. Gill
CLASS OF 1948

ECONOMICS I
1965-66
Readings for the Fall Term

ECONOMICS I
Fall Term 1965-66

1965-66
HARVARD UNIVERSITY
Midyear Examination
January 26, 1966

ECONOMICS I
(Three hours)

ECONOMICS I
1966
Readings for the Spring Term

ECONOMICS I
Spring Term 1965-66

1965-66
HARVARD UNIVERSITY
Final Examination
June, 1966

ECONOMICS I
(Three hours)

HARVARD UNIVERSITY
DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMICS

Economics 131
Comparative Economic Systems
Spring Term, 1967-68

HARVARD UNIVERSITY
Department of Economics

Economics 131: Professor Bergson
Final Examination
June 3, 1968

HARVARD UNIVERSITY.
Lectures on Taxation.

SYLLABUS OF
MR. NEWCOMB’S LECTURES ON TAXATION.

Cf. M.I.T. core microeconomic theory
1974-75

Core graduate economic theory courses
Princeton, 1976-77

ECONOMICS 501
Microeconomic Theory:
Value and Distribution

Economics 501
Sample Exercises
[Undated]

Other blog posts for
James Waterhouse Angell

ECONOMICS 121-122
READING LIST
in
MONETARY ECONOMICS

ECONOMICS 121
REQUIRED READING

VI. CURRENCY AND EXCHANGE DEPRECIATION:
INTERNATIONAL MONETARY POLICIES

14.476 Social Insurance
Spring 1981

14.476
Spring 1981
Final Exam

Course Descriptions for
Economics and Social Ethics,
1920-21

One Harvard Graduate’s Memoir
of the 1920s

[ASSIGNED READINGS]
IN SOCIAL ETHICS

Previous Posts:
Schumpeter’s Courses on Economic Theory

Course Enrollment
1948-49

1948-49
Economies 203a
Fall Term

HARVARD UNIVERSITY
ECONOMICS 203a
February 1949

Spring Term
1948-49
Economics 203b

1948-49
HARVARD UNIVERSITY
ECONOMICS 203b

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

Department of Economics
Economics 14

THE ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
OF CHINA AND JAPAN

Economics 146
Final Examination
January 1967