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Columbia Suggested Reading Syllabus

Columbia. New Seminar. Outline with readings, Economic Theory and Change. Mitchell and Ginzberg, 1937

 

Wesley Clair Mitchell left voluminous course lecture notes found with his other papers at the Columbia University Archives. On the whole his notes are very neatly written by hand so that any typed pages among his lecture notes immediately catch the attention of the tired eyes of this archival junkie working the boxes. My presumption was that this typed material was probably someone else’s work and the pencilled “Eli Ginzberg” on one of the course outlines provided an obvious lead. Ginzberg received his Ph.D. from Columbia in 1934 and held the rank of Lecturer in economics at Columbia at the time of this course. Chapter 2 (“The Education of an Economist”) in his book The Skeptical Economist (1987) provides the necessary back-story for the course materials transcribed for this post.

From Mitchell’s notes to the first session from the Winter session of the course in 1937-38, we learn that a dress rehearsal was held as a seminar during the Spring 1937 course for which we have the following list of participants. Definitely worth noting is that William Vickrey and Anna Jacobson Schwartz participated in that preliminary seminar.

____________________

Handwritten: Economics Seminar. March-May 1937
(Signatures of student participants. Note: “not complete”)

William Vickrey, Ruth Cleve [?], Pauline Arkus, Anna Jacobson [Note: this is Milton Friedman’s collaborator Anna Schwartz], [First name illegible] Louise Boggen, Konrad Bekker, Mark S. Massel, Eileen M. Conly, John I. Griffin, Alan Pope, Bela Gold, Burnham P. Beckwith, Herman Zap, Moore

Source:  Columbia University Archives. Papers of Wesley Clair Mitchell. Box 3, Folder “3-5/37 A”.

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Origin of the seminar

“In 1932-1933, a group of us brought about the first change in the curriculum: We persuaded Mitchell, Clark, and Angell to offer a seminar on economic theory. In the mid-1930s, when I had begun to teach as an assistant in the School of Business, I was instrumental in establishing several further reforms, largely through persuading its dean, Roswell C. McCrea, who also served as chairman of the Economics Department, to do the following: to reduce the number of subjects on which doctoral candidates were examined from seven to six, to invite Milton Friedman to give a course on ‘Neoclassical Economics,’ to have Wesley Mitchell substitute for his lectures on ‘Current Types of Economic Theory’ a new seminar on ‘Economic Theory and Economic Change,’ in which I would serve as his assistant. Furthermore, McCrea obtained the consent of the Committee on Instruction in the School of Business for me to offer a new course on ‘Economics and Group Behavior,’ which was cross-listed in the Department of Economics’ offerings. This was probably the first course in what later became known as ‘human resources.’”

 

Source: Eli Ginzberg, The Skeptical Economist (Westview Press, 1987), p. 16.

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Secular and Structural Changes in a Modern Economy
From Mitchell’s handwritten notes for the first meeting
Sept. 28, 1937

An experimental course. 1st time given, aside from a brief trial run in seminar last spring.
Title not felicitous: perhaps it will prove not very accurate. Explanation of view[?] called for.

Past 2 generations have seen vigorous development of three or four different approaches to study of economic behavior.

Economic theory of several types ranging from mathematical economics on one flank to institutional economics on other flank.

Economic history of recent and more remote past

Economic statistics have multiplied in the leading commercial nations and technique of using them has been improved.

Relation of these approaches to one another

Difficult to find investigation in which one approach only is used.

Economic theorist seldom disregards wholly the historical setting of his problem, or quantitative importance of its components. Whether they recognize it or not, these factors count in their thinking.

Economic historians and statisticians cannot dispense wholly with qualitative analysis.

Their selection and arrangement of materials imply classification: they take materials that are pertinent and pass on others that are not. What is pertinent in their judgment is decided whether they realize it or not, by the organization of their ideas.

Can find many investigations in which an attempt is made to use all three approaches

Schmoller’s Allgemeine Vokswirtschaftslehre, Webbs’ History of British T. U.‘s and Industrial Democracy.Marshall’s Industry and Trade. Cassel’s Social Economics. Keynes‘ Theory of Money, Pigou’s Industrial Fluctuations, Sombart’s Moderne Kapitalismus. A brilliant older example Marx’s Capital; indeed Wealth of Nations except that Adam Smith had a poor opinion of ‘political arithmetic’.

 

But, to a large extent, the theoretical, historical, and statistical approaches have been developed by three groups of workers

Each of whom is especially adept in one approach and makes incidental rather than systematic and thorough use of the other approaches

And there are

Economic theorists
Economic historians
Economic statisticians

who seem not to realize the extent to which their thinking is influenced by elements derived from the other approaches.

In general we cannot claim that the three approaches have been perfectly blended

Schmoller a particularly good example because he tried as hard to use all three. He knew certain phases of economic history well: but not all the phases on which he touched. He was a slovenly theorist and a gullible statistician.

Hence one of the great tasks before the generation of economists to whom members of this class belong is to utilize the knowledge of economic processes provided by the 3 approaches more effectively than their predecessors have done.

Primary aim of the course is to aid in that effort.

Method is to take up certain economic processes that have been studied for both the theoretical angles and for the historical or statistical angles or for both and to inquire whether the realistic approaches call for modification of the theoretical analyses: quite as much

Whether the theoretical approach calls for modification of the realistic investigations.

How much we can get out of this experiment for the improvement of our own investigations remains to be seen.

Will depend not only upon the industry with which we are ready to devote to study of the materials assigned but also upon the ability to think we are able to develop.

 

Mode of conducting course

Dr. G. and I will select problems, at least at beginning, and assign readings. Members of class will present reports to the class Written or oral. Discussion in class.

As work goes on we may well turn up problems of which Dr. Ginzberg and I have not thought in advance.

Interest of the meetings and value of the work are necessarily conditioned by the clarity of the reports made by the members of the group.

Please try hard to get your notes[?] well organized and lucidly presented. So well presented that other members who listen once only can understand and expect questions of others as you present reports.

So much for the general aims of the course and how it will be conducted. Begin work with an attempt to characterize broadly the conceptions of economic change that are held by investigators.

Or rather, what types of movements occur in economic life.

 

1st assignment

Let each member of class consult one or more of the statistical treatises that deal with time-series analysis to find out what types of movements are recognized.

What is basis of classification used? In what are these movements all alike? In what do the types differ? Are all of these types recognized by economic theory? For what types do economic theorists offer explanations? What relation if any do the movements of the statisticians bear to the ‘disturbing circumstances’ of economic theory and to the movements by which economic equilibrium is restored after a disturbance, and maintained in the absence of further disturbances (equilibrating movements)? Are the criteria used by economic statisticians in classifying movement like those used by time-series analysts? Can we expect inductive testing of economic laws?

Source:  Columbia University Archives. Papers of Wesley Clair Mitchell. Box 3, Folder “9/28/37 A”.

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Handwritten draft of course announcement

December 19, 1936
Announced for 1936-37

Cumulative Changes in Economic Processes

A critical survey of realistic studies of population growth, natural resources, occupations, capacity to produce, standards of living, national income and its distribution, ownership of property, business organization and methods, labor conditions, capital accumulation, the role played by government in economic affairs, and national planning, accompanied by study of the relations of the findings to economic theory.

Readings, reports and class discussions. Limited to twenty students. Admission by permission of the instructor.

2 hours a week, both semesters.
4-6 Thursdays.

Source:  Columbia University Archives. Papers of Wesley Clair Mitchell. Box 3, Folder “12/19/36 A”.

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Course Announcement
1937-38

Economics 201-202—Secular and structural changes in a modern economy.  3 points each session. Professor Mitchell with the assistance of Dr. Ginzberg.

Tu., 4:10-6. 102 Low.

The theoretical, institutional, historical, and statistical approaches to the study of economic changes. Critical survey of investigations into recent changes in important factors. Relations of the findings to current economic theory.
Readings, reports, and class discussions.
Admission only with permission of the instructor.

Source: Columbia University. Bulletin of Information (July 23, 1938). Courses offered by the Faculty of Political Science for the Winter and Spring Sessions, 1937-1938, p. 30.

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Course Announcement
1938-39

Economics 201-202—Economic changes and economic theory.  3 points each session. Professor Mitchell assisted by Dr. Ginzberg.

Tu., 4:10-6. 502 Business.

The theoretical, institutional, historical, and statistical approaches to the study of economic changes. Critical survey of investigations into recent changes in important factors. Relations of the findings to current economic theory. Readings, reports, and class discussions.

Admission only with permission of the instructor.

Source: Columbia University. Bulletin of Information (July 23, 1938). Courses offered by the Faculty of Political Science for the Winter and Spring Sessions, 1938-1939, p. 31.

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Jan. 14, 1937

TENTATIVE OUTLINE FOR COURSE ON CUMULATIVE CHANGES IN ECONOMIC PROCESSES

Introduction: The theoretical, the historical, and the statistical approaches to the study of Economic Changes.

  1. The concepts of economic ‘statics’ and economic ‘dynamics’ in the work of J. S. Mill, Marx, J. B. Clark, Alfred Marshall, Gustav Cassel.
    What ‘dynamic’ problems are treated by these writers? How far does the treatment build upon ‘static’ theory?
    Theoretical treatment of cumulative changes in institutions by Marx, Veblen and Commons.
  2. Historical accounts of economic changes.
    What ‘explanations’ are given of significant changes by such writers as Ashley, Schmoller, the Webbs, Sombart, Clapham?
  3. Time-series analysis
    Types of changes commonly recognized: seasonal variations, random perturbations, cyclical fluctuations, secular trends.
    The problem of ‘long cycles’. Kondratieff, Simiand, Kuznets, Burns.
    The problem of structural changes.
    What types of these changes have been explained theoretically?
    What relations have these explanations to economic theory at large?
    What relations exist between secular, cyclical, random, seasonal and structural changes?
  4. Relations among the three approaches
    The injunction to combine causal analysis with statistical description.
    Dangers of statistical work not guided by theoretical concepts.
    Dangers of theoretical speculation not checked by statistical observation
    Difficulties in fusing the two approaches
    Causal analysis of problems in which many variables are interrelated, and in which effects become causes in a process of cumulative change
    The theoretical uses of history.
    The historical applications of theory.
    Statistics and history.

Classification of investigations available for the study of economic changes

  1. Studies of recognized types of economic changes
    The abundant literature upon business cycles
    A few studies of seasonal variations
    A few studies of secular trends and of long cycles
    No systematic literature upon random perturbations; but many casual references in books on business cycles.
    Many studies of structural changes, particularly those produced by legislations—for example, the Independent Treasury system, tariff acts, etc. Also numberless discussions under next heading.
  2. Studies of changes in single economic factors
    A vast literature is available upon such subjects as
    Growth of population and its geographical distribution
    Developments of the arts of production: histories of industries
    Natural resources of different districts; their exploitation; problems of conservation
    Changes in business organization: rise of corporations, different forms of corporate organization, banking systems; histories of particular business enterprises, and so on.
    Organization of labor
    Shifting importance of agriculture, transportation, manufactures, trade, finance in the national economy.
    Changes in economic relations among nations:: commercial policies, international investments, shifts from debtor to creditor position.
    Changes in the system of prices: their relations to monetary laws and practices; the relative importance of competitive versus regulated prices, private versus public regulation; the degree of flexibility in prices
    Changes in standards of living
  3. Economic changes during certain periods
    Most of the books on economic history might be listed here, in so far as they do not belong under previous heading.
    Also a few studies primarily statistical in character, such as
    Recent Economic changes
    Recent Social Trends
    Social England—Booth’s survey and the recent many-volume study.
    Mills’ Economic Tendencies in the U.S.
  4. Work to be undertaken by the members of the course
    To read critically and report upon significant studies of recent economic changes.
    Avoid so far as feasible the subjects that are treated elaborately in other courses, for example money and banking, labor problems, business cycles, public utilities.
    Stress the effort to grasp the inter-relations among the changes studied.
    In each case consider in how far the changes are or can be ‘explained’, and what relation these explanations have or should have to economic ‘theory’.

Among the books to be consider for assignment the following are possibilities:

W. S. Thompson and P. K. Whelfton, Population Trends in the U.S. N.Y. 1933
R. D. McKenzie, The Metropolitan Community, N.Y., 1933
Carter Goodrich and others, Migration and Economic Opportunity, Philadelphia, 1936
Wyand, Economics of Consumption, N.Y., 1937
C. C. Chapman, Development of American Business and Banking Thought, 1913-1936. New York, 1937
Twentieth Century Fund, Big Business: Its Growth and its Place. N.Y., 1937
A. A. Berle and G. C. Means, The Modern Corporation and Private Property, N.Y., 1932
A. R. Burns, The Decline of Competition, N.Y., 1936
R. C. Epstein, Industrial Profits in the U.S., N.Y., 1934
Harry Jerome, Mechanization in Industry, N.Y., 1934
F. C. Mills, Prices in Recession and Recovery, N.Y., 1936
‘The Brookings Study’, Washington, 1934 and 1935

America’s Capacity to Produce
America’s Capacity to Consume
The Formation of Capital
Income and Economic Progress

H. G. Moulton and Associates, The American Transportation Problem, Washington, 1933
National Resources Board, Report December 1, 1934, Washington 1934.
W. I. King, The National Income and Its Purchasing Power, N.Y., 1930
(S. Kuznets), National Income, 1929-32, Washington, 1934
Our Natural Resources and their Conservation, A symposium edited by A. E. Parkins and J.R. Whitaker. N.Y., John Wiley & Sons, 1936
A. F. Burns, Production Trends in the U.S. Since 1870. N.Y. 1934. See review by F. A. Fetter JPE Feb. 1937
W. Sombart, Hochkapitalismus
W. H. Lough, High-Level Consumption, N.Y., 1935
W. V. Bingham. Aptitudes and Aptitude Testing, N.Y., 1937.

Source:  Columbia University Archives. Papers of Wesley Clair Mitchell. Box 3, Folder “1/14/37 A”.

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[Handwritten note at top of page: “Eli Ginzberg Jan 18 1937”]

CUMULATIVE CHANGES IN A MODERN ECONOMY

Introduction

  1. The Method of the Classicists

Ricardo—Chapter I ff.
Marshall—Book V

Supplementary:

Knight—Introduction to Risk, Uncertainty, and Profit—2d ed.
Ibid—The Ethics of Competition and Other Essays
Robbins—Nature and Significance of Economic Science
Clark, J. M. Preface to Social Economics (the essay on “Statics and Dynamics”)
Moore, H.L.—
Hotelling, H.—

  1. Historical-Statistical Approach

(a) Case study of: Industrial Revolution

Toynbee
Hammonds
Webbs
Lipson
Clapham

Supplementary: see

Mantoux—
Nef—in Economic History Review.
Reconstructions, in Economic History Review

(b) Case study of: Profits and Wages in the United States

    1. Profits

Epstein
Patten
Mills

Supplementary:

Knight—Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences—article on Profits
Knight—Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences—article on Risk, Uncertainty, and Profit
Reports of the S.E.C.
Senate Committee on Foreign Bonds

    1. Wages

Douglas—Recent Economic Changes
Wolman, L.—R.E.C. and 3 Bulletins Bureau of Labor Statistics

Supplementary:

Douglas—Theory of Wages
Beveridge—Unemployment
Clay, H.—Essays in Industrial Relations

  1. Institutional-Theoretical

Marx—Communist Manifesto
Ibid.—Capital—vol. I
Veblen—Theory of Business Enterprise
Mitchell—Business Cycles
Clark, J.M.—Economics of Overhead Costs

Supplementary:

Souter-Prolegomena to Relativity Economics
Hamilton—Encyclopedia of the Social sciences Article on “Competition”
Knight—Ethics of Competition, etc.
Clark, J. M.—Preface to Social Economics
American Economic Association—Round Tables

  1. Conclusion: Methodology

Cohen—Reason and Nature
Weber, Max—Wissenschaftslehre
Whitehead—Adventure in Ideas
Simkhovitch—Approaches
Sombart—Drei Nationalökomien
Carnap—Unity of Science
MacIver—Harvard Lecture

 

PART I—Cumulative Changes in Economic Institutions

(General aim to study changes in degree and kind in the institutional setting explicit and implicit in neo-classicists; to gauge interrelations in these changes).

  1. The Large Corporation

Berle and Means—The Modern Corporation
Twentieth Century Fund: Big Business
A. R. Burns—Decline of Competition

Supplementary:

Commons—Legal Foundations of Capitalism
Holmes, O. W.—Representative Opinion
Brandeis, L.—Social and Economic Views
Hamilton, W.—Industries affected with the Public Interest
Clark, J. M.—Social Control of Business
Handler—Trade Regulation

  1. The Credit System

Annual Reports of Federal Reserve Board
Moulton—The Formation of Capital
Brookings—The Recovery of Business
Hardy—Credit Policies of the F. R. S.
Keynes—The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money.
Angell—The Behavior of Money
Reports of Senate Sub-committee on Banking
Reports of Senate Committee on S. E. C.
Reports of Senate Committee on Foreign Bonds
Clark, J. M.—Economic of Planning Public Works
Chapman, C. C.—American Business and Banking Thought
Currie, L.—The Supply of Money

Supplementary:

Articles in Economic Journal, Q.J.E., S.[sic, J.?] of P. E.

  1. The Problem of Consumption

(a) Numbers

Thompson and Whelfton—Population Trend
McKenzie—Metropolitan Community
Goodrich—Migration and Economic Opportunity
Recent Social Trends

(b) Psychology

Veblen—The Theory of the Leisure Class
Hearings on Pure Foods Drug Act
Reports of Federal Trade Commission
Bulletins of Consumers Research
Schlink—
Chase, Stuart—

(c) Economics—

Brookings—America’s Capacity to Consumer
Brookings—Income and Economic Progress
Wyand—Economics of Consumption
Recent Social Trends
Seligman—Installment Selling
Keynes—Appendix to General Theory

 

PART II—Cumulative Changes in the Short-Run

(Contrast with equilibrium approach of neo-classicists).

Case Study: Post-War Expansion

  1. The automobile: building and new industries

(a) Source of capital
(b) Entrepreneurs’ expectations
(c) Exploitation of demand

  1. Secondary Results: Structural Changes

(a) Relocation of Industry
(b) Urbanization—suburbs
(c) Standard of living—mores—instalment credit
(d) Incidence of Transportation
(e) Complex of Industry—of steel, glass, gasoline

Literature

Recent Economic Changes
Recent Social Trends
Goodrich et al—
Epstein, R.—Automobile Industry
Facts and Figures—Automobile Industry-1919 ff.
Clark, J. M.—Strategic Factors in Business Cycles
Warburton, C.—In Mitchell volume
Moulton et al—The American Transportation Problem
National Resources Board—Report 12/1/34
Burns, A. F.—Production Trends
Trade Journals—Steel, distribution, etc.
Annalist

PART III: The Interrelations of Economic Institutions and Market Phenomena

How do the existing legal, banking, and distributive institutions help to condition—and how are they conditioned by the following?

1. Capital accumulation
2. Profitability of industry
3. National income—wages—agriculture
4. Behavior of prices and costs

Literature

Mills—Economic Tendencies
Mills—Prices in Recession and Recovery
King—National Income and its Purchasing Power
Kuznets, S.—National Income. 1929-32
Mitchell—Business Cycles
Clark, J. M.—Strategic Factors in Business Cycles
Keynes, J. M.—General Theory of Employment
Brookings—Recovery of Business
Brookings—N. R. A.

 

Source:  Columbia University Archives. Papers of Wesley Clair Mitchell. Box 3, Folder “1/18/37 A”.

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OUTLINE
Secular and Structural Changes in a Modern Economy

[Handwritten: Eli Ginzberg]

February 23, 1937

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

OUTLINE
Secular and Structural Changes in a Modern Economy.

INTRODUCTION: The theoretical, the historical, the institutional, and the statistical approaches to the study of economic changes.

  1. “Statics and Dynamics” in the works of:
    J. S. Mill, J. B. Clark, Alfred Marshall, Gustav Cassel.
  2. “Explanation” of economic changes by:
    Ashley, Schmoller, Webbs, Sombart, Clapham
  3. Cumulative changes in institutions:
    Marx, Veblen, Commons.
  4. Time-Series Analysis: seasonal variations, cyclical fluctuations, secular trends and random perturbations. “Long cycles”:
    Kondratieff, Simiand, Kuznets, Burns.

Summary: The limitations of isolated techniques and the difficulties of fusion

  1. Theory and statistics; history and theory; statistics and theory
  2. Multiple variables in a process of cumulative change.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

Secular changes in the industrial unit, the financial system, the organization of labor, and the ideology of the public during the periods:

1870-1890
1890-1914
1914-1937

 

  1. The Industrial Unit: The changing pattern of competition
    1. Economic aspects
      1. Adjustment to technology and to a national market
      2. Location of plant and transportation
      3. Integration: to raw materials; to distribution; to finance
    2. Law and Social Control
      1. Trademarks and Patents
      2. Governmental Regulation: License, taxes, etc.
      3. Trade Associations
      4. Management vs. Ownership

*Emphasis to be placed upon changing relative positions of the industrial unit to the total economy; upon the influence of size to competitive behavior; upon economic implications of individual vs. corporate forms.

  1. Financial System—The rôle of money in a modern economy.
    1. The Changing Structure of Banking
      1. Loans and investments
      2. Active money
    2. The Problems of Debt and Liquidity
      1. Private vs. Public Debt
      2. Collateral for private debt
      3. Insurance—private and public
    3. Implications: Economic and Social
      1. Economic: The interrelations of interest rates, savings, and the formation of capital.
      2. Social: The political control over the creation of money and the use of this control for the eradication of the business cycle.
  1. Labor: not solely a commodity
    1. Unionization
      1. Members
      2. Objectives
      3. Potential threats and consequences
    2. Supply
      1. Changes in requirements of skill
      2. The relative shrinkage in agriculture
      3. The additions from women of the middle class
      4. Mobility
    3. Rôle of the Government
      1. Free Services
      2. Enforcement of minimum standards
      3. Relief payments and work creation
      4. Re Bargaining between Labor and Capital

*Emphasis: Implication of these changes for

    1. Rate of wages
    2. Total wages—cf. monopoly analysis
    3. Class-struggle analysis
  1. The Changing Ideology: The influence of money making upon the attitudes of people—
    Upon their behavior in

    1. Spending: price vs. quality; advertising; women as buyers
    2. Accumulating: liquid vs. fixed assets; speculation; insurance; goods vs. family
    3. Playing: The esoteric vs. the stable; Wanderlust; the shift from church and home to club and movie.
    4. Occupational adjustment: sensitivity to monetary stimuli; civil service; money and the arts.

Conclusions: An approach to isolating and treating the strategi9c factors in a dynamic economy—

    1. The emergence of profitability
    2. The cumulative process and the breakdown
    3. The absorption of technological developments and the tendency towards retardation of growth.
    4. The closely allied patterns of change; their interaction with the economic. 1. Political/2. Legal/3. Ideological

 

Source:  Columbia University Archives. Papers of Wesley Clair Mitchell. Box 3, Folder “2/23/37 A”.

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[Pencil: “April 1937”]

SECULAR AND STRUCTURAL CHANGES
IN A
MODERN ECONOMY

OUTLINE

    1. The Study of Economic Change
    2. Population
    3. Migration and Location
    4. The Business Unit
    5. Psychology and Social Classes
    6. Technology
    7. The Legal Framework
    8. Government
    9. Dynamics of the Market
    10. Cumulative Factors

 

I

THE STUDY OF ECONOMIC CHANGE

  1. Introduction
  2. The Classicists and the Institutionalists

*Preface to First and 8th editions of Marshall’s Principles and Bk. V—Chapter XV
*Marx—Communist Manifesto—Part I

    1. The Classicists

J. S. Mill—Principles of Political Economy—Bk IV
J. B. Clark—Essentials of Economic Theory—Preface, Chapters XII, XIII, XIV, XV, and XXX
Marshall—Principles—Bk I—Chap. III; Bk V—Chaps. I, II, III, V, and XV
Cassel—Social Economy—Bk I, Chaps. I #5,6; Bk. IV

    1. The Institutionalists

Marx—Communist Manifesto—Part I
Veblen—Business Enterprise—Chpas. II, VII, IX, X
Commons—Legal Foundations of Capitalism—Chapters I, II, III, VII, IX, vi

  1. The Historians and the Statisticians

*Heckscher, Eli—“Aspects of Economic History” in Essays in Honor of Gustav Cassel
*Mitchell—“Business Cycles”—Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences

    1. The Historians

Webbs—History of Trade Unionism—Chapters II, III
Clapham—Economic History of Modern Britain—Vol I, Chapter XIV
Sombart—Der Moderne Kapitalismus—Vol. III, Part I—Chapters 22-25

    1. The Statisticians

Simiand—La Crise Mondiale—pages 1-14; pages 114-35
Burns, A. F.—Production Trends—Foreword; Chapters III;ii, iii; IV: iv; V:v, vi.
Mitchell—“Business Cycles”—Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences
Kuznets—Seasonal Variations in Industry and Trade—Chapter I, Concluding Notes—pp. 355 ff.

  1. Theory, History, and Statistics
    *J. M. Clark—“Statics and Dynamics” in Preface to Social Economy
    *F. H. Knight—New Introduction to Risk, Uncertainty, and Profit
    *W. C. Mitchell—“Quantitative Measurement” in Backward Art of Spending Money and Other Essays
    1. Cohen and Nagel—Introduction to Logic and Scientific Method Bk II: Chaps. X, XI, XVI, XVII, XIX sec. 3
    2. Robbins—Nature and Significance of Economic Science. Chapters II 4,5; III 4,5; IV; VI 5,6
    3. J. M. Clark—“Socializing Theoretical Economics” in Preface to Social Economics

 

II

POPULATION

  1. The Data, Method, and Deductions about population in economic theory
    *Malthus—Population—Chapters I, II
    *Marshall—Bk IV, Chapters IV, V

    1. Ricardo—Principles II, V, XXXII
    2. J. S. Mill—Principles—Chapter X, 2, 3
    3. Pigou—Economics of Welfare—Part I, chapters IX, X
  2. The Contemporary Data, Methods, Deductions as to Trends
    *“Population”—Encyclopedia of Social Sciences

    1. Thompson and Whelpton—Population Trends in U. S.—Chapters I: pp. 2267;257-61;288-91; IX, X, and XI
    2. Carr-Saunders—World Population (1936)—Chapters I, II, XVI, XVII, XXII, Note on Overpopulation
    3. Kucyznski—Births and Death, Vol I. Chaps. I, II, III, IV; II. Chaps. I, VI
  3. The Economic Implications of the Population Problem
    *Myrdal—“Industrialization and Population” in Essays in Honor of Gustav Cassel

    1. On Unemployment
      Beveridge—Unemployment—Chapter XVII
    2. On Imperialism
      W. S. Thompson—Danger Spots in World Politics—Chapters X, XII, XIII, XIV
    3. On Consumption
      Lynd—Middletown—Chapters V, XI
      J. M. Keynes. Economic Consequences of a Declining Population. Eugenics Review, April 1937, vol. XXIX, 13-17.

 

III

MIGRATION AND LOCATION OF PEOPLE AND INDUSTRY

*Marshall—Principles—pp. 199-203, Book IV—Chapter X, Appendix A-#13
*Weber, A.—Theory of Location of Industries—

Editor’s Introduction
Author’s Introduction
Chapters I, VII

*Semple—American History, its Geographic Conditions—Chapters XV, XVI, XVII

    1. Goodrich—Migration and Economic Opportunity—Introduction: Chapters I, VI, VII, IX, XII
    2. Mackenzie—The Metropolitan Community—Chapters I, III, V, VI, XII, XVII, XXIII

 

IV

THE BUSINESS UNIT

*Marshall—Principles—Bk IV—Chapter XII
*Twentieth Century Fund—Big Business—Summary

    1. Distribution of the Working Population

The National Income in the United States (1929-35). Department of Commerce

    1. The Problem of Control: Private

Berle and Means—Modern Corporation and Private Property, Bks I, VI
Twentieth Century Fund—Big Business Summary, Chaps. I, VIII
Laidler—Concentration of Control in American Industry, Parts I, VI.

    1. The Problem of Control: Public

Jones and Bingham—Principles of Public Utilities—Chapters I, II, and XII
Moulton Associates—American Transportation Problem—Report of Committee—Chapters I, II, XII, XXI, XXIV, XXV, XXX, XXXI

    1. Planning

Parkins and Whitaker—Our Natural Resources and their Concentration—Chapters I, II, IX, X, XI, XVI, XVIII
National Resources Board—1934—Part I—Sec. I, Sec. V.

 

V

PSYCHOLOGY AND SOCIAL CLASSES

*Marshall—Principles—Bk I—Chapter II
*Weber—General Economic History—Chapter XXX

    1. The Spirit of the Capitalist

M. Weber—The Protestant Ethic—Foreword, Introduction, Chapters II, III, V

    1. Modern Psychology and Aggression

Abrahams, K.—Selected Essays on Psycho-Analysis—Chapters XXIII, XXIV, XXV
Horney, K.—The Neurotic Personality of Our Times—Chapters [blank]
Mead, M.—Competition and Cooperation in Primitive Societies. Interpretive Statement.

    1. The American Scene

Veblen—Absentee Ownership—chapters VI, VII I, ii, iii
Parker—The Casual Laborer and Other Essays—Recent Social Trends—Chapter VIII
Taussig and Joslyn—American Business Leaders—Chapters X, XI, XVI, XVII, XIX, XX

 

VI

TECHNOLOGY

*Marshall—Principles—Bk IV—Chapter IX
*Veblen—Theory of Business Enterprise—Chapter IX

    1. America’s Capacity to Produce—Introduction, Chapters VI, XIV, XV, XVI, XIX, XX

Jerome—Mechanization in Industry—Introduction, Summary, Chapters III, IV

    1. –Recent Social Trends—Volume I—Chapter III

Weintraub and Posner—Technological Tendencies and their Social Implications
Jerome—Mechanization—Chapters IX, X

 

VII

THE LEGAL FRAMEWORK

*J. S. Mill—Principles of Political Economy—Bk II—Chapter II
*Veblen—Theory of Business Enterprise—Chapter VIII

    1. Commons—Legal Foundations of Capitalism. Chaps. I, II, III, VII, IX
    2. Handler—Trade Regulation, Chapters I, II
    3. Bonbright—The Valuation of Property—Chapters I, II, III, IV, V, XXX, XXXII

 

VIII

THE GOVERNMENT

*J. S. Mill—Principles of Political Economy—Bk V—Chapter XI
*H. Laski—The State—Chapter IV

    1. Re Taxes

Shoup—Facing the Tax Burden—Chaps 2, 3, 6, 7, 8
Recent Social Trends—Volume II—Chapters XXV, XXVI

    1. Re Banking

Willis—Central Banking—Part I, Chapters XVI, XVII, XVIII, XXVI
Hardy—Credit Policies of the Federal Reserve System—Part I

    1. Re Labor

Commons and Associates—History of Labor in the U.S.

Volume III, Section I, Chapters XI, XII, Labor legislation
Volume IV, Chapters I, II, XVI, XXXII, XXXVIII, XLIV, XLV

Epstein—Insecurity—Parts I, X, XI

 

IX

DYNAMICS OF THE MARKET

*Marshall—Principles—Book V
*J. M. Clark—Economics of Overhead Costs—Chapters XXIII, XXIV

    1. Production: 1922-36

Mills—Economic Tendencies—Chapters VI, X

    1. Prices: 1922-36

Mills—Economic Tendencies—Chapter VII
Prices in Recession and Recovery—Chapters I, III, V, VI, IX

    1. Wages: 1922-36

Douglas—Real Wages in the United States—Chapters XXII, XXVI, XXX, XXXI
Recent Economic Changes—Volume II—Chapter VI
Wolman—N.B.E.R. Bulletins #46, 54, 63

    1. Profits: 1922-36

Epstein—Industrial Profits in the United States—Introduction, Book I, Book IV

    1. Money: 1922-36

Currie—The Supply and Control of Money in the United States—Chapter III
Fed. Res. Board—Annual Reports. 1934, 1935, 1936

 

X

CUMULATIVE FACTORS

*Marshall—Principles—Book VI—Chapters XI, XII, XIII
*J. M. Clark—Strategic Factors in Business Cycles—Parts I and VI

    1. The War, Changing Attitudes, and the Economy
    2. The Automobile and the Economy
    3. The Creation and Destruction of Bank Deposits and the Economy

Source:  Columbia University Archives. Papers of Wesley Clair Mitchell. Box 3, Folder “4/?/37 A”.

Image Source: From the cover of Eli Ginzberg’s book The Eye of Illusion (Transactions Publishers, 1993).

 

 

Categories
Chicago Economist Market Economists Teaching

Chicago. Laughlin’s observations on state of economics department, 1924

 

This post features a memorandum from 1924 that summarizes a conversation between the president of the University of Chicago and the first head of the department of political economy called in after retirement to help the department in covering a vacancy in its professorial ranks. Among other things we learn that Laughlin’s pension from the university was $3000/year.

Backstory 1: Shortly after being promoted to professor of economics, Harold G. Moulton left the University of Chicago in September 1922 to head the Institute of Economics established by the Carnegie Corporation in Washington, D.C. The department had trouble finding a successor, so among temporary measures it brought James Laurence Laughlin out of retirement during the academic year 1924-25 to help cover the money field. The last item transcribed below summarizes Laughlin’s observations on the state of the department ca. eight years after his retirement in 1916.

Backstory 2: L. C. Marshall’s request to resign both the Deanship of the school of Commerce and Administration [succeeded by W. H. Spencer] and school of Social Service Administration [succeeded by Edith Abbott] was accepted to take effect 31 December 1923. He agreed to continue on as Chairman of the Department of Political Economy under the condition that funds be provided for additional clerical services.

____________________

Letter from Chairman L. C. Marshall to President Ernest D. Burton

The University of Chicago
Department of Political Economy

June 1, 1924

My dear Mr. Burton:

The department of Political Economy sees no way of filling Mr. Moulton’s place in terms of the present situation. We turn, therefore, to temporary measures.

As one phase of the matter, will you approve of bringing Mr. Laughlin back for the Autumn Quarter, in case he is available? The 1924-25 budget contains the funds. I am at this same time asking Mr. Plimpton what would be involved as far as the relationship of stipend to retiring allowance is concerned.

A carbon of this letter is going to Mr. Tufts and Mr. Laing for their information.

Yours very sincerely,
[signed] L C Marshall

LCM:OU

____________________

Letter from Chairman L. C. Marshall to Nathan C. Plimpton, comptroller

The University of Chicago
Department of Political Economy

June 2, 1924

My dear Mr. Plimpton:

In case Mr. J. L. Laughlin should be engaged to give work with us this coming Autumn Quarter would his compensation for this work be in addition to his retiring allowance for that period, or would the allowance be discontinued for that period?

The department is thinking in terms of a stipend of about $2500 if his allowance continues. If it does not, probably $3000 would suffice even though this would less than $2500 plus allowance.

Yours very sincerely,
[signed] L C Marshall

LCM:OU

____________________

Letter from Chairman L. C. Marshall to President Ernest D. Burton

The University of Chicago
Department of Political Economy

May 29, 1924

President Ernest DeWitt Burton
The University of Chicago

My dear Mr. Burton:

This is a request to include in the Political Economy budget for the year 1924-25 the sum of $1,500.00 for clerical assistance.

In order that you may not need to consult files I give below an abstract of the situation up to the present time.

  1. Along about January 1 you expressed a willingness to take up with the expenditures committee the provision of clerical assistance. While you were on your vacation I took the matter up through Mr. Dickerson and a sum was granted providing for clerical assistance during the remainder of this current budgetary year.
  2. I asked Mr. Tufts to insert in the 1924-25 budget a request for $1,500.00 but he indicated the need of awaiting your return before taking action on the matter.
  3. Sometime after your return I asked Mr. Tufts whether he wished to take the matter up with you or whether I should take it up. The reply received indicated that Mr. Plimpton was under the impression that you had some understanding on the matter.
  4. The official copy of the budget received from Mr. Tufts a day or two ago contains no such item.

Yours very sincerely,
[signed] L C Marshall

LCM:EL

____________________

Carbon copy of letter
from President Ernest D. Burton to L. C. Marshall

June 4, 1924

My dear Mr. Marshall:

In reference to your letter of May 29 I am glad to be able to state that the budget of next year as approved by the Board of Trustees carried with it an appropriation of $1500 for clerical service for your department. The statement sent to you by Mr. Tufts was intended to cover only the salaries of the teaching staff.

I am sure the Board of Trustees would approve the recommendation of the department that Mr. Laughlin be invited to give lectures in the autumn quarter. As respects his compensation, concerning which you wrote to Mr. Plimpton, the custom has been to add a stipend for such service to the retiring allowance which is continued without interruption. Mr. Small [Department of Sociology] and Mr. Coulter [Department of Botony] are both being retained next year on this basis, each of them rendering substantially half service throughout the year. The extra compensation is, in one case, $1500, in the other $2000. May I raise the question whether either sum would not be sufficient in Mr. Laughlin’s case also? In other words, $2000 for the special service, in addition to the $3000 of his regular retiring allowance?

Very truly yours,

Mr. L.C. Marshall
The University of Chicago

EDB:HP

____________________

Memorandum of Conversation with
Professor Laughlin
—November 19, 1924

On returning to the University Mr. Laughlin is struck with two things in respect to the Department of Political Economy.

1) The introductory courses are not as well conducted as they were in 1916. Then some of the abler men of the department were giving them. Now they are largely in the hands of instructors and assistants.

2) There has been a large increase in the number of graduate students.

There are four Universities that have graduate departments in Political Economy that need to be taken into account by us.

Columbia has the largest department.

Chicago is second in size.

Harvard is falling off.

Wisconsin is falling off.

            The task of meeting graduate students and overseeing their work is an arduous one. We must, however, hold our own in dealing with this class of students. It would be desirable to raise the level of undergraduate work, but not at the expense of sacrificing our graduate work.

We must hold our present staff. Marshall, Clark and Viner are the best men. Wright is a good man. Field and Millis are pretty set in their ways, but this whole staff should be retained.

(In subsequent conversation with Marshall he said Field was the best man of the whole group, but that his Harvard inhibitions made it impossible for him to bring things to pass. He is afraid of what people will say and of the tendency of things. Millis is a good man, but no longer capable of much re-adjustment.)

Mr. Laughlin urges that we must get a first class man in money. He believes that the business interests should be asked to give money for this particular purpose.

The weakness of the undergraduate department is due to the lack of good men and salaries to pay them. C & A is doing most of the undergraduate work. This is not in itself objectionable. The spirit of C & A is good.

It is very desirable to unify the Department of Economics and the School of Commerce and Administration further.

 

Source: The University of Chicago Archives. Office of the President. Harper, Judson and Burton Administration Records. Box 23, Folder 6 “Department of Political Economy, 1894-1925) Part 2”

Image Source: University of Chicago Photographic Archive, apf1-03687, Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library.

Categories
Columbia

Columbia. Alvin S. Johnson recounts exams with Franklin Giddings, 1951

 

Perhaps I lived a blessed student life. I never felt that I had been particularly ill-treated in an examination, though I should add that I have fortunately been spared the trauma of an oral examination, except for matters involving my dental health. I once spoke with Kenneth Arrow, on the day before his 90th birthday, and was surprised to hear just how salient a memory was of an injustice that had been inflicted upon him by John Maurice Clark in an oral examination some seven decades earlier. Apparently Alvin Johnson nursed an analogous decades-long grudge as a result of his oral exam at the hands of the sociologist Franklin Giddings. In his letter to Joseph Dorfman transcribed in this post, we see that he was later able to leverage a poor exam performance of a Giddings’ student into a sweet payback of sorts. 

____________________

Letter from Alvin Johnson to Joseph Dorfman

THE NEW SCHOOL
66 West 12th St. New York 11
[Tel.] Oregon 5-2700

August 21, 1951

Dear Joe:

You haven’t answered my query as to whether it wouldn’t suit your purpose better to substitute for the piece I sent you on the School of Political Science my experience of the economics department proper.

I think my second minor was in Constitutional History under Burgess. At my doctor’s exam Burgess asked me three questions, but to be fair he elaborated them so much that he answered them himself, and I had only to nod assent.

Not so with Giddings. He was having a feud with Seligman and set about taking it out of my hide. I had attended a course with him on the English Poor Laws, a course that bored Giddings stiff. He came to my exam with a sheet of details he couldn’t have remembered himself.

“What was the Statute of Laborers? What year of what reign?
“What law was enacted in the third year of Edward VI?
“What was the ‘Speenhamland Act?’ What year of what reign?”

            About forty such questions. After I had retired for the Faculty to vote[,] Giddings, who after all was my friend, came out first, slapped me on the back and said:

“Well you passed. But by God, I made you sweat.”
“I’d have made you sweat yourself if I had had the written sheet and you hadn’t loaded up for me.”
“You bet.”

            I had my revenge a few months later, when one of Giddings’ protégés came up with a thesis on Puerto Rico. He was a theologue [sic], savagely Protestant, who ascribed all the woes of Puerto Rico to the Catholic Church. His book was full of fishy figures, the worst on the food situation. The Puerto Ricans were starved; they produced practically no food but lived on imported rice, the figures for which the thesis gave. I used my arithmetic and found that the figures gave fifty pounds of rice daily per capita.

“And you say they are underfed,” I added, not very humanely.

            When the candidate had retired Goodnow moved, first that the candidate be flunked; second that Giddings be censured for bringing such a fool before the Faculty; third that I be censured for making a Faculty member laugh right out in meeting. All three votes carried.

Sincerely,
[signed]
Alvin Johnson

Dr. Joseph Dorfman
Columbia University
Faculty of Political Science
New York 27, N.Y.

aj:ar

 

Source:  Columbia University Libraries, Manuscript Collections. Joseph Dorfman Collection, Box 13, Folder “C.U. Dept.al history”.

Image Source: From the cover of Alvin S. Johnson’s 1952 autobiography.

Categories
Amherst Columbia Economists Germany Wisconsin

Columbia. Economics Ph.D. Alumnus, James Walter Crook, 1895

 

This posting is another in the irregular series, “Get to know an economics Ph.D. alum”. I stumbled upon Professor James Walter Crook’s photo while working on the previous autobiographical posting for John Maurice Clark who was a student of his at Amherst and later a colleague. Crook spent a year in Berlin as a student and overlapped with W.E.B. Du Bois there and to whom we see below he had been introduced.

____________________

James Walter Crook (1859-1933)
Columbia Ph.D., 1895

James Walter Crook was born Dec. 21, 1859 in Ontario, Canada. His family emigrated to the U.S. in 1868. According to the 1880 U. S. Census he was the Census Enumerator for the 1st Ward of the City of Manistee in Manistee county, Michigan where he (21 years of age) lived with his mother and six younger brothers.  While a few younger brothers were  registered employed in a saw mill, James Walter Crook was listed as attending school. He married Eva Maria Lewis Sept 16, 1881 in Manistee. His occupation was “school teacher” according to the record of marriage.

Crook received his B.A. from Oberlin College in 1891 where he stayed on as a history instructor the following year. This was followed by a year of graduate work at the University of Wisconsin where he was listed as a Fellow in Economics, 1892-93.

He studied at the University of Berlin in 1893-94 where he happened to be introduced to W. E. B. Du Bois, himself an American student in Berlin. In Dubois’ papers there is a letter Crook wrote (January 21, 1905): “I suppose you do not remember me, but I recall with pleasure my meeting you in Berlin, Germany introduced by our mutual friend Knowlton, now of Fargo, N. Dakota.” In particular Crook was looking for advice regarding a sociological survey he wished to conduct among the ca. 200 African-Americans living in Amherst (population about 3,000 total).

After Germany Crook went on to do graduate work at Columbia University in 1894-95. The next year he was hired to teach Political Economy at Amherst where he worked through retirement.  Crook was awarded a Ph.D. from Columbia in 1895, publishing his dissertation as German Wage Theories: A History of Their Development. Vol. IX, No. 2 of Studies in History, Economics and Public Law. New York: Columbia University, 1898.

According to the U.S. Census reports he and his wife Eva lived at  21 Main Street in Amherst for at least the four censuses 1900-1930.

James Walter Crook, died in Springfield, MA 1933.

Source: From faculty pages in the Amherst College Yearbook, Olio, 1905, page 24. Also the Dubois papers at the University of Massachusetts and U.S. Census reports.

________________________

PROFESSORS OF POLITICAL ECONOMY
Amherst College (1877-1910)

1877

 Anson Daniel Morse, LL.D. 1878
1892 John Bates Clark, Ph.D.

1895

1892

 Charles Augustus Tuttle, Ph.D., Associate Political Economy and International Law 1893
1895 James Walter Crook, Ph.D., Assistant

1899

1899

 James Walter Crook, Ph.D., Associate 1907
1907 James Walter Crook, Ph.D.

1908

 Glover Dunn Hancock, Ph.D., Assistant 1910
1910 John Maurice Clark, Ph.D., Associate

 

Source:   General Catalogue of Amherst College including the Officers of Government and Instruction, the Alumni and Honorary Graduates, 1821-1910. Amherst, Mass., p. 9.

Image Source: From faculty pages in the Amherst College Yearbook, Olio, 1905, page 24.

 

 

 

Categories
Amherst Chicago Columbia Economists

Columbia. John Maurice Clark. Autobiographical notes, 1949

John Maurice Clark

 

The following recollections of John Maurice Clark of his earliest contacts with economic problems is found in a folder of his papers containing notes about his father, John Bates Clark. The hand-written notes are fairly clear until we come to a clear addition on the final page. Abbreviations are used there and the handwriting is not always clear. Still the pages together provide a few nice stories and short lists of J.M. Clark’s teachers and students.

______________________

June 8, 1949

J.M.C.’s recollections of his earliest contacts with economic problems.

I think my earliest contact with an economic problem came on learning that the carpenter who sometimes came to do odd jobs for us at 23 Round Hill got $2.00 a day. I had a special interest in that carpenter. He was a tall man, with a full, dark beard; and it had been my imprudent interest in his operation with the kitchen double-windows (putting on? taking off?) that led me to lean out of a hammock and over the low rail of our second-story porch, to watch him (I was between two and three at the time). Mechanical consequences—I descended rapidly, landing on my head, but apparently suffering no injury except biting my tongue. Subjective consequences – maybe it pounded a little caution into me at an early age; but the present point is that it fixed that carpenter in my memory as “the man who picked me up.” It was some time later I learned that he got $2.00 a day.

I don’t remember whether I took the initiative and asked, or not. The cost of things was often discussed in our house, and my mother often talked of the difficulty of making both ends meet. I knew my father’s salary, though I can’t be sure now whether it was $3,500 or less. Anyhow, it was maybe eight or ten times the carpenter’s pay; and I began wondering how he made both ends meet, and remarked to my father that $2.00 a day wasn’t much to live on. He answered that it was pretty good pay for that kind of work. So I learned there were two ways of looking at a daily stipend—as income to live on and as the price of the service you gave your employer. Or perhaps simply the standpoints of the recipient and the payer. But especially I learned there were people who had to adjust their ideas of what they could live on, to a fraction of the income we found skimpy for the things we thought of as necessary. In short, I had a lesson in classes and their multiple standards to ponder over; without reaching any very enlightening conclusions.

I don’t think I connected this with our friends the Willistons (of the family connected with Williston seminary in Easthampton) who lived in the big house above us and from whom we rented ours. They were evidently much richer than we. They had gone to Europe (and been shipwrecked on the way, and had to transfer at sea to a lumber-schooner, which threw its deckload of lumber overboard to enable it to take on the people from the helpless steamship. — but that’s another story.)

To return to the carpenter. I suppose today he’d get perhaps $16, more?, and a Smith College salary, for a full professor, might be $7,000 or $8,000. The discrepancy has shrunk to maybe 2/5—certainly less than half—of what it was then. That puzzling discrepancy was my first lesson in economics—the first I remember.

There was another lesson—if you could call it that—the summer we spent a while at the Stanley House (now gone) in Southwest Harbor, on Mt. Desert. The rich people went to Bar Harbor. At Southwest, there was Mr. Brierly who had a yacht. We took our outings in a rowboat, sometimes with the help of a spritsail. One time we were going up Somes Sound, and were passed by one of the biggest ocean-going steam yachts—the “Sultana”. It was a very impressive sight, in those narrow waters, and looked about as big as the “Queen Mary” would to me now. I don’t remember anybody doing any moralizing; but if they did, the impression it left was that we, in our fashion, were doing the same kind of thing they were.

My first contact with economic literature (not counting the subversive economics of Robin Hood, which we boys knew by heart, in the Howard Pyle version) was at 23 Round Hill, so I must have been less than nine. I found a little book on my father’s shelves that had pictures in it – queer pictures done in pen and ink, which puzzled me. There was a boy not much bigger than I was, in queer little knee-britches, acting as a teacher to a class of grown men (including I think a Professor Laughlin, under whom I later taught at the University of Chicago.) And there were classical females being maltreated by brutal men, and other queer things. I was curious enough to read some of the text, to find out about the pictures. It was “Coin’s Financial School,” the famous free-silver tract.

I read enough to become a convinced free-silverite. And then I had the shock of discovering that my beloved and respected father was on the wrong side of that question. I decided there must be more to it than I’d gotten out of the queer picture-book. I suppose that was my first lesson in the need of preserving an open mind and holding economic ideas subject to possible reconsideration. Davenport and Veblen gave me more extensive lessons, fifteen or twenty years later, only this second time it was my father’s ideas I had to rethink, after reluctantly admitting that these opposing ideas represented something real, that needed to be reckoned with. One had to do something about it, though the something didn’t mean substituting Veblen for my father. It was a more difficult and discriminating adjustment that was called for.

To return to my boyhood. It may have been about this time that I learned something about mechanical techniques, when my father took me to see the Springfield Arsenal. They had a museum, with broadswords that had been used in battle—one was so nicked up that its edge had disappeared in a continuous series of surprisingly deep nicks—but the mechanical process that impressed me was a pattern-lathe, rough-shaping the stocks of Krags. On one side was a metal model of the finished stock revolving, with a wheel revolving against it. On the other side was the wooden blank revolving, and a wheel like the one on the model, and linked to it so as to copy its movements, and armed with knives. So the machine could make complicated shapes following any model you put into it, and do it faster and more accurately that a hand worker.

Incidentally (and as a digression) that was our first military rifle with smokeless powder, more powerful than black; our first regular military magazine rifle of the modern kind with a bolt action and a box magazine. The regulars were just getting them. The militia still had the black-powder 45-70 Springfields at the time of the Spanish War, and a Massachusetts regiment had to be ordered off the firing-line at El Caney because their smoke made too good a target. Teddy Roosevelt had pull enough to get Krag carbines for his Rough Riders plus the privilege of using their own Winchesters if individuals preferred, and, if they had the 30-40-220, which took the Krag cartridge.

But my regular education in economic theory began at the age of 9 or 10, in our first year at Amherst, when we lived on Amity Street, opposite Sunset Ave. My father had in mind James Mill’s training of his son, John Stuart Mill, and he copied the techniques of explaining something during a walk, but he didn’t follow James Mill’s example by making me submit a written report for criticism and revision. All he did was to explain about diminishing utility and marginal utility—using the illustration of the oranges. And he was satisfied that I understood it, and concluded that the simple fundamentals of economics could be taught to secondary school or “grammar-school” students. Later, my friend and former graduate student, Leverett Lyon, pithily remarked that I probably understood it better then than I ever had since. Maybe he was right. I know when I met Professor Fetter, the year the Ec. Ass. met in Princeton, he told me I didn’t understand the theory, because I had said (in print, I think) that there were some dangers about the concept of “psychic income.” I didn’t say it was wrong, but I did think it was likely to be misleading to use a term that was associated with accountants’ arithmetic. So I did probably understand the theory “better” at the age of 9 or 10. Twenty ears later, it didn’t look so simple. This was long before I disagreed with Fetter about basing-point pricing and the rightness of the uniform FOB mill price, as the price “true” competition would bring about.

______________________

J.M.C. later history.

Amherst, C in Ec tho 85 on exam, & written work not credited. (cf French A from Wilkins, C from [William Stuart] Symington (father of present (1951) W. Stuart Symington, head of nat security Resources Board). Symie sized my attitude up as that of a gentleman & gave me a gentleman’s mark) Crook said he “didn’t get hold” of me. He was correct.

 

Columbia: Giddings, A. S. Johnson, H.L. Moore, Seligman, Seager, Hawkins [?], Chaddock, Agger, Jacobstein. indoctrinated: J. B. C. orthodoxy modified by overhead costs (catalogued as “dynamics”) Dynamics (defined as) everything statics leaves out. & much induction. Take “Essentials” on slow dictation.

Veblen: slow infiltration of its logical & progre[?] rel. to the abstractions of J.B.C.: reverse normalizing might make[?] an arguable claim to equal legitimacy.

1912 ed. of Control of Trusts

“Contribution to theory of competive price” [QJE, August 1914] forerunner of “mon-comp”, largely empirical basis.

Germs of social & inst. ec. Rich-poor, Freedom as val in ec.[??] B. M. Anderson cf. Cooley

Revs of Hobson?, Pigou, Davenport Economics of Enterprise [Political Science Quarterly, Vol 29, no. 2]

 

To Chi. 1915 Changing basis of economic responsibility [JPE, March 1916] on moving to Chi. open declar[ation] of non-Laughlinism: backfire to an Atlantic article of Laughlin’s.

Modern Psych.

1917-18. War-ec. (“basis of war-time collectivism.”)

Students: Garver oral. Slichter, Lyon, Innis, Martin [?], Goodrich, Copeland, O’Grady [John O’Grady ?]

Ayres, Knight on faculty.

Ov. C. [Studies in the Economics of Overhead Costs]

Social Control [of Business]

 

Columbia. Students, Friedman, Ginzberg, Salera, Kuznets’ oral

 

Source: Columbia University Archives. John M. Clark Collection. History of Economic Thought. Box 37, Folder “J. B. Clark, 1847-1938”.

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

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Columbia Exam Questions Suggested Reading Syllabus

Columbia. Foundations of Social Economics. J.M. Clark 1937

 

Working with the papers of John Maurice Clark is not for historians who abhor dirt and disorder. Simply imagine going into an attic and finding the papers of your grandparents dumped shelf by shelf, pile by pile, with or without the social contrivance of filing, and now image the dust of decades has penetrated the recesses of box and folder. And yet there is much interesting stuff for the hardy to be found in the rummage of Clark’s career.

Three items are posted today from J. M. Clark’s course on the foundations of social economics: (i) five pages describing a course project for students to think about an economic constitution for a newly discovered, virgin continent that is 1/10 the scale of the United States which would be colonized by 1/10 of the U.S. population but run as an experiment in economics; (ii) an undated handwritten course bibliography; (iii) an undated typed final examination for the course.

Examination questions for one of the two courses taught back-to-back from a few years earlier can be found in Milton Friedman’s papers.

_________________________________

COURSE DESCRIPTIONS

Economics 109—Foundations of social economics. 3 points Winter Session. Professor J. M. Clark.
M. and W. at 2:10. 401 Fayerweather.

The course pays attention to the nature of man, and of joint organizations which act as economic men; the economic ideal, viewed dynamically; the social meaning of wealth; the institution of exchange; the principles of choice, value, and cost; a functional analysis of production; the basic institutions of control; economic guidance; negotiation and bargaining; the factors of production and the laws of return; the problem of waste.

Economics 110—Dynamics of value and distribution. 3 points Spring Session. Professor J. M. Clark.
M. and W. at 2:10. 401 Fayerweather.

The functions of value and price; the dynamics of supply and demand for commodities and factors of production; the institution of competition; social vs. competitive schemes of distribution; value and expenses of production; expenses and ultimate costs of production; cumulative vs. self-limiting changes; the level of prices; economic rhythms.

 

Source: Columbia University Bulletin of Information, Thirty-seventh series, No. 28 (June 26, 1937). History, Economics, Public Law, and Social Science. Courses offered by the Faculty of Political Science for Winter and Spring Sessions 1937-1938, p. 27.

_________________________________

Typed copy of Course Project, Econ 109
Winter Semester 1937

[handwritten note at top of page
“P.P. [per person?] 2-3 Objectives. 4-5 Strategic decisions.”]

Tentative project for Econ. 109.
(May be used as a carry-over in early meetings of 110 this year—Jan.-Feb., 1938)

Specifications for a new economic system.

A new continent, unoccupied and reproducing the area and resources of the U.S. on a one-tenth scale, has been discovered in the Pacific, and recognized as belonging to the U.S. Recognising that our present economic system is unsatisfactory, the Government has decided to use this area as a laboratory experiment in the setting-up of an altered system, starting from scratch with the advantage of hindsight as to the evils of our present system and trying to improve on them. More than one-tenth of our population, including quotas from all walks of life, have signified their willingness to try the experiment and to cooperate loyally in whatever system is selected. We needn’t take Al Capone [Chicago gangster kingpin] if we don’t want him, but we can have Owen Young [founder of RCA, the Young Plan regarding the reduction of German reparations was his namesake], Henry Dennison [important figure in scientific management movements] and others of like complexion if we want them.

This class has been designated as one of a number of groups to draw up and submit proposals, from which a plan for developing the area will ultimately be selected or otherwise made up. There are other groups concerned with religion, education and political government, and there will be interchange between all the groups before their various proposals are knit together. The political-government group is marking time until it finds what kind of a system it will have to devise a government for. There may be other groups set up on health, penology, family and social relations, art and possibly other matters as developments seem to require them.

[Handwritten title insert] First Strategic decision.

            We shall use modern scientific and technical methods of production. In departing from the pattern of the existing system, we are free to go all the way to the most complete communism, or to move in the other direction and try to set up a system more genuinely individualistic (and presumably more competitive) than the present one, if we think the chief trouble is that it is not individualistic enough.

Desirable ends, formulated as standards, so far as possible.

            “Maximum individual welfare”, including physical and mental health, personalities adjusted to social living, well-rounded exercise of faculties and adequate stimulus thereto, liberty of choice, within limits, barring things demonstrably harmful to individual or society but including choice of occupation, particular forms of recreation and consumption, adequate guidance in the exercise of liberty, possible special stimulation to activities regarded by proper and competent bodies as especially valuable.

More goods, for those who need them most, implying much greater equality of distribution that at present, but not neglecting importance of increasing total. Flat equality, or distribution (of all goods) according to need, debatable. What kinds of goods? Not much more food, not very much more clothing, much more adequate housing, more adequate education, much more adequate health service (but our religious board includes a couple of Christian Scientists!) “More goods” calls for stimuli to efficiency of production in all grades, and liberty to try new processes and new goods. Whole question of bureaucratic morale, of differentiated material rewards varying with performance (or in proportion to commercial worth of superior performance?) of comparative, quasi-competitive or completely competitive tests of performance.

Right to opportunity to work.

Relative stability of rate of production.

Adequate supply of capital to ensure progressive efficiency of production, with future product rationally weighted against present privation.

Rational distribution of family income over time, with balanced provision for old age and emergencies. (This may or may not be tied up with the provision of capital funds, as at present).

National defense, to the extent deemed necessary (We shall assume that it does not call for a totalitarian system.) [Handwritten note: “Can we safely assume that in 1947?]

Strategic decisions.

            Scope of consumers’ preference in deciding what goods and services shall be produced. We shall surely let them decide what color wall-paper and furnishings to have, and beyond certain minimum requirements what books to read and what recreations to follow. We may ration some things—if so, what?—but there will be some realm within which we let them have purchasing power which they are free to use as they choose. This will be our money, and goods will have a price, within this realm.

Shall we also let them choose whether to spend or not to spend? The dangers here are two: fluctuations of total spending (including that on capital formation) and excess saving not spent on capital formation. Unless incomes and the feeling of insecurity fluctuate heavily, the first danger is not great. With large concentrated incomes eliminated, the second danger would be practically removed. Fluctuating credit for busing durable consumers’ goods would create more danger; and for industrial investments, more still. Control of credit can be made effective downward, but not very well upward, even if credit is a public monopoly.

As to public services, I shall assume that we keep the present list, with reservations as to poor-relief if the need is changed or other agencies substituted; and that the question is as to additions. The big question is whether we make the main body of production a public service. If we do, it will be for two main reasons: to control inequality of distribution, and to control the relation between the current volume of production and the spendings (consumer and capital) it depends on to take the goods off the market, to the end that utilized production may be limited only by power and willingness to produce, no fall short of that limit as at present.

If we do that, problems arise of means to secure efficiency from workers and managers, source and allotment of capital and possible place and reward for private savings, determination of production programs and of kinds of goods and services to be produced, including new ones, organization of invention and incentives, determination of wages, of prices, of income devoted to free public series, pensions, etc. procedure concerning workers’ choice of occupation and shifting from one to another, selection of workers and treatment of those nobody wants—that’s enough to start with and to give some idea of the sort of thing that would be encountered. How combat the stagnation of bureaucracy, the multiplication of supervisors, the business of passing the buck and finding scapegoats for poor performance (I assume we shouldn’t want the scapegoats shot)? What sort of “social accounting” shall we use?

If we permit private saving, what shall we do about inheritance, and how prevent evasions of our policy.

We can embody the essentials of our plan in a constitution; how shall we provide for amendment? Shall the whole be in the hands of elected officials? If so, will anyone dare to support an opposition ticket? Will dissatisfied elements believe that a reelection was genuine and fair? Will such factors as these lead the system into a dictatorship of force, even if it did not start that way?

_________________________________

Bibliography for Economics 109
[no date]

Economics 109

Veblen:         “The Place of Science in Modern Civilization”

The Theory of Business Enterprise
The Theory of the Leisure Class
The Instinct of Workmanship.

Davenport, H. J. “Economics of Enterprise”

Anderson, B. M. “Social Value”

Cooley, C. H. : “Social Process”

Hobson, J. A. : “Work & Wealth”.

Pigou, A. C.: “Economics of Welfare” or “Wealth & Welfare”

Tugwell, (ed):  “The Trend of Economics”.

Boucke, O. F.: Critique of Economics”.

Mill, J. S.:      “Principles of Economics”

Essays on “Liberty” and “Utilitarianism”.

Clark, J. B.    “The Philosophy of Wealth”.

“Essentials of Economic Theory”.

Dickinson: Motives in Economic Life

Parker, Carleton: The Casual Laborer.

Wicksteed: “The Common Sense of Pol. Econ.”

Watkins: G. P. “Welfare as an Economic Quantity”.

Hoover Committee “Waste in Industry”

Chase, Stuart: The Tragedy of Waste”.

Clark, J.M.: “Social Control of Business”

“Economics of Overhead Costs”.

Ely: “Property & Contract”.

Commons: “Legal Foundations of Capitalism”.

Sidgwick: Principles of Political Economy.”

Tawney: The Acquisitive Society”

Edie: Principles of the New Economics.”

[Day, Clarence] “This Simian World.”

_________________________________

Economics 109
Final Examination
[undated]

 

Answer two questions, but not more than one of questions 3-8, inclusive.

  1. Discuss effects of recent military techniques on problems of the economic organization of a country.
  2. With respect to equality as a social-economic objective, what does the prevailing American social judgment favor? Note questions of degree of equality or inequality, and questions of different matters in respect of which people may be equal or unequal.
  3. “Individuals allocate expenditures so as to secure equal marginal utilities from money spent for different things, or to put themselves on a basis of indifference as between different expenditures”. Discuss. If true, why and by what psychological process; if not true, suggest amendments in the light of more realistic psychology.
  4. If you were founding a new society, what would you do about consumers’ freedom of choice, and why? If you allow such freedom in important degree, consider how far this commits you to other features of the present economic system.
  5. Discuss the economic importance of the “instinct of workmanship”.
  6. Compare the theory of “balked dispositions” with the tradition utilitarian treatment of the subjective sacrifices of production.
  7. Discuss economic significance of intelligence tests, in the light of the question what kind of a population is suitable or unsuitable to a system of private enterprise, either complete or modified.
  8. Discuss the social productivity of advertising and salesmanship, and compare this problem with the traditional concept of production, as bearing on the social productivity of private enterprise.
  9. Do the same for the social productivity of “bargaining” activities.
  10. Discuss the range of possible kinds of agencies available to perform economic functions.
  11. Would you assume that the attempt to maximize profits (with or without competition) standardizes economic behavior sufficiently to warrant using this assumption as a sufficient basis for deductive theorizing: that is, as furnishing all the basis such theorizing needs to take account of?
  12. Discuss the meaning of supply schedules or demand schedules, taking account of complexities or difficulties involved.

 

Source: Columbia University Libraries. Manuscript Collections. Papers of John M. Clark. Box 24, Unlabeled Folder.

Image Source: Detail from Columbia University group photo of economics department from the early 1930s. Columbia University Libraries. Manuscript Collections. Columbiana, Department of Economics Collection, Box 9, Folder “Photos”.

 

Categories
Columbia Curriculum Fields

Columbia. J. M. Clark on Teaching “modern tools of economic thinking”, 1942

In my examination of department archives I have been somwhat surprised at the relative scarcity of paper traffic with regard to curriculum reform. Here a short note from Maurice Clark to the executive officer of the economics department (i.e. chairman) Robert M. Haig about Columbia’s hiring strategy and whether two “math. Ec’ist[s]” aren’t enough for the task of teaching the “modern tools of economic thinking.” Looking at the faculty list for that year, I presume Clark meant Harold Hotelling and Abraham Wald. The note sounds as though Clark is looking for a way to get out of the “Current types of economic theory” course that he had taken over from Wesley Clair Mitchell and to teach instead a core theory course again.

_____________________________________

 

COPY

January 9, 1942

Dear Bob [R. M. Haig]:

I heard Lange’s paper. Impressions very favorable per se: but he’s one more high-power mathematical economist, and with three, wouldn’t we be unbalanced? And if it takes a math. Ec’ist to do the job of “modern tools of economic thinking” we had in mind, aren’t two enough?

Another unmatured impression: that part of the gap we’re thinking of would be met by a development and more up-to-date and adequate treatment of the sort of thing I used to do in the course I quit giving when I took Mitchell’s “Types” course:–more specifically, the second half-year where I dealt with the concepts of demand, supply and cost curves in an attempt to relate them to actual behavior. I adumbrated the possibility of treating the distinction between competition and monopoly in terms of slopes of “individual demand schedules” (before Chamberlin’s book). Had ‘em read Foster & Catchings to get the “Income-flow” approach, before Keynes’ books appeared. (I note Neisser of Penn. still finds use for F. & C. in teaching.) Suggested the discrepancy between saving and investment (without, I freely admit, seeing the significances that Keynes developed). And of course I had played with “multipliers”.

A course in which I ruthlessly condensed what used to be my first half-year into two or three lectures, and developed the other kind of material more adequately and systematically, might be considered, while we’re considering things.

Yours,

J. M. Clark

_____________________________________

 

January 13, 1942

Professor John Maurice Clark,
Fayerweather Hall.

Dear Maurice:

Many thanks for your note of January 9th. I am assuming that you have no objection to my showing it to Mitchell, Angell, and Goodrich.

Faithfully yours,

[R.M. Haig]

_____________________________________

January 13, 1942

Memorandum to Professors Angell, Goodrich and Mitchell
from Professor R. M. Haig:

You will be interested in the enclosed comments from Maurice Clark

_____________________________________

 

Source: Columbia University Libraries. Manuscript Collections. Columbiana. Department of Economics Collection. Faculty. Box 2. Folder “Department of Economics—Faculty Beginning January 1, 1944 (sic)”.

Image Source:  John Maurice Clark at The History of Economic Thought Website.

Categories
Chicago Fields

Chicago. Doctoral Examination Committees by Fields 1923-24

____________________________

Three memos that propose the faculty members in Political Economy (and Commerce and Administration) to prepare the written doctoral examination questions by fields, 1923-1924 along with a list of the names of the examinees by fields for the summer quarter of 1925.

____________________________

October 24, 1923

MEMORANDUM to the PERSONS mentioned below
SUBJECT:       Written Examinations for the Doctorate. Autumn Quarter, 1923.

  1. New questions will need to be prepared in the fields indicated below.
  2. It has been customary to have the questions cover a very broad territory and to give a considerable number of options. Each examination lasts for three and a half hours.
  3. Will Mr. Clark and Mr. Viner assume joint responsibility for the questions in “Economic Theory”.
  4. Will Mr. Wright and Mr. Clark assume joint responsibility for the questions in “Capitalistic Organization”.
  5. Will Mr. Barnes and Dr. Duddy assume joint responsibility for the question in “The Manager’ Relationship to the Market”.
  6. Will Mr. Wright prepare the questions in “The Historical Evolution of Industrial Society”.
  7. Will Mr. Millis and Mr. Douglas assume joint responsibility for the questions in “Labor”.
  8. Will Mr. Field and Mr. McKinsey assume joint responsibility for the questions in “Statistics and Accounting”.
  9. Will Mr. Viner assume responsibility for the questions in “Economics of Government Administration”, conferring with such other persons as seems to him appropriate.

W. H. Spencer, for Commerce and Administration
C. W. Wright, for Political Economy

WHS:EL

____________________________

 

January — 1924

Memorandum to the persons mentioned below
Subject:          Written Examination for the Doctorate. Winter Quarter, 1924.

 

  1. New questions will need to be prepared in the fields indicated below. Please remember that the examinations are in fields and not in courses.
  2. It has been customary to have the questions cover a very broad territory and to give a considerable number of options. Each examination lasts for three and a half hours.
  3. Will Mr. Clark prepare a paper on “Economic Theory”, consulting with Mr. Viner?
  4. Will Mr. Christ prepare a paper on “Social Direction and Control of Economic Activity”, conferring with Messrs. Wright, Spencer, and Clark?
  5. Will Mr. Marshall prepare a paper on “The Pecuniary and Financial System” and the “Manager’s Relationship to Finance”?
  6. Will Mr. Douglas assume the responsibility for the paper on “Capitalistic Organization”, consulting with Messrs. Marshall, Viner, and Wright?
  7. Will Mr. McKinsey and Mr. Field assume joint responsibility of preparing a paper in “Statistics and Accounting”?
  8. Will Mr. Millis, Chairman, and Mr. Douglas prepare a paper on “Labor and the Manager’s Relationship to Personnel”?
  9. Will Mr. Viner prepare a paper on “The Economics of Government Administration”, consulting, perhaps, with Messrs. Merriam and Millis?
  10. Will Mr. Wright prepare a paper on “Historical Evolution of Industrial Society”, conferring with such other persons as seems to him appropriate?

____________________________

 

WRITTEN EXAMINATION FOR THE DOCTORATE, SPRING QUARTER 1924

Memorandum to the persons mentioned below:

  1. New questions will need to be prepared in the fields indicated below. Please remember that the examinations are in fields and not in courses.
  2. It has been customary to have the questions cover a very broad territory and to give a considerable number of options. Each examination lasts for three and a half hours.
  3. Will Mr. Clark prepare a paper on “Economic Theory”, consulting with Mr. Viner?
  4. Will Mr. Christ prepare a paper on “Social Direction and Control of Economic Activity”, conferring with Messrs. Wright, Spencer, and Clark?
  5. Will Mr. Marshall prepare a paper on “The Pecuniary and Financial System” and the “Manager’s Relationship to Finance”?
  6. Will Mr. Viner prepare the paper on “Capitalistic Organization”, consulting with Messrs. Millis, Douglas, and Wright?
  7. Will Mr. McKinsey and Mr. Field assume joint responsibility of preparing a paper in “Statistics and Accounting”?
  8. Will Mr. Millis, Chairman, and Mr. Douglas prepare a paper on “Labor and the Manager’s Relationship to Personnel”?
  9. Will Mr. Viner prepare a paper on “The Economics of Government Administration”, consulting, perhaps, with Messrs. Merriam and Millis?
  10. Will Mr. Wright prepare a paper on “Historical Evolution of Industrial Society”, conferring with such other persons as seems to him appropriate?

THIS MATTER NEEDS TO BE RUSHED THIS CURRENT QUARTER; WE NEED TO HAVE ALL EXAMINATION PAPERS IN SOME CONSIDERABLE TIME AHEAD OF THE BEGINNING OF THE EXAMINATION PERIOD. SEVERAL COLLECTIONS OF PAPERS HAVE TO GO TO OUTSIDE PARTIES TO ADMINISTER THE EXAMINATIONS. WE OUGHT TO SEND THESE EXAMINATIONS IN ONE BUNCH.

LCM: EL

____________________________

 

SUMMER QUARTER, 1925

August 1.       Economic Theory

Mr. [S. E.] Beckett
Mr. [Clifford Austin] Curtis
Mr. [Harold Amos] Logan
Mr. [Royal Ewert] Montgomery
Mr. [H. V.] Olson
Mr. [Christian] Van Riper

August 8.       Govt. Finance

Mr. [Harold Amos] Logan
Miss [Mabel] Magee

August 8.       Social Direction and Control

Mr. [Christian] Van Riper

August 15.     Labor

Mr. [S. E.] Beckett
Mrs. [Helen] Homan
Miss [Leila] Houghteling
Mr. [Harold Amos] Logan
Mr. [H. V.] Olsen

August 22.     Economic History

Mr. [S. E.] Beckett
Mrs. [Helen] Hohman
Mr. [H. V.] Olsen

 

Source: University of Chicago Archives. Department of Economics. Records, Box 26, Folder 9.

Image Source: University of Chicago Photographic Archive, apf4-01703, Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library.

Categories
Columbia Economists Exam Questions History of Economics

Columbia. Classical Economics Exam by J.M. Clark. 1951

John Maurice Clark

John Maurice Clark taught a history of economic theory sequence at Columbia University that had its origins in a similar course that had been taught earlier by Wesley Clair Mitchell. On the back of Clark’s examination questions for the first session of the 1950-51 academic year one finds a list of names and grades that we can strongly presume constitute the grade distribution for the course. 43 students were listed by John Maurice Clark in his handwritten grade sheet for the first semester of formative types of economic theory, of whom 26 received grades (3.12 average on a 4 point scale, median 3.17). Mark Blaug, whose magnum opus Economic Theory in Retrospect has served as a staple of the analytic narrative of the evolution of economics, received only a grade of B- (2.67) which put him tied with two other students at rank 21. A few years later Blaug was to find his mentor and dissertation adviser, George Stigler.

The later Congressional Research Service economist John P. Hardt (Columbia Ph.D., 1954) was  on the list but not awarded a grade for the course.

Oops it happens every so often, I have repeated myself. The original posting along with another year’s examination can be found here.

_____________________

Course Announcement

Economics 115-116 — Formative types of economic theory.
3 points each session. Professor Clark.
M. W. 12. 313 Fayerweather.

Readings and critical discussion of outstanding examples of the parent stock of classical economics with some regard to historical setting, and of subsequent outstanding contributions.

Source: Columbia University. Announcement of the Faculty of Political Science for the Winter and Spring Sessions 1950-51, p. 46.

_______________________________

Course Description

Economics 115-116—Formative types of economic theory. 3 points each session. Professor Clark.

M.W. 12.         313 Fayerweather.

Readings and critical discussion of outstanding examples of the parent stock of classical economics, with some regard to historical setting, and of subsequent outstanding contributions.

Source:   Columbia University. Announcement of the Faculty of Political Science for the Winter and Spring Sessions 1950-51, p. 46.

_______________________________

Take-Home Examination Questions

Economics 115
Final Examination
January, 1951

Answer any two questions, taking about the time for the actual writing that a regular examination would take. Those who do the work during Christmas holidays will please return papers January 8; others Friday, January 26, unless otherwise specified.

  1. Do the views of ancient writers (Hebrew, Greek or Roman) afford the same kind of evidence as the writings of modern economists as to economic conditions and practices of their time?
  2. Discuss extent of applicability of medieval doctrine on price; variations or relaxations; and how far the doctrine was effective in practice.
  3. Explain and appraise Quesnay’s “Tableau Économique”.
  4. State key doctrines of the Physiocrats and indicate how they could be regarded as adaptations to an historical situation.
  5. Compare views of Smith and Ricardo on the relation of labor to value.
  6. Compare treatment of rent in Smith, Malthus and Ricardo.
  7. On what grounds did Adam Smith sanction departures from laissez-faire?
  8. Topic: dominant conceptions of what economic activity is for. Compare the dominant conception (or at most a few dominant conceptions) of as many of the following as you feel you can reasonably cover: typical Mercantilists, Physiocrats, Ricardo, John Stuart Mill.
  9. What does Bentham’s theory contribute to the basic rationale of economics, aside from his ideas on economic matters themselves? (Book V of J. S. Mill’s “Principles of Political Economy” might contain hints.)
  10. State doctrines of Ricardo which had roots in historical conditions of the time, and indicate the connection.
  11. Compare Ricardo’s treatment of value with either Adam Smith’s or John Stuart Mill’s.
  12. What were the sources of J. S. Mill’s departure from strict Ricardianism?

_______________________________

Probable Grade Distribution

Letter Grade

 Number of students
A

2

A to A-

 1
A-

5

B+

 5
B

6

B to B-

 1
B-

2

C+

 1
C

3

Note:  Mark Blaug received the B to B- grade.

Source: Columbia University Archives. John M. Clark Papers. Box 24 (Courses Misc.), Unlabeled Folder.

Image Source: Portrait of John Maurice Clark from the collection of portraits of economists presented in 1997 as a gift to the Department of Economics of Duke University by Professor Warren J. Samuels of Michigan State University. Free use of these portraits in Web documents, and for other educational purposes, is encouraged: users are requested to acknowledge that the images come from The Warren J. Samuels Portrait Collection at Duke University.

Categories
Chicago Economists

Chicago. Talent-Scouting for New Faculty, Joint Appointments and Visiting Faculty, 1945

__________________________

On April 10, 1945, the chairman of the University of Chicago’s economics department, Professor Simeon E. Leland, submitted a 77 page (!) memorandum to President Robert M. Hutchins entitled “Postwar Plans of the Department of Economics–A Wide Variety of Observations and Suggestions All Intended To Be Helpful in Improving the State of the University”.

In his cover letter Leland wrote “…in the preparation of the memorandum, I learned much that was new about the past history of the Department. Some of this, incorporated in the memorandum, looks like filler stuck in, but I thought it ought to be included for historical reasons and to furnish some background for a few of the suggestions.” 

In recent posts I have provided a list of visiting professors who taught economics at the University of Chicago up through 1944 (excluding those visitors who were to receive permanent appointments) and supporting tables with enrollment trends and faculty data (ages and educational backgrounds).

In this post we have three lists of names for economists who in 1945 could be taken into consideration for either permanent economics, joint appointments with other department or visiting appointments at the University of Chicago. Many names are immediately recognisable, others less so, and other known names left unnamed. Instead of observing the actual choices of the department, we have, so to speak, an observation of the “choice set” as perceived by the department.

______________________________

          The following list of possible additions to the staff of the Department of Economics represents an enumeration of suggestions made by various members of the Department. It, of course, does not include all of those whom the Department would like to invite as permanent members of the University staff. Many of those whom we would most like to have, it is well-known, are not available; nor can the Department be sure that those listed below would favorably consider an invitation to join our staff. Likewise, this list must not be construed as nominations for membership in the Department. Some members of the staff are known to object to the inclusion of some of the names listed below. But if unanimous consent were required before suggestions could be made, little progress in building a Department would be possible. In its present state, the list is only an enumeration of suggestions warranting further inquiry. The fields of interest of many of the potential candidates overlap and the appointment of some individuals would make it undesirable, or at least uneconomic, to appoint others. Nevertheless, the list does given an idea of some persons who might be considered for future appointments. This list, like any other enumeration, is subject to constant revision, both in the addition or subtraction of names.

Name

 Present Location

Field of Interest or Specialization
Abraham (sic) Bergson University of Texas Wages and Wage Theory
Robert Bryce Ottawa, Canada
Norman Buchanan University of California Public Utilities, Corporation Finance, Business Cycles (also possible interest in United States Economic History)
Earl Hamilton Northwestern University Economic History
Albert G. Hart C.E.D., Chicago Theory, Finance, etc.
J. R. Hicks University of Manchester, England Economic Theory
Harold A. Innis University of Toronto Economic History
Maurice Kelso University of Wisconsin Land Economics
Tjalling Koopmans Cowles Commission Statistics; Mathematical Economics; Business Cycles; Shipping
Simon Kuznets University of Pennsylvania National Income; Historical Statistics
Sanford Mosk University of California Economic History
Charles A. Myers Massachusetts Institute of Technology Labor; Industrial Relations
Walter Rostow Columbia University Economic History (XIX Century)
Leonard Salter University of Wisconsin Land Economics
T. Scitovszky London School of Economics; U.S. Army Theory of Capital and Interest; Theory of Tariffs
Arthur Smithies University of Michigan; Bureau of the Budget, Washington, D. C. Fiscal Policy; Theory; Money and Banking
Eugene Staley School of Advanced International Studies (Washington, D.C.) International Economics; Foreign Trade
George Stigler University of Minnesota Theory and Foreign Trade
R. H. Tawney London School of Economics Economic History
Allen Wallis Stanford University Statistics

______________________________

Joint Appointments

The Department of Economics shares an interest in many fields with other departments, schools and divisions of the University. It recognizes that most problems of the Social Sciences have economic aspects, and other aspects as well. Many of the fields embraced within particular disciplines are explained by accident or tradition, not always by logic. No one department can, therefore, assert a valid claim for the exclusive staffing of fields of interest held in common with other branches of knowledge. It seems wisest to develop these common grounds through joint appointments. Not only does this enable us to attract to the University more outstanding scholars than the fellowship of one department might provide, but it should also place at the disposition of those interested in promoting joint fields, perhaps, larger resources than either acting alone could command.

Joint appointments, too, will tend to integrate the Social Sciences with the other schools and departments affected, as well as contribute to the unity of the University as a whole. The Department of Economics, therefore, ventures to suggest joint appointments in the following fields:

Fields Units Affected
Trusts and Monopolies Business, Law, Economics
Railroads and Transportation Business, Economics
Public Utilities Economics, Political Science, Law
Social Control of Business Business, Law, Political Science, Economics
Advanced Applied Mathematics and Statistics Economics, Mathematics, Business, Institute of Statistics, other departments interested in statistics
Urban Planning (or the Utilization of Land) Geography, Political Science, Economics, Law, Business, Sociology
Social Legislation, particularly affecting Labor Business, Sociology, Social Service Administration, Law, Political Science, Economics

[…]

Among those who might be proposed for joint appointments are the following:

Name Present Location Field of Interest Appropriate Appointment
Charles L. Dearing Brookings Institution and U.S. Government Transportation Economics, Business
Corwin D. Edwards Northwestern University Trusts, Monopolies, Control of Business Political Science, Law, Economics
Milton Friedman Columbia University Economic Theory, Public Finance, Monetary Policy Economics, Institute of Statistics
Homer Hoyt Regional Plan Association, Inc., New York, N.Y. Land Planning Economic Geography, Political Science
David E. Lilienthal T. V. A. Public Utilities Political Science, Law, Economics
Abraham Wald Columbia University Applied Mathematics, Statistics Mathematics, Economics
Allen Wallis Columbia University Applied Mathematics, Statistics Mathematics, Economics
Samuel S. Wilks Princeton University Applied Mathematics, Statistics Mathematics, Economics

Visiting Professorships

Each department needs to diversify its courses. Too frequently the attempt at diversification is made by adding permanent members to the regular staff. The need can best be met by the appointment of visiting professors.

[…]

A list of some who might be invited to the University as Visiting Professors is as follows:

Name Present Location Fields of Interest
John D. Black Harvard Agricultural Economics
(J.) Roy Blough U. S. Treasury Public Finance
Kenneth Boulding Iowa State College Economic Analysis; Theory of Capital
Karl Brandt Food Institute, Stanford U. Agricultural Economics
Harry G. Brown University of Missouri Economic Theory, Public Finance
J. Douglas Brown Princeton University Industrial Relations
Edward H. Chamberlain(sic) Harvard Economic Theory; Monopolistic Competition
J. M. Clark Columbia University Economic theory
J. B. Condliffe California International Trade; International Commercial Policy
Joseph S. Davis Food Institute, Stanford U. Agricultural Economics
Milton Gilbert Office of Price Administration, Washington, D.C. Economic Theory; Price Control
T. Haavelmo Norwegian Shipping Administration, New York, N.Y. Econometrics
Alvin Hansen Harvard Economic Theory; Fiscal Policy
F. A. Hayek London School of Economics and Political Science History of Social Thought; Economic Theory; Monetary Policy
J. R. Hicks University of Manchester Economic Theory
George Jaszy U. S. Dept. of Commerce National Income; Business Analysis
O. B. Jesness University of Minnesota Agricultural Economics
Nicholas Kaldor London School of Economics Theory of the Firm; Imperfect Competition; Money; Business Cycles
M. Kalecki Institute of Statistics of University of Oxford, England Economic Fluctuations; Expenditure Rationing
M. Slade Kendrick Cornell University Public Finance; Farm Taxation
Arthur Kent San Francisco Attorney-at-Law Taxation
J. M. Keynes Cambridge University Fiscal and Monetary Policy
Simon S. Kuznets National Bureau of Economic Research; University of Pennsylvania Statistics; National Income and Its Problem
A. P. Lerner New School for Social Research Economic Theory; Fiscal Policy; Public Finance
Edward S. Mason Harvard University Economic Theory; International Trade and Trade Practices
Wesley C. Mitchell Columbia University Money and Prices
Jacob Mosak Office of Price Administration, Washington, D.C. Economic Theory; Statistics; Control of Prices
R. A. Musgrave Federal Reserve Board, Washington, D. C. Public Finance
Randolph Paul Lord, Day and Lord, Attorneys-at-Law Taxation
Paul A. Samuelson Massachusetts Institute of Technology Economic Theory; Money and Banking; Fiscal Policy
Lawrence H. Seltzer Wayne University Money and Banking; Public Debts; Fiscal Policy
Carl S. Shoup Columbia University Public Finance
Sumner H. Slichter Harvard University Business Economics
Richard Stone England Statistics; National Income
R. H. Tawney London School of Economics Economic History
Abraham Wald Columbia University Mathematics and Statistics
John H. Williams Harvard University Money and Banking

In the past, the Department has supplemented its staff by the appointment of visiting professors, but the invitations have ordinarily been restricted to the Summer Quarter in order (1) to relieve the regular staff from summer teaching and (2) to provide “window-dressing” to make the Summer Quarters more attractive to new students. The potentialities of the visiting professorship can hardly be realized when the practice is applied only to the Summer Quarter. That it has made that Quarter more attractive would seem to be indicated by the outstanding economists who have been guests of the University of Chicago.

[…]

The practice of inviting outstanding men to the University of Chicago seems to have been more prevalent in the early years of the University than it is today. Visiting appointments also declined with the strained finances of the University during the late depression. The Department is anxious to develop a program of instruction and research based upon the policy of the regular employment of visitors. A sum, equal to the stipend of a full professor, if used to finance a program of regular visitors, would add greater content and prestige to the Department than could be secured in any other way.

Source: University of Chicago Library, Department of Special Collections. Office of the President. Hutchins Administration Records. Box 73, Folder “Economics Dept., “Post-War Plans” Simeon E. Leland, 1945″.