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Economics Programs Economists M.I.T.

M.I.T. Department of Economics Annual Report by E. Cary Brown, 1975-1976

The following annual report of the M.I.T. department of economics was most likely written for the care and feeding of administrators and the members of the department’s visiting committee. This report covers what was my second year of graduate school, so for folks from that time it reads like an annual Holiday newsletter to the family.

_______________________

Department of Economics
1975 – 76

Undergraduate Program

The long-run impact of the past year’s changes in the Institute Requirement in the Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences is not yet clear. Unquestionably they have increased the Department’s enrollment, but the precise amount is uncertain because simultaneously a major revision was made in the two introductory economics subjects. In the past year enrollments were larger than previously, but smaller than in the transition of the previous year. Nearly 200 of the Class of 1976 concentrated in economics for their Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences Requirement. Of all students presently enrolled, 327 (primarily juniors and seniors) have elected to concentrate in economics.

Undergraduate majors remain steady in numbers. As in 1974-75, 20 degrees were awarded. In the spring term the Undergraduate Economics Association was reactivated. Its weekly meetings with faculty led to several proposals for revision of the undergraduate program, and several student-faculty socials were organized.

Graduate Program

Enrollment has been remarkably steady in the graduate program. The number of applications for admission was virtually identical to the average of the previous six years. Next year’s entering class of 32 will be slightly larger than average, and will have fewer foreign students and more women, reflecting a shift in the percentage of applications from these groups. Four students from minority groups are expected to be in this class.

Financial support for the graduate student has changed very little over the last several years. We are still fortunate in having from one-third to one-half of the entering students on National Science Foundation Fellowships. For the whole student body, there has been an increase in the support by US foundations (other than NSF) and a decrease in support provided by M.I.T.

The number receiving the Doctor of Philosophy increased somewhat in the past year to 21. For the first time, two American blacks received degrees.* The class fared well in placement, their median salary offer totaling 24 percent above that of 1971. Like the past average, 86 percent went into teaching and 14 percent into non-teaching positions.

*Samuel Myers, Jr. Ph.D. thesis: “A Portfolio Model of Illegal Transfers”, supervised by Robert Solow.
Glenn Loury. Ph.D. thesis: “Essays in the Theory of the Distribution of Income”, supervised by Robert Solow.
See: William Darity Jr. and Arden Kreeger, “The Desegregation of an Elite Economics Department’s PhD Program: Black Americans at MIT“, History of Political Economy 46 (annual suppl.)

The Graduate Economics Association awarded the outstanding teacher in the Department prize to Professor Stanley Fischer.

PUBLIC SERVICE ACTIVITIES

The faculty has always been involved in public service activities tying research to the public interest. In connection with M.I.T.’s participation in the Bicentennial Celebration, Professor Jagdish N. Bhagwati set up a recent conference on the New International Economic Order: Professor Ann F. Friedlaender is planning one for this fall on Air Pollution and Administrative Control. Through the German Marshall Fund, Professor Richard S. Eckaus is organizing a fall conference on economic problems of Portugal. Professor Franco Modigliani arranged a conference through the Bank of Finland on International Monetary Mechanisms.

Various Congressional committees and government agencies have been advised. Professor Peter A. Diamond served on the Consultant Panel on Social Security for the Congressional Research Service. Professors Rudiger Dornbusch and Fischer and Institute Professor Paul A. Samuelson prepared a report for the US Department of Commerce on international financial arrangements. Professor Robert E. Hall was a member of the Advisory Committee on Population Statistics, Bureau of the Census. Professor Jerry A. Hausman served on the Econometrics Advisory Committee to the Federal Energy Administration. Institute Professor Modigliani was a consultant and member of the Committee on Monetary Statistics, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. Institute Professor Samuelson consulted with the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, the US Treasury, and the Congressional Budget Office. Professor Charles A. Myers was a member of the National Manpower Policy Task Force. Institute Professor Robert M. Solow served as Deputy Chairman, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.

Several faculty members have been involved with the National Academy of Sciences and its related organizations. Professor Eckaus prepared a report, Appropriate Technology for Developing Countries, for the Board on Science and Technology for Developing Countries of the National Academies of Science and Engineering. Professor Franklin M. Fisher served on a National Academy panel on the Effects of Deterrence and Incapacitation; Professor Friedlaender was on the Executive Committee, Assembly of Behavioral and Social Sciences, National Research Council; Institute Professor Modigliani was on the Finance Committee; Institute Professor Samuelson served on the Editorial Board of the Proceedings; and Institute Professor Solow chaired the Steering Committee on Environmental Studies.

Professor Eckaus led an OECD Mission to Portugal that included Professors Lance Taylor and Dornbusch.* Professor Paul L. Joskow was a consultant to OECD in energy. Professor Evsey D. Domar was a member of a delegation of economists sent by the American Economic Association to the Soviet Union. Institute Professor Modigliani, who gave much time to the problems of stabilization in Italy, was a member of the Board of Directors of the Italian Council for Social Sciences.

*Along with several graduate students among whom were Paul Krugman, Andrew Abel and Jeffrey Frankel. Paul Krugman has written a short note about this experience with a picture!

The Brookings Institution Panel for Economic Activity included Professors Dornbusch and Hall, with Institute Professors Modigliani, Samuelson, and Solow as senior advisors to it. Professor Friedlaender served on the examining committee, Graduate Records Examination, Educational Testing Service. Institute Professor Modigliani served on the Committee on Economic Stabilization, Social Science Research Council. Professor Fisher is a member of the Board of Governors of Tel Aviv University. Institute Professor Solow continues as Trustee for the Institute of Advanced Study.

RESEARCH

International topics seem to dominate the research interests of the faculty. Professor Bhagwati, in addition to his work in developing countries and international trade theory, has given attention to a proposal for applying taxation to the brain drain. Professor Eckaus studied the role of financial markets and their regulation and the behavior of income distribution in economic development. Professor Taylor had three major areas of research: the development of nutrition planning models in Pakistan, international food aid and reserve policies, and growth and income distribution in Brazil.

Professor Morris A. Adelman’s continuing research on the world oil market, Professor Joskow’s analysis of the international nuclear energy industry, and Professor Martin L. Weitzman’s examination of OPEC and oil pricing involve applied microeconomics with international implications.

Research in various applied microeconomics areas was responsible for the second largest fraction of faculty effort. Institute Professor Solow continued to research the economics of exhaustible resources, and Professor Weitzman completed his analysis of the optimal development of resource pools. Professor Joskow has explored the future of the electric utility industry and its financing, the future of the US atomic energy industry, and the pattern of energy consumption in the US. He is developing a simulation model of the energy industry, and is reviewing the regulatory activities of government agencies in general and the health care sector in particular. Professor Hausman examined the Project Independence Report and is analyzing the choice of new technologies in energy research.

In the transporation field, Professor Friedlaender surveyed the issues in regulatory policy for railroads and alternative scenarios in federal transporation policy. Professor Jerome Rothenberg examined such problems in urban transportation as pricing policies, demand sensitivity to price, and modeling locational effects. Professor William C. Wheaton considered an optimal pricing and investment policy in highways under a gasoline tax.

Inextricably intertwined with urban transportation are questions of urban location and housing. Professor Rothenberg carried out research in such aspects of this problem as microeconomics of internal migration, supply-demand for housing in multizoned areas, the impact of energy costs on urban location, and the development of a model of housing markets and of metropolitan development and location that can be applied to general policy questions. Professor Wheaton developed an equilibrium model of housing and locational choice based on Boston experience.

Institute Professor Modigliani also conducted research on the housing market, but his interest comes primarily from the side of stabilization policies and similar macroeconomic problems. He also participated in a review after 20 years of his life cycle hypothesis of saving, made monetary policy prescriptions for both the US and Italy, reflected on the description of financial sectors in econometric models, and explored more deeply the application of optimal control to the design of optimal stabilization policies in economic models. Institute Professor Samuelson reviewed the art and science of macromodels over the 50 years of their development. Professor Friedlaender completed a quarterly macromodel of the Massachusetts economy. Professor Hall developed a model to deal with income tax changes and consumption.

Public economics has both macro and micro aspects, both of which are represented in the Department’s research. With Visiting Professor James A. Mirrlees, Professor Diamond theorized about public shadow prices with constant returns to scale, and about the assignment of liability. He also has generalized the Ramsey tax rule and continued his research into an optimal Social Security system. Professor Hausman is reexamining the cost of a negative income tax; Professor Rothenberg analyzed the distributional impact of public service provision; and Professor Wheaton explored intertemporal effects of land taxes, fiscal federalism in practice, and the financial plight of American cities.

Besides such theoretical research, there was significant research of an entirely pure nature. Professor Robert L. Bishop reexamined the measurement of consumer surplus. Professor Fisher extended his exploration of the stability of general equilibrium and of aggregate production functions. Professor Weitzman investigated the welfare significance of national product in a dynamic economy. Professor Hal R. Varian further explored the theory of fairness, non-Walrasian equilibria, and macromodels of unemployment and disequilibrium. Professor Hausman examined the econometric implications of truncated distributions and samples, of probit models, and of simultaneous equation models. In historical research, Professor Domar was concerned with serfdom, while Professor Charles Kindleberger investigated the role of the merchant in nineteenth-century technologic transfer.

Publications

Professor Bhagwati edited Taxing the Brain Drain: A Proposal and Brain Drain and Taxation: Theory and Empirical Analysis, and coauthored Foreign Trade Regimes and Economic Development: India. Professors Dornbusch and Kindleberger published numerous papers on implications of the new international monetary exchange structure for exchange rates, price stability, international trade, and international capital movements. Professor Weitzman continued his study of the Russian economy with a paper on the new Soviet incentive model.

With Visiting Professor of Management Ezio Tarantelli*, Institute Professor Modigliani published Labor Market, Income Distribution and Private Consumption (in Italian) and various papers on stabilization policy in Italy. He also wrote papers on inflation and the housing market and edited New Mortgage Designs for Stable Housing in an Inflationary Environment. Professor Hall’s labor market research resulted in papers on persistence of unemployment, occupational mobility, and taxation of earnings under public assistance. Professor Michael Piore wrote on labor market stratification and the effect on industrial growth of immigration from Puerto Rico to Boston. Professor Fisher had several publications on indexation and adjustment of mortgages to inflationary episodes. In the realm of economic history, Professor Temin published Reckoning with Slavery and Did Monetary Force Cause the Great Depression?

*Ezio Tarantelli was the victim of a Red Brigades’ assassination in 1985.

Institute Professor Samuelson published theoretical papers on factor price equalization and trade pattern reversal. In the realm of pure research, he put out papers on nonlinear and stochastic population analysis, optimal population growth, and the optimal Social Security system implied in a lifecycle growth model. He also brought out the tenth edition of his famous text, Economics: An Introduction Analysis.

FACULTY

Visiting Professor John R. Moroney was here from Tulane University; Visiting Professor Mirrlees came in the spring term from Nuffield College, Oxford University. Regular faculty on leave were Professors Fisher and Joskow in the fall and Professor Weitzman in the spring.

It is a pleasure to report the promotion to Associate Professor of Jerry A. Hausman. A new appointee, Professor Jeffrey E. Harris, with the unusual background of an M.D. and a Ph.D. in economics, will provide long-sought coverage in health economics.

Professor Kindleberger will retire as Ford Professor and become a Senior Lecturer on a half-time basis. Since 1948, when he came as an Associate Professor, Professor Kindleberger has been an effective teacher, scholar, participant in faculty governance, and counselor to governments and the public. He has trained the leading international economists of the next generation; he has produced a dozen books and more than a hundred articles in international trade and finance and in economic history. He epitomizes the highest kind of academician.

Several honors were bestowed on members of the Department. Institute Professor Modigliani will complete his year as President of the American Economic Association. Professor Myers received a Distinguished Alumni award from Pennsylvania State University. Professor Fisher was F.W. Paish Lecturer to the Association of (English) University Teachers of Economics. Institute Professor Solow received a D. Litt. from Warwick University, and Institute Professor Samuelson, a D.Sc. from the University of Rochester.

EDGAR CARY BROWN

Source: MIT Libraries, Institute Archives and Special Collections. MIT Department of Economics Records, Box 1, Folder “Annual Report 1975-6”.

Image Source: Building E52, Alfred P. Sloan Jr. Building, later Morris and Sophie Chang Building

 

https://mitmuseum.mit.edu/collections/subject/building-e52-alfred-p.-sloan-jr.-building-later-morris-and-sophie-chang-building-52

Categories
Economics Programs M.I.T. Undergraduate

M.I.T. Economics department committee (re-)organization. 1976-78

During my second year in graduate school at M.I.T. (1975-76), the economics department professors were engaged in a discussion about reforming the administration of their department. At the time I was completely unaware of this discussion that had been provoked by the following memorandum written by then Department Head, Professor E. Cary Brown, based on his experience with the growing overload of administrative chores and responsibilities in a department with the scale of that attained by M.I.T.’s economics department.

Brown’s memo to the faculty is followed by a transcription of a copy of the letter Brown wrote to Robert Solow, who as an administrative reorganization committee member, must have been asked for some further testimony. The entire committee’s (Peter A. Diamond, Stanley Fischer, Jerry Hausman, Paul Joskow, Robert M. Solow) report was completed two months after Brown’s memo. In the same departmental file from the M.I.T. archives, one finds a copy of the actual assignment of administrative responsibilities for the academic year 1977/78.

Many, if not most, of the administrative tasks had been allocated and faithfully executed before this “reorganization”. I know that Evsey Domar had long been covering the placement of new Ph.D.’s and also proudly serving as the departmental representative for library-related affairs. I sense reading these documents that the truly neglected child all along was the undergraduate program for which some arm-twisting was required to achieve equitable burden-sharing among the faculty. But perhaps there were other specific items that had been sore points too. Maybe Brown simply wanted an explicit organization chart to forestall “whataboutism” from the mouths of relatively uncooperative colleagues. But like I wrote above, this was a discussion that was invisible to me (appropriately so) at the time.

Cf. The committee assignments in the Harvard economics department during the 1972-73 academic year. 

__________________________

MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMICS
CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS 02139

March 12, 1976

Economics Department Faculty

Dear [blank]

For some time I have become increasingly dismayed at the increase in the administrative burden in the Department, and now find the present job as Head to be a nearly impossible one. If the job is to be made tolerable, it must have substantial additional faculty support in some form to cut it down to a scope manageable either by me or a successor.

There are two basic ways that this can be achieved: (1) by spreading the administrative activities and responsibilities more widely among the faculty; or (2) placing these tasks on essentially an associate departmental head, whose precise title could take various forms Executive Officer, Academic Officer (e.g., Tony French in Physics), or Associate Head. I personally would favor the Associate Head route, but regard it as an open question subject to further discussion and consideration, and to Administration approval. This new structure should be treated as an experiment, to last no longer than until the next Head is chosen, and to be reconsidered at that time.

My own thinking about the administrative tasks of the Department separates them into four major areas: undergraduate programs, graduate programs, research programs, and personnel and budgeting. While these can be headed by an administrator or by faculty, it seems to me that the first two programs should have formal faculty control regardless of the form the administrative reorganization takes. The graduate program nearly has that form now and largely runs itself, with the exception of a few odds and ends that now lie outside the responsibility of the graduate registration officers. The undergraduate program is a long way from this structure and will require a good deal of imagination, initiative and effort to resuscitate the Undergraduate Economics Association and provide more guidance and support for majors. The research programs (student and faculty) focus more or less clearly under the Committee on Economic Research. Personnel and budgeting are an administrative responsibility. They have involved increasing amounts of time as budgets have tightened, space has tightened, and the search for new faculty has expanded.

The administrative structure is an important matter to the Department. Because it involves departmental administration and the role of the Department Head, it concerns the Administration through Dean Hanham. He has asked me to appoint the following committee to consider these questions of reorganization and to make recommendations: Bob Solow, Peter Diamond, Stan Fischer, Paul Joskow, and Jerry Hausman. Please give your views to members of the committee as soon as you can.

Sincerely,
[signed “Cary”]
E. Cary Brown, Head

ECB/sc

__________________________

Brown to Solow

March 16, 1976

Professor Robert Solow
E52-383

Dear Bob:

I shrink from making organization charts, but the following diagram is intended to give some idea of the orders of magnitude of faculty involvement in departmental chores.

Chairman, Committee on Undergraduate Studies

  1. Faculty counselors (we have agreed with the UEA to keep members to 10 or less, and let faculty build up expertise by staying adviser for freshman, sophomore, junior, or senior year).

—10 faculty: 2 for each class. 4 for seniors

  1. Faculty adviser for humanities concentration in economics (advises and signs up students); also considers the eligibility of economics subjects, what we consider concentration, etc.
  2. Closely related to (2) is possible membership on the so-called Humanities Committee that approves and reviews the whole Humanities, Arts, and Social Science requirement and program. (We have no one on this year but as the largest concentration will surely need to have a presence.)
  3. Approval of transfer of credits from other schools to M.I.T.
  4. Advising with Undergraduate Economic Association in matters academic, professional, social.
  5. Undergraduate placement, while an Institute responsibility, could be supervised and assisted by a faculty member who would keep up to date on summer placement, interning possibilities, salaries. The experience our students have applying to graduate schools, actual jobs offered and taken.
  6. Design of curriculum, cooperative program, etc.
  7. Various activities, such as providing information to undergraduates in their choice of major (Midway in fall, seminar in spring), Open House activities, Alumni activities, etc.
  8. Relations with other Departments at undergraduate level, such as subject offerings, subject content, etc.
  9. Supervision and staffing of undergraduate subjects with multiple sections — 14.001, 14.002, 14.03, 14.04, 14.06, 14.30, 14.31.
  10. Catalog copy.

Chairman, Committee on Graduate Studies

  1. Graduate Registration Officers, so far one each for first two years, and one for thesis writers. Has been suggested that we have an additional adviser for foreign students and minority and women?
  2. Admissions Committee has, in the past, had three members.
  3. Placement, both summer and permanent.
  4. Supervision of core subjects.
  5. Ph.D. and M.S. requirements, program, size.
  6. Financial aid — coordinating various GRO; Admissions Committee, and Budget limitations.
  7. Graduate School Policy Committee meetings.
  8. Annual revision of brochure.
  9. Graduate Economics Association, Black Graduate Economics Association.
  10. Catalog copy.
  11. Various activities — professional and social that are not contained within a particular class.

Chairman, Committee on Economic Research (I faculty)

  1. Organized list of faculty projects requiring research assistants and the supply of them (both graduate and undergraduate). Assignment of R.A.’s.
  2. Assistance in research proposals.
  3. Inventory of internships and off-campus research.
  4. Supervision of unscheduled subjects, such as UROP, Undergraduate Seminar, and thesis.
  5. Supervision of M.I.T. Working Paper Series.
  6. Allocation of computer funds, developing rules, developing alternative sources.

Personnel and Budgeting (Administrative Officer and a large chunk of my time)

  1. Personnel
    1. Nonfaculty is supervised by the Administrative Officer.
    2. Faculty Personnel

(1) Employment — new Ph.D.’s and senior faculty
(2) Review and promotion
(3) Assignments, leaves, research

    1. Postdoctoral personnel
  2. Space allocations, revisions.
  3. Budget Proposals
  4. a. Proposals
    b. Implementation

Telephone
Xerox & Ditto
Supplies
Equipment

There may be other matters that I am leaving out – routine meetings average probably a day a week, and things like that. Consultations with faculty, students, and other Departments, would probably add a couple more days.

If there are questions, I’ll oblige, of course.

Sincerely,
E. Cary Brown, Head

ECB/sc

__________________________

MEMORANDUM

May 10, 1976

TO:       Department Faculty
FROM: Committee on Reorganization (PAD, SF, JH, PJ, RMS) [Peter A. Diamond, Stanley Fischer, Jerry Hausman, Paul Joskow, Robert M. Solow]

SUBJECT:         Reorganization

ECB’s [E. Cary Brown] letter of March 12, which created this committee, starts from the premise that the administrative burden on the Department Head has become essentially impossible. This seems clearly to be the case. It has happened because the department has increased in size and complexity without any corresponding adaptation of its administrative arrangements. Every new function has fallen into the Head’s lap. (Top that, anyone.) Apart from the sheer burden of work thus created, another problem is the difficulty of communications, because that is also time-consuming.

After some palaver and negotiation, we have a reorganizational package to suggest. It rests on two conditions; since it is something of an interconnected web, it will probably unravel if the two conditions can not be met. (1) Since the only way to correct an excessively centralized structure is to decentralize it, we propose to diffuse administrative responsibility more widely through the department; there will be at least one serious administrative post for everyone, or perhaps two minor posts instead, but everyone will have to participate. (2) The administrative load attached to the undergraduate program has increased with the size of the enrollment and the improvement of the curriculum; no one wants to manage an inadequately staffed program. We propose, therefore, that the normal teaching load for everyone in the department be agreed to be half graduate and half undergraduate teaching. This definition should be extended to everyone on the departmental budget: joint appointees, visiting professors, etc. As soon as there are a couple of exceptions to this understanding, there will be more. Then the management of the undergraduate program will break down, and it will revert or default to the Department Head, and that is what we are trying to stave off.

The particular organization we have in mind is as follows.

  1. The central functions (budgeting, space, leaves, relations with the MIT hierarchy, etc.) will be in the hands of the Department Head and an Associate Head namely PAD [Peter A. Diamond]). In addition, one of them (probably ECB [E. Cary Brown]) will be an ex officio member of the Committee on Undergraduate Studies to be proposed below, and the other will be an ex officio member of the Committee on Graduate Studies. The precise division of labor is obviously a matter of taste; for the moment, ECB [E. Cary Brown] will probably do most of the relations with the MIT structure and PAD [Peter A. Diamond] will concentrate on intra-departmental matters.
  2. There will be a Director of Undergraduate Studies (PT [Peter Temin]), who will be chairman of a Committee on Undergraduate Studies (with 2 or 3 additional members, possibly RD [Rudiger Dornbusch], PJ [Paul Joskow] and one other). This committee will be responsible for revisions of the undergraduate curriculum adding and subtracting subjects, staffing them, degree requirements, etc. In recent discussions with the Undergraduate Economics Association, the proposal has merged that there should be a larger number of Undergraduate Advisors (i.e., registration officers) than there is now, with each taking care of at most 10 students. That suggests we would need about 8 such advisors. The members of the Committee might serve as advisors, plus others. Merely serving as registration officer for 10 undergraduates is by itself not an onerous job.
  3. There seems to be no need for change in the organization of graduate studies in the department. We suggest that there be a Director of Graduate Studies (RSE [Richard S. Eckaus]) and a Committee on Graduate Studies which would, as now, consist of the other two Graduate Registration Officers. Things are going very well now with REH [Robert E. Hall] handling the first-year students. MJP [Michael J. Piore] the second-year students and RSE [Richard S. Eckaus] the thesis-writers. REH [Robert E. Hall] is prepared to take on the task or devising a scheme to keep track of post-generals students, and see that they find themselves a reasonable thesis topic in a reasonable amount of time. The scheme may need another person to look after it.
  4. We suggest the creation of Committee on Staffing whose functions would include looking after the hiring of assistant professors, the dovetailing of visiting professors with faculty leaves, and the rationing of visiting scholars. The picture we have is that the members of committee would do the interviewing and preliminary screening of new Ph.D.’s at the annual meetings, and decide which of them to invite to come and give seminars. At that stage and thereafter, the whole department faculty would be in on the act, and final decisions would be made, as they are now, in a department meeting. The main time-consumer for this committee would be the correspondence in connection with hiring. Since that would fall on the Chairman, that post would be a major one. For the other members of the committee, the burden would be relatively light. We suggest REH [Robert E. Hall] as chairman, plus perhaps 3 others.
  5. There seems to be no reason to change the way the Admissions Committee now functions.
  6. We see no need for major change in the Placement process. Our only suggestion are (a) perhaps to provide EDD [Evsey D. Domar] with another person to share the load, and (b) to have a pre-season department meeting, analogous to the post-generals meeting, at which each graduate student entering the market could be discussed by the full facuIty, and information and ideas collected.
  7. There are other details. RLB [Robert L. Bishop] is functioning as advisor to MIT undergraduates thinking about economics as part of their Humanities requirement, and we are happy to preserve that human capital. MAA [Morris A. Adelman] who has been our representative to CGSP is to begin a term on the CEP, which should count as a major administrative burden. We need his successor on CGSP.

One last point: we hope that each committee chairman will promptly send a written notice of each substantive decision to the Head and Associate Head for distribution to the department faculty, so that communications are well looked after. That plus rational expectations should do the trick.

Source: MIT Archives. MIT Department of Economics Records. Box 2, Folder “Department Organization”.

__________________________

DEPARTMENTAL ADMINISTRATIVE RESPONSIBILITIES:
ECONOMICS DEPARTMENT 1977-78
  1. UNDERGRADUATE COMMITTEE
Chairman: Peter Temin
Members: Cary Brown Senior Faculty Counsellor, Ex Officio
Jerry Rothenberg Senior Faculty Counsellor
Peter Temin Senior Faculty Counsellor
Rudiger Dornbusch Junior Faculty Counsellor
Jeffrey Harris Junior Faculty Counsellor
Jagdish Bhagwati Sophomore Faculty Counsellor (Fall)
Henry Farber Sophomore Faculty Counsellor (Spring)

Summer Jobs: Jeffrey Harris
Humanities Adviser: Robert Bishop
Transfer of Credits: Cary Brown

  1. GRADUATE COMMITTEE
Chairman: Richard Eckaus Thesis, Graduate Registration Officer
Members: Paul Joskow/Mike Piore Second Year Graduate Registration Officer
Marty Weitzman First Year Graduate Registration Officer
Jerome Rothenberg CGSP Representative
Stan Fischer, Ex Officio

Admissions Committee:

Chairman: Robert Bishop
Members: Frank Fisher and Lance Taylor

Placement: Evsey Domar
Harvard-MIT Theory Seminar: Eric Maskin
Theory Workshop: Kevin Roberts

  1. OTHER DEPARTMENTAL ACTIVITIES

Staffing Committee: Chairman: Rudiger Dornbusch

(For New Ass’t Profs.) Members:

Paul Joskow
Jerry Hausman
Stan Fischer, Ex Officio
(Added for Temporary Visitors: Robert Solow)

Independent Activity Period: Jeffrey Harris/Marilyn Simon
Unstructured Subjects Committee: Peter Temin, Undergraduate; Richard Eckaus, Graduate
Computer Allocation: Richard Eckaus

ADDENDUM: INSTITUTE COMMITTEES

CEP: Morris Adelman
Associate Chairman of the Faculty: Michael Piore
Visual Arts: Jerry Rothenberg
Library System, Chairman: Evsey Domar

Image Source:  For this portrait of members of the M.I.T. economics department in 1975 see the Economics in the Rear-view Mirror post that provides identifications.

Categories
Economics Programs M.I.T. Regulations

MIT. Revising Economics Ph.D. General Examinations. E.C.Brown, 1975

 

What makes this memo from E. Cary Brown particularly useful is that it provides us with a list of the graduate economics fields along with the participating faculty members as of 1975. Also the major revision proposed was to have a system of two major fields (satisfied with general examinations) and two minor fields (satisfied by course work). Interesting to note that graduate student input was clearly integrated into the revision procedure.

________________________

Memo from Chairman E. Cary Brown
on a Revision of General Exams, 1975

April 28, 1975

To: Economics Department Faculty and Graduate Students
From: E. C. Brown
Re: Revision of General Examinations

While it has been left that a Committee would be appointed to review the procedures of the general examination (see minutes of the Department Meeting of April 23, 1975), further informal discussion has moved toward a proposed concept of these examinations that I am submitting for consideration and agreement.

  1. There seems reasonable satisfaction about the structure of the present examinations, subject to clarification of the final 2 field examinations and their relationship to the 2 field write-offs.
  2. It is proposed that the 2 fields satisfied by passing the “general” examinations be designated major The examination will be offered in a field, will cover the field in a general way, and will be separated from course examinations. Minor fields will be satisfied by course work. A somewhat lower standard will be imposed in minor fields than in major fields. The “generals” examination, therefore, would apply to the fields of the candidate’s expected expertise, and emphasis would be on a broad coverage of the field.
  3. Each field should, therefore, describe its general requirements for the field as a major one, and list the subjects that may reasonably be offered as a write-off to satisfy the field as a minor one. There should also be some details on the requirements when fields are closely linked (e.g., the proposal for the transportation field and its relationship to urban economics).
  4. Assuming this proposal to be agreeable, the question of term papers still needs settling.

I propose, therefore, the following procedures:

  1. Would each of you give Sue Steenburg a list of your graduate subjects for this academic year, with an indication of whether or not a term paper was required and, if so, the percentage of final grade it represented.
  2. Would faculty in each field submit a list of subjects that may be used to satisfy major and minor requirements in their field as it would ultimately appear in the brochure. The fields to be covered are as follows, the faculty in the field are listed, and the responsible member underlined.
Advanced Economic Theory Bishop, Diamond, Solow, Fisher, Samuelson, Varian, Hausman, Weitzman
Comparative Economic Systems Domar, Weitzman
Economic Development Eckaus, Bhagwati, Taylor
Economic History Kindleberger, Temin, Domar
Finance Merton
Fiscal Economics Diamond, Friedlaender, Rothenberg, Brown
Human Resources and Income Distribution Thurow, Piore
Industrial Organization Adelman, Joskow
International Economics Kindleberger, Bhagwati
Labor Economics Piore, Myers, Siegel
Monetary Economics Fischer, Modigliani
Operations Research Little, Shapiro
Russian Economics Domar, Weitzman
Statistics and Econometrics Hall, Hausman, Fisher, Kuh
Transportation Friedlaender, Wheaton
Urban Economics Rothenberg, Wheaton

If there are any difficulties with these suggestions, let me know right away. If we can proceed along these lines, it appears to be simply a clarification of our recent past and a substantial timesaver. The reports can be looked at this summer by a student-faculty group, with responsibility for faculty on me and for students on Dick Anderson.

Source:  M.I.T. Archives. Department of Economics Records, Box 2, Folder “Grad Curriculum”.

Image with identifications: Economics Faculty group portrait, 1976.

Categories
Exam Questions M.I.T. Problem Sets Syllabus Undergraduate

M.I.T. Principles of Microeconomics, course materials. 1994-2005

 

Today’s post takes Economics in the Rear-view Mirror on a short journey to the very recent past.  Instead of transcribing archival material and publications from the period 1870-1970, I thought I would see what trawling the 341 billion web pages in the internet archive, Wayback Machine, might yield us.

On Christmas eve of 1996 Wayback Machine first captured webpages for the principles of microeconomics course taught to undergraduates at M.I.T. (14.01). Below you will find links to the archived lecture plans, problem sets and questions/answers for midterm and final examinations that I have been able to find. Spoiler alert: there are gaps in this archival record, but still one finds plenty of useful items, now more conveniently ordered. 

But first I share a few paragraphs from my paper “Syllabi and Examinations” that suggest the method in my madness. 

 

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On the virtual informational frontier in the history of economics

…historians of recent economics are facing information-engineering challenges of learning to harness the power from the enormous current of weblog postings, tweets, working papers, media transcripts and exploding data bases to study the processes of scientific innovation and diffusion.  The pedagogy of walk-talk-and-chalk has almost become relegated to the stuff of legend, and successive waves of duplication technologies have been forced to yield to the “pdf-ing” of lecture notes, syllabi, spreadsheets, and problem sets. Video and audio recordings of lectures, panel discussions, and interviews also contribute to a genuine curse of dimensionality confronting historians of contemporary economics.

Now we can imagine a virtual divide in our informational past that marks a frontier between the methodological problems associated with the relative scarcity of written artifacts relevant for the study of the earlier evolution of the education and training of economists and the current problems of judiciously sampling from an ever expanding big data universe.  But whether as historians we are working one side of this frontier or the other, it makes great sense to embed our specific empirical concerns within a common framework, assuming a great arc of continuity (nobody said smooth!) that connects 1918 with, say, 2018 with respect to the scope and methods of economics. Without a common framework, our respective narratives would resemble tunnel building from opposite sides of a mountain with the most likely result being two noncommunicating parallel tunnels in the end. Does anyone really think there is a parallel Harvard, Chicago, Columbia, Wisconsin, Michigan universe? Of course not, we really did get here from there.

 

Source:  Irwin L. Collier. Syllabi and Examinations in History of Political Economy, Vol. 50, No. 3 (September 2018), pp. 587-595.

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MIT 14.01
PRINCIPLES OF MICROCONOMICS

Spring 1994
Professor Jeffrey Harris

Final Exam and Alternate Final Exam (questions)

Fall 1994
Professor Franklin Fisher

Midterm Exam 1 (questions and answers)

Final Exam & Alternate Final Exam (questions)

Spring 1995
Professor Jeffrey Harris

Problem Sets with Solutions

Midterm Exam 1 (questions and answers)

Midterm Exam 2 (questions and answers)

Final and Conflict Final Exams (questions)

Fall 1995
Professor Franklin Fisher

Problem Sets with Solutions

Midterm Exam 1 (questions and answers)

Final and Alternate Final Exams (questions)

Spring 1996
Professor Jeffrey Harris

Problem Sets with Solutions

Midterm Exam 1 (questions and answers)

Midterm Exam 2 (questions and answers)

Final and Conflict Exam (questions)

Fall 1996
Professor Jeffrey Harris

Textbook:  Earl L. Grinols, Microeconomics (Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 1994). “The textbook differs from that assigned in recent past semesters.”

Course home page

Syllabus

Additional Course Information

Schedule

Problem sets and Solutions

Midterm 1 (with answers)

Midterm 2 (questions and answers)

Midterm 2, alternate (questions and answers)

Final and Conflict Exams (questions)

Spring 1997

No Wayback Machine captures found…yet!

Fall 1997
Professor Jeffrey Harris

Probable Textbook: Earl L. Grinols, Microeconomics (Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 1994).

Course home page

[For some reason all the links go back to Fall 1996]

Spring 1998

No Wayback Machine captures found…yet!

Fall 1998
Professor Jeffrey Harris

Textbook: Earl L. Grinols, Microeconomics (Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 1994).

Course home page

Syllabus

Schedule

Spring 1999
Professor Jonathan Gruber

Textbook: Jeffrey M. Perloff, Microeconomics (Addison Wesley Longman, 1999).

Course home page

Syllabus

Fall 1999
Professor Jeffrey Harris

Textbook: Jeffrey M. Perloff, Microeconomics (Addison Wesley Longman, 1999).

Syllabus

Spring 2000
Professor Jonathan Gruber

Textbook: Jeffrey M. Perloff, Microeconomics (Addison Wesley Longman, 1999).

Syllabus

Schedule

Fall 2000
Professor Jonathan Gruber

Textbook: Perloff, Jeffrey M. Microeconomics. 1st Edition. Addison-Wesley.

Course home page

Syllabus

Schedule

Spring 2001
Professor Christopher Snyder

Textbook: Pindyck and Rubinfeld, Microeconomics, 5th ed.

Course home page

Syllabus

Schedule

Fall 2001
Professor Jeffrey Harris

Textbook: Pindyck & Rubinfeld, Microeconomics, 5th Edition (Prentice Hall, 2001).

Course home page

Syllabus

Schedule

Midterm 1 with answers

Spring 2002
Professor Paul Joskow

Textbook: Pindyck & Rubinfeld, Microeconomics, 5th Edition (Prentice Hall, 2001).

Course home page

Syllabus

Schedule

Fall 2002
Professor Jonathan Gruber

Textbook: Jeff Perloff, Microeconomics, 2nd Edition (Addison Wesley Longman, 2001).

Course home page

Syllabus

Schedule

Midterm 1 with answers

Spring 2003
Professor Paul Joskow

Textbook: Pindyck and Rubinfeld, Microeconomics, 5th Edition.

Course home page

Syllabus

Schedule

Fall 2003
Professor Jonathan Gruber

Textbook: Jeffrey M. Perloff, Microeconomics, 3rd Edition.

Course home page

Syllabus

Schedule

Midterm 1 (Solutions)

Midterm 2 (Solutions)

Spring 2004
Professor Paul Joskow

Textbook: Pindyck and Rubinfeld, Microeconomics, 5th Edition.

Course home page

Syllabus

Schedule

Fall 2004
Professor Jonathan Gruber

Textbook: Jeffrey M. Perloff , Microeconomics, 3rd Edition.

Course home page

Syllabus

Midterm 1 (questions)

Spring 2005
Professor Jeffrey Harris

Textbook: Microeconomics, Robert S. Pindyck, Daniel L. Rubinfield, Prentice Hall, June 30, 2004 (6th edition).

Course home page and syllabus

Schedule

 

Image:  Mr. Peabody (dog) and Sherman (boy) activating the original WABAC Machine.

Categories
Funny Business M.I.T.

M.I.T. “The Greatest Faculty Skit Ever Written”, ca. 1974

 

The following faculty skit comes from the M.I.T. department of economics when memories of the Senate Watergate Hearings (summer of 1973) were still very fresh in everyone’s memories.  This skit was likely presented at the 1973-74 annual skit party.  Frederick Mishkin received his B.S. in 1973 from M.I.T. and his first year as a graduate student at M.I.T. was in 1973-74. Other graduate students named were either second year or thesis-writers.

I presume “E. Hausman Hunt” was a blend of the names of the MIT econometrician Jerry Hausman and the Watergate conspirator E. Howard Hunt.

“Bob Dean” was likely a blend of the names of Robert Hall (who taught the course 14.123) and Nixon’s special counsel John Dean (wife’s name Maureen).

“Paul Colson” might have been a blend of the names of Paul Joskow and Charles Colson, Nixon’s man for “dirty tricks” and who claimed he would have walked over his own grandmother to get Nixon reelected.

“F.” would appear with the remark about not understanding “goyim” to have been Frank Fisher.

Roger Backhouse graciously made his copy of this skit available for transcription. I have corrected many typos in the original text. If I ever identify the author, I shall update this post. 

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The Greatest Faculty Skit Ever Written
(in 1 hour, 15 minutes)

F. This here meeting will now come to order. Let the minutes show that this is the 732nd meeting of the Special Subcommittee of the Econometrics [sic] Society investigating the notorious Westgate affair.

M1: Mr. Chairman, a point of personal privilege—

F. Yes, Mr. Solow.

M2: I’ve been out of town testifying for IBM in Tulsa for the last 7 months. Could you fill me in on what’s been happening?

F. On the night of June 20, 1972 several graduate students were apprehended breaking into Gary Becker’s office. It appeared that these students were after Prof. Becker’s manuscript on a theory of marriage. Several pieces of evidence point [to] the fact that these students were after Prof. Becker’s manuscript on a theory of marriage. Several pieces of evidence point [to] the fact that a well known Eastern economist (with initials PAS) may have funded this break-in for as yet unknown reasons. This committee has been called to investigate this matter.

M1Thank you Mr. Chairman.

F. Will the first witness step forward to testify?
Please state your name.

EHH   E. Hausman Hunt.

F. What have you been doing for [the] last 3 months?

EHH.  I’ve spent the last 3 months in Charles St. Jail polishing up my lecturing technique. If I could only speak a little faster during my lecture, just think how much more material I could cover.

F. Is it true that you were in charge of organizing the burglary of Becker’s office?

EHH. Yes; I used several graduate students from MIT: my first choices were Rick Kasten and Roger Gordon but we had to reject them since we were afraid they were too talkative. However I finally settled on Rick Mishkin and Glenn Loury; Mishkin because he was so calm and organized; and Louryto comply with equal opportunities satisfy HEW.

F. Is it true that you write econometrics papers under a pseudonym?

EHH. Yes, I’ve just produced my 43rdpaper on the identification problem using the pseudonym “Franklin M. Fisher”

F. Well, I may be an old country bullfrog, but…
Next witness, please

(BH steps forward; Maureen sits in his lap; F. gives the eyebrows to the audience)

F. State your name, rank.

BD. I’m Bob Dean, special assistant professor.

F. And whom do you assist?

BD. Prof. Paul Anthony Samuelson, BA, PhD, L.H.D, L.L.D, Litt.D. (hon), LSD.

F. Can you describe briefly your part in the Westgate affair?

BD. Prof Samuelson was working on a theory of marriage at the same time as Prof. Becker. He had just succeeded in developing the formal first order conditions for the optimal marriage (using the LeChatelier principle) when he discovered Prof Becker’s work. He asked me to arrange for him to get a look at Prof. Becker’s manuscript.

F. Isn’t it true that you got married on or about this same period?

BD. Yes, that was also part of Prof Samuelson’s theory of marriage. He had also arranged for an empirical part of this work; after deriving the first order conditions, he hired a computer programmer to search for the optimal marriage in the department. Maureen and I were chosen. Pressured by Samuelson we agreed to get married.

F. How did you afford your honeymoon on an assistant prof’s salary?

BD. I borrowed some money from a departmental slush fund.

F. What is the source of this slush fund?

BD. It was accumulated for the sale of lecture notes from 14.123; why else do you think we sell those notes?

F. (eyebrows) I see. When did you again meet with Prof Samuelson?

BD. March 21, 1973;

F. What happened at that meeting?

BD. We received instructions from Prof. Samuelson on how to behave on our honeymoon. We asked Prof. Samuelson if it would be OK if our marginal utilities were not equalized; he said that “it would be wrong.”

F. Why was Prof Samuelson taking such an interest in your honeymoon?

BD. He wanted to be sure that his theory involved only “empirically refutable propositions”. He was also worried that we might behave too formally.

F. I don’t think I’ll ever understand you goyim.

F. Next witness. Please state your name.

PC. Paul Colson.

F. For what purpose were you hired by Prof Samuelson?

PC. I was supposed to ghost write the empirical part of the paper.

F. It says here (looking at notes) that you are one of the most dedicated of the applied econometricians?

PC. Yes, I’d run over my own grandmother to get a t-statistic greater than 2.

F. What were Prof. Samuelson’s instructions?

PC. As you know, Prof Samuelson was worried that Bob and Maureen Dean might be too formal on their honeymoon; I was sent along to collect data on their performance.

F. What happened? (eyebrows)

PC. As I peered into their motel room, I saw Bob come out of the bathroom dressed in pajamas and say to Maureen: I offer my honor. Maureen came out in her nightgown and replied I honor your offer.

F. (eyebrows) What happened next?

PC. From then on it was just honor and offer all night.

F. What went wrong?

PC. We forgot to check the second-order conditions and it was only a saddle point.

 

Source:  Duke University. David M. Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library. Economists’ Papers Archive. Papers of Robert M. Solow. Box 83.

Image Source: Photo from U.S. Senate Watergate hearings. From left to right: minority counsel Fred Thompson, ranking member Howard Baker, and chair Sam Ervin of the Senate Watergate Committee.

Categories
Economic History Exam Questions Syllabus Yale

Yale. American Economic History. Topics and final exam. Parker and Joskow, 1972

 

If my extremely fuzzy recollection of the graduate course in American economic history taught at Yale in the spring semester of 1972 by William Parker and Paul Joskow is to be trusted, many if not most of the readings came from these two texts:

  • American Economic Growth: An Economist’s History of the United States, Lance E. Davis, Richard A. Easterlin and William N. Parker (editors). New York: Harper & Row, 1972.
  • Robert W. Fogel and Stanley L. Engerman (eds.). The Reinterpretation of American History. New York: Harper & Row, 1971.

The topical outline and final examination questions for the course are transcribed below. 

One of the graduate students taking the course was the brilliant Willem Buiter who left a deep impression (that was probably reinforced and made permanent by Robert Solow having taught the Cowles Foundation Discussion paper by Tobin and Buiter (1974) to my cohort at M.I.T.). 

Careful readers will note the distinctly Yale custom of not displaying academic rank. We addressed our professors with Mr./Miss/Mrs./Ms. [it was a transition time for gender honorifics].

William Parker had a well-honed wit. His Adam-Smith inspired lyrics to the tune of the evergreen spiritual “Rock of Ages” has been posted earlier here at Economics in the Rear-view Mirror.

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Economics 133b—American Economic History
Spring 1972

Mr. Parker
Mr. Joskow

Schedule of Topics

  1. Establishing the National Economy
    1. The colonial economy.
    2. Problems of colonial and early national policy
    3. Regional economies to the Civil War
  2. Natural Sources of National Wealth
    1. Relations between Resources and Technology
    2. Population Growth and Organization of Labor Force
  3. The Process of Extensive Expansion
    1. Westward Movement and Agrarian Expansion
    2. Extension of Transportation and its Effects
  4. The Growth of Manufactures
    1. Expansion and Transformation of Light Industries
    2. Heavy Industry: Shifts in Location and Scale
  5. Economic Organization within the Market Economy
    1. Money, Finance and Controls over Investment
    2. The U.S. in the International Economy
    3. Economic Fluctuations through the Great Depression
  6. Non-market Organization and Controls
    1. Large Organizations in the American Economy
    2. Political Issues and Public Policies

 

Economics 133b
Final Examination
May 17, 1972

Take any three questions including at least one from each Part of the examination.

I.

  1. Trace the major developments in the economic history of one of the three major regions of the United States from 1750 through the 1830’s.
  2. What problems appear in measuring the economic growth of the United States before 1860? Distinguish between problems of source materials and problems of definition and concepts. What do the data most probably show about the growth rate between 1800 and 1850?
  3. The major sources of growth of agricultural productivity are: (1) Westward movement to new lands, (2) regional specialization deriving from market growth and transport improvements, (3) technical change. Discuss the influence of any one of these sources on agricultural productivity in 19thCentury United States.
  4. “Government policy toward the economy before 1860 was not controlled by the philosophical issue of laissez-faire vs. intervention, but by the political issue of federal-state relations.” Discuss with reference to specific policy areas (land policy, banking, tariffs, public works, etc.)
  5. Slavery and cotton go together in the sense that neither could have flourished in the South without the other. Do you agree? Explain.
  6. “The relative scarcity of labor in the American economy in the first half of the 19thCentury gave a labor-saving bias to the technology invented and introduced in that period.
    Analyze and discuss this statement, giving specific examples.

II.

  1. “The efficiency of a monetary and banking system can be judged by several criteria, notably: (1) elimination of the risk of individual losses, (2) variety of monetary and credit instruments available to supply individual preferences with respect to wealth holding, (3) effects on the volume of investment, (4) effects on the trend of prices and the stability of such a trend.
    Evaluate the American monetary and banking institutions with respect to these criteria over some 25-30 period in American history.
  2. What do you consider to be the main factors causing the increase in scale of firm in manufacturing industry between 1840 and 1890?
  3. Describe the major changes in the evolution of the balance of payments of the United States between colonial times and 1929. Do you think that phases in the growth process in the United States can be dated from turning points in the relation of the various items in the balance to one another.
  4. “The railroad is the mother of trusts.” Explain. Is this true for the United States?
  5. “Large organizations developed not just in manufactures, but in all sections of American economic life after 1880. The phenomenon therefore cannot be simply derived from the economies of large scale manufacture and the technological changes which produced them.” Do you agree? Discuss with specific reference to one industry and to one type of non-industrial organization (Labor, government, politics etc.)
  6. Increased government regulation of the economy between 1887 and 1914 was a response to the concerns of progressive elements in the country regarding the increasing concentration of American industry. Discuss the validity of this statement by looking at the causes and effects of several attempts by the federal government to regulate industrial structures or practices.

 

Source:  Irwin Collier, personal papers.

Image Source: Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, Vol. 151, No. 2, June 2007.

Categories
Economists M.I.T.

MIT. Department of Economics Group Photo, 1976

Back Row:  Harold FREEMAN, Hal VARIAN, Jerome ROTHENBERG, Peter DIAMOND, Jerry HAUSMAN

4th Row: Paul JOSKOW, Anne FRIEDLAENDER, JOHN R. MORONEY (VISITOR TO DEPARTMENT)

3rd Row: Stanley FISCHER, Jagdish BHAGWATI, Rudiger DORNBUSCH, Robert SOLOW, Robert HALL

2nd Row: Edward KUH, Morris ADELMAN, Abraham J. SIEGEL, Richard ECKAUS, Martin WEITZMAN

1st Row: Evsey DOMAR, Paul SAMUELSON, Charles KINDLEBERGER, E. Cary BROWN, Franco MODIGLIANI, Sydney ALEXANDER, Robert BISHOP

1976_MITEcon_blogCopy

Apparently didn’t get the memo and/or not pictured: Michael PIORE, Frank FISHER, Peter TEMIN.

Thanks to Robert Solow, the photo-bomber standing to Solow’s left in the picture has been identified as a guest from Tulane University, John Moroney. It is possible that I forgot some other person not included in this faculty picture.

I note that the entire front row has gone to that great Department of Economics in the Cloud.

Source: A graduate student buddy of mine who entered the MIT Ph.D. program in 1975/76.

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If you find this posting interesting, here is the complete list of “artifacts” from the history of economics I have assembled of which this is the 250th. You can subscribe to Economics in the Rear-View Mirror below. There is also an opportunity for comment following each posting….