Tag: Gerschenkron

Harvard. Annual report on the department of economics. Dunlop, 1961-1962

Post author By Irwin Collier
Post date 2025-05-26

An overview of the annual comings and goings of a department are typically chronicled in a report prepared by the department chair. Such low circulation documents are sometimes targeted to a specific readership, e.g. a visiting committee, a dean, the alumni, but the report transcribed in this post for the Harvard economics department in 1961-62 does not appear to have had a particular audience in mind.

___________________________

About Chairman John T. Dunlop
(Harvard Album, 1960)

Sallying forth from an office in the farther reaches of Littauer to Washington, D.C., JOHN THOMAS DUNLOP, Professor of Economics and faculty member in the Graduate School of Public Administration, is certainly one of the university’s most travelled professors. Dunlop, a labor expert, teaches an undergraduate course on unionism and public policy applying to labor relations and problems; in the grad school he conducts two seminars, in one of which he had worked closely with the late Professor Slichter. But in addition to his teaching, Professor Dunlop is one of the country’s leading strike arbitrators, and he figures that he travels in the vicinity of 150,000 miles a year on this outside work. The occasion for a weekly trip to the nation’s capital is his post as the impartial chairman of a joint committee in the construction industry, comprising representatives of the eighteen major unions and contracting firms. In this position Professor Dunlop must mediate disputes between the union and management. He is also a permanent umpire for the women’s garment industry and in the past has served in similar capacities for the brass companies of Connecticut and the bituminous coal producers. The dispute in 1955 involving the complexities of the ratio of required conductors to the length of a freight train called him back to the role of mediator, following a long term with the Atomic Energy Labor panel. At present he edits the Wertheim series on the histories of various big corporations and unions, and he also administers a Ford Foundation grant to study the functionings of labor and management in the underdeveloped countries of Asia.

Professor Dunlop was born in the Forty-Niner gold region and graduated from the University of California in 1935. He has been with Harvard since 1938, when he joined the faculty as an instructor. He gets back to California at least once a year, and the last time he returned he did so by travelling eastward via Indonesia. Professor Dunlop lives in Belmont, and, when not compiling mileage, he devotes his time to his wife and three children, and concentrates on his tennis game.

Source: The Harvard Album, 1960, p. 29.

___________________________

Previously posted departmental reports

Department Reports to the Dean (1932-41)
Department Reports to the Dean (1942-1946)
Department Reports to the Dean (1947-1950)
Department Report to the Dean (1955-56)
Department Newsletter (June 1960)

___________________________

June 26, 1962

Report
Department of Economics, 1961-1962

1. Staff

Professor Gerschenkron was Taussig Research Professor for the year, and Professor Albert J. Meyer, lecturer in the Department, was also on leave. Professor Galbraith and Kaysen continued on leave in government appointments. During the spring term Professor Harris was on sabbatical leave; Professor Bergson held a Ford Faculty Research Fellowship, and Professor Leontief was Visiting Professor at the College du France, Paris. Assistant Professors Gill and Vanek were also on leave throughout the year.

As a consequence of the number of senior members on leave, the Department included this year a relatively large number of visiting professors and lecturers. Professor Jesse Markham of Princeton University taught the courses in industrial organization; Dr. Frank Spooner was in charge of economic history; Professor William H. Nicholls of Vanderbilt instructed in agriculture and economic development. Professor Jacob Viner was Taussig Research Professor, and while he taught no courses, we were delighted to have him with us for the year. Professor Schmookler of Minnesota was associated with the science and public policy seminar of the Littauer School, and was a visiting lecturer in the Department. In addition, Professor Domar of M.I.T. taught a course in the Soviet economy in the spring term. Mr. Langley gave courses ordinarily taught by Professor A.J. Meyer, and Professor Caleb Smith of Brown University continued to teach the accounting course.

2. New Appointments

The Executive Committee unanimously recommended the appointment of Professor Richard Caves as a permanent addition to the Department. Following the established procedures, the governing boards on May 14, 1962 voted his appointment as Professor of Economics effective July 1, 1962. Professor Caves completed his Ph.D. degree in the Department in 1958 and has been on the staff at the University of California (Berkeley) since 1957. He has been vice-chairman of the Berkeley Department. The appointment of Professor Caves will materially strengthen the Harvard Department, particularly in the fields of international trade and industrial organization. Moreover, he is regarded as an excellent undergraduate teacher.

The Department unanimously recommended and the President and governing boards approved the appointment of four new assistant professors starting July 1, 1962: Clopper Almon, Jr., Elliot Berg, Phoebus Dhrymes, and Thomas Wilson. It is planned that these assistant professors in the Department will devote part time to research and be paid in part from research budgets. Such arrangements, combined with the higher salary scales starting July 1, 1962, should facilitate the recruitment of first rate assistant professors; it has often been difficult in the past to fill this rank in this Department.

In approving these four appointments on March 5, 1962, President Pusey stated:

“It is my understanding that these four new Assistant Professors will devote part of their five-year tenure to special research projects and that an appropriate fraction of their salaries during these periods will be charged against the project budgets. I approve in principle the idea of experimenting in this way with charging portions of the salaries of assistant professors to grants or contracts, provided these grants or contracts are of sufficient duration to avoid the danger of funds running out when there are still large salary commitments in excess of our normal academic salary budget. Thus I feel that we should move with caution in this direction, treating the above appointments as experimental, and waiting for the results to become apparent before venturing further along this road.”

3. Chair in Modern China Studies and Economics

The primary responsibility for filling this chair has now been placed in the Department of Economics. After a series of conferences with the East Asia Research Center of Harvard University, President Pusey approved the arrangements under which the Department will seek a permanent appointment competent in Economics and with a command of the Chinese language. In the meanwhile, the Department is to be responsible for providing some instruction on term appointments in the field and is to have the use of the income of the endowment for such instruction and to develop promising scholars in this field.

Professor Kuznets is to be Chairman of the Committee of the Department to seek appropriate appointments. It is expected that Mr. Dwight Perkins, a graduate student in the Department, will provide a half course of instruction on the Economy of China in the spring term, 1963.

4. Undergraduate Program

The enrollment in the undergraduate courses in the Department has grown in the last several years. The aggregate enrollment in undergraduate courses was 926 in the fall of 1959 and 1375 in the fall of 1961; the aggregate enrollment was 1080 in the spring term of 1960 and 1281 in the spring of 1962. These figures include the enrollment in Economics 1 which averaged 540 in 1959 and 628 in 1962. It is thought that these increases in part reflect the reorganization of the undergraduate program placed into effect in the fall of 1960 following several years of work on the part of the committee on undergraduate instruction. The division of full year courses into half year courses, the arrangement of courses into four groups according to prerequisites and level of difficulty, the lectures in Economics 1 and the addition to the curriculum of a few new courses is thought to have stimulated enrollment.

Despite the increases in enrollment in undergraduate courses, the Department faces a serious continuing problem to maintain and to increase the number of concentrators in the field. The percentage of all concentrators who elect the field of Economics has declined from 7.7 percent in 1956-57 to 6.0 percent in 1960-61. The low concentration in Economics at Radcliffe is of particular concern to the Department, and conferences seeking to increase interest among the students have been held with President Bunting and other members of the Radcliffe staff.

In order to improve the quality of our instruction, Economics 98 (junior tutorial) is to be reorganized. The adoption of the Gill plan by the Faculty materially increased the number of students in Economics 98 from 40 or 50 to more than 80. The instruction in economic theory by lectures has proven to be inappropriate with the larger group. Next year, 1962-63, it is planned to divide the group into three or four seminars, each of approximately 20 students; each seminar is to be under the direction of a senior member of the Department or an assistant professor. In addition, tutorial groups of four or five students will meet with individual tutors. Professor Caves has been given overall responsibility for this important part of the undergraduate program.

5. Graduate Instruction

There was a total of 48 first year graduate students in the Department this year including 5 women and 3 enrolled through Littauer. There were 88 continuing graduate students including 6 women, 6 from Littauer, and 2 in joint degrees, for a total of 136 graduate students; in addition, the Department had 10 special students and 10 special auditors. A total of 21 Ph.D. degrees were awarded to students in the Department of Economics.

The competition for places in the graduate schools for work in the Department of Economics has grown more severe in recent years. From the more than 260 applications for admission to the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences received in the spring of 1962, there will only be about 45 new graduate students in the fall of 1962. Almost half of these students will be from outside the United States and Canada. For the fall of 1962 we have been able to obtain the admission of 8 out of the first 10 on our list, a considerably higher fraction than in recent years.

The Department faces strong conflicting pressures in making decisions on the number of new graduate students to be admitted. On the one hand, the Department is anxious to provide individual instruction particularly after the first year of graduate study for the highest quality students. A greater enrollment would also complicate materially the teaching of the required graduate courses in economic history, statistics and theory, and after a point would require further manpower so that two senior members of the Department might give parallel courses or sections. On the other hand, the Department is anxious to make its contribution to the increased demands for economists particularly for developing countries. Moreover the quality of a number of the students rejected for admission (perhaps as many as 15 to 20) appears to be very good. In the selection of students from abroad it is particularly difficult to know whether one has made the best selections. When students are admitted whose records turn out to be poor, there are often many complications for both the student and the University. The Department has spent considerable energy in reviewing the records of students admitted during the past decade; a careful statistical study was made under the direction of Professor Houthakker. The Department is continuing to seek to improve admission procedures.

Financial resources available to the Department for its own use for scholarships and fellowships is a serious problem since the money made available by the generous gift of Mr. Roger Kyes has now been exhausted.

6. Organization of the Department

The Department now performs much of its routine business through committees. The two major committees are on Undergraduate Instruction under Professor Eckstein and on Graduate Instruction under Professor Dorfman.

7. Research

A very large amount of research activity is carried out by members of the Department of Economics. In addition to individual research by senior members, an increasing number of research projects which employ a number of graduate students and junior staff are being conducted under the direction of senior members. These research projects often provide opportunities for training of graduate students in research methods and afford topics and financing for Ph.D. dissertations.

Among these research projects with financial support are the following:

Professor Leontief	Harvard Economic Research Project which has recently been refinanced for a period of years.
Professor Mason	The relations of government and business in economic development.
Professor Mason and Dr. Papanek	Overseas operations and training (Center for International Affairs)
Professor Kuznets	Economic growth
Professor Eckstein	Economics of public expenditures
Professor Houthakker	Forecasting consumers’ expenditures
Professor Harris	Education and Public Policy
Professor Schelling	Defense studies and Experimental Study of Bargaining
Professor Dunlop	Labor-Management History and Economics of Medical Care
Professor Duesenberry	Capital Markets
Professor Meyer	Business Decisions
Professor Bergson	Soviet Economics
Professor Gerschenkron	Economic History Workshop

8. Public and Professional Activities

A number of members of the Department were engaged in a wide variety of professional activities and public service during the year. A few instances may be of interest; no attempt is made for a complete listing.

The president of the American Economic Association comes from this Department two years in a row. Professor Mason is president for 1962, and Professor Haberler is president-elect.

Professor Leontief was chairman of the International Conference on Input-Output Techniques held in Geneva, Switzerland in September 1961 and sponsored by the Harvard Economic Research Project in association with the U.S.[sic] Secretariat. He was also a member of the Commission of Experts for the United Nations which reported on the Social and Economic Consequences of Disarmament.

Professor Dorfman served as a member of the President’s Scientific Advisory Committee team on Waterlogging and Salinity in West Pakistan. He is also a member of the President’s Committee to Appraise Employment and Unemployment Statistics.

Professor Harris is serving as Economic Advisor to the Secretary of the Treasury and is a member of the Public Advisory Board of the Area Redevelopment Program.

Professor John R. Meyer served as a consultant in connection with the President’s message on Transportation Policy.

Professor Kuznets is Chairman of the Committee on the Economy of China of the Social Science Research Council.

Professor Bergson is a member of this same Committee and chairman of the Joint Committee of Slavic Studies of the Social Science Research Council and the American Council of Learned Societies. His study, The Real National Income of Soviet Russia Since 1928, was published in 1961 by the Harvard University Press.

Professor Mason is Chairman, Advisory Committee, A.I.D.

Professors Duesenberry, Eckstein and Smithies have been consultants to the Council of Economic Advisors. Professor Duesenberry was on the staff of the Commission on Money and Credit and was chairman of the Joint Economic Committee’s Inventory Study Committee.

Professor Schelling has been a consultant to the Department of Defense and to the Scientific Advisory Board of the Air Force. His study Strategy of Arms Control (with Morton J. Halperin), was published by the Twentieth Century Fund in 1961.

Professor Houthakker has worked on revenue forecasting problems for the Department of the Treasury.

Professor Dunlop was a member of the Presidential Railroad Commission (1960-1962), and is a member of the President’s Missile Sites Labor Commission. He was Chairman of the International Conference on Labor Productivity under the auspices of the International Economic Association held August-September 1961.

9. Visiting Committee

A series of meetings this year with the Chairman of the Visiting Committee, and others of its members, have improved the relations between the Visiting Committee and the Department of Economics. I believe these new attitudes are reflected in the annual report of the Committee. There is a genuine desire on the part of both the Department and the Committee for a constructive relationship.

___________________
John T. Dunlop
Chairman

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

Image Source: The Harvard Class Album 1960, p. 29.

Tags AlmonC, BergE, Bergson, Caves, Dhrymes, Domar, DorfmanR, Duesenberry, Dunlop, Eckstein, Galbraith, Gerschenkron, Gill, Haberler, Harris, Houthakker, Kaysen, Kuznets, Langley, Leontief, Markham, Mason, MeyerAJ, MeyerJ, Nicholls, Papanek, Perkins, Schelling, Schmookler, SmithCaleb, Smithies, SpoonerF, Vanek, Viner, WilsonT

Economists Harvard Teaching Undergraduate

Harvard. Annual Economics Newsletter. 1 June 1960

Post author By Irwin Collier
Post date 2025-05-09

This three page departmental newsletter for Harvard economics from the end of the academic year 1959-60 is found in Edward H. Chamberlin papers curated at the Economists’ Papers Archive at Duke University. Among other things we learn from this newsletter is that a year’s course “Mathematics for Economists” was able to satisfy the foreign language requirement, or expressed differently, the punishment for receiving a grade less than B in the first semester of the math course was being required to pass a rigorous foreign language examination.

Of course, finding this I wonder where I can find the first four issues of the Harvard Economics Newsletter.

___________________________

ECONOMICS NEWSLETTER
Fifth Annual Issue, June 1, 1960

UNDERGRADUATE INSTRUCTION:

The Department has been engaged in a study of its undergraduate curriculum over the past year and has now adopted a substantial series of changes in concentration requirements and, more particularly, in the undergraduate course offerings. The basic principles underlying the revisions were set out in a report of the Committee on Undergraduate Instruction under the chairmanship of Professor John Dunlop. These principles, briefly, were that the undergraduate program is “part of a liberal education” and, except in very special cases, is “not designed as professional training in Economics”; that the undergraduate program should be “clearly differentiated” from the graduate program; that the undergraduate should have as much flexibility as possible in choosing courses of interest to him; that close attention should be given to the teaching of Economics courses and to the balance of analytic and institutional material in each.

These principles clearly indicate a concern on the part of the Department that the undergraduate program may tend to become subordinate to the graduate program unless specific attention is paid to the particular interests and objectives of the younger student. The revisions, therefore, are in the direction of making a greater number of courses (particularly half-courses) open to undergraduates; breaking the traditional parallelism between graduate and undergraduate courses; and emphasizing historical, institutional and policy questions which will be of interest not only to the Economics concentrator but to able concentrators in other fields. To make certain that this greater freedom of choice does not lead to a lack of coherence, a certain “progression” has been introduced in the course offering and Honors candidates are required to take at least one “advanced” course in the area of their choice.

The sum total of these changes gives us a field of concentration which we believe will better serve the purposes of a liberal arts college. So far as undergraduate reaction is concerned, it will not be until the changes have gone into effect next year that we will be able to judge the response effectively. It is of interest, however, that the Crimson, not an altogether silent critic in the past, has called the new program a “model” which other departments might wisely study.

MATHEMATICS- LANGUAGE REQUIREMENT:

Realizing that mathematical competence is growing more important in most branches of economic work than linguistic ability, the Department has revised the language requirement in the following manner:

A full course entitled “Mathematics for Economists” has been established. All graduate students are now required to take and pass the first half of this course or pass an equivalent mathematics examination. Those who pass with at least a B may take the second half of the course, and no language will be required.

Those students who desire fluency in a foreign language or who receive a grade less than B in the first half of the mathematics course must complete the mathematics-language requirement by passing a rigorous language examination.

THE ECONOMICS OF HIGHER EDUCATION:

Professor Seymour E. Harris has been on leave this year on a Ford Fellowship, to complete the study of the Economics of Higher Education. He has visited more than 100 colleges and universities, and has submitted the following report for inclusion in this year’s Newsletter:

There were three resultant manuscripts:

More Resources for Education (John Dewey Lecture), Harpers, 1960
Economics and Educational Value. Edited volume based on seminar in 1958-59 for College Administrators. (Assisted by Richard Cooper and Reginald Green). Harvard University Press, 1960.
Economics of Higher Education, McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1961.

A questionnaire sent to about 200 economists revealed attitudes towards higher education. A considerable sentiment for:

1. Higher tuition if accompanied by improved financing methods. But fear expressed of resultant excessive gains of enrollment for public institutions, increased recourse to colleges near home, a tendency to favor high income groups and endanger the position of many vulnerable private institutions.
2. General agreement that much greater recourse to loans is practical. But some economists expressed dissatisfaction with the idea that young men and women should be encouraged to borrow. Furthermore, they are unaccustomed to seeking large credits.
3. Economists generally envisaged the possibility of substantial economies — better use of plant, reduced number of courses, etc. But it was hoped that small discussion groups would not be eliminated.

PERSONNEL:

Professor Simon KUZNETS, now at Johns Hopkins, and Professor Hendrik HOUTHAKKER, now at Stanford, will join our staff next year.

Professor Otto ECKSTEIN has recently been promoted to Associate Professor of Economics. This fall he was in Washington, where he was Technical Director for the Douglas Committee investigating prices, wages, productivity, etc. Now he is in Europe working for the O.E.E.C. Professor GALBRAITH has been on leave in Switzerland for the spring term, working on a new book on corporation organization. Professor KAYSEN been working for Doxiadis Associates in Athens this year, making a study of Greek economy.

Professor James McKIE from Vanderbilt and Professor Henri THEIL from the Econometric Institute in the Netherlands have been visiting members of our staff this year.

Professor DUNLOP is President of the Industrial Relations Research Association for 1960. He has also been appointed to the President’s Committee investigating non-operating unions on the railroads.

Professor MASON has edited a book, Corporation and Modern Society. Professor DUESENBERRY has been working on his Capital Markets Project, supported by a grant from the Merrill Foundation to the Business School. Professor GERSCHENKRON’s Economic History Workshop, under a grant from the Ford Foundation, began operation in the fall of 1959.

Professor LEONTIEF gave three public lectures as Hitchcock Professor at the University of California in November 1959. Now he is in Argentina at the invitation of the University of Buenos Aires, where he is giving some lectures. He has been sent by ICA and will be there about two weeks. On the way back he will be stopping in Rio de Janeiro to give a lecture at the invitation of the Getulio Vergas Foundation.

Professor DORFMAN will be on leave next year, when he will be at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences in Stanford, California.

The Department was saddened by the deaths of Professor SLICHTER in September 1959 and of Mrs. John H. WILLIAMS and Professor BLACK in April 1960.

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

Image Source: “Overhead of empty Harvard Sq.” (1961) Cambridge Historical Commission, Cambridge Photo Morgue Collection. Digital Commonwealth, Massachusetts Collections Online.

Tags BlackJD, CooperRichard, DorfmanR, Duesenberry, Dunlop, Eckstein, Galbraith, Gerschenkron, Harris, Houthakker, Kaysen, Kuznets, Leontief, Mason, McKie, Slichter, Theil, WilliamsJH

Fields Harvard

Harvard. Report on Long-range Plans for the Department of Economics. 1948

Post author By Irwin Collier
Post date 2025-05-04

The following transcribed report of a special committee regarding the future of the Harvard economics department looking forward from 1948 is fascinating. Eight senior professors would be retiring over the coming decade and there was a serious discussion of the economists needed to replace them. For my money the most interesting comparison is the one made between Arthur Smithies and Paul Samuelson. I’ll let you or your AI of choice fish that out of the report. But there is much more to be found.

_____________________________

The Provost is not amused
[No letterhead, unsigned.
Apparently a copy.]

December 22, 1947

Dear Mr. Burbank:

I am not at all happy with the recommendation sent me by the Department of Economics and the School of Public Administration for the appointment at professorial rank of a man to serve jointly in the Department and in the School. As you realize, the five votes taken by the group reveal a confused picture in which no clear preference is indicated. Nor have I been successful in clarifying the situation by requesting from each member of the group a letter addressed to me in which he explained fully his vote. Hence I believe it necessary to suggest a different procedure from that which has been followed.

One source of the difficulty, it occurs to me, is that the recommendation for the joint appointment has not been studied sufficiently in relation to the other vacancies which are to be filled within the next year or two. As you know, the Department has, in addition to the joint professorship, a vacancy in the rank of full professorship created by the resignation of Professor Crum, and one in the rank of associate professorship. It also has due it in 1950-51 a second vacancy as associate professor. Hence it appears that within a short span, the Department has four major appointments to make. It goes without saying that those appointments will influence in great measure the future of economics at Harvard for many years to come. The importance of making wise selections cannot be lost sight of.

It seems to me that we must consider all these appointments as a related problem. Consequently I shall take no action on the recommendation for the joint appointment until the Department has thought through its entire slate. No evidence has been given me yet which suggests that the Department has worked out a consistent plan or program into which all these appointments can be fitted and which meets, within the resources available, the demands which the Faculty as a whole may properly make upon the Department of Economics.

I have no desire to lecture the Department as to its obligations, but I do have certain responsibilities to discharge as Dean of the Faculty. Hence I venture to suggest that there are certain questions which may reasonably and properly be directed to the Department for an answer. Among those questions are the following:

What is your concept of teaching and research within the Faculty of Arts and Sciences?
What fields will you cover, within the resources at your command, in carrying out the answer to the first question?
Are you properly discharging your obligations to your sister departments of the Faculty and to the programs which the Faculty has legislated as common ventures?
Do your specific recommendations harmonize with a general plan and program?

I understand fully that these are no easy questions to answer and that the difficulty of finding an answer is a prime factor in creating the present state of confusion. But I suspect that more preliminary efforts to answer the questions might have reduced the degree of confusion. Certainly so long as the basic issues are not clarified, the discussion of individuals to be appointed breaks down into fragmentary views.

I am also distressed by the fact that many of the professors in the Department have informed me that they do not consider themselves either willing or competent to serve as Chairman of the Department when your term expires in June. One conclusion which might be drawn from this situation is that the Department as now constituted needs some recruitment from men competent and willing to think of economics in general, and of the relation of economics to the faculty at large and to the world outside the university.

I must also report a sense of uneasiness among members of the Faculty in other Departments, that the Department of Economics is showing a tendency not to give due weight in the filling of its vacancies to common programs. If there is cause for this apprehension, I should be quite dismayed. At a time when the Faculty as a whole gives indication of the need in teaching and research for ever greater cooperation between disciplines of learning, it would be regrettable if the Department of Economics adhered to narrow and vertical procedures. To make the point quite specific, I might inquire what the Department of Economics plans to do in regard to Economic History and to the Area Program in Russian.

I also wonder whether in your immediate desire to fill the vacancies with men now available, you have given proper consideration to the range of younger men coming to maturity in your field. I have, for example, observed two young economists now in the Society of Fellows who seem to me to have ultimate promise of achievement greater than that of at least some of the men now available. There must be many other such men in the University and elsewhere. It would seen wise in any general approach to the problem to give assurance that proper consideration had been made in our appointment schedule for the generation of economists now coming to maturity.

These are some of the matters I have in mind, both general and particular, which incline me to the decision that we should follow an approach in handling these appointments different from the one followed to date. I fear that the approach followed so far is leading into an impasse from which the only escape will be the making of something less than the wisest appointments. Hence I suggest a change of procedure and ask first that the Department present me, in advance of any specific recommendation, with a statement which deals with the questions raised earlier in this letter. Recommendations may accompany this document, but they will not be accepted without it and unless they are shown to have meaning in relation to it.

Finally, the time has come, I believe, when I must personally associate myself with the development of this program. I am therefore arranging a dinner and evening meeting in the rooms of the Society of Fellows on January 21 at 6:30 p.m. to which I shall invite each member of the Executive Committee (all Professors and Associate Professors) of the Department. I shall preside at this meeting, and we shall begin then discussion of the issues outlined in this letter. Needless to say that because of the urgency of the matter, I shall expect a full attendance of the Executive Committee at the dinner.

I am sending a copy of this letter to each Professor and Associate Professor of the Department.

Sincerely yours,
[Unsigned by Paul H. Buck]
Provost

Professor H. H. Burbank
Littauer Center

_____________________________

C O N F I D E N T I A L

REPORT ON LONG-RANGE PLANS
FOR THE
DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMICS
(REVISED EDITION)

February 25, 1948

The Task of the Committee

In his letter of December 22, 1947, to the Chairman of the Department of Economics [Professor Harold H. Burbank], the Provost [Professor Paul H. Buck] raised a series of questions concerning the long-run plans for the growth and development of the Department. Any future appointments clearly ought to be related to a comprehensive study of the needs and objectives of the Department.

The questions posed by the Provost were as follows:

1. What is your concept of teaching and research within the Faculty of Arts and Sciences?
2. What fields will you cover, within the resources at your command, in carrying out the answer to the first question?
3. Are you properly discharging your obligations to sister departments of the Faculty and to the programs which the Faculty has legislated as common ventures?
4. Do your specific recommendations harmonize with a general plan and program?

Following an evening meeting on January 21, 1948, with the Executive Committee of the Department, the Provost appointed a committee of five to consider the above questions and to prepare a report on long-run plans for the Department. The Committee was also directed to recommend appointments for existing vacancies in the light of such a comprehensive survey of long-range problems. Four appointments are under consideration at this time: (1) a full professor replacement for Professor Crum, (2) a full professor to be appointed jointly in the Department and in the Littauer School of Public Administration, (3) an associate professor available July 1, 1948, and (4) an associate professor normally not available until July 1, 1951, but who might be appointed at an earlier date.

The Prospective Situation in the Department

The growth of the Department in recent years is indicated in the following tabulation of the number of permanent positions and the number of undergraduate and graduate students for selected years since 1925.

Year	Permanent Positions	Undergraduate Concentrators	Graduate Students*
1925-26	10	324	75
1930-31	14	397	82
1935-36	13	376	47
1940-41	16	321	102
1947-48	17	726	264

* Prior to 1940, graduate students with Corporation appointments were not required to register in the Graduate School. The graduate figures for 1940-41 and 1947-48 include Joint Degree and Littauer School candidates who take most of their work in Economics.
Radcliffe students are included in the figures only for 1947-48.

The Department of Economics may reasonably anticipate the retirement of one-half of its present permanent members by June 30, 1958. On the normal assumption that retirement takes place at age sixty-six, eight of the sixteen present permanent members may be expected to become emeritus during the next ten years. The members of the Department who are, and are not, expected to retire before 1958 are indicated in the following lists. (The dates of birth are given after each name.)

Expected Retirement by 1958		Active Status Expected, Fall 1958
A.P. Usher	January 13, 1883	E. Frickey	August 20, 1893
J.A. Schumpeter	February 8, 1883	S.E. Harris	September 8, 1897
J.D. Black	June 6, 1883	O.H. Taylor	December 11, 1897
A.E. Monroe	August 2, 1885	E.S. Mason	February 22, 1899
J.H. Williams	June 21, 1887	E.H. Chamberlin	May 18, 1899
H.H. Burbank	July 3, 1887	G. Haberler	July 20, 1900
A.H. Hansen	August 23, 1887	W.W. Leontief	August 5, 1905
S.H. Slichter	January 8, 1892	J.T. Dunlop	July 5, 1914

The Department can look forward, under the existing rules of the University, to a total of six new permanent appointments, including the four now under consideration during this ten-year period. The Department can also expect the appointment of an economist to the Lamont University Professorship upon the retirement of Professor Slichter. Accordingly, the Department can expect to retain a total of fifteen permanent appointments in the academic year 1958-59 in comparison with the seventeen permanent members during the current academic year (the above list plus Professor Crum). (The number of permanent members of the staff may at any given time be larger than retirement dates would indicate by reason of extension of normal term of service.)

These expected changes in the personnel of the Department over the next ten-year period indicate clearly the decisive nature of the appointments now under deliberation. Four of the six expected appointments are under study. The distinction and reputation of the Department for many years to come is at stake. It is imperative that every effort be made to appraise the needs and opportunities of the Department during the next decade and to canvass with insight all possible candidates.

The Place of the Department in the Faculty

The first question posed by the Provost in his letter of December 22, 1947, was: “What is your concept of teaching and research within the Faculty of Arts and Sciences?” The Committee makes the following points in a re-examination of the role of the Department.

(a) The Faculty of Arts and Sciences has embarked on programs of General Education and Area Studies [e.g., Russian Studies]. The Department of Economics has a substantial and distinctive contribution to make to each of these experiments: the development of a common core of a liberal education and the integration of different disciplines around the problems of a significant geographical area.

(b) The past twenty years have witnessed an unprecedented expansion in the need for economists in a variety of positions outside the academic world — government service, business concerns, research organizations, labor and farm groups, consulting practice and economic reporting. The Department of Economics needs to develop a more flexible graduate program to meet this more diversified demand in cooperation with other Departments in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and with various Graduate Schools in the University. The recognition of these broader objectives will supplement rather than detract from the training of economists for academic posts.

(c) The balance between graduate and undergraduate instruction in Economics is always a delicate adjustment. Indeed, the Provost has recently indicated that the strength and prestige of Harvard College lies in the fact that we are truly a “University College.” The Committee has analyzed the relative proportion of the time of its permanent members devoted to graduate and undergraduate course instruction for selected years since 1925. The permanent staff of the Department gave more courses for undergraduates in 1947-48 than in 1925-26. The proportion of all course time devoted to undergraduate instruction, however, has been reduced in this same period from a half to little more than a third. In other words, the increased permanent manpower of the Department over this period (permanent positions increased from ten to seventeen) has been devoted largely to graduate instruction.

The following table compares the number of courses “taught” or “supervised” by permanent members of the Department for undergraduates with the offering of courses for graduate students for selected dates. Comparative figures are also presented for the History and Government Departments.

Courses of Instruction by Permanent Staff
	Economics		History		Government
Dates	Undergrad.	Grad.	Undergrad.	Grad.	Undergrad.	Grad.
1925-26	8 ½	8 ½	14	12	6 ½	8
1930-31	9	11 ¾	14	22 ¾	5	9 ½
1935-36	8 ¾	12	15 ¼	31	5 ¼	10 ¼
1940-41	9 ¾	19 ½	14	13 ½	7 ¼	19 ¾
1947-48	12 ½	22	15	10 ½	9	9

These figures would appear to indicate that graduate course instruction has expanded in Economics relatively to undergraduate course instruction and also relative to the experience of graduate instruction in other departments. It should be noted, however, that the large increase in graduate courses after 1935/36 was associated with the establishment of the Graduate School of Public Administration which affected both the Department of Economics and the Department of Government.

These data on course offering need to be interpreted in terms of graduate enrollment and undergraduate concentration. The following table presents this information. The figures indicate the incidence of the postwar expansion in University enrolment upon the burden of instruction in Economics and allied departments.

Undergraduate Concentrators and Graduate Students
	Economics		History		Government
Dates	Undergrad.	Grad.	Undergrad.	Grad.	Undergrad.	Grad.
1925-26	324	75	190	—	113	45
1930-31	397	82	254	138	130	56
1935-36	376	47	283	104	292	38
1940-41	321	102	272	146	314	76
1947-48	726	264	321	207	763	129

The Committee believes that undergraduate instruction in Economics in the past two years has suffered materially by the suspension of the tutorial system. The assistant professor rank in which there is normally considerable contact with undergraduates has not been fully manned in recent years. The Committee believes that undergraduate instruction needs to receive more attention in the Department, not so much by more courses given by permanent members but by rebuilding a strong group of younger teachers in the assistant professor and annual instructor rank.

Assuming the number of the permanent staff at present contemplated to be fixed, the size of the graduate student body in Economics must be reduced from its present size of more than 260 if members of the Department are to fulfill their total obligations to the University and if a more diversified graduate student body is to receive adequate instruction and supervision. The Committee suggests a figure of 200 graduate students — twice the pre-war level — as a normal standard for the period under review. The rate of admission planned for the Fall term, 1948, will eventually yield a student body close to this figure. It is impossible at this time to foresee whether the numbers of qualified graduate students seeking economic instruction at Harvard will substantially exceed 200 after the special circumstances accounting for the present large numbers have been eliminated. If, as may well happen, the demand on the part of first-rate men and women for graduate instruction in economics exceeds the capacity of the staff as at present planned, it may indicate a need for revision of plans of instruction in economics.

(d) There is imperative need for more systematic development of research plans in Economics and for financial arrangements whereby permanent members may be relieved of all duties for periods of a term to pursue research on a full-time basis. Research grants should be used in part to secure substitute instruction. Several research projects which provide a practicable model for the expansion of research have recently been undertaken by members of the Department. Individual members of the Department should be encouraged to organize specific research projects and solicit support, in cooperation with the University administration. These projects should make provision for full-time leave for a term whenever possible. Such projects, moreover, may well become a training center for the most advanced students.

(e) The Department of Economics should expect a continuation of the distinguished tradition of participation by many of its members in wider forms of service to the community — government service, consultation to business and industry, private arbitration, private research organizations, etc. A danger exists, however, that these activities may consume too large a proportion of the time and energy of members of the staff. A devotion to productive scholarship should be an indispensable requirement of every appointee.

In making appointments the Department must be concerned to choose men with the energy and capacity for developing these outside interests and contacts. The Department has not only an obligation to the world of scholarship but also a unique responsibility for leadership at the many points where Economics has a contribution to make to the world of affairs.

The Urgent Needs of the Department

The second question posed by the Provost in his letter of December 22, 1947, asked: “What fields will you cover, within the resources at your command, in carrying out the answer to the first question?” When the objectives for the Department outlined in the preceding section are considered in conjunction with the present personnel and the retirement pattern outlined in Section 2 above, the following needs of the Department appear to be the most urgent. (The listing of these requirements at this point does not imply any particular hierarchy of urgency.)

(a) Economic History. This field has been a required part of the graduate program in Economics for many years. Moreover, for over half a century instruction in this area has been located in the Economics Department. The retirement of Professor Usher requires that provision be made for this field in any comprehensive plan for the Department.

(b) Agriculture and Marketing. Professor Black has developed work in two fields: (1) The Economics of Agriculture and Land Use Planning, and (2) Marketing and Distribution. Ideally two men would be required to carry on this work.

(1) Agriculture. The Committee is of the opinion that work in the Economics of Agriculture and Land Use Planning is indispensable. Research and training in this field have constituted a major contribution of the Department. Moreover, the agricultural field is of particular concern in the School of Public Administration.

(2) Marketing. The Committee reluctantly concludes that, under present prospects and despite the importance of work in marketing and distribution, it is unlikely that one of the few appointments available can be allocated in this field. It may be that the field of Business Organization can be reorganized to permit the inclusion of some portion of the work in the present field of Marketing and Distribution.

(c) General Education and the Area Program. It is imperative that the Department take an active part in the formulation and development of these new programs. The availability of half-time appointments from the General Education and Area budgets would permit the Department of Economics to make two appointments (of half-time each) for one budget vacancy. That is, the appointment of two men, a half time of one in an Area and of the other in General Education, might fill one of the vacancies in the Economics Department.

(d) Business Organization. The resignation of Professor Crum and the administrative responsibilities of Professor Mason make an appointment in this area urgent. Moreover, the field constitutes one of the largest areas of undergraduate and graduate concentration.

(e) Public Policy. The systematic development of the field of the Economic Aspects of Public Policy is essential to the growth of the Graduate School of Public Administration. One of the appointments available at this time has been explicitly earmarked for this purpose.

(f) Public Finance. The retirement of Professor Burbank in the period indicates the necessity for providing for work in this area. The field is indispensable both to the Economics Department and the Graduate School of Public Administration.

(g) Statistics. The burden of instruction in the field of Statistics is heavier than one man should be asked to assume. In addition to undergraduate and graduate courses, this required field involves participation in virtually all general examinations. Ideally instruction should be provided in the field of national income and mathematical statistics. If an additional appointment is not devoted exclusively to this field, consideration should be given to the recruitment of men able to develop such statistical instruction as a part of their program.

(h) Department Chairman. The Department is required to give serious weight in making appointments to qualities which make for a successful Chairman. The Department is so large as to place very heavy administrative responsibilities on its Chairman. The Department should have in its ranks a number of persons qualified to perform the duties of Chairman so that the burden on one individual over the years is not unreasonable.

The Committee believes that the Department should examine its internal operations to determine whether an administrative reorganization might not facilitate the effectiveness of the work of the Department. A systematic survey could be made of such duties as: counselling graduate students, placement, recruitment of superior students, and the supervision of Economics A and the junior teaching staff. Careful study should be given to the possibility of delegating more responsibility to standing committees of the Department.

While the Committee has emphasized, and it believes properly, certain specific needs of the Department, the overriding need, which should take precedence in all appointments, is for able men. If a first-rate man cannot be found in a specific field, it is better either to neglect the field or to divert the attention of existing personnel to this field than to fill the vacancy with second-rate material.

The Committee believes that the answer to the Provost’s third question, “Are you properly discharging your obligations to sister departments of the Faculty and to the programs which the Faculty has legislated as common ventures?”, must, at present, be “no.” It considers, however, that the addition of the personnel suggested below will, together with some reallocation of the time of present officers, enable the Department to meet these obligations.

A consideration of the Provost’s fourth question, “Do your specific recommendations harmonize with a general plan and program?” leads directly to a discussion of the proposed appointments.

Recommendations

(a) The Committee recommends that one appointment at the associate professorship level be utilized in the following manner: that Alexander Gerschenkron be invited on the understanding that the Department assume the responsibility for half his salary, the Russian area assuming responsibility for the other half; that John Sawyer, now a Junior Fellow, be appointed to an assistant professorship at the end of 1948-49, on the understanding that the responsibility for half his salary be assumed either by General Education or the Department of History.

Gerschenkron is one of the two best economists in the country now working on Russian problems, the other being Abram Bergson of Columbia University. Gerschenkron has the advantage of being an economic historian. Consequently, his appointment would enable the Department to take care not only of instruction and research in Russian economics but also to replace Professor Usher’s work in European economic history on his retirement.

Sawyer is an historian of an intellectual ability fully equal to that of our own Junior Fellows, Tobin and Kaysen. He has evinced an interest in cultivating the field of American economic history and also of working in General Education. Since Sawyer’s prospects in the History Department are extremely good, it would be necessary to assure him, on appointment as an assistant professor, that a clear road to advancement exists in the Department, if he shows the competence the Department expects of him.

These two appointments, which would fill one vacancy, would go far towards meeting the Department’s obligations toward the Russian area and toward General Education as well as taking care of economic history.

(b) The Committee feels that the vacancy left by the resignation of Professor Crum must be filled and that the best candidate available is Sidney Alexander, now an assistant professor. Although Alexander’s publication to date does not justify promotion, he has an impressive series of contributions due for publication during the next year which will make him an eminently qualified candidate for promotion by the end of the academic year 1948-49. The Committee therefore believes that one of the vacancies at the associate professorship level should be reserved for the advancement of Professor Alexander.

(c) In many ways the most serious and difficult problem confronting the Committee concerns the replacement of the work now carried on by Professor Black. The research and training program in agricultural economics and land use is an asset of great worth both to the Department of Economics and to the Graduate School of Public Administration.

The Committee understands that before the date set for Professor Black’s retirement the Administration will request him to continue his services to the University for a number of years. It therefore believes that some four to five years are available in which to select a man fully capable of carrying on Professor Black’s work. The Committee believes that there are a number of able young men in the field of agricultural economics who might be secured at the assistant professorship level. The Committee therefore recommends that one or more of these candidates be brought to Harvard and that the next two or three years be utilized to survey the field, including such men as are brought here at lower than permanent rank, to assure the selection of the best possible man.

(d) If one position is filled by Gerschenkron and Sawyer, and another is reserved for Alexander, there remain two positions at the professorial level. These positions might be treated in any one of the following ways:

(1) Both positions could be filled at once;

(2) One position could be filled now and the other held vacant for Professor Black’s successor;

(3) One position could be filled, the other held vacant pending the appearance of a suitable candidate not necessarily in the field of agricultural economics. In this case it must be assumed that the vacancy caused by Professor Black’s retirement would be filled from the appointment accruing to the Department in 1954, which appointment might be advanced in time. It should also be recognized that this appointment might have to be at the professorial level which would involve a departure from present University policy.

In considering the possibility of filling both vacancies now, the Committee was heavily influenced by the desirability of maintaining balance in the Department not only as among various fields of interest but as among types of mind and of methodological approaches to economic problems. In this connection the Committee considered carefully the qualifications of both Smithies and Samuelson. While of the opinion that each of these men might individually be considered intellectually superior to the rest of the field, the Committee feels strongly that the addition of both would give a particular stamp to the Department that should, if possible, be avoided. Both of these men are, in a sense, system builders, concerned with the logical and mathematical interrelations of the elements of their systems. Neither has done much empirical work. Smithies has shown recently a concern for, and an interest in, institutional developments and public policy. Moreover, he has had extensive experience in government service. The Committee believes that while each of these men is pre-eminent in his type of work the two together do not make a satisfactory combination.

The problem then narrows down to the question of Samuelson or Smithies and someone else. The Committee considers that the interests and type of mind represented either by Richard Bissel or Colin Clark would effectively supplement the Smithies-Samuelson characteristics. No effective way of communicating with Clark suggested itself to the Committee, and there is certain evidence to support the view that he would not be available. It appears that Bissel may not be available at this time. If his views change in the near future, the Committee considers him its first choice.

Of other possibilities the Committee discussed at length the qualifications of Galbraith, Yntema, David Wright, Albert Hart, Donald Wallace, and others. For various reasons, too lengthy here to enumerate, none of these candidates seemed first-rate possibilities.

The Committee therefore recommends that one of the professorial positions be held vacant for the time being pending the appearance of a satisfactory candidate. As to the relative merits of Smithies and Samuelson, the Committee, after deliberating at length, favors Smithies. While recognizing that Samuelson has in his field of activity a better record than anyone near his age in any field, the Committee was heavily influenced by the probability that Smithies’ contribution to the needs of the Department would be substantially greater. He appears to be an ideal man to develop the work in the School of Public Administration on Economic Analysis and Public Policy; he appears to be an eminently satisfactory man to take over the work in Public Finance on Professor Burbank’s retirement; he is clearly a man who would make an able Departmental Chairman. In addition he is competent to develop work in advanced statistics should the Department consider this desirable. For these reasons, and others, the Committee recommends the appointment of Smithies.

Paul H. Buck, Chairman
John T. Dunlop
Wassily Leontief
Edward S. Mason
John H. Williams

Source: Duke University, Economists’ Papers Archive, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library. Edward H. Chamberlin Papers. Box 17, Folder “Economics Department Faculty, 1944-47.”

Image Source: Harvard Seal detail from the cover of the Harvard Law School Yearbook 1949.

Tags Alexander, Bergson, Bissel, BlackJD, Burbank, Chamberlin, ClarkC, Crum, Dunlop, Frickey, Galbraith, Gerschenkron, Haberler, Harris, HartAB, Kaysen, Leontief, Mason, Monroe, Samuelson, SawyerJ, Schumpeter, Smithies, TaylorOH, Tobin, Usher, WallaceDH, WilliamsJH, WrightD, Yntema

Economic History Exam Questions Harvard

Harvard. Twenty years of graduate economic history exams. Gay and Usher, 1930-1949

Post author By Irwin Collier
Post date 2022-04-09

This has turned into a post that is over fifty pages long when printed as a normal text document. It began with materials in a folder found in Alexander Gerschenkron’s papers at the Harvard archives that contained a test-bank of two of his predecessors in economic history at Harvard, Edwin F. Gay and Abbott Payson Usher, starting with the 1929-30 academic year. I thought this was a convenient collection to transcribe but soon found myself going through other archival material I have collected to fill in the inevitable “missing observations”. There are still a few gaps I am sorry to report, but not enough to stop me from posting this incredible collection of the exams for graduate courses in economic history at Harvard spanning twenty years during the first half of the 20th century.

Harvard’s catalogues of courses long distinguished between those “primarily for undergraduates”, “for undergraduates and graduates” and “primarily for graduates”. The exams transcribed below are from courses “primarily for graduates”.

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Previous posts
(for 1921-1941)

Biographical info for Edwin F. Gay and Abbott Payson Usher.

Readings for undergraduate european economic history (Economics 2a). Usher, 1921.

Final Exam Questions for undergraduate European Economic History (Economics 2a). Usher, 1922.

Readings and final exam for undergraduate/graduate History of Commerce to 1750 (Economics 10a). Usher, 1929-30.

Readings and Exam for undergraduate European Economic History since the Industrial Revolution (Economics 2a) Gay, 1934.

Course outline, readings, and exam for undergraduate/graduate Development of Industrial Society (Economics 10b). Usher, 1934.

Readings for Recent Economic History (Economics 23). Gay, 1934-35.

Readings and paper topics for Economic History to 1450 (Economics 21) Usher, 1934-35.

Topics/readings for Modern Economic History Seminar (Economics 136). Usher, 1937-41.

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1929-30

From Course Announcements

II
ECONOMIC HISTORY

Economics 23 ¹hf. Economic History to 1450

Half-course (first half-year). Two hours a week, to be arranged. Associate Professor Usher.

[Economics 24. Topics in Modern Economic History]

Two consecutive hours a week, to be arranged. Professor Gay.

Omitted in 1929-30.

Economics 25. Recent Economic History

Tu., Th., at 4. Professor Gay.

Source: Harvard University, Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Official Register of Harvard University. Vol. XXVI (September 19, 1929), No. 44, Announcement of the Courses of Instruction, 1929-1930 (Second Edition), p. 124.

Enrollment

Economics 23 ¹hf. Associate Professor Usher. — Economic History to 1450.

Total 1: 1 Graduate.

Economics 25 Professor Gay. — Recent Economic History.

Total 47: 40 Graduates, 7 Radcliffe

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College 1929-30, p. 78.

1929-30.
Harvard University.
Economics 23¹.
[Mid-year Exam, 1930]

Answer five questions.

What distinction may be drawn between the process of invention and the process of achievement? Give illustrations.
What reasons may be advanced for considering the beginning of the Christian Era a line of demarcation of primary importance?
Comment on the individual terms and the general doctrine of the following passage:
For centuries the Roman adhered to his “two-field system” of agriculture, and rectangular fields, and the Germans preserved the ancestral “strip system” of fields of their village communities. Even the reduction of these free villages to manorial villages and the fiscal pressure of the manorial regime failed completely to fuse or even much to modify these immemorial farming practices.
Discuss the meanings of the terms “civitas”, “oppidum”, “portus” and their relation to the problem of the origin of the medieval towns.
What distinctions may be drawn between the “free” craft and the “worn” craft? What were the functions of the wardens of a craft guild?
Describe the general features of a radiate market system, and explain the broader characteristics of its price structure in normal times.

Source: Harvard University Archives. Papers of Alexander Gerschenkron, Box 3, Folder “Examinations 233a & b [1929/30-1967/68].

1929-30
Harvard University.
Economics 25
[Mid-year Exam, 1930]

PART I

(An hour to an hour and a half)
Write an essay on one of the following topics.

The practical triumphs of the Ricardian economies before 1850.
The “movement of liberation,” or “laissez-faire,” as applied to the condition of the industrial workers.
An outline history of any decade between 1790 and 1860. In Europe and the United States, emphasizing the economic factors, and giving reasons for the choice of decade.

PART II

Write on three of the following questions.

Comment on the following statement:
[As compared with England] “the postponement of personal freedom gave the continental serfs one signal advantage. Emancipation was accomplished without the sacrifice of their rights in the soil.”
Give a definition or a concise description of the “putting-out” system; justify your inclusions and exclusions.
Describe briefly the relations between the agricultural development of the United States and Europe before 1860.
Outline the attitude of the government to railroads in England, the United States, and France, before 1860.
On two occasions in his life — 1819 and 1844 — Sir Robert Peel thought that he had placed the English monetary system on a sure foundation. Why?

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University Mid-year Examinations, 1852-1943. Box 12, Bound volume Examination Papers, Mid-Years 1929-30.

1929-30
Harvard University.
Economics 25
[Year-end Exam, 1930]

Adequate and appropriate historical evidence must be presented in support of any opinions and generalizations.

Answer four of the following questions.

Discuss the following statement, especially emphasizing the relations between banking and agriculture in American economic history:
“It is hardly too much to say that the political as well as economic history of America has been dominated by real estate speculation and by the cheap money controversy, largely an offshoot from the former.”
F. H. KNIGHT, Risk, Uncertainty and Profit (1921), p. 17.
Explain and illustrate the following passage from Alfred Marshall, Industry and Trade (1919), p. 746:
“[The English classical economists] overlooked the fact that many of those indirect effects of Protection which aggravated then, and would aggravate now, its direct evils in England, worked in the opposite direction in America. For the more America exported her raw produce in return for manufacture, the less the benefit she got from the Law of Increasing Return….”
Compare and criticize the two theories of the development of the Industrial Revolution implied in the two following quotations:
“La préponderance économique du commerce, trait dominant de la phase économique qui s’étend du commencement du XVI^e siècle à la fin du XVIII^e, va decroître relativement à l’industrie naissante.”
B. Nogaro and W. Oualid, L’Évolution du Commerce, du Crédit et des Transports (1914), p. 9.
“…it was this slow process of finding out the opaque matters of fact that make up the material of technological science that occupied several generations of the British before the Germans took over any appreciable portion of it. The first acquisition of this material knowledge is necessarily a slow work of trial and error, but it can be held and transmitted in definite and unequivocal shape, and the acquisition of it by such transfer is no laborious or uncertain matter.”
T. Veblen, Imperial Germany and the Industrial Revolution (1915), p. 185.
Discuss the tendency toward aggregation and control in industry in the United States, Germany, and England, with comment on the following statements:
1. “Our people cannot live and thrive under the regime of bureaucracy that threatens unless industry solves its own problems. It was the abuses attendant upon an unregulated national industrial impulse that brought upon our country that legislative monstrosity known as the Sherman anti-trust law…. It is industry’s own neglect … that gives us a growing number of boards, commissions and tribunals to add their weight to the burden of industry.” American Federation of Labor (1924)
  “The state is not capable of preventing the development of the natural concentration of industry.”
  S. Gompers, Presidential Address to the American Federation of Labor, 1899.
  “Our big business has not justified the fears of our people.” Owen D. Young.
2. As contrasted with the growth of industrial combination in other countries, a French writer thinks that “trusts” have arisen in the United States because the government has “done too little or too much” — i.e. too little intelligent and effective regulation (including the regulations of railroads) and too much protection by tariffs.
What have the successive booms and crises, the upward and downward swings of business cycles, during the last century taught the banker, the manufacturer, and the wage-earner?
Comment on the accompanying statistical table:

Net tonnage of leading mercantile fleets, 1850-1920
(in thousand tons)

		1850	1870	1890	1910	1920
United Kingdom	sail	3,397	4,578	2,936	1,114	625
United Kingdom	steam	168	1,113	5,043	10,443	12,026
United States (in foreign trade)	sail	1,541	2,449	749	235	937
United States (in foreign trade)	steam	45	97	198	557	8,626
German Empire	sail		900	710	507	342
German Empire	steam		82	724	2,397	221
France	sail	674	918	444	636	267
France	steam	14	154	500	816	1,746
Norway	sail	298	1,009	1,503	628	225
Norway	steam		14	203	897	1,149
Japan	sail			48	413	203
Japan	steam			94	1,234	1,900

Note: The figures for the year 1920 have been obtained from another source, and are not reliably comparable with the figures for the earlier years. There is particular suspicion of error in the figures for United States shipping in that year.

Source: Harvard University Archives. Papers Printed for Final Examinations [in] History, New Testament, …, Economics, …, Military Science, Naval Science (January-June 1930) in Vol. 72 Examination Papers, Finals 1930.

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1930-1931

From Course Announcements

II
ECONOMIC HISTORY

Economics 23 ¹hf. Economic History to 1450

Half-course (first half-year). Two hours a week, to be arranged. Associate Professor Usher.

[Economics 24. Topics in Modern Economic History]

Two consecutive hours a week, to be arranged. Professor Gay.

Omitted in 1930-31.

Economics 25. Recent Economic History

Wed., Fri., at 3. Professor Gay.

Source: Harvard University, Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Official Register of Harvard University. Vol. XXVII (September 17, 1930), No. 42, Announcement of the Courses of Instruction, 1930-1931 (Second Edition), p. 125.

Enrollment

Economics 23 ¹hf. Associate Professor Usher. — Economic History to 1450.

Total 2: 1 Graduate, 1 Senior.

Economics 25 Professor Gay. — Recent Economic History.

Total 50: 41 Graduates, 9 Radcliffe

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College 1930-31, p. 77.

1930-31
Harvard University
Economics 23.
[Mid-year Exam 1931]

Answer five questions.

What distinctions may be drawn between the process of invention and the process of achievement? Give illustrations.
What reasons may be advanced for considering the beginning of the Christian Era a line of demarcation of primary importance to economic history?
Sketch the history of the “colonus” in Roman Gaul and in the Frankish kingdoms.
Discuss the meanings of the terms “civitas”, “oppidum”, “portus” and their relation to the problem of the origins of the medieval towns.
What distinctions may be drawn between the “free” craft and the “sworn” craft? What were the functions of the wardens of a craft gild?
Describe the general features of a radiate market system, and explain the broader characteristics of its price structure.
Write briefly on any one of the following topics:

shipping partnerships and sea-loans,
towns and trade routes of the Mohammedan world,
Venice, Genoa, and the crusades.

Source: Harvard University Archives. Papers of Alexander Gerschenkron, Box 3, Folder “Examinations 233a & b [1929/30-1967/68].

1930-31
Harvard University
Economics 25
[Mid-Year Exam, 1931]

Write an essay on one of the topics in Part I, and answer briefly two questions in Part II.

The relation between the development of economic theory and the experiences of the period of the Industrial Revolution in England.
English Liberalism: its component elements as a body of doctrine, and its expression in political action before 1865, with especial emphasis upon its attitude toward economic policy.

Summarize in parallel columns the outstanding events in the economic history of England and the United States between 1840 and 1850.
Do the same for England and France between 1850 and 1870.
How closely is the history of transportation in England before 1870 related to the long and the short fluctuations in general business activity?
Outline the chief points you would treat in a chapter on Money and Banking for an Economic History of the Nineteenth Century to 1865.

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University Mid-year Examinations, 1852-1943. Box 12, Bound volume Examination Papers, Mid-Years 1930-31.

1930-31
Harvard University
Economics 25
[Year-end Exam, 1931]

I
Write an essay on one of the following statements:

“The machine, the child of laissez faire, has slain its parent.”
“You shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.”
“The one-crop system has been the bane of American agriculture.”
“In England the Reform Act initiated and the Corn Law decreed the conquest of town over country, factory over farm; in the United States a similar revolution is in process.”
“The Sherman Act, like Canute’s throne, was set to stem the advancing tide. Now the question is, shall it be submerged or dragged back to higher land.”

II
Write concisely on two of the following questions:

What are four outstanding developments of banking from about 1790 to the present time? Compare and contrast these movements in Western Europe and the United States.
In what successful ways did Western Europe meet the invasion of American agricultural products after 1870?
Place in their order of industrial and commercial importance, at 1750, 1880 and 1930, the following countries: Holland, Germany, France, England and the United States. Give your reasons.
Trace the connection, if any, between (a) the swings of business cycles and secular trends and (b) the development of the combination movement and trade unionism.

__________________________________

1931-1932

From Course Announcements

II
ECONOMIC HISTORY

Economics 23 ¹hf. Economic History to 1450

Half-course (first half-year). Two hours a week, to be arranged. Associate Professor Usher.

[Economics 24. Topics in Modern Economic History]

Two consecutive hours a week, to be arranged. Professor Gay.

Omitted in 1931-32.

Economics 25. Recent Economic History

Wed., Fri., at 4. Professor Gay.

Source: Harvard University, Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Official Register of Harvard University. Vol. XXVIII (September 24, 1931), No. 45, Announcement of the Courses of Instruction, 1931-1932 (Second Edition), p. 127.

Enrollment

Economics 23 ¹hf. Associate Professor Usher. — Economic History to 1450.

Total 1: 1 Graduate.

Economics 25. Professor Gay. — Recent Economic History.

Total 65: 54 Graduates, 11 Radcliffe

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College 1931-32, p. 72.

1931-32
Harvard University
Economics 23
[Final Exam 1932]

Answer five questions.

Write briefly on any one of the following topics:

the development of the mechanical clock,
the development of the sailing vessel, 1200-1450,
the application of power to milling, 100B.C.-1300 A.D.

May any of the industrial establishments of ancient Greece or Rome be properly classified as factories? Why, or why not?
What was the significance of the types of establishment whose classification is involved in such doubts?
Describe the general features of the organization of the craft gilds.
In what respect do we find differences in the various regions of Europe?
Describe the legal and economic features of villein tenure in France and England in the middle ages.
How may we explain the development of towns in Italy and Northern Europe after the ninth century?
What were the distinctive privileges of a town?
Describe the operations of banks of deposit in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and discus their significance in the development of credit.

Source: Harvard University Archives. Papers of Alexander Gerschenkron, Box 3, Folder “Examinations 233a & b [1929/30-1967/68].

1931-32
Harvard University
Economics 25
[Mid-Year Exam, 1932]

Write an essay on one of the topics in Part I, and answer briefly three questions in Part II.

“The changes of the Industrial Revolution in England were interrelated both serially and laterally, i.e., as between commerce, industry and agriculture.”
“The policy of Free Trade has dislocated the whole structure of English society.”
Peasant proprietorship in Western Europe.

Estimate the significance of Peel’s administration (1842-46) in the economic history of England.
Discuss the “home-market” argument in United States tariff history.
Comment on the statement: “Between 1830 and 1840 the issue between individualists and collectivists was fairly joined.”
“The introduction of railways marks a stage in the Industrial Revolution in England, not as in some countries its beginning.” Give illustrations for three countries of this statement.

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University Mid-year Examinations, 1852-1943. Box 12, Bound volume Examination Papers, Mid-Years 1931-32.

1931-32
Harvard University
Economics 25
[Year-End Exam, 1932]

Write an essay (not more than half your time) on any one of the following questions, and answer more briefly two other questions.

Compare the governmental railroad policies of the United States, England and Germany since 1870.
Explain the movement toward a protective tariff policy since 1860, with illustrations drawn from the economic history of two countries which led in the movement.
Does historical experience support the arguments of the advocates of ship subsidies for the United States?
Discuss the following statements:
“Virtual monopoly is an incident of our industrial development.” Senator Aldrich.
“The trust movement was and is a direct response to certain forces inherent in modern industry, and if it ought to be controlled, it must be controlled with those forces in mind.” Professor Jenks.
It is said that the labor movement in the United States is a generation behind that of England. Give your reasons for or against this statement.

Source: Harvard University Archives. Vol. 74 (HUC 7000.28) Examination Papers, Finals 1932.

__________________________________

1932-1933

From Course Announcements

II
ECONOMIC HISTORY

Economics 23 ¹hf. Economic History to 1450

Half-course (first half-year). Two hours a week, to be arranged. Associate Professor Usher.

[Economics 24. Topics in Modern Economic History]

Two consecutive hours a week, to be arranged, Professor Gay.

Omitted in 1932-33.

Economics 25 ¹hf. Recent Economic History

Half-course (first half-year). Wed., Fri. at 4. Professor Gay.

Source: Harvard University, Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Official Register of Harvard University. Vol. XXIX (September 19, 1932), No. 41, Announcement of the Courses of Instruction, 1932-1933 (Second Edition), p. 126.

Enrollment

Economics 23 ¹hf. Associate Professor Usher. — Economic History to 1450.

Total 4: 4 Graduates.

Economics 25 ¹hf. Professor Gay. — Recent Economic History.

Total 51: 39 Graduates, 12 Radcliffe

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College 1932-33, p. 66.

Note: Have found no copy of the Economics 23¹ exam as of yet for 1932-33.

1932-33
Harvard University
Economics 25¹
[Mid-year Final Exam, 1933]

Write an essay (not more than half your time) on any one of the following questions, and answer concisely three other questions.

Compare governmental regulation of railroads, as developed in the United States, with governmental ownership as in Germany, emphasizing the merits and defects of the two methods of control. Do these historical experiences throw any light upon the present railroad problem in the United States?
Is free trade responsible for the relative decline of the British iron and steel industry as compared with that of the United States and Germany? Enumerate and weigh the chief factors accounting for the development of the industry in these countries.
(a) Trace the successive steps in banking reform in England and the United States. Is there any parallelism?
(b) How do you explain the differences between the two countries in regard to the movements of banking concentration and industrial combination?
Outline a series of chapters in a book on the agricultural “world invasion” of European markets.
“Among the agencies which labor has chosen to defend its interests are the trade union, the cooperative society, and political action.” What has been the relative importance of these agencies at three stages of the British labor movement?
Discuss critically Dice’s views concerning “collectivism” and its causes.

Source: Harvard University Archives. Papers Printed for Final Examinations [in] History, History of Religions, …, Economics, …, Military Science, Naval Science (January-June 1933) in Vol. 75, Examination Papers, Finals 1933.

__________________________________

1933-1934

From Course Announcements

II
ECONOMIC HISTORY AND STRUCTURE

Economics 21 ²hf. (formerly Economics 23) Economic History to 1450

Half-course (second half-year). Two hours a week, to be arranged. Associate Professor Usher.

[Economics 22. (formerly Economics 24) Topics in Modern Economic History]

Two consecutive hours a week, to be arranged. Professor Gay.

Omitted in 1933-34; to be offered in 1934-35.

Economics 23 ²hf. (formerly Economics 25) Recent Economic History

Half-course (second half-year). Wed., Fri., at 4. Professor Gay.

[Economics 24. Topics in American Economic History]

Hours to be arranged. Professor A. H. Cole.

Omitted in 1933-34.

[Economics 25. (formerly Economics 30). Economic Problems of Latin America]

Tu., Th., at 3.

Omitted in 1933-34.

Source: Harvard University, Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Official Register of Harvard University. Vol. XXX (September 20, 1933), No. 39, Announcement of the Courses of Instruction, 1933-1934 (Second Edition), pp. 127-128.

Enrollment

Economics 21 ²hf. (formerly Economics 23). Associate Professor Usher. — Economic History to 1450.

Total 3: 2 Graduates, 1 Seniors.

Economics 23 ²hf. (formerly Economics 25). Professor Gay. — Recent Economic History.

Total 18: 13 Graduates, 5 Radcliffe

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College 1933-34, p. 85.

Note: Have not found exam for Economics 21 ²hf. (formerly Economics 23) Economic History to 1450

1933-34
Havard University
Economics 23²
[Final Exam 1934]

Write an essay (not more than half your time) on any one of the first six questions, and answer concisely three other questions (including question 7).

Discuss the following statements:
“The present agricultural depression differs in its origin and character in many respects from the general depression of the period 1873-96, but in the conditions which brought about the depression of 1873-96 there are important points of similarity with the post-war situation.”
“The European attitude toward agriculture is entirely different from that of the great exporting countries beyond the seas.”
“The choice (in railway management) is between rationalization and nationalization.” (Sir Eric Geddes.)
“The trend, in all forms of transport and over a long period, is inevitably toward amalgamation. As between private monopoly and public ownership the choice is clear; the only question is as to the form which public ownership shall take.”
Comment on these views. In what respects does the experience of the United States differ from that of England and Germany?
The Webs say that there was a time at the middle of the nineteenth century when capitalism “could claim that it had produced a surprising advance in material civilization for greatly increased populations. But from that moment to the present it has been receding from defeat to defeat, beaten ever more and more hopelessly by the social problems created by the very civilization it has built up.”
A critic of the present governmental policies has recently declared that, with the various restrictions on output, wage and price regulations, and codes of business practice, the United States is returning to the Age of Diocletian or to the medieval gild-system, and thereby imperiling the chief gains of the great technological and economic progress since the Industrial Revolution.
Comment on the two points of view, and give reasons for your own view as to the present direction of economic and social development.
Compare the history of banking reforms since 1815 in England and the United States with reference to the successive business cycles.
What part, according to the Macmillan Report, has the United States played in the post-war economic situation; and in the proposals for monetary and banking reform, made in this Report, what is practicable for the United States?
“The Cooperative movement is one of the constituent elements in the socialist state.”
“No social group, on the Continent of Europe, is more important, and none more intensely individualistic, than the peasant landholders.”
Which of these assertions is more nearly true? Can they be reconciled?
Which among the books you have read in this course do you regard as the best? State your reasons and discuss that book critically.

Source: Harvard University Archives. Papers of Alexander Gerschenkron, Box 3, Folder “Examinations 233a & b [1929/30-1967/68].

__________________________________

1934-1935

From Course Announcements

II
ECONOMIC HISTORY AND STRUCTURE

Economics 21 ¹hf. Economic History to 1450

Half-course (first half-year). Two hours a week, to be arranged. Associate Professor Usher.

Economics 22. Seminar. Topics in Modern Economic History

Two consecutive hours a week, to be arranged. Professor Gay

Economics 23 Recent Economic History

Tu., Th., at 4. Professor Gay.

[Economics 24. Topics in American Economic History]

Hours to be arranged. Professor A. H. Cole.

Omitted in 1934-35

[Economics 25. Economic Problems of Latin America]

Tu., Th., at 3.

Omitted in 1934-35.

Source: Harvard University, Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Official Register of Harvard University. Vol. XXXI (September 20, 1934), No. 38, Announcement of the Courses of Instruction, 1934-1935 (Second Edition), p. 128.

Enrollment

Economics 21 ¹hf. Associate Professor Usher. — Economic History to 1450.

Total 4: 2 Graduates, 2 Seniors.

Economics 23. Professor Gay. — Recent Economic History.

Total 22: 16 Graduates, 1 Senior, 4 Radcliffe, 1 Other.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College 1934-35, p. 82.

Economics 21. Economic History to 1450.
Readings and paper topics, Usher. 1934

1934-35
Harvard University
Economics 21
[Final Exam. Jan 18, 1935]

I
(About one hour)

Write an essay upon some topic selected from the reading period assignments, or upon one of the following topics:
1. a multilinear concept of historical process,
2. systems of agriculture in the open field villages of England and Europe.

II
Answer three questions

Describe the rights and obligations of the peasant cultivator in two types of the perpetual leases of Roman and medieval law.
Describe the primary features of an organized market, and the simple and radiate forms of market systems.
Discuss the nature and importance of capitalistic control of industry in medieval Europe.
Describe the characteristic functions and features of religious gilds in England.
Sketch the early history of deposit banking in medieval Europe.

Source: Harvard University Archives. Papers of Alexander Gerschenkron, Box 3, Folder “Examinations 233a & b [1929/30-1967/68].

1934-35
Harvard University
Economic 23
[Mid-year Exam 1935]

Write an essay (not more than half your time) on any one of the following questions and answer concisely three other questions.

Discuss critically the following statements:
1. In England, up to the middle of the eighteenth century, “production was regulated by local consumption…After an apprenticeship of greater or less length everyone became a master; the State guaranteed the guilds a monopoly of production and secured the interests of the consumer by requiring all products to pass certain standard tests. But this patriarchal state of things suddenly gave way before a movement which has been justly called the Industrial Revolution. To these gigantic changes (machinery, steam, factories, wide markets, chain of middle-men) the guild system soon showed itself inadequate.” (Guido de Ruggiero, History of European Liberalism.)
2. For about fifty years before the middle of the eighteenth century in England, “trade had been freed from the oppression of the dying guilds, but machinery had not yet come to the aid of capitalism to enable it to overturn and destroy the whole social fabric and especially the livelihood of the poor.” (R. W. Postgate.)
“Metallurgy and the metal workers have an absolute primacy in the history of modern manufacturing industry.” (Clapham.)
Illustrate this statement for England.
Is it equally true for all countries?
“It is questionable if all the mechanical inventions yet made have lightened the day’s toil of any human being.”
Was this true when John Stuart Mill wrote it in 1848? If so, why?
Outline a chapter (or a book) on the Agrarian Revolution in England.
Describe the development of the Zollverein, distinguishing the economic and the political factors.
The significance of the decade of the forties in European economic history.

Source: Harvard University Archives. Papers of Alexander Gerschenkron, Box 3, Folder “Examinations 233a & b [1929/30-1967/68].

1934-35
Harvard University
Economics 23
[Year-end Exam, 1935]

Write an essay not more than half your time) discussing one of the quotations or topics in this paper, and comment concisely on three others.

“It is believed that, had it not been for the free-trade policy of Great Britain, the manufacturing system of America would at the present time have been much more extensive than it is.” (Ellison, 1858.)
“There is some truth in the view of the cynical British exporter who thanked God for the American tariff, but for which American manufacturers would have driven him out of the world markets.’ (London “Economist,” 1912.)
“In my belief, both Free Trade of the laissez-faire type and Protection of the predatory type are policies of Empire, and both make for War.” (H. J. Mackinder, 1919.)
Do you find any confirmation for these views in your reading of American tariff history? Illustrate from the cotton or iron industry.
“On voit apparaître chaque jour davantage tout ce que l’Angleterre, depuis cent ans, devait à des circonstances que les contemporains avaient cru permanantes et qui n’etaient que passagères.
L’hégémonie économique anglaise coincide dans l’histoire avec le règne de la machine à vapeur; la période victorienne, apogée de prosperité et de puissance, évolue tout entière sous le signe du charbon….C’est ainsi qu’a pu s’édifier, sur al base étroite d’un territoire plus que médiocre, cette paradoxale superstructure manufacturière, et parallèlement s’épanouir cette population aujourd’hui trop dense, si dangereusement dépendante, pour sa subsistance, des produits importés….
Dans ces conditions, le jeu parfaitement agencé de la doctrine libre-échangiste paraissait avoir été concu tout exprès pour l’Angleterre, par les soins d’une Providence attentive et partiale.” (Siegfried, 1931.)
The National Banking system is “not only a perfectly safe system of banking, but it is one that is eminently adapted to our political institutions.” (Hugh McCulloch, 1863.)
“American banking has not yet distinguished between solvency after an interval, and readiness to meet demands at once and without question… At present the characteristics of the American business man seem to fit him to do most things better than banking.” (Hartley Withers, 1909.)
“Everybody will agree to-day that it would be difficult to imagine a banking system more cruel and inefficient than that prevailing in the United States at the beginning of the twentieth century — a system which, instead of scientifically regulating the flow of credit and money so as to secure the greatest possible stability, was designed automatically to produce instability.” (Paul Warburg, 1930.)
“The technological revolution of the last hundred years furnishes the ultimate explanation of agricultural progress and of agrarian discontent both in Europe and America.” (ca. 1925)
“Though the mechanization of industrial processes is almost universal, the great majority of farmers throughout the world are content with the simple instruments used by their forefathers.” (“World Agriculture,” 1932.)
“The significant fact is that the periods of prosperity and the great depressions in agriculture have coincided with periods of monetary expansion and monetary contraction. Though other factors must not be ignored, the agricultural history of the last hundred years shows that favorable monetary conditions are essential to recovery.” (“World Agriculture,” 1932.)
“The Merchant Marine of the United States is not a burden upon the tax-payer’s back, but an economy of the first water, keeping millions in the country, giving employment to thousands of persons, aiding in the development of foreign markets and backing up the nation’s forces in any contingency that may arise.” (Senator Royal S. Copeland, 1934.)
“Our own vessels carry only about 40 per cent of our foreign trade. We are dependent on our competitors to carry 60 per cent of our trade to market. Of course, the result is that they help themselves and hamper us. Parity in merchant ships is only less important than parity in warships. We ought to make the necessary sacrifices to secure it.” (Calvin Coolidge, 1930.)
D. H. Robertson, writing in 1923, concerning the American Railroad Act of 1920 and the increased powers of the Interstate Commerce Commission, says:
“The home of free enterprise has furnished us with experiments in positive State control on a scale which finds no parallel outside Communist Russia.”
Louis D. Brandeis in 1912 wrote: “The success of the Interstate Commerce Commission has been invoked as an argument in favor of licensing and regulating monopoly.” This argument, he held, was not valid. Do you agree? Why or why not?
In a period when traditional standards have broken down and when the legal system is supported by laissez-faire theory, the movement toward industrial combination is “a remorseless sort of profit-seeking.” (M. W. Watkins, 1928.)
“The only argument that has been seriously advanced in favor of private monopoly is that competition involves waste, while the monopoly prevents waste and leads to efficiency. This argument is essentially unsound. The wastes of competition are negligible. The economies of monopoly are superficial and delusive. The efficiency of monopoly is at the best temporary.” (L. D. Brandeis, in Harper’s Weekly, 1913.)
“Our evidence goes to show that most of the Trusts and Cartels have been, in their origin at any rate, defensive movements.” (D. H. MacGregor, 1912.)
Industrial combinations must be recognized as “steps in the greater efficiency, the increased economy, and the better organization of industry.” (Minority Report of the Parliamentary Committee on Trusts, 1918.)
Write on the topic which, in your reading for this course, has most interested you.

Source: Harvard University Archives. Papers of Alexander Gerschenkron, Box 3, Folder “Examinations 233a & b [1929/30-1967/68].

__________________________________

1935-1936

From Course Announcements

II
ECONOMIC HISTORY AND STRUCTURE

[Economics 21 ¹hf. Economic History to 1450]

Half-course (first half-year). Two hours a week, to be arranged. Associate Professor Usher.

Omitted in 1935-36.

Economics 22. Seminar. Topics in Modern Economic History

Two consecutive hours a week, to be arranged. Professor Gay

Economics 23 Recent Economic History

Wed., Fri., at 4. Professor Gay.

Economics 24. Seminar. Topics in American Economic History

Hours to be arranged. Professor A. H. Cole.

[Economics 25. Economic Problems of Latin America]

Tu., Th., at 3.

Omitted in 1935-36.

Source: Harvard University, Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Official Register of Harvard University. Vol. XXXII (September 18, 1935), No. 42, Announcement of the Courses of Instruction, 1935-1936 (Second Edition), p. 140.

Enrollment

Economics 23. Professor Gay. — Recent Economic History.

Total 31: 24 Graduates, 7 Radcliffe.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College 1935-36, p. 83.

1935-36
Harvard University
Economics 23
[Mid-year Exam, 1936]

Write an essay (not more than half your time) discussing one of the quotations or topics in this paper, and comment concisely on three others.

(a) “The essence of the Industrial Revolution is the substitution of competition for the medieval regulations which had previously controlled the production and distribution of wealth.”
(b) The use of machinery “began by being the resultant of these two phenomena (the extension of the exchange of commodities and the increase in the division of labor), at one of the decisive moments in their evolution. This crisis, distinguished by the appearance of machinery, best defines the industrial revolution.”
The relations between the industrial and agrarian revolutions in England.
(a) The chief measures of factory legislation in England.
(b) To what extent and why, on the continent of Europe, did factory legislation lag behind that of England?
(a) In 1850 Porter wrote: “The laissez faire system has been pregnant with great loss and inconvenience to the country in carrying forward the railway system.” Heaton has recently remarked: “Considering the novelty of the car and the strangeness of the route, parliament could retort to Porter that it had been a fairly competent back-seat driver.”
(b) A French writer in 1883 explained the contrast between private enterprise in English railway management and public control or ownership in France and Germany as resulting mainly from the more advanced state of English economic development.
“The safest lesson to draw from the experience of Germany is the simple fact that changes in tariff policy were only one, and commonly not the most important, amongst the many causes of her economic progress.”

Source: Harvard University Archives. Papers of Alexander Gerschenkron, Box 3, Folder “Examinations 233a & b [1929/30-1967/68].

1935-36
Harvard University
Economics 23
[Year-end Exam, 1936]

Write an essay (not more than half your time) discussing one of the questions in this paper, and comment concisely on three others.

Taussig finds that the development of trusts under protection does not “confirm the doctrine that the tariff matures monopolies permanently. … The industrial influence of the protective tariff tends to become less and less.” Illustrate with any two of his three cases — steel rails, tin plate and sugar refining. What is the basic historical relationship between the movements toward industrial combination and toward protectionism in Europe and America?
“The significant fact is that the periods of prosperity and the great depressions in agriculture have coincided with periods of monetary expansion and monetary contraction. Though other factors must not be ignored, the agricultural history of the last hundred years shows that favorable monetary conditions are essential to recovery.” (“World Agriculture,” 1932.) Give your reasons for agreement or criticism. What weight do you give to the “other factors”?
“A general view of the monetary history of the entire period of our national existence shows that each generation had to learn for itself and at its own expense the evils of unsound money and of defective banking.” Is the assertion also true of modern Europe? In outlining and comparing the experience of both America and Europe, distinguish between inherent unsoundness and lags of development.
“It remains clear that the Industrial Revolution is not a closed episode; we are living in the midst of it, and the economic problems of to-day are largely problems of its making.” (W. C. Mitchell, 1929.)
“Unregulated capitalism is being superseded by a regulated, organized and controlled capitalism.” (Hansen, 1932.)
“In the United States the profit motive . . . worked to the end of blind self-destruction.” (Childs, 1936.)
How far are these statements true and consistent with each other? In what respects are they questionable?
Clapham quotes a competent German observer of the English working classes, writing in the 80’s, as finding “an improvement . .. beyond the boldest hopes of even those who, a generation ago, devoted all their energies to the work.”
A recent writer, declaring that we must choose between security and progress, asks: “Have we reached a sufficiently high standard of per capita productivity to warrant stabilization at the present standard of living?”
Does Clapham agree that the German estimate was justified? What connections do you see between the two quotations?
“For all the exaggeration in the statements that English unionism has sounded the death-knell to English industrial leadership, it remains true that the absence of firmly entrenched unions in the cotton and iron manufactures has facilitated the march of improvement in the United States.”
“The English, by labor organization and social legislation, have built a platform over the abyss.”

Source: Harvard University Archives. Papers of Alexander Gerschenkron, Box 3, Folder “Examinations 233a & b [1929/30-1967/68].

Summer School of Harvard University
August 15, 1936
Economics S20 (Economics 23)

Write an essay (not more than half your time) discussing one of the questions in this paper, and comment concisely on three others.

(a) “The Napoleonic wars exercised the same influence upon subsequent commercial policy in France (though for different reasons) as the Civil War in the United States.” (Percy Ashley)
(b) “The British protective system up to 1846 had been maintained chiefly for the sake of agriculture; the German protective system from 1848 to 1860 had been dictated by the interests of manufacturers; now (in 1879) an effort was to be made to harmonize these two and to give a fair measure of protection to all.” (Percy Ashley)
“It remains clear that the Industrial Revolution is not a closed episode; we are living in the midst of it.” (W. C. Mitchell, 1929)
“Two contrasting theories of banking were put forward at the beginning of the nineteenth century and subsequently they controlled the banking development of the different countries.”
State precisely the two theories and their historical effects.
(a) “The one-crop system has been the bane of American agriculture.”
(b) In what ways did Western Europe meet the invasion of American agricultural products after 1870?
Trace the connection, if any, between (a) the fluctuations of business cycles and secular price trends, and (b) the development of the railroad network and railroad governmental policies in England and the United States since 1830.
“Among the agencies which labor has chosen to defend its interests are the trade union, the cooperative society, and political action.” (Webb) What has been the relative importance of these agencies at three stages of the British Labor movement? Compare and explain the differing development of American labor history.
“The wastes of competition are negligible. The economies of monopoly are superficial and delusive. The efficiency of monopoly is at the best temporary… Excesses of competition lead to monopoly, as excesses of liberty lead to absolutism.” (L. D. Brandeis, 1912)
“We are persuaded by our study of the combination movement at home and abroad that it is essentially a movement making for economy, efficiency, and better relations in business.” (Seager and Gulick, 1932)
What is your view, supported by what evidence?
Select the ten-year period in English and American economic history of the nineteenth century which you believe to be the most important, giving your reasons, and then summarize in parallel columns the outstanding events of that decade for both countries.

Source: Harvard University Archives. Papers of Alexander Gerschenkron, Box 3, Folder “Examinations 233a & b [1929/30-1967/68].

__________________________________

1936-1937

From Course Announcements

III
ECONOMIC HISTORY AND STRUCTURE

[Economics 131 ¹hf. (formerly 21). Economic History to 1450]

Half-course (first half-year). Two hours a week, to be arranged. Professor Usher.

Omitted in 1936-37.

Economics 133 (formerly 23). Recent Economic History

Mon., Wed., and (at the pleasure of the instructor) Fri., at 4. Professor Usher.

[Economics 136 (formerly 22). Seminar. Topics in Modern Economic History]

Two consecutive hours a week, to be arranged. Professor —

Omitted in 1936-37.

Economics 137 ²hf. (formerly 24). Seminar. Topics in American Economic History

Half-course (second half-year). Hours to be arranged. Professor A. H. Cole.

[Economics 138 (formerly 25). Economic Problems of Latin America]

Tu., Th., at 3.

Omitted in 1936-37.

Source: Harvard University, Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Official Register of Harvard University. Vol. XXXIII (September 23, 1936), No. 42, Announcement of the Courses of Instruction, 1936-1937 (Second Edition), p. 146.

Enrollment

III

Economics 133 (formerly 23). Professor Usher. — Recent Economic History.

Total 36: 31 Graduates, 5 Radcliffe.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College 1936-37, p. 93.

[NOTE: the final exams volume for 1936-37 binds January-June, 1937 together so for full courses it appears only the June exam were included.]

1936-37
Harvard University
Economics 133
[Year-end Examination, 1937]

I
(About one hour)

Write an essay on a topic covered by the work of the reading period, or on one of the following topics: the historical significance of the theory of monopolistic competition; the concept of interregional equilibrium.

II
(About two hours)
[Handwritten addition: Answer three questions]

Answer (a) or (b).
1. In what respects did the Ricardian group misjudge the structure of the London money market of their day?
2. Sketch the development of contacts between the United States Treasury and the New York money market in the period, 1869-1914.
Answer (a) or (b).
1. Sketch the history of the petroleum industry in the United States during the decade 1870-1879.
2. Discuss the development and the significance of any single cartel in Great Britain or Germany.
Describe briefly the position of British agriculture during the period 1878-1895, and discuss the relative significance of the factors primarily involved.
Answer (a), (b), or (c)
1. Discuss the relations between sugar growing in Hawaii and the position of Hawaiian products in the markets of the United States.
2. Is tariff protection likely to afford Great Britain an adequate solution to the problem of foreign dumping?
3. Discuss the relative importance of political and economic factors in the tariff policies of France or Germany since 1871.
Answer (a), (b), or (c).
1. Discuss the significance of recent tendencies toward centralized control of power production in Great Britain and continental Europe.
2. Sketch the development of the Royal Dutch-Shell Petroleum Company and discuss the significance of its position in the world market.
3. Discuss the relative importance of birth rates and death rates in the history of population in England in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Source: Harvard University Archives. Papers of Alexander Gerschenkron, Box 3, Folder “Examinations 233a & b [1929/30-1967/68].

__________________________________

1937-1938

From Course Announcements

III
ECONOMIC HISTORY AND STRUCTURE

Economics 133 (formerly 23). Recent Economic History, 1820-1914

Mon., Wed., and (at the pleasure of the instructor) Fri., at 4. Professor Usher.

Economics 136 (formerly 22). Seminar. Topics in Modern Economic History

Two consecutive hours a week, to be arranged. Professor Usher.

[Economics 137 ²hf. (formerly 24). Seminar. Topics in American Economic History]

Half-course (second half-year). Hours to be arranged. Professor —.

Omitted in 1937-38.

Source: Harvard University, Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Official Register of Harvard University. Vol. XXXIV (October 1, 1937), No. 44, Announcement of the Courses of Instruction, 1937-1938 (Second Edition), p. 153.

Enrollment

III

Economics 133 (formerly 23). Professor Usher. — Recent Economic History, 1820-1914.

Total 33: 25 Graduates, 2 Business School, 1 Public Administration, 4 Radcliffe, 1 Other.

Economics 136 (formerly 22). Professor Usher. — Seminar. Topics in Modern Economic History.

Total 7: 7 Graduates.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College 1937-38, p. 86.

1937-38
Harvard University
Economics 133
[Mid-year Exam, 1938]

I
(About one hour)

Write an essay on a topic based upon the work of the reading period, or on one of the following topics: the concept of social evolution as a multilinear process; the development of free trade in Great Britain.

II
(About two hours)

Answer three questions:

What were the more important factors underlying the differences in the rates of growth of the cotton and the woollen industries in the period, 1750-1850?
Answer a, b, c, or d.
1. Describe and discuss the characteristic features of railway rates in Trunk line territory before 1887.
2. Discuss the general features and the significance of the consolidation of railways in Great Britain in 1921.
3. Sketch the history of the French railway network through 1883.
4. Discuss the significance of water competition for the railways of Germany.
Describe the primary factors in the location and development of London, Paris, or New York city.
Discuss the problems presented by the proposal to include Austria in the German Customs Union, 1848-1863.
Answer a, b, or c.
1. Discuss the place of the small holding in Great Britain, with special reference to its development since the agricultural depression (1878-1895).
2. Describe the factors affecting the development of small peasant holdings in France.
3. Describe the organization and routine on some of the large slave plantations of the old south.

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University Mid-Year Examinations, 1852-1943. Box 13. Papers Printed for Mid-Year Examinations [in] History, History of Religions, … , Economics, … , Military Science, Naval Science (January-Febrary 1938) included in bound volume Mid-Year Examinations 1938.

1937-38
Harvard University
Economics 133
[Year-end Exam, 1938]

I
(About one hour)

Write an essay on a topic covered by the work of the reading period or on one of the following topics: planning in free societies; modern tendencies toward autarchy.

II
Answer THREE questions.

Answer (a) or (b).
1. Discuss the policies used by the Bank of England between 1825 and 1910 in establishing its rate of discount.
2. What considerations seem to have led Biddle to apply in January 1832 for an extension of the charter of the Second Bank of the United States?
Discuss the characteristic practices of pools and cartels in the United States up to 1899.
Discuss: “The Corn Law of 1815 like the Agriculture Act of 1920 attempted to stabilize returns to the British wheat grower, but the machinery of the act of 1920 was even less adapted to its purpose than the machinery established in 1815.”
Answer (a), (b), (c), or (d).
1. Does the history of the silk manufacture in the United States afford decisive evidence of the significance of protection to young industries? Why, or why not?
2. Discuss the argument that protection will make it possible for Britain to maintain her “standard of life.”
3. Discuss: “In France, protection has been the parent as well as the child of fear. It has strengthened the force, which in conjunction with ignorance, gave it birth.”
4. What principles and purposes dominated the fiscal policy of Bismarck?

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University Final Examinations, 1853-2001. Box 4. Papers Printed for Final Examinations [in] History, History of Religions, … , Economics, … , Military Science, Naval Science (June 1938).

__________________________________

1938-1939

From Course Announcements

III
ECONOMIC HISTORY AND STRUCTURE

[Note change in course numbering]

Economics 133. Recent Economic History, 1820-1914.

Mon., Wed., Fri., at 4. Professor Usher.

Economics 136. Seminar. Topics in Modern Economic History

Two consecutive hours a week, to be arranged. Professor Usher.

[Economics 137 ²hf. Seminar. Topics in American Economic History]

Half-course (second half-year). Hours to be arranged. Professor —.

Omitted in 1938-39.

Source: Harvard University, Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Official Register of Harvard University. Vol. XXXV (September 23, 1939), No. 42, Announcement of the Courses of Instruction, 1938-1939 (Second Edition), p. 150.

Enrollment

III

Economics 133. Professor Usher. — Recent Economic History, 1820-1914.

Total 46: 40 Graduates, 2 Public Administration, 2 Radcliffe, 2 Others.

Economics 136. Professor Usher. — Seminar. Topics in Modern Economic History.

Total 10: 9 Graduates, 1 Senior.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College 1938-39, p. 99.

1938-39
Harvard University
Economics 133
[Mid-year Exam, 1939]

I
(About one hour)

Write an essay on a topic based on the work of the reading period, or on one of the following topics: feudal tenures as a basis for land utilization; the significance of the quantitative method in economic history.

II
Answer THREE questions

Sketch the history of the application of machinery in the textile industries of Great Britain, France, Germany, or the United States for any period of 100 years between 1700 and 1900.
Describe the salient features of the railway network in any one country, and discuss the merits of public policy in respect of railway construction in that country.
Within what limits of accuracy may we compute the quantitative significance of the following inventions: Darby’s process for smelting iron with coke, Fourneyron’s turbine, the Jacquard loom action?
Sketch the development of the fiscal policy embodied in Peel’s budget of 1842, and discuss its significance.
Answer (a) or (b).
1. Discuss: “The long succession of preemption acts were but premonitions of a free land policy, a policy destined to come, but hindered by sectional interests and differences for many years.”
2. Discuss the economic and the political significance of the major compromises embodied in the ordinances creating the national domain in the United States.

Source: Harvard University Archives. Papers of Alexander Gerschenkron, Box 3, Folder “Examinations 233a & b [1929/30-1967/68].

1938-39
Harvard University
Economics 133
[Year-end Exam, 1939]

I
(About one hour)

Write an essay on a topic based on the work of the reading period, or on one of the following topics: the bullionists and the Bullion Report; the anti-monopoly policy in the United States.

II
Answer three questions

Answer (a) or (b).
1. What were the lessons of the crisis of 1847? In what ways did this crisis affect the policies of the Bank of England?
2. What were the merits and the defects of the organization of the call loan market in New York prior to 1914?
Answer (a), (b), or (c).
1. Discuss the attempts to establish international control of the sugar trade between 1926 and 1932.
2. Sketch the development of trusts and cartels in Great Britain after 1914.
3. Describe the characteristic types of “concern” in post-war Germany.
Answer (a), (b), (c), or (d).
1. Has the United States gained enough from the development of the Beet Sugar culture to justify the costs?
2. Can policy of tariff preferences between Great Britain and her dominions be defended on economic grounds?
3. Discuss the theories which served as the basis for the development of protection in France after 1889.
4. Sketch the development of agrarian influences upon German tariff policy after 18790 and discuss briefly the merits of the basic demands.
Discuss the influence of the development of hydro-electric power sites upon the industrial future of Italy.
What changes in the Malthusian theory of population are necessary to bring its broader elements into conformity with the historical record of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries?

__________________________________

1939-1940

From Course Announcements

III
ECONOMIC HISTORY AND STRUCTURE

Economics 133. Recent Economic History, 1820-1914

Mon., Wed., Fri. at 3. Professor Usher.

[Economics 136. Seminar. Topics in Modern Economic History]

Two consecutive hours a week, to be arranged. Professor Usher.

Omitted in 1939-40; to be given in 1940-41.

Source: Harvard University, Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Official Register of Harvard University. Vol. XXXVI (September 22, 1939), No. 42, Announcement of the Courses of Instruction, 1939-1940 (Second Edition), p. 158.

Enrollment

III

Economics 133. Professor Usher. — Recent Economic History, 1820-1914.

Total 50: 41 Graduates, 1 Senior, 1 Public Administration, 4 Radcliffe, 3 Others.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College 1939-40, p. 100.

1939-40
HARVARD UNIVERSITY
ECONOMICS 133
[Mid-Year Exam, 1940]

I
(About one hour)

Write an essay on a topic based on the work of the reading period, or on one of the following topics: the concept of nodality, the effective sphere of pure competition in the industrial societies of the nineteenth century.

II
Answer three questions

Answer a, b, c, d, or e.
1. How many of the basic forms of industrial organization were to be found in the textile industries of the United States between 1790 and 1830? What was their relative importance?
2. Describe the distinctive features in the organization, equipment, and management of the Boston Manufacturing Company in Waltham in its early years.
3. Discuss: “Those who draw all their illustrative material from the textile industries fall into serious errors in their judgment of the effect of machinery upon labour.”
4. Describe the position of organized labor in Germany towards the close of the nineteenth century.
5. Sketch the development in the use of iron and its products in England between 1800 and 1890.
In what ways and to what extent do geographic factors affect the rate structure of a given railway network?
Answer a, or b.
1. What considerations led the various groups of German states to accept the leadership of Prussia in the Customs Union?
2. Sketch the activities of M. Chevalier in the negotiation of the Anglo-French Treaty of Commerce of 1860.
Answer a, b, or c.
1. What elements of ambiguity made it difficult to interpret and enforce the resolutions of the French National Assembly of August 4 and 11, 1789? What interpretation was finally established by the legislation of 1792 and 1793?
2. Does the experience of France and Germany in the late nineteenth century warrant the belief that the number of small holdings can be now increased or even maintained without tariff protection or financial aid?
3. Discuss: “Although southerners have persistently asserted that the interstate slave trade was of no substantial significance, the structure of slave prices provides decisive evidence that the trade was vital to the perpetuation of slavery as a system.”
Discuss: “Southern systems of settlement were based on a policy of free land, and the actual introduction of such modes of settlement on the Public Domain was largely due to southern influence, but formal recognition of the policy was long and successfully opposed by southern members of Congress.”

Source: Harvard University Archives. Papers of Alexander Gerschenkron, Box 3, Folder “Examinations 233a & b [1929/30-1967/68].

1939-1940
HARVARD UNIVERSITY
ECONOMICS 133
[Year-End Exam, 1940]

I
(About one hour)

Write an essay on a topic covered by the work of the reading period, or on one of the following topics: Malthus and the theory of population; technological factors underlying tendencies towards integration in the production and distribution of electricity.

II
Answer THREE questions

Answer (a) or (b).
1. “In actual operation, the Bank Act of 1844, instead of tying the currency more closely to gold, injected an additional amount of credit into the reserves of the English banking system.” Discuss.
2. Sketch the development of the Suffok banking system and discuss its significance.
Describe the conditions in the American iron industry that led to the formation of the United States Steel Corporation. What may we presume to have been the effect of this achievement upon competition in the industry?
Answer (a) or (b).
1. Discuss the effectiveness of the British Wheat Act of 1932.
2. Describe the organization of the Russian collective farms and their influence upon productivity.
Answer (a), (b), (c), or (d).
1. Discuss the relation of the changes in the duties on wool and woolens in the U. S. tariff act of 1913 to the general concept of a competitive tariff.
2. Does Beveridge offer a satisfactory defense for a continuance of a free trade policy in Great Britain? Why, or why not?
3. Discuss the concepts of tariff policy held by Protectionists and Liberals in France, with special reference to the precise points of difference between them.
4. Describe and discuss Bismarck’s theories of taxation and fiscal policy.
Does the development of hydro-electric power significantly affect either the immediate or the ultimate location of economic activity in Europe and the United States?

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University Final Examinations, 1853-2001. Box 5. Papers Printed for Final Examinations [in] History, History of Religions, … , Economics, … , Military Science, Naval Science (June 1940).

__________________________________

1940-1941

From Course Announcements

III
ECONOMIC HISTORY AND STRUCTURE

Economics 133. Recent Economic History, 1820-1914

Mon., Wed., Fri., at 3. Professor Usher.

Economics 136. Seminar. Topics in Modern Economic History

Two consecutive hours a week, to be arranged. Professor Usher.

[Previous post for the Economics 136 Seminar]

Source: Harvard University, Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Official Register of Harvard University. Vol. XXXVII (March 4, 1940), No. 7, Announcement of the Courses of Instruction, 1940-1941 (Provisional Announcement), p. 161.

Enrollment

III

Economics 133. Professor Usher. — Recent Economic History, 1820-1914.

Total 41: 31 Graduates, 4 Public Administration, 6 Radcliffe.

Economics 136. Professor Usher. — Seminar. Topics in Modern Economic History.

Total 10: 9 Graduates, 1 Senior.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College 1940-41, p. 59.

1940-41
Harvard University
Economics 133
[Mid-year Exam, 1941]

I
(About one hour)

Write an essay on a topic based on the work of the reading period, or on one of the following topics: typical deviations from a “normal” distance principle in railway rate structures; elements of a concept of social evolution implicit in the work of Bentham and Malthus.

II
Answer THREE questions

What were the primary changes in the processes of producing malleable iron in the late eighteenth century? In what fields did these changes extend the use of iron products?
Describe the changes in ocean shipping services that resulted in the organized attempt to control rates through shipping conferences. Do you feel that these rate agreements imposed undesirable restrictions upon free competition?
Under what circumstances is labor “externally conditioned”? Do such phenomena make the location of economic activity indeterminate?
Answer (a) or (b).
1. What were the objectives of the Middle German Commercial Union? What were the basic factors in its failure?
2. Describe the protectionist groups in Germany between 1833 and 1865, and point out the reasons for the ineffectiveness of their activities.
Describe the broader features of the concentration of ownership of land in England, France, and Prussia in the late nineteenth century. Have we reason to believe that the degree of concentration was affected by the agrarian reforms of the period 1750-1850?

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University Mid-year Examinations, 1852-1943. Box 14, Papers Printed for Mid-Year Examinations [in] History of Religions, … , Economics, … , Military Science, Naval Science in a bound volume, Mid-Year Examinations—1941.

1940-41
Harvard University
Economics 133
[Year-end Exam, 1941]

I
(About one hour)

Write an essay on a topic based on the work of the reading period, or on one of the following topics: the significance of locational theory for the restatement of the theory of international trade; the fallacies and dangers in the concept of a closed economy.

II
Answer THREE questions

Answer (a) or (b).
1. Sketch the development of the Bank of England as a central bank.
2. Describe the nature and the extent of the concentration of bank reserves in New York city under the old National Banking system. Was this a desirable or adequate means of achieving centralization of reserves? Why, or why not?
What were Adam Smith’s views on the use of the corporate form in private business, both as to public policy and private administration?
Does the history of private business corporations in the United States belie the wisdom of Smith’s judgment? Why, or why not?
Answer (a) or (b).
1. Discuss the place of wheat growing in British farming, and the effect upon agriculture in general of policies affecting wheat culture.
2. Were the countries of South Eastern Europe suffering from over-population in 1930? Why, or why not?
Answer (a), (b), (c), (d), or (e).
1. What circumstances led to the revision of the United States tariff in 1909? In what measure were the objectives of revision actually achieved?
2. Have we grounds for presuming that the development of the iron and steel industry of the United States was significantly influenced by the protection given it? Why, or why not?
3. What changes have taken place since 1880 in the position of Great Britain in the export markets of the world?
4. Discuss: “The agrarian interests in France made a fatal mistake in the decade of the eighties by seeking to share in protection instead of seeking reductions in the duties on manufactures.”
5. Discuss the program of the agrarian party in Germany towards the close of the last century.
Do changes in the expectation of life afford a significant measure of material well-being? Why, or why not?

__________________________________

1941-1942

From Course Announcements

III
ECONOMIC HISTORY AND STRUCTURE

Economics 133. Recent Economic History, 1820-1914

Mon., Wed., Fri., at 3. Professor Usher.

[Economics 136. Seminar. Topics in Modern Economic History]

Two consecutive hours a week, to be arranged. Professor Usher

Omitted in 1941-42.

Source: Harvard University, Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Official Register of Harvard University. Vol. XXXVIII (September 18, 1941), No. 54, Announcement of the Courses of Instruction, 1941-1942, p. 61.

Enrollment

III

Economics 133. Professor Usher. — Recent Economic History, 1820-1914.

Total 34: 26 Graduates, 4 Public Administration, 4 Radcliffe.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College 1941-42, p. 64.

1941-42
Harvard University
Economics 133
[Mid-year Exam, 1942]

I
(About one hour)

Write an essay on a topic based upon the work of the reading period, or on one of the following topics: the postulates of liberalism; the influence of improvements in transport upon the importance of primary nodes.

II
Answer THREE questions

Sketch the broader features of the process of achievement, and indicate explicitly its relation to the process of invention.
Discuss: “The Marxian concept of the labor problem was largely implicit in the Marxian concept of the factory. Careful analysis of the conditions of employment in factories affords a basis for a significant restatement of the problems of labor.”
Answer (a), (b), (c), or (d).
1. Sketch the development of railroad rebates in the United States and discuss the elements of danger to shippers and to the public.
2. Describe the procedure of railway amalgamation in Great Britain in 1921, and discuss briefly the treatment of basic problems.
3. Describe the reorganization of French railways in 1921, and discuss the advantages of the plan.
4. Does the sketch of German railway policy in Barker actually support the conclusions he draws in respect of the advantages of state ownership?
In what respects does the history of the iron industry show the importance of a dominant material on the location and the structure of an industry? Draw illustrative material from the history of the industry in Great Britain, France, Germany, or the United States.
Answer (a), (b), or (c).
1. In what ways and in what degree did crop rotations lead to improvements in productivity and to more adequate differentiation of land use?
2. Sketch the development of the procedures and the policy of making grants of public lands to further internal improvements.
3. In what ways did the defects of the Harrison Act of 1800 lead to a demand for the revision of the general principles of public land policy?

Source: Harvard University Archives. Mid-year examinations, 1852-1943. Box 15, Papers Printed for Mid-Year Examinations [in] History, History of Religions,…Economics,…, Military Science, Naval Science. January-February, 1942 in bound volume Mid-year Examinations—1942.

1941-42
Harvard University
Economics 133
[Year-end Exam, 1942]

I
(About one hour)

Write an essay on a topic covered by the work of the reading period, or on one of the following topics: concepts and measures of material well-being, the gold standard in the nineteenth century.

II
Answer THREE questions.

Answer (a) or (b).
1. What were the essential features of the credit policy proposed by the Banking School, 1820-1840? In what respects was it unsound?
2. Sketch the development of the Free Banking system in the United States. Discuss its advantages and disadvantages.
Discuss the issues of fact raised by the prosecution of the United States Steel Corporation. Do you feel that the position taken by the Court was sound? Why, or why not?
Discuss the policy of Great Britain towards agriculture during and since the great depression. Do you feel that agriculture was sacrificed to misguided loyalty to a free trade policy?
Describe the effects of technical development upon units of management in the production and distribution of electricity since 1890.
Answer any one of the following:
1. Discuss the relative merits of proration and unit operation as solutions of the problem of regulating the production of petroleum.
2. Sketch the history of the reservation of oil lands by the government of the United States, and the development of their exploitation.
3. Sketch the development of oil production and trade in eastern Europe and the Dutch East Indies from 1900 to 1924.
4. Sketch the development of British oil policies, 1900-1924.

Source: Harvard University Archives. Papers of Alexander Gerschenkron, Box 3, Folder “Examinations 233a & b [1929/30-1967/68].

1942
Harvard University
Economics S133

I
(About one hour)

Write an essay on the selected topic.

II.
Answer three questions: exclusive of the general topic of the essay.

Answer a or b:
1. Sketch the development of the factory system from its origins to a position of clear dominance in Great Britain, or in Germany
2. Sketch the development of the factory system in the United States to 1880.
Answer a, b, c, or d:
1. Describe and discuss the characteristic features of railway rates in Trunk line territory before 1887.
2. Discuss the general features and the significance of the consolidation of railways in Great Britain in 1921.
3. Sketch the history of the French railway network through 1883.
4. Discuss the significance of water competition for the railways of Germany.
Under what circumstances is labor “externally conditioned”? Do such phenomena make the location of economic activity indeterminate?
Answer a or b:
1. Discuss the contributions of Peel and Cobden to the establishment of Free Trade in Great Britain.
2. Sketch the progress of negotiations leading to the German Customs Union during the years 1828 to 1834.
Answer a or b:
1. Sketch the development of the Bank of England as a central bank.
2. Sketch the development of contacts between the United States Treasury and the New York money market in the period, 1869-1914
Answer a or b:
1. Sketch the history of the petroleum Industry in the United States from 1859-1879.
2. Discuss the development and the significance of any single cartel in Great Britain or Germany.
Answer a, b, c, d, or e:
1. What was the purpose of the compensating duties in the woollen and worsted schedules of the United States tariff of 1867, 1883, and 1890? Did the duties as levied achieve this purpose?
2. Describe the different forms of dumping. How did the forms prevalent in the United States before 1914 affect the development of our domestic industries? Was dumping disadvantageous to the consumers of similar goods in the United States?
3. Does imperial preference meet the essential needs of ether Great Britain or her dominions? Why, or why not?
4. Discuss: “The history of protection in France shows clearly the impossibility of securing trustworthy objective evidence of its effect, but the record of the nineteenth century affords no presumption that the benefits of protection offset the palpable increases in the cost of living due to the tariffs.”
5. Has the experience of Germany thrown new light upon the effects of protection to agriculture? Why, or why not?
Answer a or b:
In what ways and to what extent have technological changes, since 1900, affected the regional balance of primary resources in Europe and the world at large?
What changes in the Malthusian theory of population are necessary to bring its broader elements into conformity with the historical record of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries?

Source: Harvard University Archives. Papers of Alexander Gerschenkron, Box 3, Folder “Examinations 233a & b [1929/30-1967/68].

__________________________________

1942-1943

From Course Announcements

III
ECONOMIC HISTORY AND STRUCTURE

Economics 133. Recent Economic History, 1820-1914

Mon., Wed., Fri., at 3. Professor Usher.

Economics 136. Seminar. Topics in Modern Economic History]

Two consecutive hours a week, to be arranged. Professor Usher.

Source: Harvard University, Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Official Register of Harvard University. Vol. XXXIX (September 23, 1942), No. 53, Announcement of the Courses of Instruction, 1942-1943, p. 56.

Enrollment

III

Economics 133. Professor Usher. — Recent Economic History.

Total 15: 10 Graduates, 3 Public Administration, 2 Radcliffe.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College 1942-43 p. 48.

1942-43
Harvard University
Economics 133
[Mid-year Exam, 1943]

I
(About one hour)

Write an essay on a topic based on the work of the reading period, or on one of the following topics: the shortcomings of Victorian liberalism, out-standing definitions of the factory and their significance.

II
Answer THREE questions.

Answer (a) or (b).
1. Discuss the changing conditions of competition among the various textile products from 1750 to 1851.
2. Describe the out-standing technical improvements in the iron industry in England in the late eighteenth century.
Answer one of the following:
1. Describe the devices employed by railroads in the United States to make personal discriminations in favor of particular shippers. What success has been achieved in the suppression of these practices?
2. Describe and discuss the primary features of the British Railway Act of 1921.
3. Discuss the relative significance of the benefits to the railroads and the new liabilities involved in the Conventions of 1883 between the great railroad companies and the French government.
4. Describe the inland waterways of Germany and discuss their place in the transport system.
What are the more important weight-losing materials? What is their relative significance for the localization of economic activity at the present time?
In what ways and to what extent did purely fiscal motives enter into the reform of the British tariff in the first half of the nineteenth century?
Answer (a), (b), or (c).
1. In what ways did new problems of land use affect the character of agrarian reforms in England and in Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries?
2. What compromises were involved in the adjustments of the claims to western lands?
3. Sketch the development of the political agitation for free land through the passage of the Homestead Act.

Source: Harvard University Archives. Papers of Alexander Gerschenkron, Box 3, Folder “Examinations 233a & b [1929/30-1967/68].

1942-43
Harvard University
Economics 133
[Year-end Exam, 1943]

I
(About one hour)

Write an essay on a topic covered by the work of the reading period, or on one of the following topics: modern formulations of autarky as an objective of economic policy; Victorian Liberalism — its prestige as a gospel, its deficiencies as a social philosophy.

II
Answer three questions.

Answer (a) or (b).
1. Describe the primary features of the London money market in the early nineteenth century, indicating essential specialization of function.
2. Describe the various elements in the Democratic party that were hostile to the Second Bank of the United States. In what ways, and to what extent did they influence Jackson?
Was the Sherman Law an appropriate and well designed instrument to prevent the kinds of abuse of economic power that were emerging in the United States about 1890? Why, or why not?
Answer (a) or (b).
1. Discuss British policy towards wheat growing before and after World War I.
2. Does German trade under exchange controls offer an adequate solution to the problems of the agricultural areas of south eastern Europe? Why, or why not?
Sketch the development of centralized power production in Great Britain and Germany.
In what respects does the record of population growth in Great Britain reveal the presence of factors unsuspected by Malthus?

Source: Harvard University Archives. Papers of Alexander Gerschenkron, Box 3, Folder “Examinations 233a & b [1929/30-1967/68].

__________________________________

1943-1944

From Course Announcements

III
ECONOMIC HISTORY AND STRUCTURE

Economics 133a. Economic History, 1750-1860

Half-course (summer term; to be repeated in spring term). Mon., Wed., Fri., at 3. Professor Usher.

Students will attend classes in Economics 33a and do supplementary work for [graduate] credit in this course.

Economics 133b. Economic History, 1860-1914

Half-course (winter term). Mon., Wed., Fri., at 3. Professor Usher.

Students will attend classes in Economics 33b and do supplementary work for [graduate] credit in this course.

Source: Harvard University, Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Official Register of Harvard University. Vol. XL (March 29, 1943), No. 4, Announcement of the Courses of Instruction, 1943-1944, p. 40.

Enrollment

III

Economics 133a. (winter term) Professor Usher. — Economic History, 1750-1860.

Total 16: 12 Graduates, 2 Public Administration, 2 Radcliffe.

Economics 133b. (winter term) Professor Usher. — Economic History, 1860-1914.

Total 23: 16 Graduates, 2 Public Administration, 4 Radcliffe, 1 Other

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College 1943-44 p. 57.

1943-44
Harvard University
Economics 33a, 133a
[Final Examination, June 1944]

Write an essay on a topic based on the work of the reading period, or on one of the following topics: Bentham’s contribution to the content of liberalism: the theory of invention.

II
(About two hours)
Answer THREE questions.

Answer (a) or (b).
1. What were the characteristic features of the agrarian reforms in France, 1750-1815?
2. Have we reason to presume that the plantation would have developed significantly in southern United States if slave labor had not become available? Did slave labor make the plantation more profitable than farming with free labor? Why, or why not?
Why has it been misleading to develop a concept of an “Industrial Revolution” that is to be identified with the period 1760-1800?
The generalization of the factory system created new problems in labor relations which were very imperfectly covered by the methods of collective bargaining even at their best.
In what ways did the development of steam navigation create new problems in merchant service and in national policy?
What is the significance of water and water power for the location of economic activity?

Source: Harvard University Archives. Papers of Alexander Gerschenkron, Box 3, Folder “Examinations 233a & b [1929/30-1967/68].

1943-44
Harvard University
Economics 33b, 133b
[Final Exam, February 1944]

I
(About one hour)

Write an essay on a topic covered by the work of the reading period, or on one
of the following topics: planning in a free society, the significance of monopolistic competition theory for the formulation of policies for the control of business.

II
Answer THREE questions.

Answer (a) or (b):
1. Describe the structure of the Bank of England under the Bank Act of 1844. What was the significance of the distinctive features of the new structure?
2. Sketch the development of the Suffolk Bank system.
Answer (a) or (b):
1. In what ways does the topography of a region exert an influence on the pattern of the railway network? What typical patterns of networks may be distinguished?
2. Describe the broader features of the Interstate Commerce Act of 1887. Do you feel that the courts were at fault for the disappointments experienced by the advocates of strict control?
Answer (a), (b), or (c):
1. What factors enabled the Standard Oil group to secure transport differentials from the railroads and from the pipe line companies?
2. What factors have controlled the development of integration of industry in Great Britain since 1870?
3. What changes have taken place in the structure of big business in Germany since 1919? How may we explain this development?
Describe the place of water power in the power system of the United States. Discuss the problems of policy involved in the full and effective utilization of these water powers.
What modifications of the Malthusian theory of population are necessary to bring its broader features into conformity with the historical record of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries?

Source: Harvard University Archives. Papers of Alexander Gerschenkron, Box 3, Folder “Examinations 233a & b [1929/30-1967/68].

__________________________________

1944-1945

From Course Announcements

III
ECONOMIC HISTORY AND STRUCTURE

Economics 133a. Economic History, 1750-1860

Half-course (winter term). Tu., Th., and (at the pleasure of the instructor) Sat., at 12. Professor Usher.

Students will attend classes in Economics 33a and do supplementary work for [graduate] credit in this course.

Economics 133b. Economic History, 1860-1914

Half-course (winter term; to be repeated in spring term). Mon., Wed., and (at the pleasure of the instructor) Fri., at 2. Professor Usher.

Students will attend classes in Economics 33b and do supplementary work for [graduate] credit in this course.

Source: Harvard University, Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Official Register of Harvard University. Vol. XLI (September 15, 1944), No. 19, Announcement of the Courses of Instruction, 1944-1945, pp. 36-37.

Enrollment

III

Economics 133a. (winter term) Professor Usher. — Economic History, 1750-1860.

Total 20: 14 Graduates, 3 Public Administration, 3 Radcliffe.

Economics 133b. (winter term) Professor Usher. — Economic History, 1860-1914.

Total 17: 15 Graduates, 4 Public Administration, 7 Radcliffe [sic]

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College 1944-45 p. 64.

1944-45
Harvard University
Economics 33a, 133a
[Final Exam, February 1945]

I
(About one hour)

Write an essay on a topic based on the work of the reading period, or on one of the following topics: liberalism; the structure and objectives of a free society.

II
Answer three questions

Answer a, b, or c.
1. In what ways did the rights enjoyed by English “landlords” of the eighteenth century fall short of being rights of unqualified ownership?
2. Discuss: “Homestead settlement had its essential roots in the practices of southern United States, but the formal adoption of the policy was persistently opposed by southern members in Congress.”
3. Sketch the various types of labor management used on southern plantations.
What are the essential features of the system of quantity production? Was the date of its significant introduction determined primarily by economic or by technological conditions?
Answer a or b.
1. Discuss the critical problems involved in the definition of a factory.
2. Describe the more conspicuous abuses in the administration of the old poor laws. Comment on the reform accomplished in 1834.
What conditions stood in the way of an early development of the operation of ocean going steamships by American builders and owners?
Why did the application of power to industry and transport alter the significance of surplus food supplies for the location of economic activity?

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University Final Examinations, 1853-2001. Box 10. Papers Printed for Final Examinations Winter Term [in] History, History of Religions, … , Economics, … , Military Science, Naval Science (February 1945).

1944-45
Harvard University
Economics 33b, 133b
[Final Exam. June 1945]

I
(About one hour)

Write an essay on a topic covered by the work of the reading period, or on one of the following topics: revisions and restatements of the theory of population; the future of the liberal concept of economic statesmanship.

II
Answer three questions

Answer (a) or (b).
1. What were the primary contentions of the Bullionist writers? In what respects would their positions now be criticized?
2. What tendencies towards centralization of banking appeared in the United States in the early nineteenth century?
Answer (a) or (b).
1. Under what circumstances does value of the transport service modify the rate structure of a railway network? Are discriminations of this nature “reasonable”?
2. In what ways did the Hepburn Act (1906) extend the authority of the Interstate Commerce Commission? Were the new powers adequate?
Answer (a) or (b).
1. Describe the position of the United States Steel Corporation in the industry about the time of the decision of the Supreme Court. Do you feel that the Court was justified in finding that “full and free competition” existed in the industry?
2. Does the experience of Germany indicate that the “cartel” is a satisfactory and permanent means of organizing big business enterprises? Why, or why not?
What is, at present, the relative significance of coal, oil, and water power as sources of mechanical energy? Are there grounds for believing that the future development of water power will significantly alter the pattern of industrialization in the world?
Describe recent tendencies toward centralization of power production in Great Britain and continental Europe. Discuss the economic and social consequences of these changes.

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University Final Examinations, 1853-2001. Box 10. Papers Printed for Final Examinations [in] History, History of Religions, … , Economics, … , Military Science, Naval Science (June 1945).

__________________________________

1945-1946

From Course Announcements

III
ECONOMIC HISTORY AND STRUCTURE

Economics 133a. Economic History, 1750-1860

Half-course (fall term). Tu., Th., and (at the pleasure of the instructor) Sat., at 11. Professor Usher.

Economics 133b. Economic History, 1860-1914

Half-course (spring term). Tu., Th., and (at the pleasure of the instructor) Sat., at 11. Professor Usher.

Source: Harvard University, Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Official Register of Harvard University. Vol. XLII (March 31, 1945), No. 8, Announcement of the Courses of Instruction, 1945-1946, p. 40.

Enrollment

III

Economics 133a. (fall term) Professor Usher. — Economic History, 1750-1860.

Total 54: 34 Graduates, 1 Junior, 1 Freshman, 4 Public Administration, 14 Radcliffe.

Economics 133b. (spring term) Professor Usher. — Economic History, 1860-1914.

Total 79: 58 Graduates, 1 Sophomore, 9 Public Administration, 11 Radcliffe

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College 1945-46, p. 59.

1945-1946
Harvard University
Economic 133a
[Final Exam, August 1946]

Answer all questions. Question 1 is given double weight. Please write clearly and in ink.

Write an essay of one hour on the factors which appear to have controlled the timing and rate of industrial development of areas, using illustrative material from the industrial history of England, France, Germany, and the United States. What recommendations respecting policy would you make to a government of a backward nation anxious to achieve, not only parity in industrial development and technology, but also a position of leadership in these fields?
Compare the major features of the structures of land ownership and use, and of agricultural organization during the first half of the nineteenth century in two of the following regions: Great Britain, France, the southern United States, the American West. Discuss fully the economics of each of the two systems considered and criticize in the light of this discussion the public and private policies involved in each.
Explain how the Industrial Revolution and the factory system in Great Britain altered the position of the workers in the economic system, and discuss in the light of the prevailing concepts of economic and political organization the problems of government labor policy which arose.
Analyze the remarkable boom in the American shipping and ship-building industries between 1830 and 1856, and the subsequent collapse. In this connection, what features of American and British merchant marine policy appear to have been important, and which of these policies might be criticized as being undesirable or ill-conceived from the American point of view?
Discuss the evolution of the structure of the British money market and banking system between the late eighteenth century and the mid-nineteenth century, showing the major changes which occurred, and analyzing the primary problems which arose.

Source: Harvard University Archives. Papers of Alexander Gerschenkron, Box 3, Folder “Examinations 233a & b [1929/30-1967/68].

1945-1946
Harvard University
Economics 133b
[Final Exam, August 1946]

Answer all questions. Please write clearly and in ink.

Compare the primary features since 1860 of railway organization and public railway policy in two of the following countries: the United States, Germany, France, Great Britain. Analyze the points of strength and weakness which you find in each of the two cases.
Analyze the reasons for the continued failure of American foreign-trade shipping to make progress between 1860 and 1914. In particular, what problems were encountered in the use of ship subsidies, and what conclusions do you draw from this experience, and that of other countries, regarding the essentials of a good subsidy policy?
Analyze the reasons for the development of industrial integration in the United States, and explain the timing of the movement. In this connection compare and criticize the integration movements and associated public policies in the United States and in Germany or Britain.
What major problems have arisen in connection with the control and exploitations of major sources of energy for capitalistic economies? How has the energy problem conditioned the economic development and basic policies of western nations?
Analyze the factors responsible for the agricultural maladjustments of the period 1914-1939. In what respects does this period differ from that from 1870 to 1914?
Write an essay discussing those features of the economic history of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries which seem to you evidences of progress, and those which seem the reverse. What concept and test of progress, or of the lack of it, do you consider valid.

Source: Harvard University Archives. Papers of Alexander Gerschenkron, Box 3, Folder “Examinations 233a & b [1929/30-1967/68].

__________________________________

1946-1947

From Course Announcements

III

[NOTE: the announcement of courses of instruction no longer distinguishes “Economic history” courses from others in group III…cf: Group I Theory/Group II Statistics]

Economics 133a. Economic History, 1750-1860

Half-course (fall term). Tu., Th., and (at the pleasure of the instructor) Sat., at 11. Professor Usher.

Economics 133b. Economic History, 1860-1914

Half-course (spring term). Tu., Th., and (at the pleasure of the instructor) Sat., at 11. Professor Usher.

Source: Harvard University, Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Official Register of Harvard University. Vol. XLIII (September 3, 1946), No. 21, Announcement of the Courses of Instruction, 1946-1947, p. 45.

Enrollment

III

Economics 133a. Professor Usher. — Economic History, 1750-1860 (F).

Total 68: 46 Graduates, 3 Seniors, 1 Junior, 10 Public Administration, 8 Radcliffe.

Economics 133b. Professor Usher. — Economic History, 1860-1914 (Sp).

Total 73: 50 Graduates, 1 Senior, 1 Junior, 12 Public Administration, 9 Radcliffe

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College 1946-47, p. 71.

1946-47
Harvard University
Economics 133a
[Final Exam, January 1947]

I
About one hour

Write an essay based on the work of the reading period or on one of the following topics: the Marxian concept of the factory and its problems: British and American shipping subsidies.

II
Answer three questions.

What were the essential features of the rotation systems developed in Great Britain and in Europe? In what ways and to what extent did the introduction of the rotations require reform of tenure and of village organization?
Discuss: “Recent developments of science and of scientific methods have made invention a laboratory process; it has become a group activity independent of particular individual endowments.”
What are the characteristic features of craft industry? Describe and define the different kinds of relationships to be found in the craft industries.
Is Weber’s treatment of transportation costs as uniform ton-mile rates a satisfactory basis for the theoretical analysis of the location of economic activity? Why, or why not?
Answer a or b.
1. What political and economic circumstances led to the success and significance of the German Customs Union?
2. In what respects was the liberal philosophy of the nineteenth century unsound or incomplete?

Source: Harvard University Archives. Papers of Alexander Gerschenkron, Box 3, Folder “Examinations 233a & b [1929/30-1967/68].

1946-47
Harvard University
Economics 133b
[Final Exam, May 1947]

I
About one hour

Write an essay on a topic based on the work of the reading period, or on one of the following topics: the legal concept of “free competition” in U. S. statutes and case decisions; the significance of the value of transport in railroad rate structures.

II
Answer THREE questions

Answer (a) or (b).
1. What were the merits and defects of the defense of the policies of the Bank of England made by the officers of the Bank, in the period 1820-1840?
2. Describe the tendencies toward centralization of banking activity in the state banking systems of the United States prior to 1860.
Answer (a), (b), or (c).
1. Sketch the development of British policy towards railroad construction and regulation, 1830-1914.
2. In what ways did the government of France give financial aid to the construction and operation of railroads prior to World War I?
3. What were the characteristic features of the rate structure in the southern United States prior to World War I?
In what ways did the development of the Bessemer Converter and the Open Hearth process affect the structure and organization of the iron and steel industry?
Discuss the social and economic problems embodied in the doctrine of “capture” as developed in the United States in respect of property rights in petroleum.
Discuss: “The Malthusian principles of population were not essentially incorrect, though the formulation by Malthus was infelicitous and incomplete, and later discussion has commonly exaggerated the defects of the original presentation.”

Source: Harvard University Archives. Papers of Alexander Gerschenkron, Box 3, Folder “Examinations 233a & b [1929/30-1967/68].

__________________________________

1947-1948

From Course Announcements

III

Economics 133a. Economic History, 1750-1860

Half-course (fall term). Tu., Th., and (at the pleasure of the instructor) Sat., at 11. Professor Usher and Assistant Professor Rostow.

Economics 133b. Economic History, 1860-1914

Half-course (spring term). Tu., Th., and (at the pleasure of the instructor) Sat., at 11. Professor Usher and Assistant Professor Rostow.

Economics 136a. Seminar. Topics in Modern Economic History

Half-course (spring term). Hours to be arranged. Professor Usher and Assistant Professor Rostow.

Economics 136b. Seminar. Topics in Modern Economic History

Half-course (spring term). Hours to be arranged. Professor Usher and Assistant Professor Rostow.

Source: Harvard University, Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Official Register of Harvard University. Vol. XLIV (September 9, 1947), No. 25, Announcement of the Courses of Instruction, 1947-1948, p. 74.

Enrollment

III

Economics 133a. Professor Usher. — Economic History, 1750-1860 (F).

Total 77: 59 Graduates, 11 Public Administration, 7 Radcliffe.

Economics 133b. Professor Usher. — Economic History, 1860-1914 (Sp).

Total 65: 50 Graduates, 8 Public Administration, 6 Radcliffe, 1 Other

Economics 136a. Professor Usher. — Seminar. Topics in Modern Economic History (F).

(F) Total 7: 5 Graduates, 1 Junior, 1 Radcliffe

Economics 136b. Professor Usher. — Seminar. Topics in Modern Economic History (Sp).

(Sp) Total 5: 5 Graduates

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College 1947-48, p. 91.

1947-48
Harvard University
Economics 133a
[Final Exam, January 1948]

I.
About one hour

Write an essay on a topic based on the work of the reading period, or on one of the following topics: the place of energy resources in the economy of a region, the concept of the factory.

II.
Answer three questions

Answer a, b, or c.
1. How did copyhold tenures arise in England? In what respects, and on what grounds, were the relations of the copyholder to his lord modified by judicial interpretation?
2. Discuss: “The National Assembly destroys entirely the feudal régime, and decrees the abolition without compensation of all feudal dues.” Resolution of Aug. 11, 1789.
3. Discuss the political and economic issues involved in granting rights of preemption to squatters on the Public Domain.
Answer a, or b.
1. What were the more important stages in the development and application of the hydraulic and steam turbines?
2. Describe the official and unofficial procedures for establishing wage rates in England in the eighteenth century.
Describe the various types of improved inland waterways, and discuss the effectiveness of competition between waterways and railroads.
What types of industries can be most advantageously located at wholesale market sites? why?
Discuss: “The function of state coercion is to override individual coercion; and, of course, coercion exercised by any association of individuals within the state.”

Source: Harvard University Archives. Papers of Alexander Gerschenkron, Box 3, Folder “Examinations 233a & b [1929/30-1967/68].

1947-48
Harvard University
Economics 133b
[Final Exam, May 1948]

I
(About one hour)

Write an essay on a topic based on the work of the reading period, or on one of the following topics: “malefactors of great wealth,” the judicial concept of competition.

II
Answer THREE questions.

Answer (a) or (b):
1. “The Bank Act of 1844 is an outstanding illustration of erroneous policy: the act failed to achieve any of its essential purposes; it remained on the statute books because it secured incidental conveniences that were really without importance.” Discuss.
2. Describe the relations between the United States Treasury and the National Banks, 1865-1913.
Answer (a), (b) or (c):
1. What are the obstacles to the adoption of cost of service as a test of the “reasonableness” of railroad rates?
2. In what ways, and to what extent did the British government encourage competition among railroads in the nineteenth century?
3. Did the Interstate Commerce Act of 1887 provide adequate remedies for the abuses against which it was directed? Why, or why not?
Describe the technical factors affecting the size of the enterprise in the iron and steel industry, or the electric power industry.
Discuss the competitive position of coal as a source of energy since 1900.
In what ways and to what extent do vital statistics throw light upon the relative well-being of different populations?

Source: Harvard University Archives. Papers of Alexander Gerschenkron, Box 3, Folder “Examinations 233a & b [1929/30-1967/68].

__________________________________

1948-1949

From Course Announcements

Note: Usher’s last year, Gerschenkron’s first year.

III

Economics 233a (formerly 133a). Economic History, 1750-1860

Half-course (fall term). Tu., Th., and (at the pleasure of the instructor) Sat., at 11. Professor Usher and Associate Professor Gerschenkron.

Economics 233b (formerly 133b). Economic History, 1860-1914

Half-course (spring term). Tu., Th., and (at the pleasure of the instructor) Sat., at 11. Professor Usher and Associate Professor Gerschenkron.

Economics 236 (formerly 136a and 136b). Seminar. Topics in Modern Economic History

Full-course. Wed., 4-6. Professor Usher and Associate Professor Gerschenkron.

Source: Harvard University, Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Official Register of Harvard University. Vol. XLV (September 15, 1948), No. 24, Announcement of the Courses of Instruction, 1948-1949, p. 78.

Enrollment

III

Economics 233a (formerly 133a). Economic History, 1750-1860 (F). Professor Usher and Associate Professor Gerschenkron.

Total 43: 38 Graduates, 1 Senior, 2 Public Administration, 5 Radcliffe. [sic]

Economics 233b (formerly 133b). Economic History, 1860-1914 (Sp). Professor Usher and Associate Professor Gerschenkron.

Total 42: 38 Graduates, 2 Public Administration, 2 Radcliffe

Economics 236 (formerly 136a and 136b). Seminar. Topics in Modern Economic History (Full Co.) Professor Usher and Associate Professor Gerschenkron.

(F) Total 2: 2 Graduates
(Sp) Total 4: 2 Graduates, 1 Senior, 1 Public Administration

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College 1948-49, p. 78.

1948-49
Harvard University
Economics 233a
[Final Exam, January 1949]

I
About one Hour

Write an essay on a topic based on the work of the reading period, or on one of the following topics: the process of invention, the copyhold tenure.

II
Answer three questions

Answer a, b, or c.
1. Describe the primary features of the métayage tenures in France. Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of the tenure.
2. In what ways did the defects of the Harrison Act of 1800 lead to a demand for the revision of the general principles of public land policy?
3. Discuss the problems of determining the effective costs of slave labor on the plantations of the southern United States.
In what ways and to what extent did the development of the factory system modify the position of the capitalist or entrepreneur?
In what way did the development of steam navigation affect the character of competition and the organization of oceanic shipping in the second half of the nineteenth century?
Answer a or b.
1. What factors must be considered in computing the capacity of a railroad? What are the more conspicuous kinds of unused capacity?
2. Describe the primary features of the patterns of procurement and distribution costs in a material oriented industry.
Answer a or b.
1. Discuss the relative significance of Peel’s budget of 1842 and the repeal of the Corn Laws as the date line for the establishment of the Free Trade principle.
2. What were the distinctive contributions of Bentham to the development of liberalism?

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University Final Examinations, 1853-2001. Box 16. Papers Printed for Final Examinations [in] History, History of Religions, … , Economics, … , Military Science, Naval Science (February 1949) in the bound volume Final Examinations Social Sciences, Feb. 1949.

1948-49
Harvard University
Economics 233b
[Final Exam, June 1949]

I
(About one hour)

Write an essay on a topic based on the work of the reading period, or on one of the following topics: the legal concept of competition in the United States; the measurement of material well-being.

II
Answer three questions.

Answer (a) or (b).
1. Describe the policies and functions of the Bank of England 1790-1819. Were the policies of the Bank essentially sound?
2. What problems were presented in the choice of a monetary standard in the United States? What were the defects of the Mint Act of 1792?
Answer (a) or (b).
1. What are the advantages and disadvantages of organizing a railway network under a principle of regulated regional monopoly?
2. Describe the Trunk Line’ Rate system in the United States. Discuss its significance for theoretical analysis of railroad rate structures.
Answer (a) or (b).
1. Describe the tensions and difficulties in the steel industry of the United States in the decade 1890-1900. Did the formation of the United States Steel Corporation provide a sound and satisfactory solution for these problems?
2. In what ways and to what extent did the development of industrial consolidation in Germany after 1919 lead to the formation of more fully integrated enterprises than the older cartels?
Discuss the purposes and primary features of the British Electricity Supply Acts of 1919 and 1926.
How may we explain the changes in the birth rates and death rates in England in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries?

Source: Harvard University Archives. Papers of Alexander Gerschenkron, Box 3, Folder “Examinations 233a & b [1929/30-1967/68].

Image Source: Edwin F. Gay (left) and Abbott P. Usher (right) from Harvard Class Album 1934.

Tags Gay, Gerschenkron, RostowWW, Usher

Economics Programs Harvard Regulations

Harvard. Graduate Exam Grade Distributions, 1971-72

Post author By Irwin Collier
Post date 2021-12-01

From the distribution of grades for graduate economics examinations from the academic year 1971-72 at Harvard we see that the range from Good-minus through Good-plus covered the majority of grades awarded at that time…except for economic history. Gerschenkron fought grade inflation his way (zero grades of “excellent”), stingy award of grades of “good”). Economic history now sits in a n.e.c. (not elsewhere classified) requirement to get a Harvard Ph.D. in economics (a course in economic history or political economy or behavioral economics).

Previous posts dealing with economics Ph.D. requirements fifty-some years ago:

Harvard. Economics Ph.D. Regulations, 1968

Harvard. Report on the General Examination for an Economics PhD, 1970

____________________________

HARVARD UNIVERSITY
Department of Economics

Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138
December 12, 1972

To: All Professors in the Department of Economics

From: Nancy Frolkis, Graduate Secretary

The tabulation of examination results for the academic year 1971-72 has been completed. We have enclosed a copy since we thought it would be of interest to you.

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

EXAM RECORDS
September 1971-September 1972

Written Theory Examination
Excellent	2
Excellent Minus	2
Good Plus	6
Good	16
Good Minus	7
Fair Plus	2
Fair	6
Fair Minus	6
Fail	3
TOTAL	50

Quantitative Methods Examination
Pass	5
Fail	1
TOTAL	6

Oral History Examination
Excellent	0
Excellent Minus	0
Good Plus	0
Good	3
Good Minus	1
Fair Plus	0
Fair	5
Fair Minus	1
Fail	3
TOTAL	13

General Oral Examination
Excellent	1
Excellent Minus	1
Good Plus	5
Good	10
Good/Good Minus	1
Good Minus	13
Fair Plus	10
Fair	2
Fair Minus	2
Fail	1
TOTAL	46

Thesis Grades
Excellent	2
Excellent Minus	6
Good Plus	6
Good	6
Good Minus	5
Fair Plus	4
Fair	2
Fair Minus	0
Fail	0
Not yet graded	1
TOTAL	32

Special Examination
Excellent	2
Excellent Minus	5
Good Plus	7
Good	7
Good Minus	7
Fair Plus	3
Fair	1
Fair Minus	0
Fail	0
TOTAL	32

Comparison between Thesis and Special Examination
Same grade for exam and thesis	13
Exam ½ grade higher than thesis	6
Exam ½ grade lower than thesis	9
Exam 1 full grade higher than thesis	2
Exam 1 full grade lower than thesis	1
Unknown (thesis not graded)	1
TOTAL	32

Source: Harvard University Archives. Papers of Alexander Gerschenkron, Box 3, Folder: “Economics (General) 1972/73”.

Tags Gerschenkron

Economists Harvard War and Defense Economics

Harvard. Reactions to Galbraith’s call for students to boycott professors doing classified government research, 1967

Post author By Irwin Collier
Post date 2021-02-15

Looking through my files of material from the Gottfried Haberler papers at the Hoover Institution Archives, I came across an unpublished, heavily sarcastic “letter to the editor” of the Harvard Crimson by the economic historian Alexander Gerschenkron in reaction to John Kenneth Galbraith’s statement at an anti-war event at Radcliffe in which he suggested that students could reasonably consider boycotting the classes of professors engaged in classified research to protest that war. One of Galbraith’s targets was clearly his colleague Arthur Smithies. (“I assume that Professor Smithies would suppress all protest. Many will doubt the wisdom of this course as also, I trust, the wickedness of the secret work on which he is engaged.”) While the rules of English grammar are such that Galbraith did explicitly state “many will doubt…the wickedness of [Smithies’] secret work…”, it is a pretty cheeky way to simultaneously mention that there are indeed some who will see Smithies’ secret work in a wicked light.

The post ends with a later Harvard Crimson article that reports on Smithies’ career, with considerable emphasis on his work for the U.S. government (including the C.I.A.) on South Vietnam’s economy. We also see below that Thomas Schelling was so little amused by Galbraith’s boycott proposal as to have written a letter for actual publication in the Harvard Crimson.

_________________________

“Galbraith Asks Campus Blacklist of Recruiters”

The Boston Globe. 14 November 1967 pp. 1,9.

Harvard economist John Kenneth Galbraith urged Monday that college students oppose the Vietnam War by publicly blacklisting war-linked campus recruiting agencies and by boycotting professors engaged in classified government research.

Speaking at Radcliffe College, Galbraith explained his blacklist as a “proclamation” on which signatories would state their intention to refuse to work for agencies, such as Dow Chemical Co. or the C.I.A.

A boycott of professors engaged in classified research, he said, would be a “particularly effective way of expressing your opposition.”

The former U.S. ambassador to India, publicly backed “moderate” student demonstrations before a packed Harvard Radcliffe group in Hilles Library.

He cautioned the students against protests that are “violent or in egregiously bad taste.”

These, he said, would “provide a welcomed handle for the opposition.”

Galbraith said he had discussed his blacklist and boycott proposals with colleagues and many found them favorable. He called both courses “legitimate means of dissent within the university framework of conduct rules.”

He originated the black-list concept at talks with business and government leaders who indicated that recruiters are “greatly concerned with campus recruiting demonstrations,” Galbraith said.

Turing to anti-war referenda, Galbraith advised they would have more chances of success if they were worded “for political reality rather [than] for candor.”

The San Francisco anti-war referenda would have had a good chance for approval had it been stated in “milder” terms, he said. (This referendum, which asked: ‘should the U.S. immediately withdraw from Vietnam?’ drew a 38 percent affirmative response.)

“It would be an enormous mistake to assume your protest efforts have been futile,” he told students. Only three years ago, he said the State and Defense Departments” would have assumed wide spread acceptance of escalation.

“But now, in the wake of widespread university opposition to the war, there has been a snowballing effect of mounting opposition.”

His talk was sponsored by the Committee for Effective Action, a student group “opposed to the war but frustrated by the means of opposing it,” explained its spokesman. This was the first of an expected four or five meetings with the faculty.

_________________________

Letter from John Kenneth Galbraith

The Harvard Crimson, November 16, 1967

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

My distinguished colleague may be out of touch with recent discussion, but the issue is probably worth explaining. Students here and elsewhere have been told how they may not react to university involvement in military activities of which they disapprove. With other Faculty members I assume that this carries an obligation to say how they may react. I suggested (initially in Michigan and later here) that they organize to avoid employment in corporations of whose products they disapprove and classes of professors whose secret contracts they deplore. (I also suggested that this last was inapplicable under Harvard policy and that there be combined effort to find other forms of legitimate and effective protest.) I assume that Professor Smithies would suppress all protest. Many will doubt the wisdom of this course as also, I trust, the wickedness of the secret work on which he is engaged.

John Kenneth Galbraith
Paul M. Warburg Professor of Economics

_________________________

Unsent, but circulated, reaction to Galbraith’s proposal
by Alexander Gerschenkron

HARVARD UNIVERSITY
DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMICS

M-7 Littauer Center
Cambridge 38, Massachusetts

Alexander Gerschenkron
Walter S. Barker Professor of Economics

November 16, 1967

The Editor
The Crimson
Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138

Sir,

It is with greatest possible interest that I have read of Professor Galbraith’s suggestion that students should boycott lectures of those members of the Faculty who are known to engage in classified research. This is a most original and stimulating idea, which is not surprising as nothing less novel and exciting could be expected from Professor Galbraith’s fertile mind.

The only thing that disturbs me are problems of implementation. Professor Galbraith abstained from discussing them, probably feeling that what mattered was to cast abroad a fine idea, while the rest could be safely left to more pedestrian minds. May I try to fill out the gap? Obviously, the first thing that is needed is to provide some machinery in order to discover just who is engaged in classified research. I suggest therefore, that the Student-Faculty Committee should immediately establish a special Sub-Committee charged with carrying out the requisite investigations. It should be called “Student-Faculty Sub-Committee on Un-Left Activities.” This Sub-Committee should interrogate members of the faculty. A difficulty to be faced will no doubt stem from the lack of subpoena powers on the part of the Sub-Committee. But the problem should not be insoluble. The Administration should be put under pressure to agree that those members of the Faculty who 1) refuse to appear before the Un-Left Sub-Committee or, 2) if appearing, refuse to name those colleagues whose connection with classified research is known to them, or 3) refuse to answer questions concerning their own classified research, should be informed by the Administration that such refusals constitute contempt of the Un-Left Sub-Committee, and, by the same token, must be regarded as acts of gross misconduct. In all fairness, the offenders should be given a fortnight to reconsider, but should they stubbornly persist in their hostile attitude, their connection with the University should be severed without further delay.

On the other hand, should the Administration hesitate to accede to the Sub-Committee’s fair and reasonable demands, which as Professor Galbraith likes to say are surely justified by the extraordinary situation in which the country finds itself, occupation of University Hall by the students should be the first natural step, if necessary, to be followed by other more stringent measures.

Thus Professor Galbraith’s idea appears to be altogether practicable. In conclusion, I cannot help praising his wise restraint. He could have suggested, for instance, that also lectures of those Faculty members who either themselves express Un-Left opinions or associate with colleagues who have expressed Un-Left opinions should be boycotted by the students. That he failed to make such suggestions agrees well with the sapient counsels of moderation which informed his speech.

Very truly yours,
[signed]
Alexander Gerschenkron

AG:dod

Note: For reasons well within this writer’s control, the foregoing epistle has failed to reach the editorial office of The Crimson.

Source: The Hoover Institution Archives. Papers of Gottfried Haberler, Box 12, Folder “GH—Alexander Gerschenkron”.

_________________________

Letter from John Kenneth Galbraith

The Harvard Crimson, November 16, 1967

To the Editors of The CRIMSON:

I am persuaded that at some risk of repetition I should be sure that there is no misunderstanding of my recent remarks on legitimate and non-violent forms of student protest as these concern University involvements with military activities. Two or three weeks ago in Detroit I was asked to comment on prospective efforts to obstruct physically the Willow Run laboratories operated on contract by the University of Michigan and engaged, I am told, on development of highly secret materiel for use in Vietnam. I urged not alone the futility but the adverse public effects of such action; I said that a better remedy lay against the Faculty members who ran this enterprise. Students might organize to avoid their classes, i.e., peacefully to boycott them. Last Monday evening at the meeting in the Hilles Library arranged by [Radcliffe] President Bunting to discuss legitimate forms of protest I repeated (along with others) this suggestion and added that this particular one would not be without effect on those who sponsored such work in a university but that it did not have application at Harvard where, wisely, the Administration frowned on secret contracts. I confess that I did not think of the possible application of my suggestion to confidential or secret consulting work or research by individual Harvard professors. A member of the Faculty has since invited the attention of those who are, with sufficient reason, sensitive to the association between the University Community and this war. Additionally, my reference to boycott, which of course means peaceful abstention, was evidently taken to mean some kind of physical action.

I would like to urge in the most earnest possible fashion that there be no effort by anyone, students in particular, to identify and oppose in any manner the individual participation by Faculty members in confidential or secret tasks of the government. There is a radical difference between this varied and individual work and the classified contracts for weapons development which I had in mind. This individual work covers a wide range of matters and much, or most, has no bearing on military activity. Most of it is the work of those Faculty members with the strongest instinct for public service. An effort to discriminate between approved and disapproved work would import into the academic community an improper concern for the extra-curricular pacifists who are so engaged as to those who are otherwise disposed. It could also be a most disagreeable source of tension and suspicion.

As members of the Harvard community will be aware, I am not indifferent to the Vietnam war. I regard it as an appalling tragedy; to no other matter of my adult life have I devoted more effort than to opposing the war. But I would be profoundly and also greatly embarrassed were anyone to take my remarks at Radcliffe as an invitation to any form of opposition to the participants of individual Faculty members, on a public or confidential basis, in government activities. Needless to say, none of this impairs in any way my promise at the Radcliffe meeting to work with concerned Faculty members and students to devise other effective, legitimate and non-violent forms of protest.

John Kenneth Galbraith
Paul M. Warburg Professor of Economics

_________________________

Letter from Thomas Schelling in response to Galbraith’s boycott proposal

The Harvard Crimson, December 5, 1967

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

While I’ve seen no indication that Professor Galbraith’s proposed boycott of professors who do classified research for the government is going to stimulate a new movement, it does raise important questions about the personal activities of faculty members and the ways they may be involved with the government, and about the appropriate selection of target for protest. May I explain why I think his proposal is probably not workable and, if not workable, objectionable?

Let me first point out that Professor Galbraith did not propose that students boycott those professors whose research is objectionable, nor did he clarify what research would be objectionable. His reference was merely to “classified” research. I’m sure that by almost anyone’s standards of wickedness (Galbraith’s term) some classified research would be found unobjectionable. People concerned about the dissemination of nuclear technology, about the limitation of weapons, even about ways of ending the war in Vietnam, often require classified information to do their work or, at least, have to be exposed to classified information in doing their work and cannot do it unless they are willing to safeguard what the government calls “security.” Even if the character of everybody’s classified research could be ascertained, drawing the line between the objectionable and the unobjectionable, or between what any reasonable man would consider objectionable and what some reasonable men might consider to be in the public interest, would require subjective judgments. (Most classified research, incidentally, is probably unrelated to Vietnam.)

Second, much of the unclassified research that goes on would be objectionable to people who oppose any kind of war-related research; and to exclude such unclassified research would be arbitrary discrimination.

Third, “research” itself is difficult to define. Many faculty members are occasionally consultants or members of advisory boards in various agencies, or participants in government-sponsored conferences, sometimes classified, sometimes unclassified. Whether their influence is benign or malignant would be hard to judge; so would the degree of support or implied approval in attendance at a meeting at which one criticizes a government program or decision.

And if unclassified contributions had to pass the same strict test as classified work, to qualify for boycott or immunity from it, one would have to ask whether an activity like the Peace Corps is to be treated as a propaganda arm of the Johnson administration or as a benign and constructive activity. Again a judgment depends on a complex evaluation of the different purposes that a government program may serve.

Finally, are Faculty members who are unaffiliated with the government in any fashion, classified or unclassified, but who openly support the administration’s policy toward Vietnam, to qualify for boycott? It seems strange to exclude them; but again the line would be hard to draw for those who neither wholly support the conduct or the war nor are wholly committed to one drastic alternative. (It is unclear to me on which side of the line Professor Galbraith would be placed.)

I could go on multiplying the difficulties of finding a reasonable line to draw between the non-university-administered activities of professors that are objectionable and those that are not, whatever one’s standards of wickedness; and, further, I doubt whether there is enough consensus on standards to make it possible to draw an agreed line, even if some people think they know where to draw it. If I’m right about this, any line has to be arbitrary, as Professor Galbraith’s line was arbitrary. (If Professor Galbraith interprets his original proposal as applying only to university-administered research, the line is clearer but only because more arbitrary.)

If, though, the line is arbitrary–if its purpose just to mark out an identifiable target without regard to the nature of the research itself or of the non-research activity–then, aside from the likelihood that an embarrassingly large number of angels will be caught in the netful of devils, there is the question of what is being objected to and what the purpose of the boycott is. The purpose can no longer be described as bringing pressure to bear to get objectionable activities terminated. Rather, it would look–to me, at any rate–as though a boycott were being used to induce a particular group of professors to join a boycott against the government, or to embarrass them for declining to join a boycott.

Whatever my feelings about Professor Galbraith’s protest movement, I resent his proposal that students organize to coerce me into joining it. And I hope nobody stays away from Professor Galbraith’s classes in a vain organized attempt to embarrass him into changing his politics.

T.C. Schelling
Professor of Economics

_________________________

An Academic [Arthur Smithies] in the War
By Seth M. Kupferberg

The Harvard Crimson, May 23, 1975

Edward F. Chamberlin, superintendent of Kirkland House, tells a story about a Kirkland celebration that took place some years back, when Arthur Smithies was House master. Smithies was pouring drinks for the members of the victorious House crew team, starting with the bow man and working towards the stern of the shell, and as he reached the stroke, someone brought word that he had just become a grandfather.

“He kept right on—he just said, ‘Coxswain!'” Chamberlin recalls, chuckling. ‘”Coxswain, take your wine…’ We almost died.”

Smithies–Ropes Professor of Political Economy and a long-time adviser in the Saigon bureau of the Agency for International Development—gave up his mastership—”certainly Harvard’s best job,” he says—last spring. (“You can stay on past 66 as a professor but you have to retire as a master,” he grouses. “It should be the other way around—the brain deteriorates before the body does.”) But the story of the Agassiz Cup celebration still seems characteristic of him—both in content and in style, for a certain kind of sharp, logical humor as well as, perhaps, a certain cheerful indifference to happenings that would excite or upset or change the attitudes of many people. It’s a style, arguably, that found expression in Smithies’s work in Vietnam as well as his praise of the Agassiz Cup winners—and there, it was likely to have larger effects and meanings, since it served a side in an internecine war instead of an intramural regatta.

At the simplest, most straightforward level, the Agassiz Cup story is characteristic because it’s about crew—the sport that in 1929 helped bring Smithies, a 22-year-old Australian law student, the great-grandson of the first Methodist minister in western Tasmania, a Rhodes Scholarship. Finding England “too structured for my taste,” Smithies went on to discover “the fleshpots of the United States” with a Commonwealth Fellowship and a Model A Ford, earn a quick Harvard doctorate in economics, return to Australia briefly to work in its treasury department, then settle in the United States for good.

Smithies accepted tenure at Harvard in 1949—partly “so I could take up rowing again”—and continued to work at budgetary and fiscal economics. He also demonstrated an idiosyncratic kind of firmness—”I’m a believer in strict academic requirements, but for something important, like seat-races, I would make an exception,” he once told a Kirkland House oarsman. In its more political manifestations, many students came to find Smithies’s firmness objectionable. “People used to go around screaming ‘CIA Agent!’ and things at me,” he recalls. For when anti-ROTC students occupied University Hall in April 1969 and opened the files of then dean of the Faculty Franklin L. Ford, one of the letters they released to The Old Mole, the underground Cambridge newspaper that folded in 1970, was from Smithies. Dated December 7, 1967, it read: “The Central Intelligence Agency has instructed its consultants to inform their official superiors of this connection with the Agency. I hereby inform you of my connection of ten years duration. I wish I could, add that there is something subtly interesting or sinister about it.”

The tinge of self-mockery—the impatience of a person who takes certain things for granted, maybe—was typical: the same slight aloofness you sense when Smithies says he spends his free time “rowing boats and toiling in my garden,” as though the joys of domesticity in Belmont, like England, are a little too structured for his taste. But that didn’t stop the CIA letter from kicking up a minor storm.

“The CIA is divided sharply into two parts—covert and overt,” Smithies—who says he was most recently consulted by the agency, regarding a report on the future of the Vietnamese economy, last year—explains now. “For about ten years I’d go down there and review their papers on national economic matters: I’ve never been the cloak-and-dagger type. But naturally they made a big fuss about it,” he concludes, with something close to approval. “That’s good tactics.”

It was partly an exclusive attention to improving tactics—rather than more fundamental questions about the Vietnam war—that the University Hall occupiers and other Harvard radicals objected to in Smithies, even before they discovered his CIA letter, Smithies traces his service as an Agency for International Development consultant, advising the Republic of Vietnam on its fiscal policy and rates of international exchange, to previous foreign-affairs interests that included involvement in administering the Marshall Plan. He says he was regarded as a liberal both as a young teacher at the University of Michigan, where he defended the Michigan Daily‘s right to take leftist editorial stands, and in his early years in the Harvard Economics Department, where Keynesians like him were still an embattled minority.

And he still offers qualified praise for radical economists like Stephen A. Marglin ’59 or other members of the Union of Radical Political Economists—for aiming at a historical perspective on economic systems. “I think if they’d let me I’d be more of an ally than I am,” he says. “I don’t like a narrow concentration on Marx—I think it should also include Weber and people like that. I also and not a socialist, and URPE people generally are socialists—I firmly believe in the mixed economy.” For his part, Marglin says he agrees with Smithies’s stress on “the historical nature of economic theory and the fact that neo-classical theory is not the pinnacle of economic thought.” But he claims that Smithies shares orthodox economists’ bias toward marginal improvements that don’t call basic assumptions into question—”that perspective divides him pretty fundamentally from most URPE people,” he says.

Even setting aside Smithies’s belief in a mixed economy, Marglin’s criticism isn’t too surprising—budgetary economics by definition focuses on evaluating means, not ends, which it takes more or less for granted. Smithies’s book, The Budgetary Process in the United States, begins by calling a description of the ways the government sets its priorities “quite enough for one volume and one author,” and it offers only one assumption about how the budgetary process should end up—that “government decision-making can be improved by the clear formulation of alternatives.” Like his work on the budget, Smithies’s work on Vietnamese fiscal policy took its basic political framework more or less for granted.

And like the Agassiz Cup celebration, it was carried on with a certain quiet bravado, even in defiance of what many people might think of as reflex reactions to human events. Apart from his consulting work for AID—which kept him in.

During the height of campus anti-war activity, Smithies recalls, “People used to go around screaming ‘CIA Agent!’ and things at me.” Saigon most summers—Smithies wrote several reports, comparable to other American economists’ and political scientists’ attempts to improve the Saigon government’s chances and provide scientific descriptions of its progress.

Like these other writers, Smithies’s descriptions often reflected Saigon’s assumptions and interests, and so worked to limit debate in the United States and thus to keep the Saigon government strong. Not all American analysts acknowledged this political effect of their writing, but to many of their critics. It was its most important aspect. For the politics underlying questions of Vietnamese economic development included more even than questions about who should manage development and profit from it. The human, political context AID economists could all but ignore also included the struggle over these questions that was killing people and making them homeless, the struggle in which the government AID belonged to was playing an increasingly dominant part.

In a 1971 report commissioned by the Institute for Defense Analyses, called “Economic Development in Vietnam: The Need for External Resources,” and based on a “planning assumption” of “military stalemate and withering away of the war, a process that can last for a decade or more.” Smithies called for $500 million a year in American aid to the Saigon government “during the next decade,” and $700 million more in financing, preferably from an international consortium of countries, “for the indefinite future.” And while noting some of the bad effects of the war on South Vietnam’s economy—such as an unfavorable balance of trade, governmental corruption, the destruction of bridges and the defoliation of forests—Smithies also took note of countervailing factors, such as “the increase in the expectations of the Vietnamese people,” which he suggested would remain after “the horrors of war” had faded.

“The war has provided Vietnam with paved highways from end to end, with more airfields than it can possibly use, with spectacular harbors, with an elaborate communications system, with power plants, and with potable water in Saigon,” Smithies wrote.” …While it is impossible to make an accurate inventory of the changes in the infrastructure during the war, the impression is inescapable that the plusses greatly outweigh the minuses.” It was the kind of report that led Frances Fitzgerald ’62 to call AID economics “perhaps the ultimate expression of American hubris.”

Today, Smithies—who says he grew to like Saigon very much, despite a “very rarefied atmosphere” that necessitated weekly trips to the provinces for a reminder that there was a war going on—is naturally less sanguine. “Whatever the merits of the cause. I’m deeply disturbed to see the U.S. forced into a position of unconditional surrender under any circumstances,” he says. “And it’s not clear to me that there is still a clear direction to foreign policy.”

“I wouldn’t have gone there unless I thought the objective of a free and independent South Vietnam was a worthwhile one,” he continues, “and it’s fairly obvious that we didn’t pursue that role at all effectively.” Nevertheless, Smithies stresses American advisers’ accomplishments in such areas as improving rice strains—”whatever side you’re on politically, this was a useful thing,” he says—and the importance of combating “the impression that everyone connected with Vietnam was a scoundrel.”

“I think the economic staff there was really doing a good job,” he says. “In the economic and financial areas there were some very good Vietnamese and some very devoted and sincere Vietnamese—extremely able and also extremely patriotic. I can’t say the same for some of the corps commanders—but in the welter of recriminations there’s a tendency to forget what was good.”

* * *

It took just a few days after the Provisional Revolutionary Government’s victory last month for Smithies’s acquaintances to stop asking him, as at least one had the first day, about “the end of those summers in Saigon.” In the burgeoning New England spring, Saigon seemed very far away. It seemed more appropriate to remember smaller-scale settings for imperturbability in the face of exciting or famous or upsetting people or events—the Agassiz Cup celebration, say, or the Kirkland House dinner two years ago at which Smithies gave President Bok a long, pointed introduction, replete with references to “the days when the University was interested in education—before the present administration took office.” (“These occasions can get very stolid if you don’t liven ’em up a bit,” Smithies explains now. “I think one ought to be mildly provocative—what do you think?”)

At most, it seemed in keeping with the intoxicating spring weather to remember Smithies’s 1969 visit to occupied University Hall—the only one by a master, possibly helping to inspire his belief that by playing a “civilizing role,” “the House system vindicated itself in 1969 as I haven’t seen it do before or since.” Smithies says the visit was mostly a matter of bravado, “rather foolish. I suppose,” but he still seems proud of it—he’s supposed to have informed an occupier who called him an administration spy that he had “rather more right to be here than you do.” The occupiers voted to expel Smithies, but they allowed him to speak first. “It was rather reassuring, in a way,” he said, but the occupiers evidently weren’t sympathetic—”all I remember just what he said, but the occupiers evidently weren’t sympathetic—”all I remember is that it was philosophically weird,” one of them said recently.

Meanwhile, Smithies continued to teach macroeconomic theory, scull on the Charles, lunch in the Kirkland dining hall, even be mildly provocative, if only because senior English majors in the House were taking general exams, on such moderately unlikely subjects as the poetry of T.S. Eliot ’10. “My wife and I used to be very fond of Eliot—I think we still are,” Smithies explained later, but at lunch, he didn’t seem so sure.

“But is it poetry–the broad-backed hippopotamus?” he asked his companions, a little quizzically. Then he proceeded to rattle off three or four stanzas: The broad-backed hippopotamus Rests on his belly in the mud; Although he seems so firm to us He is merely flesh and blood…

“Is that poetry–or is it just a jingle?” he asked again. No one offered an immediate answer: things were back to normal.

Steven B. Geovanis

Image Sources: Left to right. Smithies and Galbraith from Harvard Class Album 1958; Gerschenkron from Harvard Class Album 1957.

Tags Chamberlin, Galbraith, Gerschenkron, Schelling, Smithies

Economic History Harvard Regulations

Harvard. What to do about economic history, 1973

Post author By Irwin Collier
Post date 2018-12-06

The December 1973 memo transcribed below can be viewed as a last stand in anticipation of the retirement of Alexander Gerschenkron to continue to require Harvard graduate students in economics demonstrate a modest acquaintance with some economic history from somewhere or other. The Committee writing the report consisted of two professors, Abram Bergson (Soviet economy and comparative economics) and Albert O. Hirschman (by this time dedicated to work in matters of intellectual history) along with two Harvard economics graduate students, Deborah G. Clay-Mendez (b. 1949, Harvard Ph.D., 1981) and William D. White (b. 1945, Harvard Ph.D., 1975).

Cf. Harvard’s current distribution requirement (from a screen capture dated November 13, 2018 at the Wayback Machine)

The distribution requirement is fulfilled by taking an approved field course in Economic History, Political Economy or Behavioral. The purpose of the requirement is to ensure that students are exposed to non-standard ways of thinking about issues central to economics. The course must be passed with a grade of B or better.

_______________

DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMICS

January 9, 1974

To: Members of the Department of Economics
From: James S. Duesenberry, Chairman

NOTICE OF DEPARTMENT MEETING

There will be a meeting of the Department of Economics on Tuesday, January 15^thin the Littauer Lounge from 4 to 6 p.m.

The main items on the Agenda will be a report of the Committee on Economic History Requirements and a discussion of theory requirements.

* * * * * * * * *

Course Offerings and Examinations in Economic History

As directed by the Chairman of the Economics department and the Chairman of the Graduate Instruction Committee, a Committee consisting of the undersigned has reviewed the graduate course offerings and examinations in economic history at Harvard. We have deliberated as a group a number of times, and have also solicited the opinions of persons not members of the committee, including graduate students in economics and faculty members offering courses in economic history and related fields. We focused on several related issues, and set forth below our recommendations on each in turn:

Should there be an economic history requirement for graduate students in economics? We all agreed that there should be, and that the aim of such a requirement should be to assure that the student gains an understanding of processes of long-term economic change, and of the comparative role of economic and non-economic factors in such change. The requirement should also be a means by which the student becomes better acquainted with a variety of economic institutions other than our own contemporary ones.
What sort of requirement is in order? In our view, normally the completion of work with an average grade of B+ or better in two semester courses in economic history or their equivalent. Should the student fail to achieve a grade of B+ or better in such courses, however, he may be allowed, on petition to the Committee on Economic History (see below), to complete the requirements by retaking the final examination in one or both of the courses in question. Alternatively, depending on the circumstances, the student might be asked to do under faculty guidance a research paper of suitable quality. As in the past, a creditable performance in an appropriate and suitably delimited oral examination should also signify completion of the requirement.
In what specific fields of economic history may the requirement be completed? We agreed that the requirement should permit work in various fields of economic history relating to the experience of industrialized societies including among others those of Western Europe, the United States and Japan.
To that end, the Department has an obligation to see that appropriate courses in diverse fields are in fact offered to the student. Additional courses might be made available in other departments and through cross registration at MIT, the Business School and the like.
The Committee also considered whether work in economic development or comparative economic systems might be countered towards the requirement. It was agreed that one semester’s course work in one field or the other might be counted, but on the understanding that the courses in question must be substantially concerned with processes of long-term economic change and in a context in which substantial attention is given to the interplay between economic and non-economic factors, and between economic doctrines and developments.
How should the requirement be administered? We agreed that a Committee should be appointed by the Department to oversee the economic history requirement. It should be responsible particularly for assuring that in one way or another suitable courses are available, and for determining just what courses should be eligible for meeting the economic history requirement. It should also consider petitions such as are referred to in item 2, above, and should have responsibility for setting standards for and delimiting oral examinations.

Respectfully submitted

Deborah Clay
William White
Albert Hirschman
Abram Bergson, Chairman

December 26, 1973

Source: John F. Kennedy Presidential Library. John Kenneth Galbraith Papers. Series 5. Harvard University File, 1949-1990. Box 526, Folder: “Harvard University. Department of Economics: General Correspondence, 1967-1974 (1 of 8)”.

Image Source: Abram Bergson (From National Academy of Sciences Biographical Memoir written by Paul Samuelson); Albert O. Hirschman (From the Institute for Advanced Study Archives).

Tags Bergson, Clay-Mendez, Gerschenkron, Hirschman, WhiteWD

Amherst Chicago Economists Harvard M.I.T. Placement

Chicago. Zvi Griliches asking Frank Fisher for junior appointment leads, 1961

Post author By Irwin Collier
Post date 2018-04-13

In a 1961 memo Zvi Griliches reported to his Chicago colleagues some scouting results regarding a possible junior appointment in economics. He spoke econometrician-to-econometrician with his colleague Frank Fisher at M.I.T. about the most interesting graduate students in the Cambridge area on the job market that year. Four names were mentioned, two unsurprising enough were the names of economists “unable” to be drawn from the gravitational pull of Cambridge.

Griliches ended his memo with the remark “This year Domar happens to be MIT’s ‘placement officer’ and this is likely to put us at some competitive disadvantage.” Does this mean that Griliches thought the monopsonist Evsey Domar would deliberately discriminate against the University of Chicago?

_______________

Four graduate students discussed by Zvi Griliches and Frank Fisher

Beals, Ralph E. Dept. of Econs. Amherst College, Amherst, MA 01002. Birth Yr: 1936. Degrees: B.S., U. of Kentucky, 1958; M.A., Northwestern U., 1959; Ph.D., Mass. Institute of Technol., 1970. Prin. Cur. Position: Clarence Francis Prof. of Econs., Amherst Coll., 1966. Concurrent/Past Positions: Assoc., Harvard Institute for Int’l. Develop., 1973. Research: Int’l. trade, commercial policy & industrialization in Indonesia.

[According to the Prabook website: Ralph E. Beals was Assistant professor economics, Amherst (Massachusetts) College, 1962-1963; associate professor, Amherst (Massachusetts) College, 1966-1971. ]

Hohenberg, Paul M. RPI, Dept of Econ, Troy, NY 12180. Birth Yr: 1933. Degrees: B.Ch.E., Cornell U., 1956; M.A., Tufts U., 1959; Ph.D., Mass. Institute of Technol., 1963. Prin. Cur. Position: Prof. of Econs., Rensselaer Poly. Institute, 1977. Concurrent/Past Positions: Vis. Assoc. Prof., Sir George Williams U., Montreal, 1972-74; Assoc. Prof., Cornell U., 1968-73. Research: Urbanization & econ. change in Europe and U.S.

Marglin, Stephen A. Birth Yr: 1938. Degrees: A.B., Harvard U., 1959; Ph.D., Harvard U., 1965. Prin. Cur. Position: Prof. of Econs., Harvard U.

Temin, Peter. Mass Inst of Tech, Dept of Econ, Cambridge, MA 02139. Birth Yr: 1937. Degrees: B.A., Swarthmore Coll., 1959; Ph.D., Mass. Institute of Technol., 1964. Prin. Cur. Position: Prof. of Econs., Mass. Institute of Technol., 1970. Concurrent/Past Positions: Assoc. Prof., Mass. Institute of Technol., 1967-70; Asst. Prof., Mass. Institute of Technol., 1965-67. Research: Econ. history; telecommunications policy.

Source: Biographical Listing of Members. The American Economic Review, Vol. 83, No. 6 (Dec., 1993).

_______________

Memo on possible appointments written by Zvi Griliches

November 8, 1961

[To:] A. Rees
[From:] Z. Griliches
[Re:] The possible appointments.

I had a long telephone conversation with Frank Fisher last week about “whom we should look at.” It is his opinion that the single best young man coming up now in the Cambridge area is:

Stephen A. Marglin—He is a mathematical theorist, with several papers to his credit. He has spent a year at Cambridge, England and is currently in his second year of a three year Junior Fellowship at Harvard. I had already invited him to give a talk to the workshop and he will be here on January 16 to talk on “The Social Rate of Discount and the Opportunity Costs of Public Investment.” Frank thinks that we would have a very hard time getting him, in particular for next year, but that he is clearly the best.

The best current MIT student that will be coming to the market is, in Fisher’s opinion:

Ralph Beals—who is a third year graduate student specializing in the fields of monetary policy and econometrics. He has been working with Solow and Albert Ando and his interests in the monetary area have appartently been stimulated by Solow’s and Ando’s involvement in the Monetary Commission stuff.

In addition, Fisher mentioned that there are also two ver good “economic historian types” finishing there this year:

Peter Pemin[sic, “Temin”]—who is working with Gerschenkron at Harvard, and
Paul Hohenberg—who is working withKindelberger on the sources of the econonmic development of France in the 19^thcentury.

This year Domar happens to be MIT’s “placement officer” and this is likely to put us at some competitive disadvantage.

cc: H. Johnson, M. Friedman, T. Schultz✓, G. Stigler, W. Wallis.

Source: University of Chicago Archives. Department of Economics Records, Box 42, Folder 3.

Image Source: Zvi Griliches from the University of Chicago Photographic Archive, apf1-06565, Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library.

Tags Beals, Domar, FisherFM, Gerschenkron, Griliches, Hohenberg, Marglin, Rees, Temin

Harvard Seminar Speakers

Harvard. International Economic Relations Seminar. Haberler and Harris, 1940-45

Post author By Irwin Collier
Post date 2018-02-01

The most famous economics seminar at Harvard University in the history of economics is undoubtedly the fiscal policy seminar run by John Williams and Alvin Hansen. A list of that seminar’s speakers and their topics was included in an earlier post. Below I provide the reported speaker’s and topics for the “younger” international economic relations seminar jointly organized by Gottfried Haberler and Seymour Harris during the War years.

___________________________________

EXPANSION OF THE SEMINAR PROGRAM

Several additions have been made in the seminar program of the School [of Public Administration] for the year 1940-1941. Professors Haberler and Harris are presenting a seminar on international economic relations. We planned our seminar program in 1937 on the assumption that it was wise to begin with domestic problems despite the fact that a number of the Faculty had special interests in the international field. In view of the events of the last few years, it seems highly important to develop these interests. The seminar given by Professors Haberler and Harris deals with the application of the principles of international trade to current problems…

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College and Reports of Departments for 1939-40, p. 306.

___________________________________

1940-41
INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC RELATIONS SEMINAR
[partial list]

[Seven of the meetings of the Fiscal Policy Seminar were held jointly with other seminars – four with the International Economic Relations Seminar and three with the Agricultural, Forestry, and Land Policy Seminar.]

October 11. SVEND LAURSEN, Student, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Harvard University.

Subject: International Trade and the Multiplier. (Joint meeting with Fiscal Policy Seminar.)

February 21. HARRY D. WHITE, Director, Division of Monetary Research, United States Treasury Department.

Subject: Blocked Balances. (Joint meeting with Fiscal Policy Seminar.)

March 21. RICHARD V. GILBERT, National Defense Advisory Commission.

Subject: The American Defense Program. (Joint meeting with Fiscal Policy Seminar.)

May 2. GUSTAV STOLPER, Financial Adviser.

Subject: Financing the American Defense Program. (Joint meeting with Fiscal Policy Seminar.)

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College and Reports of Departments for 1940-41, p. 323 ff.

___________________________________

INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC RELATIONS SEMINAR:
1941-1942. Professor Haberler and Associate Professor Harris

In 1941-42 the seminar devoted its attention to war and post-war problems in the field of International Economic Relations. A few meetings were spent on the discussion of fundamental theoretical problems. During the first semester all meetings were taken up by papers of outside consultants and their discussion. In the second semester student reports were presented and discussed, and a few extra meetings were arranged for outside speakers. The consultants and their topics were as follows:

October 1. EUGENE STALEY, Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. Economic Warfare.

October 8.[**] CHARLES P. KINDLEBERGER, Federal Reserve Board. Canadian-American Economic Relations in the War and Post-War Period.

October 15.[**] A. F. W. PLUMPTRE, University of Toronto. International Economic Position of Canada in the Present Emergency.

October 22. HEINRICH HEUSER, Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. Exchange Control.

October 29. FRITZ MACHLUP, University of Buffalo. The Foreign Trade Multiplier.

November 5. HENRY CHALMERS, United States Department of Commerce. Trade Restrictions in Wartime.

November 12. ARTHUR R. UPGREN, United States Department of Commerce. International Economic Interest of the United States and the Post-War Situation.

November 19. OSKAR MORGENSTERN, Princeton University. International Aspects of the Business Cycle.

November 28.[*] NOEL F. HALL, British Embassy. Economic Warfare.

December 5.[*] ROBERT BRYCE, Department of Finance, Canada. International Economic Relations with Special Reference to the Post-War Situation.

January 26.[*] PER JACOBSSEN, Bank for International Settlements. The Problem of Post-War Reconstruction.

February 13.[*] JACOB VINER, University of Chicago. Monopolistic Trading and International Relations.

February 18. H. D. FONG, Director, Nankai Institute of Economics, Chungking, China. Industrialization of China.

February 25. MICHAEL HEILPERIN, Hamilton College. International Aspects of the Present and Future Economic Situation.

March 11. JACOB MARSCHAK, New School for Social Research. The Theory of International Disequilibria.

March 14.[*] RICHARD M. BISSELL, JR., Yale University and the United States Department of Commerce. Post-War Domestic and International Investment.

March 18. ANTONIN BASCH, Brown University. International Economic Problems of Central and Southeastern Europe.

March 20.[*] ALBERT G. HART, University of Iowa. The Present Fiscal Situation.

April 10. ABBA P. LERNER, University of Kansas City. Post-War Problems.

May 8. HORST MENDERSHAUSEN, Bennington College. International Trade and Trade Policy in the Post-War Period.

Six of these were joint meetings with the Fiscal Policy Seminar [*] and two were joint meetings with the Government Control of Industry Seminar[**].

Student reports were presented on the following subjects:

Argentine International Trade.
Exchange Control in Argentina.
Some Aspects of Sino-Japanese Trade.
International Effects of Price Ceilings.
Location Theory and the Reconstruction of World Trade.
Some Post-War Politico-Economic Problems of the Western Hemisphere.
Economic Problems and Possibilities of a Pan Europe, Pan America and Similar Schemes.
The Balance of Payments of China.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College and Reports of Departments for 1941-42, pp. 344-346.

___________________________________

INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC RELATIONS SEMINAR
1942-43. Professor Haberler

A larger portion of the time of the seminar than usual was devoted to the discussion of fundamental principles of international trade and finance. This was due to the fact that the graduate course on international trade (Economics 143) was not offered, and the seminar had to take over to some extent the functions of the graduate course.

There were eleven meetings with outside consultants, of which eight were joint meetings with the Fiscal Policy seminar. The smaller number of students made it advisable to combine the two seminars more frequently than usual. The consultants and the topics discussed with them were as follows:

November 13. Professor FRITZ MACHLUP, University of Buffalo. (Joint meeting with Fiscal Policy seminar.)

Subject: National Income, Employment and International Relations; the Foreign Multiplier.

November 18. Dr. THEODORE KREPS, Economic Adviser, Board of Economic Warfare, Office of Imports.

Subject: Some Problems of Economic Warfare.

November 27. Hon. GRAHAM F. TOWERS, Governor, Bank of Canada. (Joint meeting with Fiscal Policy seminar.)

Subject: Canadian War Economic Measures.

December 4. LYNN R. EDMINSTER, Vice-Chairman, U. S. Tariff Commission. (Joint meeting with Fiscal Policy seminar.)

Subject: Post-War Reconstruction of International Trade.

December 11. Professor SEYMOUR E. HARRIS, Director, Office of Export-Import Price Control, Office of Price Administration. (Joint meeting with Fiscal Policy seminar.)

Subject: Trade Policy in Wartimes.

February 12. THOMAS MCKITTRICK, President, Bank for International Settlements. (Joint meeting with Fiscal Policy seminar.)

Subject: The Bank for International Settlements.

February 24. Dr. LEO PASVOLSKY, State Department. (Joint meeting with Fiscal Policy seminar.)

Subject: Post-War Problems in International Trade.

March 3. P. T. ELLSWORTH, War Trade Staff, Board of Economic Warfare.

Subject: The Administration of Export Control.

April 12. EMILE DESPRES, Office of Strategic Services, Washington, D. C. (Joint meeting with Fiscal Policy seminar.)

Subject: The Transfer Problem and the Over-Saving Problem in the Pre-War and Post-War Worlds.

April 16. Dr. ALBERT HAHN. (Joint meeting with Fiscal Policy seminar.)

Subject: Planned or Adjusted Post-War Economy.

April 20. Dr. ALEXANDER LOVEDAY, League of Nations.

Subject: European Post-War Reconstruction.

Student reports were presented on the following subjects among others: practice and theory of an international bank; post-war industrialization of China; coordination of fiscal policy in different countries; international position of the Brazilian economy; international commodity agreements; international implications for fiscal policy; British exchange equalization account; and Argentine exchange control.

Twelve students were enrolled in the seminar of which four were Littauer fellows, seven graduate students from the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and one from the College.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College and Reports of Departments for 1942-43, pp. 246-247.

___________________________________

INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC RELATIONS SEMINAR
1943-44. Associate Professor Harris

A new approach was tried in the International Economic Relations Seminar this year. We paid particular attention to the international economic problems of Latin America and especially to the problems raised by the great demand for Latin American products for war, the expansion of exports and of money, and the resulting inflation. Attention was also given to the transitional problems in the postwar period, particularly to the adjustments that will be required in exports, imports, capital movements, exchange rates, and the allocation of economic factors. In the course of the year leading government authorities on Latin American economic problems were invited to address meetings of the seminar, which were frequently joint meetings with the Fiscal Policy Seminar or the students of the graduate course in international organization.

The schedule of meetings for 1943-44 was as follows:

November 12. Professor HARRIS.

Subject: Inflation in Latin America.

December 9. Dr. CORWIN EDWARDS, Chairman, Policy Board of the Anti-Trust Division of the Department of Justice and Chief of Staff of the Presidential Cooke Commission to Brazil.

Subject: Brazilian Economy.

December 17. Dr. HARRY WHITE, Director of Monetary Research, Treasury Department.

Subject: Problems of International Monetary Stabilization.

January 6. Professor HARRIS.

Subject: International Economic Problems of the War and Postwar Period.

January 10. Professor HABERLER.

Subject: Reparations.

January 14. Dr. N. NESS, Member, Mexican-U. S. Economic Commission.

Subject: Mexico.

January 17. Dr. BEARDSLEY RUML, Chairman, Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

Subject: Economic Budget and Fiscal Budget.

January 21. Dr. P. T. ELLSWORTH, Economic Studies Division, Department of State.

Subject: Chile.

January 24. Dr. DON HUMPHREY, Special Advisor on Price Control to Haitian Government; Chief, Price Section, O.P.A.

Subject: Haiti.

January 31. Dr. ROBERT TRIFFIN, Member, U. S. Economic Commission to Paraguay.

Subject: Money, Banking, and Foreign Exchanges in Latin America.

February 4. Dr. MIRON BURGIN, Office of Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs.

Subject: Argentina.

February 9. Dr. FRANK WARING, Director, Research Division, Office of Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs.

Subject: Broad Aspects of Latin-American Economics.

February 10. Dr. BEN LEWIS, Head of Price Control Mission to Colombia, Special Assistant to the Price Administrator.

Subject: Colombia.

March 9. Dr. HENRY CHALMERS, Department of Commerce.

Subject: Inter-American Trade Practices.

March 31. Mr. HENRY WALLICH.

Subject: Fiscal Policy and International Equilibrium.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College and Reports of Departments for 1943-44, pp. 271-2.

___________________________________

INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC RELATIONS SEMINAR
Professor Haberler and Associate Professor Harris

The seminar meetings in the year 1944-1945 may be arranged under the following headings:

Exchanges, Controls, and International Trade (8 meetings)
Regional Problems (8 meetings).
Regional and International Aspects of Domestic Problems (8 meetings).
Lectures and Discussions on International Trade by Professors Haberler and Harris (8 meetings).

Four of the papers presented at these meetings were subsequently published in economic journals.

The schedule of meetings for 1944-1945 was as follows:

November 16. Dr. RANDALL HINSHAW, Federal Reserve Board.

Subject: American Prosperity and the British Balance-of-Payments Problem. (Published in the Review of Economic Statistics, February 1945.)

December 11. EDWARD M. BERNSTEIN, Assistant Director, Division of Monetary Research, Treasury Department.

Subject: The Scarcity of Dollars. (Published in The Journal of Political Economy, March 1945.)

December 15. Dr. FRANCIS MCINTYRE, Representative of the Foreign Economic Exchange on Requirements Board of the War Production Board.

Subject: International Distribution of Supplies in Wartime.

December 21. Dr. ALEXANDER GERSCHENKRON, Federal Reserve Board.

Subject: Some Problems of the Economic Collaboration with Russia.

January 11. Dr. WOLFGANG STOLPER, Swarthmore College.

Subject: British Balance-of-Payments Problem After World War I.

January 22. Dr. WALTER GARDNER, Federal Reserve Board.

Subject: Some Aspects of the Bretton Woods Program.

January 26. Dr. WILLIAM FELLNER, University of California.

Subject: Types of Expansionary Policies and the Rate of Interest.

January 29. Professor WALTER F. BOGNER, Dr. CHARLES R. CHERINGTON, Professors CARL J. FRIEDRICH, SEYMOUR E. HARRIS, TALCOTT PARSONS, ALFRED D. SIMPSON, and Mr. GEORGE B. WALKER.

Subject: The Boston Urban Development Plan.

March 5. Dr. ROBERT TRIFFIN, Federal Reserve Board.

Subject: International Economic Problems of South America.

March 19. Dr. LOUIS RASMINSKY, Foreign Exchange Control Board, Ottawa, Canada.

Subject: British-American Trade Problems from the Canadian Point of View. (Published in the British Economic Journal, September I945.)

March 22. Dr. ROBERT A. GORDON, War Production Board.

Subject: International Raw Materials Control: War and Postwar.

March 26. Dr. HERBERT FURTH, Federal Reserve Board.

Subject: Monetary and Financial Problems in the Liberated Countries.

April 2. Dr. LLOYD METZLER, Federal Reserve Board.

Subject: Postwar Economic Policies of the United Kingdom. (An article based on this paper and written in collaboration with Dr. RANDALL HINSHAW was published in The Review of Economic Statistics, November 1945.)

April 16. Professor EDWARD S. MASON, State Department, Washington.

Subject: Commodity Agreements.

April 23. Dr. ABBA P. LERNER, New School for Social Research, N. Y.

Subject: Postwar Policies.

April 27. Professor JOHN VAN SICKLE, Vanderbilt University.

Subject: Wages and Employment: A Regional Approach.

May 14. Dr. E. M. H. LLOYD, United Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, British Treasury.

Subject: Inflation in Europe.

May 28. Professor LEON DUPRIEZ, University of Louvain, Belgium.

Subject: Problem of Full Employment in View of Recent European Experience.

May 29. Professor SEYMOUR E. HARRIS, Professor WASSILY W. LEONTIEF, Professor GOTTFRIED HABERLER, Professor ALVIN H. HANSEN.

Subject: The Shorter Work Week and Full Employment.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College and Reports of Departments for 1944-45, pp. 285-6.

Tags Bissell, Despres, Fellner, Furth, Gerschenkron, GilbertRV, GordonRA, Haberler, Hansen, Harris, HartAG, Heuser, Hinshaw, Kindleberger, Leontief, Lerner, Loveday, Machlup, Marschak, Mason, Mendershausen, Metzler, Morgenstern, Sickle, Staley, Stolper, StolperG, Triffin, Viner, Wallich, White

Funny Business Harvard M.I.T.

Harvard or MIT. Economics graduate student skit, ca. 1963.

Post author By Irwin Collier
Post date 2017-12-18

Because of the reference to Jaroslav Vanek’s leaving Harvard, we are able to date the following script to 1962-63 since Vanek left Harvard to work at the State Department in 1963. Almost everything about this script would lead me to conclude that it was used in a Harvard graduate student skit that somehow wound up in the folder for the Graduate Student Association at the Department of Economics of M.I.T. The folder is otherwise filled with clearly M.I.T. skit material from the 1960s. One of the students is identified as “David” another “Bob” and the third looks like “Les”.

Lester Thurow did get his Ph.D. from Harvard in 1964 and came to M.I.T. in 1968 so it is not inconceivable that the following transcription is indeed based upon his personal typed script copy with original pencil stage directions that made its way into the folder.

One thing that I find rather surprising about the text is just how many Harvard professors’ names have been misspelled.

__________________________

D—This is a review with a message—a message no economist can afford to ignore. The year is 2000 A.D. 16 years have now passed since 1984, that Armageddon of the economics profession when Professor Wassily Leontief finally established that the world really was homogeneous of degree one. The then President of the United States, Mr. Norman Mailer, immediately issued the great Marginal Product Proclamation. Everyone was to receive their marginal product.

B— But there was nothing left over for the economists. Economists became the hand-loom weavers of the 20^th. century.

L—Arthur Schlesinger Jr. vividly described their position in a 17-volume work entitled “The Coming of the Raw Deal.” Economists everywhere, after the first shock, set out upon new careers. Tonight we shall discover what happened to some of those whom we know and love.

D—Several of them went into the movie industry and we will now let you hear the soundtrack of the preview of one of their movies.

(Epic Music—Bruckner?)

[Insert: Stand]

L—Ladies and Gentlemen, 21^st Century Fox are proud to present Arthur Smithies and Joan Robinson in….The Big Push, the story of the unbalanced growth of an economist….

B—Production by Karl [sic] Kaysen

D—Copyright by Edward Hastings Chamberlain [sic]

L—All labor disputes on location and with Elizabeth Taylor arbitrated by John Dunlop.

B—Continuity by Simon Kuznets

L—Editing by Seymour Harris, of course.

D—Costumes by Robert Dorfman.

B—This is the story of Ragnar Maynard von Eckstein (his parents had always wanted him to be an economist). After many struggles at last he got to Harvard Graduate School.

L—It is a tale of ^|horror. See him now at a seminar on the economics of Medical Care…..

D—This after-noon I am going to discuss the economics of Blood-banking. One of the crucial problems in this field is what proportion to maintain of liquid assets. In this category we have blood [Insert: L. What about near blood] near-blood. We also have non-liquid assets—bonds in the form of pounds of flesh. Another problem is the current shortage of tellers, for we can only employ vampires with a strong liquidity preference. If we cannot get more it will clot up the flow of funds and reduce the velocity of circulation.

L—It is a tale of ^|ambition…..

B—Coming from a family whose marginal product was zero, Ragnar Maynard realized that to get on quickly he must publish something. But what? He had not written anything. But our resourceful hero saw a way out: he would publish his first book before it was written. It was called First Draft, a revised tentative, preliminary, provisional text. It was based on Photostat copies of his blackboard notes.

L—It is a tale of ^|love….

D—Ragnar Manyrd fell passionately in love with a beautiful capital theorist, played in the movie by ravishing Joan Robinson. His demand for her love was infinitely elastic; her supply could not meet him—at least not at his price. The price was to join him in his exhausting search over peaks and through troughs for the elusive U-shaped cost curve.

L—It is a tale of^|excitement

B—See Ragnar Maynard trying to free himself from the dreaded liquidity trap.

Insert: D—It’s true, it really is thicker than water

L—All this and more you can see in this movie—The Big Push is a take-off point in the development of the motion-picture.

B—See the exciting attempt on Professor Leontief’s life (with a 202 rifle) to try to prevent him revealing his startling discovery of a constant returns world.

D—See the world’s largest input-output table which proved it—drawn by the Economic Research project in the sand of the New Mexican desert.

L—You cannot afford to miss this motion picture. Filmed in wonderful new—Solocolor. An introducing revolutionary—Rostowscope.

(concluding epic music)

[Insert: Sit]

D—But the movies could not accommodate everybody…

[Insert: Bob in middle]

[Insert: one illegible word]

L—Professor Leontief, having escaped with his life, and using his input-output table from Scientific American as a testimonial, got into the business of designing bathroom tiles.

B—Professor Duesenbery [sic] was well qualified to go into the demonstration business. He drove Cadillacs around low-income districts to stimulate demand. And changed his name to Jones so that it would be him that everyone was keeping up with.

D—In England many economists went to work for the government where they produced a remarkable effect. Before 1984 political speeches had sounded something like this.

B—Good evening; I’m the Prime Minister. My name is….. [insert: ad lib] etc.

D—But now all this has changed…

B—Good evening…[insert: ad lib] etc.

L—Professor Tom Schelling took up a career in Madison avenue. It was he who was responsible for some of the following products…

D—Ladies, now you can wear the most powerful and alluring perfume in the world—First Strike—the only perfume with complete credibility. It also contains the only deodorant with overkill.

B—Now at last there is a product to take away the smell of deodorant—it is called Counterforce. Only Counterforce gives you 24-hour protection against odorlessness. [Insert: 5120 or S120]

[Insert: STAND]

L—For years girls have been searching for a perfume which will attract the men and yet prevent them from taking liberties—now they have it in the form of Deterrence—the perfume which is effective [Insert: only] if you don’t use it.

D—He also introduced a city wide deodorant campaign under the title of Civil defence.

L—And the only really safe method of birth control—Early Warning.

B—Meanwhile Professor Dunlop had become a truck driver and a shop steward for Jimmy Hoffa.

D—And Professor Kuznets took to selling abacuses.

[Insert: Some economists, not from Harvard opened a cafeteria.]

[Insert: Bob-Les—come forward]

L—Professor Galbraith first thought of becoming a rice farmer. But he soon saw that since there was no more need for economists he could now come into his own. After a coup d’etat he took over the Littauer building and changed it into the department of Affluent Studies. The idea was the ultra-popularization of economics; the main qualification for admission was to be a good phrase-monger. The new department published books like…

B—The Economics of Sex, with an appendix on the second derivatives of Jayne Mansfield. A geometric interpretation with diagrams.

D—The department became identified with a new theory of economic decline, published as a non-Rostovian manifesto. All countries, it said, tend to decline, and their speed of decline is determined by their relative degree of economic advancement. Its five stages of decline started with the age of mass consumption, through the age of preconditions for decline, coming then to the crucial landing stage.

B—Other books appeared like ‘The Naked Truth about Public Squalor, and so on.

[Insert: Pause—back to audience]

L—Only one of the redundant economists took the highest calling of all. Let us now eavesdrop on a sermon by [Insert: his eminence] Archbishop Gerschenkron…

[Insert: seated]

B—You know, when I was an economist one of my graduate students wrote a very good paper for my course. Matthew, [Insert: I said] why don’t you publish this paper, no, really why don’t you publish. But you know youll have to change the title. What journal is going to publish a paper called ‘the First Gospel’? But you know it really was a very good paper. There was a lot of interesting material about the farm problem in Egypt and about the almost miraculous elasticity of supply of loaves and small fishes in Gallillee [sic]. Then there was a very good section about Christ throwing the money-changers from the temple. Well, you see, the rate of interest was very high then. Don’t you think that the real reason why Christ did this was to reduce the rate of interest and to stimulate investment. You see, I wanted Matthew to rewrite his paper for the Quarterly Journal and call it ‘Christ as a proto-Keynsian’ [sic] But no, he was a very strong-willed boy and he brought it out in a syposium [sic] edited by Seymour Harris, called the Bible, essays in honor of God. But, you know, it was still required reading for my course.

D—Professor Harberler [sic] took to song writing, and here is a sample…

[Insert: stand behind table]

(tune: God bless America)

[Insert: All:] God bless free enterprise,
[Insert: MOC or HOC or NOC] System divine,
Stand beside her and guide her,
Just as long as the profits are mine.
[Insert: Salute]
Corporations may they prosper
Big business, may it grow!
[Insert: MOC or HOC or NOC] God bless Free Enterprise,
The Status quo!

L—Well, David, I guess that’s it. Do you think they’ll throw us out?

D—I dont know. But I dont suppose we’ll ever be allowed to pass generals. There are still some jobs you can get without a Ph.D.

B—No chance at all is there? I mean about generals….

D—Well they were all in it weren’t they—all the generals board.

L—What about Professor Vanek? He emerged unscathed.

D—That’s true but he’s leaving.

B—That’s fair, of course.

L—Yes, he hasn’t done much since he’s been here really.

D—Half a dozen good articles…

B—4 books, or is it 5?

L—He’s become an acknowledged expert on at least two major fields of economics…

D—A clear and stimulating teacher…
And a nice guy…

L—Not much really. [Insert: Clearly not a Harvard type]

B—Not surprised they’re letting him go

D—Well, that’s it then.

B—One more thing actually…The perpetrators of this entertainment would like it to be known that any resemblance of characters in this review to any person or persons living or half-dead is purely intentional.

L—So be it.

All—In the name of the Holy Trinity:

D—Dorfman,

L—Samuelson,

B—and Solow.

All—Amen

Source: MIT Archives. Department of Economics Records, Box 2, Folder “GEA 1961-67”.

Tags Chamberlin, Duesenberry, Dunlop, Eckstein, Galbraith, Gerschenkron, Haberler, Harris, Kuznets, Leontief, Smithies, Thurow

About Chairman John T. Dunlop (Harvard Album, 1960)

Previously posted departmental reports

Report Department of Economics, 1961-1962

ECONOMICS NEWSLETTER Fifth Annual Issue, June 1, 1960

UNDERGRADUATE INSTRUCTION:

MATHEMATICS- LANGUAGE REQUIREMENT:

THE ECONOMICS OF HIGHER EDUCATION:

PERSONNEL:

The Provost is not amused [No letterhead, unsigned. Apparently a copy.]

C O N F I D E N T I A L

REPORT ON LONG-RANGE PLANS FOR THE DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMICS (REVISED EDITION)

February 25, 1948

Previous posts (for 1921-1941)

1929-30

From Course Announcements

Enrollment

1929-30. Harvard University. Economics 231. [Mid-year Exam, 1930]

1929-30 Harvard University. Economics 25 [Mid-year Exam, 1930]

PART I

PART II

1929-30 Harvard University. Economics 25 [Year-end Exam, 1930]

1930-1931

From Course Announcements

Enrollment

1930-31 Harvard University Economics 23. [Mid-year Exam 1931]

1930-31 Harvard University Economics 25 [Mid-Year Exam, 1931]

1930-31 Harvard University Economics 25 [Year-end Exam, 1931]

1931-1932

From Course Announcements

Enrollment

1931-32 Harvard University Economics 23 [Final Exam 1932]

1931-32 Harvard University Economics 25 [Mid-Year Exam, 1932]

1931-32 Harvard University Economics 25 [Year-End Exam, 1932]

1932-1933

From Course Announcements

Enrollment

1932-33 Harvard University Economics 251 [Mid-year Final Exam, 1933]

1933-1934

From Course Announcements

Enrollment

1933-34 Havard University Economics 232 [Final Exam 1934]

1934-1935

From Course Announcements

Enrollment

Economics 21. Economic History to 1450. Readings and paper topics, Usher. 1934

1934-35 Harvard University Economics 21 [Final Exam. Jan 18, 1935]

1934-35 Harvard University Economic 23 [Mid-year Exam 1935]

1934-35 Harvard University Economics 23 [Year-end Exam, 1935]

1935-1936

From Course Announcements

Enrollment

1935-36 Harvard University Economics 23 [Mid-year Exam, 1936]

1935-36 Harvard University Economics 23 [Year-end Exam, 1936]

Summer School of Harvard University August 15, 1936 Economics S20 (Economics 23)

1936-1937

From Course Announcements

Enrollment

1936-37 Harvard University Economics 133 [Year-end Examination, 1937]

1937-1938

From Course Announcements

Enrollment

1937-38 Harvard University Economics 133 [Mid-year Exam, 1938]

1937-38 Harvard University Economics 133 [Year-end Exam, 1938]

1938-1939

From Course Announcements

Enrollment

1938-39 Harvard University Economics 133 [Mid-year Exam, 1939]

1938-39 Harvard University Economics 133 [Year-end Exam, 1939]

1939-1940

From Course Announcements

Enrollment

1939-40 HARVARD UNIVERSITY ECONOMICS 133 [Mid-Year Exam, 1940]

1939-1940 HARVARD UNIVERSITY ECONOMICS 133 [Year-End Exam, 1940]

1940-1941

From Course Announcements

Enrollment

1940-41 Harvard University Economics 133 [Mid-year Exam, 1941]

1940-41 Harvard University Economics 133 [Year-end Exam, 1941]

1941-1942

From Course Announcements

About Chairman John T. Dunlop
(Harvard Album, 1960)

Report
Department of Economics, 1961-1962

ECONOMICS NEWSLETTER
Fifth Annual Issue, June 1, 1960

The Provost is not amused
[No letterhead, unsigned.
Apparently a copy.]

REPORT ON LONG-RANGE PLANS
FOR THE
DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMICS
(REVISED EDITION)

Previous posts
(for 1921-1941)

1929-30.
Harvard University.
Economics 23¹.
[Mid-year Exam, 1930]

1929-30
Harvard University.
Economics 25
[Mid-year Exam, 1930]

1929-30
Harvard University.
Economics 25
[Year-end Exam, 1930]

1930-31
Harvard University
Economics 23.
[Mid-year Exam 1931]

1930-31
Harvard University
Economics 25
[Mid-Year Exam, 1931]

1930-31
Harvard University
Economics 25
[Year-end Exam, 1931]

1931-32
Harvard University
Economics 23
[Final Exam 1932]

1931-32
Harvard University
Economics 25
[Mid-Year Exam, 1932]

1931-32
Harvard University
Economics 25
[Year-End Exam, 1932]

1932-33
Harvard University
Economics 25¹
[Mid-year Final Exam, 1933]

1933-34
Havard University
Economics 23²
[Final Exam 1934]

Economics 21. Economic History to 1450.
Readings and paper topics, Usher. 1934

1934-35
Harvard University
Economics 21
[Final Exam. Jan 18, 1935]

1934-35
Harvard University
Economic 23
[Mid-year Exam 1935]

1934-35
Harvard University
Economics 23
[Year-end Exam, 1935]

1935-36
Harvard University
Economics 23
[Mid-year Exam, 1936]

1935-36
Harvard University
Economics 23
[Year-end Exam, 1936]

Summer School of Harvard University
August 15, 1936
Economics S20 (Economics 23)

1936-37
Harvard University
Economics 133
[Year-end Examination, 1937]

1937-38
Harvard University
Economics 133
[Mid-year Exam, 1938]

1937-38
Harvard University
Economics 133
[Year-end Exam, 1938]

1938-39
Harvard University
Economics 133
[Mid-year Exam, 1939]

1938-39
Harvard University
Economics 133
[Year-end Exam, 1939]

1939-40
HARVARD UNIVERSITY
ECONOMICS 133
[Mid-Year Exam, 1940]

1939-1940
HARVARD UNIVERSITY
ECONOMICS 133
[Year-End Exam, 1940]

1940-41
Harvard University
Economics 133
[Mid-year Exam, 1941]

1940-41
Harvard University
Economics 133
[Year-end Exam, 1941]

1941-42
Harvard University
Economics 133
[Mid-year Exam, 1942]

1941-42
Harvard University
Economics 133
[Year-end Exam, 1942]

1942
Harvard University
Economics S133

1942-43
Harvard University
Economics 133
[Mid-year Exam, 1943]

1942-43
Harvard University
Economics 133
[Year-end Exam, 1943]

1943-44
Harvard University
Economics 33a, 133a
[Final Examination, June 1944]

1943-44
Harvard University
Economics 33b, 133b
[Final Exam, February 1944]

1944-45
Harvard University
Economics 33a, 133a
[Final Exam, February 1945]

1944-45
Harvard University
Economics 33b, 133b
[Final Exam. June 1945]

1945-1946
Harvard University
Economic 133a
[Final Exam, August 1946]

1945-1946
Harvard University
Economics 133b
[Final Exam, August 1946]

1946-47
Harvard University
Economics 133a
[Final Exam, January 1947]

1946-47
Harvard University
Economics 133b
[Final Exam, May 1947]

1947-48
Harvard University
Economics 133a
[Final Exam, January 1948]

1947-48
Harvard University
Economics 133b
[Final Exam, May 1948]

1948-49
Harvard University
Economics 233a
[Final Exam, January 1949]

1948-49
Harvard University
Economics 233b
[Final Exam, June 1949]

HARVARD UNIVERSITY
Department of Economics

EXAM RECORDS
September 1971-September 1972

Comparison between Thesis
and Special Examination

Unsent, but circulated, reaction to Galbraith’s proposal
by Alexander Gerschenkron

HARVARD UNIVERSITY
DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMICS

An Academic [Arthur Smithies] in the War
By Seth M. Kupferberg