Category: Undergraduate

Today’s posting is a transcription of the “correlation examination” questions for the history of political and economic thought given at Harvard in May 1939.

Concentrators in Economics will have to pass in the spring their Junior year a general examination on the department of Economics, and in the spring of their Senior year an examination correlating Economics with either History or Government (this correlating exam may be abolished by 1942), and a third one on the student’s special field, which is chosen from a list of eleven, including economic theory, economic history, money and banking, industry, public utilities, public finance, labor problems, international economics, policies and agriculture.
Courses in allied fields, including Philosophy, Mathematics, History, Government, and Sociology, are suggested by the department for each of the special fields. In addition, Geography 1 is recommended in connection with international policies or agriculture.
[Source: Harvard Crimson, May 31, 1938]

A printed copy of questions for twelve A.B. examinations in economics at Harvard for the academic year 1938-39 can be found in the Lloyd A. Metzler papers at Duke’s Economists’ Papers Project. 

• One Departmental Examination from the Department of Economics.
• Five Division Special Examinations.

Economic Theory,
Economic History Since 1750,
Money and Finance,
Market Organization and Control,
Labor Economics and Social Reform.

• Six Correlation Examinations given to Honors Candidates.

Economic History of Western Europe since 1750,
American Economic History,
History of Political and Economic Thought,
Public Administration and Finance,
Government Regulation of Industry,
Mathematical Economic Theory.

______________________

If you find this posting interesting, here is the complete list of “artifacts” from the history of economics I have assembled. You can subscribe to Economics in the Rear-View Mirror below. There is also an opportunity for comment following each posting….

______________________

DIVISION OF HISTORY, GOVERNMENT, AND ECONOMICS
CORRELATION EXAMINATION
HISTORY OF POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC THOUGHT

(Three hours)

            Answer either FOUR or FIVE questions, selected from TWO or THREE groups. If questions are taken from only TWO groups, at least TWO questions must be answered in each group. If you answer FOUR questions, write about an hour on ONE of them and mark your answer “Essay.” This question will be given double weight.

A
Use a separate blue book for the questions in this part.

1. “The greatest contribution of the Hellenistic Age in the field of political thought was the idea of cosmopolitanism.”
2. “Dante’s De Monarchia represents both the culmination and the close of medieval political theorizing on international relations.”
3. “Luther accepted the medieval conception of the social order, while at the same time rejecting all its sanctions.”
4. “The Leviathan of Hobbes is the best philosophical comment on the Tudor system.”
5. Who in your opinion is more typical of the eighteenth-century French thought: Montesquieu, Voltaire or Rousseau?
6. “In a historical discussion of Romanticism, the term should be used in the plural, not in the singular.”
7. “Hegel’s philosophy, with its emphasis on the historical continuity and collective nature of society, contributed to the growth of various types of political and social thought.”
8. Discuss the impact of the theory of Evolution on the idea of Progress.
9. “The Dictatorship of the Proletariat is a modern version of the Enlightened Despotism.”
10. “It is highly significant that the present-date dictatorships, while frankly admitting they are anti-liberal nature, all pretend that they are more democratic than the old democracies.”

B
Use a separate blue book for the questions in this part.

11. To what extent are the classifications of types of governments given by Plato and Aristotle useful at the present day? What amendments or additions would you suggest?
12. The theory of popular sovereignty in the Middle Ages.
13. “When Machiavelli based his instruction for Princes on the freedom from restraint, it seemed to the men of his day and unheard-of innovation, a monstrous crime.”
14. “What is called totalitarianism is really the rediscovery of the doctrine of sovereignty, well-established in the 16th century, by nations which have more recently come to national life and the realization of it. Nothing has been added to the doctrine except the confusion of legal omnipotence with a practical omnicompetence.”
15. “It was in truth a revolutionary act when Rousseau struck out the contract of rulership from the contractual theory; but it was not wholly without preparation that this stroke fell.”
16. “It is in general a necessary condition of free institutions that the boundaries of governments should coincide in the main with nationalities.”
17. How would you explain the weakness and inadequacy of American political thought in the period since the early years of the 19th century?
18. “The idea of the totalitarian State was born in the last world war, which became a totalitarian war.”
19. “The Fascist state is not legal but social; it deals with men as they are, not with legal patterns or abstractions. It does not recognize the “rights of citizens”; it offers men, services.”

C
Use a separate blue book for the questions in this part.

20. “For a modern student, seeking to understand and to judge the medieval doctrines about ‘usury’, both the theoretical arguments supplied by Aristotle, and the religious attitude of the Church, are less important than certain medieval economic conditions.”
21. “The basis of mercantilism was not confusion of the ideas, money and wealth, but a set of conditions which made the policy inevitable and right in that era.”
22. “Few writers in history have exerted an influence upon the policies of any nation, equal to that of Adam Smith over British fiscal and commercial policy throughout the nineteenth century.”
23. “The two parts of Ricardo’s system of economic theory were inconsistent; his theory of value or exchange implied, given free markets or free competition, a perfect harmony of all individual interests with one another and the public interest; but his theory of distribution, or wages, profits, and rent, implied a conflict of class-interests, in which Capital robs Labor while the Landlords Rob both.”
24. “The classical tradition of economic theory is not responsible for the economic interpretation of history; for Marx was led to the latter, not at all by the ideas he borrowed from the classical economists, but wholly by Hegel’s philosophy of history, which he converted from ‘dialectical idealism,’ into his own theory of ‘dialectical materialism.’”
25. “The ‘marginal utility’ and ‘productivity’ theories were invented in the late 19th century by the Austrian economists, J. B. Clark, and others, in an effort to refute Marx; and they failed to do this, because Marx had written about actual capitalism, while these new theories assumed an economic system that never did, or could, exist.”
26. “The history of economic theory, in relation to that of the public policies discussed by economists, shows how small a part reason plays in the conduct of human affairs. To take only one example; although all economists have agreed, for a century, that Free Trade is beneficial, and Protection is harmful to every nation, only England heeded them for a little while, and they are now ignored on this issue, thru-out the world.”
27. “The majority of the nineteenth century economists scarcely recognized, and their present-day successors are still far from understanding, the worst disease of the modern economic system, i.e., that which has caused it, ever since the outset of the industrial revolution, to break down every tenth year or so, in a world-wide depression.”
28. “The ‘trust-busting’ era in American history had behind it the over-simple theory of business competition and monopoly, of the 19th century economists. But economists now possess a more realistic theory of ‘monopolistic competition,’ which may lead in time to public acceptance, and regulation of monopolies, replacing futile efforts to suppress them.”
29. “The early, classical economic theory properly emphasized the ‘long-run’ effects of disturbing changes in economic conditions, which if allowed to work themselves out, usually correct the distressing, immediate effects that public opinion always wants governments to correct at once. But as more recent economic theorists have turned to ‘short-run’ analysis, they have fallen a prey, themselves, to the popular fallacies exploded by their predecessors.”

May 12, 1939.

Source: David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University. Lloyd A. Metzler Papers, Box 7; [Harvard University], Division of History, Government and Economics, Division Examinations for the Degree of A.B., 1938-39.

Today’s posting is a transcription of the “special examination” questions in market organization and control given at Harvard in May 1939.

Concentrators in Economics will have to pass in the spring their Junior year a general examination on the department of Economics, and in the spring of their Senior year an examination correlating Economics with either History or Government (this correlating exam may be abolished by 1942), and a third one on the student’s special field, which is chosen from a list of eleven, including economic theory, economic history, money and banking, industry, public utilities, public finance, labor problems, international economics, policies and agriculture.
Courses in allied fields, including Philosophy, Mathematics, History, Government, and Sociology, are suggested by the department for each of the special fields. In addition, Geography 1 is recommended in connection with international policies or agriculture.
[Source: Harvard Crimson, May 31, 1938]

A printed copy of questions for twelve A.B. examinations in economics at Harvard for the academic year 1938-39 can be found in the Lloyd A. Metzler papers at Duke’s Economists’ Papers Project. 

• One Departmental Examination from the Department of Economics.
• Five Division Special Examinations.

Economic Theory,
Economic History Since 1750,
Money and Finance,
Market Organization and Control,
Labor Economics and Social Reform.

• One of the Six Correlation Examinations given to Honors Candidates. (May 12, 1939; 3 hours)

Economic History of Western Europe since 1750,
American Economic History,
History of Political and Economic Thought,
Public Administration and Finance,
Government Regulation of Industry,
Mathematical Economic Theory.

_____________________________________

If you find this posting interesting, here is the complete list of “artifacts” from the history of economics I have assembled. You can subscribe to Economics in the Rear-View Mirror below. There is also an opportunity for comment following each posting….

________________________

DIVISION OF HISTORY, GOVERNMENT, AND ECONOMICS

DIVISION SPECIAL EXAMINATION
Market Organization and Control

(Three hours)

PART I

(About one hour)

1. Write an essay on one of the following topics:
   1. public control of stock markets,
   2. significance of NRA for future public policy,
   3. the Federal Trade Commission—an appraisal,
   4. two-price plans for farm products,
   5. farm tenancy,
   6. cooperative marketing in agriculture,
   7. public planning for electricity in Great Britain and in the United States,
   8. the question of relief for the railroads,
   9. the concept of “natural monopoly”,
   10. the holding company in industry and in public utilities,
   11. rural electrification,
   12. legislative and administrative standards for government price control.

PART II

(About one hour)

Answer two questions. Candidates for honors must answer one starred question

2. (*) What problems do you think especially need study in a “monopoly investigation”?
3. (*) “With a basing point system competition in such crude matters as price and quality has been put aside, and all that seems to remain is a gentlemanly emulation in the art of making friends and influencing people.”
4. Discuss the relations of vertical combination to efficiency and to monopoly.
5. “Pure competition is not the path to economic progress in an industrial age.”
6. (*) “Selection of a short-run agricultural program should depend on long-run objectives. If the eventual aim is to reduce farm capacity some type of domestic allotment scheme is appropriate for short-run policy; if the purpose is to maintain present capacity unchanged for two or three decades, then export subsidy is indicated for the short run.”
7. (*) In the case where farm products are purchased by a few large buyers can the prices paid be kept permanently below the level that they would approximate if there were many small buyers? Explain.
8. Would you agree with the view that the important public problems concerning agriculture are those of land use and conservation rather than those of prices, costs, and incomes?
9. “the fact that during the twenties the farmers did not move on into some non-agricultural pursuit shows that the incomes that they received were sufficient to keep them on the farms. Hence there was no real overcapacity in agriculture.”
10. (*) The elimination of excessive profits from utility operations is, in itself, no proof of successful rate regulation.”
11. (*) What do you think should be the objectives of regulation of securities and financial practices of operating utility companies? What principles of financial regulation seem best fitted to achieve these aims?
12. Discuss some of the important economic problems in the field of communications.
13. “If the utility has a thousand transactions a day and its charge on each is but a reasonable compensation for the benefit received by the party dealing with it, such charges do not become unreasonable because the aggregate of the profits is large.”

PART III

(About one hour)

Answer two questions.

14. “The manufacturers who reduce output to maintain high prices nevertheless understand that the soundest principles of economics have been violated when farmers are assisted by government to plough under cotton and slaughter little pigs. These same farmers, however, will in the same breath denounce the railroads and utilities for not expanding production by reducing rates.”
15. “Sizes of firms have nothing to do with the degree of price flexibility in a market. That depends fundamentally on conditions of demand and of costs.”
16. How may prices of farm products and location of agricultural production be affected by freight rates?
17. “Where a large proportion of the costs are fixed, competition is likely to be a poor regulator of industry. It seems highly probable that some industries escaped a situation somewhat analogous to that of farming because of monopolistic elements in competition.”
18. Do you agree with the view that price discrimination is desirable in public utilities but undesirable in other industries? Explain.
19. “A reduction in corporate taxes would be the most effective antitrust measure to get lower prices.”
20. Do you think that total employment and total consumption of goods and services in the country as a whole can be influenced appreciably by (a) the policies of public utility managements and of regulatory commissions, or (b) the policies of farmers and of the Secretary of Agriculture?
21. “The organization and mechanism of the socialist economy is almost identical with that of monopolistic corporate capitalism. It is the results which would differ.”
22. “In the future the policies of labor unions will have more influence on industrial prices than the policies of business executives.”

May 10, 1939.

Source: David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University. Lloyd A. Metzler Papers, Box 7; [Harvard University], Division of History, Government and Economics, Division Examinations for the Degree of A.B., 1938-39.

Today’s posting is a transcription of the “special examination” questions in money and finance given at Harvard in May 1939. Note that by finance, government finance/fiscal policy was understood.

Concentrators in Economics will have to pass in the spring their Junior year a general examination on the department of Economics, and in the spring of their Senior year an examination correlating Economics with either History or Government (this correlating exam may be abolished by 1942), and a third one on the student’s special field, which is chosen from a list of eleven, including economic theory, economic history, money and banking, industry, public utilities, public finance, labor problems, international economics, policies and agriculture.
Courses in allied fields, including Philosophy, Mathematics, History, Government, and Sociology, are suggested by the department for each of the special fields. In addition, Geography 1 is recommended in connection with international policies or agriculture.
[Source: Harvard Crimson, May 31, 1938]

A printed copy of questions for twelve A.B. examinations in economics at Harvard for the academic year 1938-39 can be found in the Lloyd A. Metzler papers at Duke’s Economists’ Papers Project. 

• One Departmental Examination from the Department of Economics.
• Five Division Special Examinations.

Economic Theory,
Economic History Since 1750
Money and Finance,
Market Organization and Control,
Labor Economics and Social Reform.

• One of the Six Correlation Examinations given to Honors Candidates. (May 12, 1939; 3 hours)

Economic History of Western Europe since 1750,
American Economic History,
History of Political and Economic Thought,
Public Administration and Finance,
Government Regulation of Industry,
Mathematical Economic Theory.

_____________________________________

If you find this posting interesting, here is the complete list of “artifacts” from the history of economics I have assembled. You can subscribe to Economics in the Rear-View Mirror below. There is also an opportunity for comment following each posting….

________________________

DIVISION OF HISTORY, GOVERNMENT, AND ECONOMICS

DIVISION SPECIAL EXAMINATION
Money and Finance

(Three hours)

PART I

(About one hour)

1. Write an essay on one of the following topics:
   1. the depression of 1937-1938,
   2. the Federal Reserve System since the War,
   3. currency depreciation,
   4. price levels and foreign exchange under inflation,
   5. the recent and current policies of Germany with respect to foreign exchange and foreign trade, and their effects on the world economy,
   6. international short-term balances,
   7. the ability-to-pay theory of taxation,
   8. the burden of the public debt,
   9. taxes and subsidies as means to increase the national income,
   10. financing social security,
   11. taxation and the business cycle,
   12. the Federal Reserve Board and the Treasury.

PART II

(About one hour)

Answer two questions. Candidates for honors must answer one starred question

2. (*) According to a recent proposal, new money (supplementary to our present currency) would be freely issued at a fixed price against the delivery of a stated composite of storable raw materials and redeemable at any time in the same commodity composite. Discuss the possibilities of this scheme as a means of mitigating the business cycle.
3. (*) Explain (a) the factors that determine the current level of total consumption and investment in a community in a given period, and (b) the possible effects of the current on the future level of consumption and investment.
4. “Inflation means that artificial purchasing power, which represents no goods and services available for exchange, is enabled to bid for goods and services.”
5. Discuss the importance and the principles of proper control of the quality of bank credit.
6. (*) “When a country is off the gold standard, its government and central bank have the power to control the exchange rate and prevent external events from causing domestic deflation and unemployment. And in this case even if the government and the bank are not conscious of this power and have no conscious policy, their actual behavior will precisely determine the exchange rate, and the output and income of the country.” Discuss.
7. (*) Can the general conclusions of the classical theory of international trade be supported if the theory of comparative labor costs is replaced by a type of analysis consistent with the ideas about costs and values now accepted in general economic theory? Explain.
8. “In practical world politics, the difference between the South Manchurian Railway Company and the Japanese Government, or between the Anglo-Persian Oil Company and the British Government, is the difference between Tweedledum and Tweedledee.”
9. Outline and explain the principal changes that have occurred in the balance of payments of the United States in the last two decades.
10. (*) Are there any satisfactory criteria to distinguish between “productive” and “unproductive” government expenditure?
11. (*) How may expenditure by government of funds obtained through taxes affect the incidence of the taxes?
12. “All taxes tend to depress wages or increase prices and to lower the standard of living.”
13. “Equity in taxation is an elusive mistress, whom perhaps it is only worth the while of philosophers to pursue ardently and of politicians to watch warily.”

PART III

(About one hour)

Answer two questions.

14. “The budget should be balanced by issue of gold certificates. The government owns the gold and it has every right to use it to pay its debts.”
15. “Keynes’s economic system is a reversion to the economic doctrines of mercantilism.”
16. Compare the probably effectiveness of banking reform and tax reform as methods of preventing harmful inequalities of income.
17. “The ‘abstinence’ for which investors are presumed to be rewarded under our system of private capitalism has too often become total and permanent abstinence, because our commercial bankers have departed from their proper functions and become mortgage bankers or bond salesmen, or even croupiers for the gambling games carried on in stock exchanges.”
18. Do you think that the financing of a large governmental deficit by the banking system makes it difficult for private investment to expand enough to provide full employment?
19. “The true meaning of laissez-faire, as the Classical economists well understood, is positive action by government in the spheres of money, public finance, and foreign trade to provide a framework within which free enterprise can function to bring desirable results.”
20. “Free competition is essential to the proper functioning of capitalism and the necessity for competition in the banking business is perhaps the primary requisite in this respect.”
21. Do you think that the foreign markets for this country’s surplus farm products are being seriously jeopardized by the present administration’s agricultural policies? Explain.
22. “Public finance, above all, must ‘change with the times’, for the failure to adapt public finance to changing social pressures has always been a potent cause of revolution.”

May 10, 1939.

Source: David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University. Lloyd A. Metzler Papers, Box 7; [Harvard University], Division of History, Government and Economics, Division Examinations for the Degree of A.B., 1938-39.

Today’s posting is a transcription of the “special examination” questions in economic theory given at Harvard in May 1939.

Concentrators in Economics will have to pass in the spring their Junior year a general examination on the department of Economics, and in the spring of their Senior year an examination correlating Economics with either History or Government (this correlating exam may be abolished by 1942), and a third one on the student’s special field, which is chosen from a list of eleven, including economic theory, economic history, money and banking, industry, public utilities, public finance, labor problems, international economics, policies and agriculture.
Courses in allied fields, including Philosophy, Mathematics, History, Government, and Sociology, are suggested by the department for each of the special fields. In addition, Geography 1 is recommended in connection with international policies or agriculture.
[Source: Harvard Crimson, May 31, 1938]

A printed copy of questions for twelve A.B. examinations in economics at Harvard for the academic year 1938-39 can be found in the Lloyd A. Metzler papers at Duke’s Economists’ Papers Project. 

• One Departmental Examination from the Department of Economics.
• Five Division Special Examinations.

Economic Theory,
Economic History Since 1750,
Money and Finance,
Market Organization and Control,
Labor Economics and Social Reform.

• One of the Six Correlation Examinations given to Honors Candidates. (May 12, 1939; 3 hours)

Economic History of Western Europe since 1750,
American Economic History,
History of Political and Economic Thought,
Public Administration and Finance,
Government Regulation of Industry,
Mathematical Economic Theory.

______________________

If you find this posting interesting, here is the complete list of “artifacts” from the history of economics I have assembled. You can subscribe to Economics in the Rear-View Mirror below. There is also an opportunity for comment following each posting….

________________________

DIVISION OF HISTORY, GOVERNMENT, AND ECONOMICS

DIVISION SPECIAL EXAMINATION
Economic Theory

(Three hours)

A candidate may, at his option, write hour essays on TWO topics in Part I and omit Part II.

Part I

(About one hour)

1. Write an essay on one of the following topics:
   1. monopolistic competition and excess capacity,
   2. selling costs and social waste,
   3. the theory that interest is the price paid for ‘the service of waiting’,
   4. the effects on employment of a general cut in money wage-rates in the early stages of depression,
   5. the nature and causes of ‘pure profit’.

Part II

(About one hour)

Answer two questions.

2. Explain, and discuss briefly, the meanings, the main ‘geometric’ properties and relations, and the main uses as aids to analysis, of the following ‘tools’: the demand curve for a firm’s output; the firm’s marginal revenue curve; its short- and long-period curves of average total unit costs; and its curve of marginal costs.
3. “Although the ‘individual firm approach’ to value theory is in general superior, the ‘whole industry approach’ of Marshall still is capable of being used, without assuming ‘pure competition’, as an effective way of exploring certain important problems, which the other approach leaves out of sight.” Discuss.
4. Explain the essential propositions of the ‘marginal productivity theory’ of income distribution in an economy characterized by pure competition; and the principal changes which must be made in this theory when account is taken (a) of monopoly elements in the markets in which products are sold, and (b) of monopoly elements in the markets in which factors are hired.
5. “Those who hold that competitive allocation of economic resources in free markets would bring maximum satisfaction only if incomes were approximately equal, are in effect admitting that the market neither does, nor can, give sound guidance in any economic system that relies upon the profit motive to keep going.”
6. Discuss the proper definitions, provinces, difference in assumptions, and relation to each other, of economic ‘statics’ and ‘dynamics’.
7. Explain and discuss one major, novel concept introduced into economic theory by J. M. Keynes.

Part III

(About one hour)

Discuss two of the following questions.

8. “Men are no longer units; they are being compulsorily coagulated into groups, and the forces of combination and regulation are producing a society very different from that which the nineteenth century Political Economy set out to interpret.”
9. “The nature of an economic law is such that it can be neither established nor refuted by an appeal to the facts.”
10. “The conception of the economic process as a circus off commodities and prices divorced from class relations is neither Marxian nor Classical.”
11. “If we find something approaching pure competition in any branch of production, we can conclude that it is subject to increasing costs.”
12. “Given fresh natural resources to develop, a rapidly increasing population, and foreign markets for goods and capital, even a trustified capitalism might be able to maintain high utilization of economic resources and an increasing national income. But in the absence of these favoring conditions it will be undermined more and more by direct government action to ward off the ever-present tendency to continuous depression.”

May 10, 1939.

Source: David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University. Lloyd A. Metzler Papers, Box 7; [Harvard University], Division of History, Government and Economics, Division Examinations for the Degree of A.B., 1938-39.