Tag: Slichter

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Columbia Economist Market Economists Harvard

Harvard and Columbia. President of Harvard headhunting conversation regarding economists. Mitchell and Mills, 1936

The following typed notes were based on a conversation that took place on February 21, 1936 regarding possible future hires for the Harvard economics department. President James B. Conant (or someone on his behalf) met with Columbia university professors Wesley C. Mitchell and his NBER sidekick, Frederick C. Mills. This artifact comes from President Conant’s administrative records in the Harvard Archives.

In the memo we find a few frank impressions of members of the Harvard economics departments together with head-hunting tips for established and up-and-coming economists of the day.

An observation that jumps from the paper is the identification pinned to the name Arthur F. Burns, namely, “(Jew)”. Interestingly enough this was not added to Arthur William Marget (see the earlier post Harvard Alumnus. A.W. Marget. Too Jewish for Chicago? 1927.) nor to Seymour Harris.  

________________________

[stamp] FEB 25, 1936

ECONOMICS

Confidential Memorandum of a Conversation on Friday, February 21, with Wesley [Clair] Mitchell and his colleague, Professor [Frederick Cecil] Mills (?) of Columbia

General impression is that the Department of Economics at Harvard is in a better state today than these gentlemen would have thought possible a few years ago. The group from 35-50 which now faces the future is about as good as any in the country. [Edward Hastings] Chamberlin, [John Henry] Williams,[Gottfried] Haberler and Schlichter [sic, [Sumner Slichter] are certainly quite outstanding. Very little known about [Edward Sagendorph] Mason;  he seems to have made a favorable impression but no writings. [Seymour Edwin] Harris slightly known, favorable but not exciting.

[John Ulric] Neff admitted to be the best man in economic history if we could get him. Names of other people in this country mentioned included:

[Robert Alexander] Brady — University of California, now working on Carnegie grant on bureaucracy; under 40.

Arthur [F.] Burns at Rutgers (Jew) now working with the Bureau of Economic Research and not available for 3 or 4 years. Said by them to be excellent.

Henry Schultz of Chicago, about in Chamberlin’s class and age, or perhaps a little better.

[Arthur William] Marget of Minnesota, Harvard Ph.D., I believe; well known, perhaps better than Chamberlin. Flashy and perhaps unsound. (Mitchell and Mills disagree to some extent on their estimate of his permanent value but agree on his present high visibility).

Winfield Riffler [sic, Winfield William Riefler], recently called to the Institute of Advanced Study at Princeton, probably one of the most if not the most outstanding of the younger men.

Morris [Albert] Copeland of Washington; good man but not so good as Chamberlin.

Giddons [sic, Harry David Gideonse?] of Chicago, very highly thought of by Chicago people but has not written a great deal; supposed to be an excellent organizer.

C. E. [Clarence Edwin] Ayres, University of Texas, about 40; in N.R.A. at Washington. Mitchell thinks very highly of him.

England

[Theodore Emmanuel Gugenheim] Gregory, at London School of Economics, about 50, same field as Williams but not so good. Mills more favorable than Mitchell.

Other outstanding young Englishmen:

[Richard F.] Kahn, Kings College, Cambridge

F. Colin [sic, Colin Grant] Clark, of Cambridge

Lionel Robins [sic, Lionel Charles Robbins] of London, age 35, rated very highly by both Mills and Mitchell

F. A. Hayek, another Viennese now in London; spoken of very highly by both Mills and Mitchell.

Source: Harvard University Archives. Records of President James B. Conant, Box 54, Folder Economics, “1935-1936”.

Image Sources: Wesley Clair Mitchell (left) from the “Original Founders” page at the website of the Foundation for the Study of Business Cycles; Frederick C. Mills (right) from the Columbia Daily Spectator, Vol. CVIII, No. 68, 11 February 1964.

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Chicago Economist Market Salaries

Chicago. Suggestions to make University of Chicago professorships more attractive. Leland, 1945

 

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

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

In earlier posts I have provided (1) a list of visiting professors who taught economics at the University of Chicago up through 1944 (excluding those visitors who were to receive permanent appointments); (2) supporting tables with enrollment trends and faculty data (ages and educational backgrounds); (3) three lists of names for economists who in 1945 could be taken into consideration for either permanent economics, joint appointments with other department or visiting appointments at the University of Chicago.

The excerpt transcribed for this post deals with the employment conditions and prospects of University of Chicago faculty. The basic message was that Chicago had lost its position as highest-bidder in the academic market and that relative attractiveness was a function of salary to be sure, but also other conditions (teaching loads, research support, clerical support, burden of special (extra) examinations, housing, medical benefits, etc.) should be improved as well.

Leland’s laundry list of suggestions seems pretty familiar to early 21st century academics. Would love to have an analogous memo for the present to see which additional items are now included.

_________________________

POSTWAR PLANS
OF THE
DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMICS

A Wide Variety of Observations and Suggestions
All Intended To Be Helpful
in Improving the State
of the
University

by Simeon E. Leland, Chairman
(on his own behalf and for the Department)

1945

[…]

Making University of Chicago Professorships More Attractive

The following suggestions are, in large part, the result of actual experiences in negotiating with “outsiders” over appointments to our faculty, or are reactions observed in dealing with present faculty members with respect to appointments or promotions within the Department. Some of them undoubtedly represent aspirations of the staff. They are offered, not as criticisms of present conditions, but as suggestions for improvements for realization in the future.

1. Distinguished Professorships

At the inception of the University, President Harper established a salary scale for full professors which was the highest in the country. He literally bought his faculty, outbidding all competitors for the services of distinguished men. The University of Chicago at once gained a reputation for the payment of attractive salaries. With the passage of time this situation has changed. Although the University of Chicago is still a “high-salary” institution, the emoluments it offers are by no means the most attractive in the United States.

The enhanced salaries paid (on an individual competitive bargaining arrangement) to present staff members on the 4E contracts render utterly inadequate the $10,000 salaries paid to the holders of University Distinguished Service Professorships. When these Professorships were established the salary differentials between the Distinguished Professorships and other professorships were quite large. They are far narrower today due to the liberal treatment by the University of the “ordinary” professors. Rising costs of living have also lowered the real wages paid to our Distinguished colleagues, and others as well.

If the Distinguished Professorships are to mean much to the holders over the years to come, the stipends should be increased; otherwise, the recognition bestowed will be rewarded only by a name or possibly by a degree of freedom not possessed by colleagues — both of which by that time may be empty honors. The times seem to call for $12,000 salaries as a minimum rather than $10,000 for these Professorships.

2. Divisional Professorships

If the Divisional Professorships, such as the Social Sciences Professorships, are to carry any real distinction they should be made to rank in terms of prestige and desirability next to the Distinguished Service Professorships. At present all they have to offer is some relief from fixed teaching (which is illusory for men with real scholarly interests who always talk about problems of their intellectual world with students) and the right to teach what they wish, irrespective of departmental lines. Both of these freedoms in greater or lesser degree are accorded every member of the staff, especially the freedom to teach.

In the Social Sciences Division, a Social Sciences Professorship is supposed to signify a recognition of competence or achievement. The breadth of knowledge, the spread of intellectual interest and the true humanity of the holder (or holders) indicate a degree of competence beyond that of the ordinary professor and that of many of the University’s most distinguished appointees, yet, in last analysis, all that a Social Sciences Professorship confers upon the holder is a title with, perhaps, a scintilla of freedom. Such a chair should be made into something tangible for the holder — into something to be sought after by other members of the staff — into something to attract men from abroad. The minimum salary should be $10,000 at least. The working conditions should be far above those for ordinary men.

3. A New Type of Professorship

It is believed that named professorships with research stipends attached would attract outstanding scholars to the University. Such an appointment would not only carry an adequate salary for the incumbent but also a fund to assure him of a definite research budget so long as he occupied the designated chair. The University is probably not rich enough to afford many such appointments, but certainly it should seek to establish one in at least every division and school — granted that willing donors could be found. In any case, if the University believes its own statements concerning the importance of research and has faith in its appointees, it might well combine the two, in a few instances, to provide University Research Professorships which carry with them definite research grants to be spent as the incumbent elects. The Thomas W. Lamont Professorship at Harvard is of this type. It is held at the moment by Mr. Sumner H. Slichter, a Ph.D. of the Department of Economics of the University of Chicago.

4. Research, Clerical and Library Assistance

The climate for research around the University is not as favorable as speeches and propaganda would indicate. The professorial staff — the highest-priced talent along with administrators in the University — is required and expected to do all manner of chores that should be done for them if research output is to be maximized. Adequate stenographic service is often lacking or, at most, is not always immediately available to members of the Department. The stenographic pool in the Dean’s office is inadequate, a reflection, of course, of the present labor situation. But it is operated on the basis of bookkeeping arrangements which seem to make it freely available to all staff members only on the basis of antecedent budgets. Stenographic service should be available freely to all members of the staff for University business, for correspondence arising in connection with their work (in order to save valuable time) and for all research needs, including the copying of materials. Courses also could be improved if professors could make more materials available to students, perhaps on a nominal fee basis operated through departmental offices.

Similarly, a reasonable amount of clerical and library service should be available to staff members. Now such service is extended only as given research projects are approved, as special deals are made with individual faculty members, or as special services are given as a favor or in recognition of something or other. So long as these services are not generally available or can be had only upon request, there is a tendency that they will go first to the most vocal groups. In any case, the Department has too few people available to do the odd jobs to lighten the work and increase the research output of the faculty. Arrangements might be made whereby a clerical or service pool could meet the needs of many staff members.

5. Reduction in Examinations

The emphasis on examinations other than course examinations makes such tests too arduous a task to be well performed by the University staff. Everywhere there is objection! The time given to special terminal, qualifying and other examinations is grudgingly provided. It is given at the expense of research, creative thinking, or writing. And when the work is turned over to hired examiners who know examination techniques, but who are untrained in the fields involved, the examinations themselves become an intellectual travesty. (Actual illustrations can be supplied on request.)

It is recognized that many examinations are required and that there is a place for trained examiners; but the emphasis on examinations at the University is out of proportion to their worth. At the graduate level these examinations have operated to lower scholastic standards. Part of this is due to the efforts to deprecate courses and to offer illusory means for speeding up the educational process, hardly appropriate in the graduate and professional schools. Students are told they can visit courses (registering for R’s) and as long as they can pass final examinations they can qualify for degrees. The result is that special examinations have to be prepared; that students are rated on too limited a sample of their work; that recommendations of the University count for less than they once did. Another result of the examination emphasis is that students bone up for examinations, try their luck on this or that test and if they pass (by good fortune or otherwise), they are advanced or awarded the appropriate degrees.

From every point of view, too much faculty time is spent on examinations of various kinds; too large a fraction of the student’s record is based upon them.

6. Teaching Loads

In the matter of teaching loads, the Department, on the basis of University of Chicago conditions, has little cause for complaint. The Department has been well treated. Nevertheless, for the greatest good of the University it would like to indicate that teaching loads, even in the Department, are too high for the attainment of the best standards of graduate instruction and research.

Differentiations in teaching loads are appropriate. The load in the College may well be higher than in the Division, but in graduate and professional schools the teaching load should be low if the scholarship and research of the faculty are to be maximized. It may also be appropriate to have different teaching loads, on the average, for the ranks of assistant professor, associate professor and professor. It is the load of the productive scholars which really counts. Harvard and Columbia both have a teaching load of four hours a week for professors of Economics. This is also a factor of importance in the competition with these universities for staff members. It is a factor also affecting the quality of graduate instruction.

The reduction of teaching loads should be made a matter of University policy.

7. Salary Schedules

Salaries of members of the Department are believed to compare favorably with other salaries paid in the University. The general level of salaries paid at the University of Chicago places it among the high-salaried institutions, but it no longer ranks at the top. Harvard has recently raised its minimum professorial salary to in excess of $9,000, with commensurate increases along the line. The level of payments at Columbia, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and California Institute of Technology, for example, exceeds the level prevailing at Chicago.

Nor is it certain that the new salary plan will help attract eminent scholars to the University of Chicago. The experience of the Department to date has not been favorable to the new plan. Regardless of sentiments for and against the 4E Contract, its operation should be watched with care lest it adversely affect the quality of new appointments. In order to correct one evil, a greater one — the refusal of offers of appointment — may have been created. Many features of the 4E Contract make such terms unattractive to men who have been well treated by other institutions of high repute. If an outstanding scholar will not accept the 4E Contract, another type of contract should be offered. It is more important to secure the right scholars than to preserve a unique salary plan.

Changes in living costs have greatly decreased the value of payments here. Among the items on the postwar agenda should be new salary scales.

8. Faculty Housing

The Department was much gratified to see that the question of adequate housing for the faculty is again being considered. During the past year, more than one person who was being approached as a potential faulty member declined to consider an offer from the University as long as housing facilities are what they are in Chicago, and especially in Hyde Park. These facilities will remain unattractive until the University improves them. Princeton and Stanford, for example, have made notable contributions to the development of faculty housing. Appropriate housing should also be a good investment. If the Trustees should be unwilling to invest endowment funds in a faculty housing venture, a private company, or even a public housing corporation, should be organized in the neighborhood to meet this vital need.

Attention should also be given to the improvement of the University neighborhood. Its deterioration is a matter of great concern, affecting far more than the value of adjacent properties.

9. Miscellaneous Suggestions

There has always been much talk about improving the lot of younger men. Greater equality could be provided if faculty perquisites were increased. Former tuition differentials to faculty children and wives could be restored, or even increased with the number of children in each family. Hospital rates could be reduced. Out-patient medical service could be provided for University families at small cost. The present shortage of practicing physicians would make such a service a real boon. The University in its own interest, too, could afford to provide free medical examinations for faculty members and employees with increased public health services available at nominal cost. It might thus decrease illness among staff members or even add to their span of life (a thing in which it may not be interested under the rigid enforcement of retirement at age 65). Even the retirement policy might be examined in connection with the state of health and mental ability of emeriti over the last decade. It may be that the University is losing the services of distinguished men a few years too soon. All of these things could be done on a group basis with returns far in excess of cash outlays. To the members of the staff they would constitute significant increases in real wages.

[…]

Source: University of Chicago Library. Department of Special Collections. Office of the President. Hutchins Administration Records. Box73, Folder “Economics Department, ‘Post-war Plans,’ Simeon E. Leland, 1945” pp. 30-36.

Image Source: Portrait of Simeon E. Leland. University of Chicago Photographic Archive, apf1-03716, Hanna Holborn Gray Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library. Image colorized by Economics in the Rear-view Mirror.

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Economics Programs Harvard Undergraduate

Harvard. Economics Department Reports to the Dean, 1946-47 to 1949-50

 

This post adds the Chair’s annual reports on the Harvard Economics Department for the early post-WW II years to previously posted reports for 1932-33 through 1945-46. 

Reports to the Dean of Harvard
from the Department of Economics.
1932-1941
1941-1946

___________________________

1946-1947

September 29, 1947

Dear Dean Buck:

You have requested a brief report on the work of the Department of Economies for the academic year 1946-47.

This report necessarily follows much the same pattern as the report for last year. Again our work has been dominated by the number of students, undergraduate and graduate, and the lack of a trained junior staff.

The number of undergraduates of course is entirely so beyond our control. In Economies A and in most of our “middle group” courses, the elections taxed our capacity for effective instruction. Under the most propitious conditions the crowded classrooms would have presented many problems but with a dearth of trained teaching fellows and annual instructors the load carried by the senior staff was unduly heavy. Foreseeing this range of problems, the Department voted on February 19, 1946 [sic, 1947 probably correct. In December 1946 departments wereallowed to withdraw from offering tutorials] to suspend tutorial instruction for a period of two years. It may be stated here that this was probably a wise decision. Concentration in Economics appears to have resumed the trend apparent before the war. In the current year the number of concentrators will approach, or perhaps exceed 800. Even should no consideration be given to the expenditure involved, the possibility of finding and training effective tutors even for honors candidates seems somewhat remote.

On the graduate level the problems of instruction were even more difficult. During the year the number of graduate students receiving instruction was approximately 286. Our course offering on this level is large. Nevertheless, the principal graduate courses were crowded to a point where the maintenance of standards was difficult. After the graduate student has completed his preliminary program and has been accepted as a candidate for the Ph.D, degree, the instruction is largely individual. In the last year we were just coming into the situation where a considerable proportion of the students were receiving such instruction. The full impact of this situation will be felt in the current year. Most members of the senior staff will be directing the theses of some 10 to 15 students. Some officers will be responsible for even larger numbers. With the numbers we are attempting to handle on the graduate level the single task of examining candidates in the general and special examinations becomes a major consideration. During the last academic year the staff conducted general and special examinations. Such an amount of examining and of individual instruction on the graduate level has its bearing on tutorial instruction for undergraduates.

The Department voted to accept the large number of graduate students now on our rolls only after considerable investigation and discussion. It is my own personal opinion that we have set our limit altogether too high. However, the pressure upon us for admission has been very strong and our obligations to the Littauer School, where the pressure is hardly less, just be observed.

This matter of the size of the Graduate School in the immediate future is one of our most difficult problems. It will receive our attention in the current year.

In the last two or three years these reports have noted certain experiments in instruction, especially in connection with Economics A. Such experiments are dependent upon the presence of a considerable number of able and mature young men with adequate teaching experience, as well as upon a margin of free time. Both of these factors are lacking to such a degree that substantial and outstanding progress could not be expected but the plans were active and some progress was made.

If full tutorial instruction is not resumed by the Department, experimentation in undergraduate courses is imperative and this we have planned. It is our expectation that a good deal in the way of individual guidance can be accomplished in connection with Economics A and some of our middle group courses. We believe that we can make our instruction more efficient with a much smaller personnel and at much less expense than the tutorial system would involve. However, a definitive decision has not been reached on all of these matters.

It is hardly necessary to emphasize that the heavy instructional demands discussed above affected our research projects. Furthermore, the officers of this Department are severely handicapped by the lack of research funds. This dearth of research funds is a question which has been placed before our Visiting Committee.

In spite of the difficulties involved, the contributions of the members of the Department were substantial. The following books were published:

Teoria de la Competencie Monopolica, by E. H. Chamberlin, Mexico, 1946. (Spanish translation of The Theory of Monopolistic Competition)

Economic Policy and Full Employment, by A. H. Hansen. McGraw-Hill. 1947.

The New Economics, S. B. Harris, editor and contributor Knopf. 1947.

The National Debt and the New Economics, by S. E. Harris. 1947.

Income and Employment, by T. Morgan. Prentice-Hall. 1947.

New enlarged edition of Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy, by J. A. Schumpeter.

The Challenge of Industrial Relations, by S. H. Slichter, Cornell University Press, 1947.

Postwar Monetary Plans and other Essays, by J. Williams. Knopf, 3rd edition. 1947.

articles were published.

Although we are able to record only one new volume and one republication of an older volume in the Harvard Economic Series for the past year, four other volumes are in the hands of the printer and will appear in the current year.

In the area of distinctions or honors, I believe the only items to be noted concern Dean Edward S. Mason. Last spring he was appointed Economic Advisor to Secretary of State Marshall at the Moscow Conference. In July he was appointed a member of President Truman’s Committee on Foreign Aid.

Sincerely yours,
H. H. Burbank

Dean Paul H. Buck

Source: Harvard University Archives. Department of Economics, Correspondence and Papers (UAV 349.11), Box 2, Folder “Provost Buck—Annual Report of Dept.”

___________________________

1947-1948

September 30, 1948

Dear Provost Buck:

You have requested a brief report on the work of the Department of Economics for the academic year 1947-48.

The report on the work of the Department for the last year can be given in part in the same terms that have been employed in the last three reports. Our major problems have been quantitative and have presented the same difficulties that were emphasized in the other post-war reports. However, we believe that the last year did reach the peak of the load and that the pressure of numbers will abate steadily. The problem of building and maintaining an effective junior staff was hardly less than in the preceding years. Crowded classrooms and insufficiently trained assistants imposed unduly severe burdens upon the senior teachers responsible for course instruction. Some improvement, especially in the middle group courses, is in prospect for the coming year but it is probable that two to three years more will be necessary before these courses will be adequately staffed. In the introductory course which relies heavily upon a large number of young instructors and teaching fellows, the situation is still serious but latterly we have been able to utilize young men with more satisfactory preparation and training. Because of the heavy demands for the services of these young men by other institutions, the turnover is large leaving us each year with a relatively inexperienced staff.

Graduate instruction continues to make unusual demands upon the time and energy of the senior staff. During the past year we conducted 109 general examinations and 26 special examinations. Examining and the related task of directing the research of candidates for the higher degrees undoubtedly have an incidence upon undergraduate instruction which raises questions of fundamental importance. It is encouraging that the number of graduate students is, through the action of the Department, declining.

In spite of the difficulties presented by the numbers of undergraduates and graduates, the Department, perhaps belatedly, has given particular consideration to its commitments in the Areas and in General Education. A report on General Education is enclosed.

Also, the Department has considered at length and in detail various problems of instruction, particularly undergraduate instruction. These considerations will be continued in the current year. By completely revising the content of our basic courses it may be possible to increase the effectiveness of our instruction and reduce somewhat the number of courses offered. A preliminary report on this aspect of our work is included.

A year ago I noted that many of our senior officers were handicapped severely by the lack of research funds. As you know, it can now be recorded with sincere satisfaction that a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation and that several projects under the auspices of the Research Marketing Act, U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Charles H. Hood Dairy Foundation, the Ferguson Foundation Fund, and the Carnegie Corporation Fund, meet the situation effectively for some of our officers. The set-up of these projects promises not only to be of great value to the professors in charge of the research but it contributes heavily to the training of our most promising graduate students and younger officers.

The following books were published by members of the Department:

How Shall We Pay for Education? by Seymour Harris. Harpers.

Stabilization Subsidies by Seymour Harris. Historical Report Series, U.S. Gov’t.

Price Control of International Commodities by Seymour Harris. Archives Volume, Historical Records Office.

International Monetary Policies, by Gottfried Haberler (with Lloyd Metzler and Robert Triffin). Postwar Economic Series, Federal Reserve System Board of Governors.

Problemas de Conjuntura e de Politica Economica, by Gottfried Haberler. Fundacao Getulio Vargas, Rio de Janiero.

Production in the United States, 1866-1914, by Edwin Frickey. Harvard University Press.

Seventy-eight articles have been published. Three books were published in the Harvard Economic Series during the past year. Five volumes are in the hands of the Press to be published later this year.

Professor Edward H. Chamberlin has been appointed to succeed Dr. Arthur B. Monroe as Managing Editor of the Quarterly Journal of Economics. Both the Quarterly Journal of Economies and the Review of Economic Statistics are well established intellectually and financially. With the demands of instruction and research, the editing of the Quarterly Journal of Economics and the Review of Economics and Statistics, as well as the direction of the Harvard Economic Series, raises questions regarding the adequacy of the manpower within the Department.

 In the area of distinctions or honors, Professor Joseph A. Schumpeter was chosen to be President of the American Economic Association for 1948. Dean Edward S. Mason was awarded an honorary degree, D. Litt, from Williams College, June, 1948.

Very sincerely,
H. H. Burbank

Provost Paul H. Buck
5 University Hall

Source: Harvard University Archives. Department of Economics, Correspondence and Papers (UAV 349.11), Box 2, Folder “Provost Buck—Annual Report of Dept.”

___________________________

1948-1949

September 28, 1949

Dear Provost Buck:

The pattern of the report of the Department of Economics on the work of the last year is essentially the same as the other reports for the post-war years. Indeed, not a little of the introduction to the report of a year ago could be utilized in the current report. The quantitative side of our work has been among our major problems. I think I was correct in predicting that the peak of the load would be passed in 1948-49. For the year 1949-50, numbers, particularly on the graduate level, will be approximately less although the total is still beyond the capacities of our senior staff.

Again I can repeat that the problem of building and maintaining a junior staff presents great difficulties. We have strengthened our position on the level of the assistant professor but we are unable to hold our most promising young Ph.D’s for appointment at the instructor level. All of our undergraduate instruction suffers because of this factor, but Economics 1 (the introductory course) is affected particularly. The demand for these young men by other institutions continues at a high level resulting in a high rate of turnover and leaving us sech year with a relatively inexperienced staff. [end of p. 1]

[Note: need to replace unfocussed image of page 2]

[p. 3 begins ] …expectation that we will be able to revise our general examination effectively.

In the post-war years the Department has been striving to meet its obligations to General Education and to the areas. We believe that we have made an excellent beginning in both General Education and in the Russian Area. We are still actively engaged in the attempt to strengthen our position in the Chinese Area. This is exceedingly difficult but I believe that some progress is being made.

Last year we were able to record with great satisfaction that some research projects were being established satisfactorily. These projects under the auspices of the Rockefeller Foundation and under the auspices of various groups interested in agriculture and marketing are now going forward successfully and up proving to be important for us not only as research projects but also because of their general effect upon a relatively large group of our graduate students. We can now give a type of training to our most promising men which would have been impossible without such projects. It should be emphasized at this point that other areas of interest need research funds.

The following books were published:

Collective Bargaining: Principles and Cases, Richard D. Irwin, Inc., 1949, by John I. Dunlop.

Labor in Norway by Walter Galenson. Harvard University Press, 1949.

Monetary Theory and Fiscal Policy, by Alvin Hansen McGraw-Hill, 1949.

The European Recovery Program, by Seymour E. Harris. Harvard University Press.

Foreign Economic Policy for the U.S., edited by Seymour E. Harris, Harvard University Press.

Price Control of International Commodities, by Seymour E. Harris. Archives Volume for Historical Records Office.

Saving American Capitalism, edited by Seymour E. Harris. Knopf.

Economic Planning, by Seymour E. Harris. Knopf.

Post-war Monetary Plans and Other Essays, by John H. Williams. Oxford, Basil Blackwell.

The American Economy, Its Problems and Prospects, by Sumner H. Slichter. Knopf.

There were 62 articles published by members of the Department during the past year. Five books were published in the Harvard Economic Studies and two volumes are in the hands of the Press to be published later this year. There has been a total of 86 books published in the Harvard Economic Studies to this date.

It should be recorded that both the Quarterly Journal of Economics under the editorship of Professor Chamberlin and the Review of Economics and Statistics have prospered during the year. Again I do feel it necessary to refer to the fact that editing the Quarterly Journal of Economics and the Review of Economics and Statistics and the carrying forward of the Harvard Economic Studies continues to raise questions regarding the adequacy of the manpower within the Department.

In the area of distinctions and honors, Professor Slichter was awarded honorary degrees (LL.D.) from the following universities: Lehigh University, Harvard University, University of Rochester, University of Wisconsin and Northwestern University. Professor

Haberler was awarded an honorary degree of Doctor of Economics (“Doktor der Wirtschaftswissenschaft honoris causa”) from Handelshochschule, St. Gallen, Switzerland. Dr. Galbraith was awarded the President’s Certificate of Merit, Medal of Merit Board, for services in Price Control and Economic Stabilization during the war.

Sincerely
[Harold H. Burbank]

Source: Harvard University Archives. Department of Economics, Correspondence and Papers (UAV 349.11), Box 2, Folder “Departmental Annual Reports to the Dean 1948-54”.

___________________________

1949-1950

[Draft] Report to Dean, October 2, 1950
Professor Burbank

In each of the reports for the last three years, emphasis has been placed upon two matters; our efforts to handle the increased numbers incident to the war, particularly on the graduate level, and our attempts to revise and improve our instruction, particularly on the undergraduate level.

With a good deal of satisfaction we are able to report that for the last year substantial progress has been made in each of these areas. Immediately after the war the number of our graduate students increased from approximately 100 to nearly 300. By raising the standards of admission and giving the most careful scrutiny to applications, the numbers on the graduate level are now well under 200, and will be reduced somewhat more for 1950-51.

The work of supervising and directing graduate students falls very unevenly upon the various members of the senior staff. Even with not over 150 graduate students some members of the staff will carry an inordinate part of individual instruction and of examining for the higher degrees. Further, large graduate classes tend to dilute the instruction.

On the undergraduate level the Department has revised its requirements for concentration, including the content of many of our key courses. This plan has been accepted by the Faculty and is now in operation. It is an ambitious scheme that involves not only a change in the content and coverage of our key courses but it also involves the strengthening the staff in these courses and an integration of course work with tutorial work. Undoubtedly it will take some years to complete this plan. Much depends upon our ability to build a strong junior staff, especially on the annual instructor level. When this reorganized instruction is in full operation it is expected that a number of courses now offered for undergraduates may be deleted.

Also it is with a good deal of satisfaction that after a period of suspension tutorial instruction has been reestablished and is developing steadily. The period of suspension was unfortunate but probably inevitable. We are now approaching a position with respect to both graduate and undergraduate instruction that at least approximates a normal situation, with a possibility of a carefully planned and well integrated system of undergraduate instruction. As a part of this plan increased attention has been given to reestablishing the General Examinations on something approximating the level of earlier years. Since we are lacking experienced tutors the establishment of tutorial instruction is a very real task but it is believed it can be done successfully.

We have been fortunate to have been able to attract to the Graduate School a group of unusually able young men. The very top of this group represents ability of the very highest order. Unfortunately only rarely can we retain the services of these young men even on the assistant professor level. However, the Department is keenly aware of the difficulties it faces in recruitment and every effort is being made to follow the progress of the product of other schools as well as the progress of our own young scholars.

Source: Harvard University Archives. Department of Economics, Correspondence and Papers (UAV 349.11), Box 2, Folder “Provost Buck—Annual Report of Dept.”

___________________________

1949-1950

January 5, 1951

Provost Paul H. Buck
5 University Hall
Cambridge, Massachusetts

Dear Provost Buck:

I am now somewhat belatedly submitting the report of the Department of Economics for 1949-50.

I. Undergraduate Instruction

Four hundred eighty-two Harvard and Radcliffe students concentrated in economics in 1949-50 as compared with 608 in the previous year. The enrolment in Economics 1 was 402 as compared with 546 in the previous year. Seventy-seven students graduated with honors; 20 obtaining magna cum laude and 57 cum laude.

The entire senior staff gave courses at the undergraduate level— a practice that distinguishes Harvard sharply from institutions such as Columbia and Chicago which restrict the activities of some of the most talented members of the staff to graduate instruction. Nevertheless, the strength of our undergraduate teaching has depended very largely on the unusually fine group of assistant professors we now have on our staff.

During the past couple of years the Department has been gradually moving toward restoration of the tutorial system and last spring it decided finally to give tutorial instruction to all honors students in their junior and senior years,

II. Graduate Instruction

Two hundred graduate students in economics were in residence last year as compared with 234 the previous year. The Department gave 58 general examinations for the Ph.D. and 47 special examinations.

The number of graduate students is still too large to handle effectively with the present staff. The students themselves justifiably complain that they cannot see enough of the members of the faculty. However if they did see as much of the faculty as they wanted to, the faculty would have little time for reading and research and the quality of instruction would decline. We are planning to deal with this problem as far as possible by making sure that more graduate students attend reasonably small seminars and do have an opportunity to get to know at least one faculty member reasonably well.

I believe that the quality of our graduate work has suffered through overemphasis on course work and preoccupation with grades. We tend to make graduate instruction too much of a prolongation of undergraduate instruction. We also tend too much in the direction of specialization and provide too little encouragement for students to become coordinated in the whole economic field. The remedy for this state of affairs depends more upon the general attitude of the Department rather than any specific measures of reorganization. We shall do whatever is possible to encourage students in the feeling that their main function here is to acquire the maturity that is essential for scholarship rather than to accumulate a collection of pieces of isolated information.

III. Research

Professors Mason, Leontief, Black, Galbraith and Dunlop are all conducting organized research projects within the Department. Apart from their substantive value, these projects give a considerable number of graduate students an opportunity to take part in organized research activity. I believe these projects have an important part to play in the future of the Department as a whole rather than as special interests of individual members. However, I do not share the view that most of our intellectual activities should be directed towards organized research. There is danger that we may become a research bureaucracy and that the merits of individual scholarship may achieve less recognition than they deserve. While the research project is invaluable in training the students in specialized activity, it does little to cultivate the maturity that should be one of the most important products of our graduate training.

IV. The Staff of the Department

Professor Schumpeter’s death has meant a loss to the Department that cannot be covered by any individual that we now have on the staff or could get from the outside. The only way to make up for his absence is for the present members of the faculty to direct part of their attention to the aspects of economic thought in which Schumpeter was particularly interested. This has in part been done. I think it is true to say that since Schumpeter’s death his own work has received more attention in Harvard classrooms than it received while he was alive.

The only new additions to the to the staff at the professorial level in 1949-50 were assistant professors Orcutt and Sawyer. Orcutt is giving a course at the graduate level and the undergraduate level on empirical economies in which he stresses the quantitative aspects of economic theory. He is also a first-class statistician. Since the resignation of Professor Crum we have had only one professional statistician in the Department, and it seems highly desirable to have at least two. Sawyer will add considerable strength to the Department’s work in economic history although he will spend half of his time in the General Education program.

VI. [sic] Distinctions

Members of the Department received the following distinctions:

Professor Edward Chamberlin — An honorary degree (Dr.) awarded by the Universita Catholica del Sacro Cuore, Milan, Italy. December 1949.

Professor Sumner Slichter — President, Industrial Relations Research Association.

Professor Gottfried Haberler — President, International Economic Association for 1950 (held by Professor Schumpeter at the time of his death).

I am attaching a bibliography of the writings of the members of the Department. [not included in this folder]

Sincerely yours,
Arthur Smithies

Source: Harvard University Archives. Department of Economics, Correspondence and Papers (UAV 349.11), Box 2, Folder “Departmental Annual Reports to the Dean 1948-54”.

Images Source: Burbank (left) from the Harvard Class Album 1946, Smithies (right) from the Harvard Class Album 1952.

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Economics Programs Harvard Teaching Undergraduate

Harvard. Economics Department Reports to the Dean, 1941-1946

This post adds the Chairman’s annual reports on the Harvard Economics Department for the World War II years to the series:

Department of Economics Reports to the Dean of Harvard, 1932-1941

More about Harvard during WWII: Coreydon Ireland, “Harvard Goes to War,” The Harvard Gazette (November 10, 2011).

_______________________

1941-42

October 15, 1942

Dear Dean Buck:

I submit herewith a report on the work of the Department of Economics covering the past year.

The only honor conferred upon a member of the Department during this period has been the election of Professor Leontief to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Several books have been published by members of the Department, including Professor Harris’s two major works (appearing, I believe, not more than a month apart), The Economics of American Defense and Economics of Social Security; Professor Black’s Parity, Parity, Parity; Professor Hansen’s Fiscal Policy and Business Cycles; and Professor Haberler’s Consumer Credit and Economic Fluctuations. Professor Haberler’s Prosperity and Depression has also gone through a third edition. Professor Crum was co-author of Fiscal Planning for Total War. The list of articles, pamphlets, reviews, and other items seems unusually long. Professor Hansen has listed thirteen items, Professor Slichter eight, and Professor Black six. The Harvard Economic Studies has expanded from 70 to 72 volumes during the year.

The contribution of the Department to the war effort has been substantial. Professor Mason continues on leave of absence with the Office of Strategic Services, and Professor Harris has recently been granted full time leave to serve as Director of the Division of Export-Import Price Control in the Office of Price Administration. Among those in the Department who are more or less active as Consultants or in other part time war activities are Professors Black, Crum, Hansen, Leontief, and Slichter, and Dr. Butters. Numerous younger men have, of course, entered the war services or have declined possible reappointment at Harvard in order to accept administrative and research positions in Washington.

The problem of maintaining instructional standards has, of course, been aggravated by the war. Fortunately, exceptions to the two-thirds rule have been granted in many cases; otherwise it would have been literally impossible in the face of competing wartime opportunities to recruit a staff of younger men at all. Out of the present staff of fifteen teaching fellows eleven are on more than two-thirds time, and almost without exception these men would not have been available (that is, not even at two-thirds time) if exceptions to the rule had not been made. The average experience of the Economics A staff has improved owing to a policy of putting more experienced men into Economics A and breaking in new men either in tutorial work or in the Statistics and Accounting courses. 36% of concentrators in Economics are tutored by new men this year; 60% by men of one year or less experience. The very sizeable staff in Statistics and Accounting is made up almost entirely of new appointees.

In view of the desperate need for trained economists in the expanding activities of the United States Government, the Department has announced for the current year an Undergraduate Training Program in Economics for Government Service which has attracted a substantial enrolment. The program has been opened to non-honors as well as to honors candidates. It has been carefully designed to give advanced training of a type which will enable them to undertake with a minimum of delay and adaptation administrative and research positions in the government service. It includes, in addition to a substantial corps of standard courses in Economics, three new courses, namely, Economics 7a and 7b, Research in Market Organization, Commodity Distribution, and Prices; Economics 19a, Research in Money and Finance; and Economics 22b, Government Statistics. One striking indication of the merits of this program might appear in the fact that a program of training announced by the Department of Government seems to consist essentially in normal concentration Government plus an election from these new courses in Economics.

Sincerely yours,

E. H. Chamberlin

Dean Paul H. Buck

_______________________

1942-43

October 21, 1943

Dear Dean Buck:

I submit herewith the report on the work of the Department of Economics for the academic year.

The war effort has continued to deplete our staff. Since the opening of the academic year Professors Chamberlin and Haberler and Dr. Dunlop have been granted leave of absence to undertake work in war agencies in Washington. However, Professor Crum resumes his work with the Department after leave of absence from the University to conduct an investigation on Fiscal Planning for the National Bureau of Economic Research of which he is currently the Chairman. Also Associate Professor Seymour Harris has returned to the University after a year and a half of service with the Office of Price Administration where he served as Director of the Office of Import-Export Price Control. A very small fraction of the once large junior staff now remains. By the end of the coming term it is expected that not more than four Annual Instructors will be active in instruction.

The incidence of war activities on research and publication has been two-fold. In some instances long-time research projects have been put aside, but concurrently much effort has been applied to projects concerned with war and post-war problems. Having in mind the inevitable interruptions of the war period, it is gratifying to be able to report that the books, scientific articles, addresses and reports have been in about the same number as the average of the immediately preceding years.

Of the major publications during the year the following should be mentioned:

J. A. Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy

P. M. Sweezy, The Theory of Capitalist Development

Edwin Frickey, Economic Fluctuations in the United States: a Systematic Analysis of Long-Run Trends and Business Cycles, 1866-1914

S. E. Harris, Economics of America at War

S. E. Harris, Editor, Postwar Economic Problems

A. P. Usher, The Early History of Deposit Banking in Mediterranean Europe has just left the press.

J. T. Dunlop, Cost Behavior and Price Policy

It is also indicative of the demands of war activities that some forty or fifty articles directly related to the war and post-war economy have been published by members of the Department. In addition numerous reports have been issued to or under the auspices of various war agencies such as Professor Harris, “O.P.A. Manual of Price Control” and his “Reports on Anti-Inflationary Programs in South America,” and Professor Crum’s memorandum on Fiscal Planning for Reconstruction and Peace for the National Bureau of Economic Research. The Quarterly Journal of Economics has continued successfully through another year, bringing the total volumes of this publication to 57. The Review of Economic Statistics now in its 25th volume is continuing under the editorship of Professor Harris. The Harvard Economic Studies is now publishing its 75th volume.

The rapid reduction in the numbers of the teaching staff has been met in part by the increased activity of those remaining. With the very active cooperation of the members of the staff we have been able to offer a reasonably full and well balanced program of instruction. On the graduate level flexibility of instruction has been more necessary than in previous years because of the cosmopolitan group now in attendance –not less than a dozen different nationalities are represented. This flexibility is being achieved largely by increased individual supervision and instruction.

The sharp decline in the undergraduate body together with the presence of a small but able and experienced staff of teachers has made possible a degree of experimentation in the introductory course in Economics which should lead to significant changes in the conduct of this course in the post-war period. Also at the present time some attention is being given to a question which has been in the minds of a number of members of the staff for some year—the so-called quiz section. It has been a quite common practice, in the conduct of middle group courses to provide for two lectures and one section meeting each week. On occasion five lectures are followed by the section meeting. For many years the usefulness of the section meeting has been in question. It is to be admitted that it does relieve the instructor of a lecture, but whether or not it provides equivalent or better instruction is debatable. At the present time Professor Crum and Dr. Smith are conducting a controlled experiment in the section meetings connected with their offering Government Control of Industry and Public Utilities. In the course time they will report their findings to the Department.

At this point I should like to mention the interesting and valuable “experiment” which Professor Slichter has called The Trade Union Fellowship Project. I am enclosing Professor Slichter’s report on this project which, I believe, you will find of interest. We regard the experiment as not only highly successful from both the point of view of the University and the Unions, but the experience furnishes a good deal of evidence regarding educational processes which may prove to be highly significant.

Very sincerely yours,

H. H. Burbank

_______________________

1943-44

October 13, 1944

Dear Dean Buck:

I submit herewith a brief report on the work of the Department of Economies for the academic year.

In the main, this report is a continuation of the report sent to you a year ago. In spite of the multifarious wartime activities of the member of the staff, the Department has maintained a well balanced offering of courses on both the undergraduate and graduate level. Course elections have continued to be surprisingly large, but I believe that the decline we have been expecting will actually begin with the Winter Term. The large proportion of foreign students on the graduate level, together with our inability to give complete offerings each Term, has necessitated an unusual amount of individual instruction.

Professors Mason and Chamberlin and Drs. Sweezy and Dunlop were on leave for the entire year. Professor Haberler resumed his work with us for the Summer Term.

I can repeat from my report of last year that the incidence of war activities on research and publication has been twofold. Most of our long time research projects have been put aside, but currently many projects concerned with war and postwar problems have been initiated and some of them completed. Although publication has been diminished by war activities, it is still gratifying to be able to report that the books, scientific articles, addresses, and reports—although not in quite the same quantity as in the prewar years—have nevertheless appeared in substantial numbers. Progress on the publication of books has shown a more definite interruption, but four books have been published during the year and not less than six books are now either actually in the press or are nearing form for publication. The books published during the year were:

J. D. Black, Food Enough

A. H. Hansen, (with H. S. Perloff), State and Local Finance in the National Economy

S. H. Slichter, Present Savings and Postwar Markets

J. H. Williams, Postwar Monetary Plans and Other Essays

Both of our periodicals — the Quarterly Journal of Economics and the Review of Economic Statistics — have been able to continue publication without interruption and have been able to maintain their high standards. The difficulties encountered by scientific periodicals during these years are very real. One other volume has been added to the Harvard Economic Studies.

In my last report I mentioned the experimentation, particularly in the Introductory course, which had been initiated. I am very happy to be able to report that this experimentation has continued through another year with very gratifying results. A very interesting problem is involved in the attempt to present adequately the introductory material in Economies. Most of us who have been intimately concerned with the problem believe that a single course can serve both for those who will concentrate in Economics and for those whose main, interest lie elsewhere. The content of such a course, and the effective presentation of the material, is now being studied.

I might add here—because fundamentally it is experimentation in methods and relationships—that the Trade Union Fellowship Project has been conducted successfully for another year. At various times I have sort you Professor Slichter’s reports on these projects. We believe that a very interesting and productive educational experiment is being carried on with the Trade Union men.

Also in the sane connection I should like to record that during the last year we were presented with a variety of problems by the numerous South American students who came to us on the graduate level.We gave these students particular attention. By the end of the year we had learned that it would be highly profitable to develop for such students some specialized instruction which would overcome the difficulties under which all of them labored in their first term or two of residence. Their educational background, following European patterns, is such that it is necessary for us to present to them in concentrated form certain types of qualitative and quantitative analysis with which they are unfamiliar and which is not now offered on the graduate level.

The members of the Department have continued to discuss and to arrive at decisions regarding course instruction in the postwar years. In sone respects, we will strengthen the instruction offered mainly for the specialist in Economics, but we are more concerned with broader offerings which will prove to be desirable, and we hope necessary, for the college at large. Our permanent staff is large and versatile. We hope to be able to utilize to the full the resources we possess. In connection with the enrichment of our teaching, we expect to utilize more effectively in our instruction the material forthcoming from a number of proposed seminars.

It seems unnecessary to mention in detail the wartime activities of our staff members. Practically every member of the staff is actively engaged in some type of war activity. Without exception, each officer is utilizing his special aptitudes and training in connection with the various Federal agencies concerned with economic problems.

Very sincerely,

H. H. Burbank

Dean Paul H. Buck
University Hall 5
Cambridge, Massachusetts

_______________________

1944-45

October 24, 1945

Dear Dean Buck:

I submit herewith a brief report on the Department of Economics for the last year.

As in the preceding war years, the Department has been able to present a very respectable offering of courses, both on the graduate and undergraduate level. The number of graduate students continued to be unexpectedly large, necessitating a rather more elaborate course offering for them than we had planned. To a somewhat larger extent than in the two preceding years the students enrolled represent such a diverse background of training and experience that sone new types of instruction were involved. Some seventeen nationalities were represented. We are inclined to believe that this is not altogether a temporary and war situation. Even after the European universities are reestablished, we expect to draw many students with foreign background and training. If this expectation is fulfilled, our wartime experience with foreign students will have been of considerable value.

Even before the war the Department was concerned with the reorganization of its instruction. Our discussions continued throughout the year materializing in a curriculum in theoretical and applied Economics which tends to utilize to the full the unusual capacities of the members of the staff. Our present position, however, is by no means definitive. We have always relied heavily upon the stimulating intellectual activities of the younger members of the staff. When recruitment is again possible we expect to strengthen our position markedly through the cooperation of these younger members.

The reorganization of instruction has been concerned mainly with the content and coverage of courses, but in some cases it has dealt with the actual methods of classroom instruction. The introductory course has been completely recast, involving new types of material and new methods of presentation. The full effects of these changes will have to wait upon the enlargement of our junior staff. Also, some of our plans involving quantitative instruction necessarily are held in abeyance until the questions regarding a statistical laboratory have been settled.

The war effort of many officers of the Department continued through the year. Professor Mason and Drs. Sweezy and Dunlop were on leave from the University devoting their entire time to their respective wartime assignments. Professor Chamberlin returned to Cambridge in February from his post with the office of Strategic Services. Other members of the Department, particularly Professors Hansen, Slichter, Harris, Leontief and Black, while meeting their University obligations also served in various capacities with wartime agencies.

The incidence of this wartime service upon research and publishing activities of the group was marked. Both books and articles were fewer in number than in the normal year and in the main reflected the particular war activities of the authors. However, in all some

34 articles and 7 books were published. It should be noted that at least three volumes which the authors had expected to complete in the last year are now being prepared for the press.

The difficulties involved in the publication of scientific journals have been great but not insurmountable. We have been able to continue the publication of the Quarterly Journal of Economies and the Review of Economic Statistics without reduction in size and without omission of numbers. In the Harvard Economic Series [rest of line blank] that some four volumes either in the hands of the press or the Department were ready for publication but because of the war restrictions were not actually published.

Latterly the Department has been concerned with the vexing problems of the definition of objectives of students on the graduate level and the adjustment of these objectives to the various higher degrees offered. We are concerned with the administration not only of the Ph.D. degree in Business Economies, the Ph.D. in Political Economy and Government, and in part with the Ph.D. in Public Administration which may be conferred through the Littauer School of Public Administration. The problems involved in defining and administering each of these degrees will receive continued attention.

Although no honorary degrees have been reported by members of the staff, Professor E. H. Chamberlin was elected Membre Correspondent de L’Institut de Science Économique Appliquée, May 1945, and Professor S. E. Harris was elected to membership in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Very sincerely,

[H.H. Burbank]

_______________________

1945-46

September 30, 1946

Dear Dean Buck:

You have requested a brief report on the Department of Economics for the academic year 1945-46.

Although the Department of Economics had anticipated to a considerable extent the problems that would be presented by the post-war situation, it found the academic year 1945-46 presenting difficulties for which there, was no immediate solution.

Fortunately we had devoted a great deal of time and thought to our course offering and to methods of instruction. We were moderately well prepared to take up the new work involved in new instruction and also the work involved in changing the content of, old courses. Again we were fortunate in being able to meet most of the difficulties presented by the unprecedented number of graduate students. With all of the permanent members of the staff in residence, we were able to meet the graduate situation although it taxed our resources to the limit. Many of our most insistent problems were concerned with the difficulties we met in assembling and training an adequate junior staff. We began the fall term with 2 Assistant Professors (Faculty Instructors), 3 Annual Instructors, and 7 Teaching Fellows. The staff was increased during the year but it was far from adequate to meet the course work, involved in our offering. However, this would seem to be a problem of relatively short duration. A few young scholars are being brought from other institutions and occupations and our Graduate School contains a number of most promising young scholars whose development is proceeding rapidly.

During the fall of 1945 the Department surveyed repeatedly the obligations it had undertaken. We were committed to an elaborate course offering. He realized that the permanent personnel of the Department could not be expanded and we recognized that in the range of the junior staff immediate and extensive increases in personnel also were impossible. Because of the irreducible demands upon our limited resources, we reconsidered repeatedly our efforts in the area of tutorial instruction and eventually voted to suspend tutorial instruction for a period with the stipulation that the subject be reconsidered at such time as the Department might see fit and in no event not later than two years.

The foregoing remarks have indicated that all members of the staff are carrying much heavier loads than in pre-war days. The burden necessarily is apportioned unevenly but all are affected. The main incidence of this situation is on research. For some officers it means that research must be put aside temporarily. For others, less than ordinary progress is being made. However, as the following titles indicate, the contributions have been substantial:

Black, John D., and a committee consisting of M. R. Benedict, S. T. Dana, and L. K. Pomeroy; Credit for Small Timberland Owners, Including Farmers with Woodlands; A Report on Forest Credit. (In press)

Black, John D., with some guidance from Jorge Ahumada of Chile, Roberto Arellano Bonilla of Honduras, and Jorge Alcazer of Bolivia; Farm Cost Analysis, with Some Reference

Black, John D.; Clawson, Marion; Sayre, C.F.; Willcox, W. W.; Farm Management. The Macmillan Company (in press).

Chamberlin, E. H.; Fifth edition of the Theory of Monopolistic Competition (Chapter added). Translation of the above book into Spanish.

Crum, W. L., and Schumpeter, J. A.; Rudimentary Mathematics for Economists and Statisticians. McGraw-Hill.

Hansen, A. H.; America’s Role in the World Economy. W. W. Norton.

Hansen, A. H.; The United States After the War. Cornell Uiv. Press.

Hansen, A. H.; Financing American Propsperity. 20th Century Fund.

Harris, S. E.; Price Control in the International Field. (In press)

Harris, S. E.; National Debt. (In press)

Mason, E. S.; Controlling World Trade; Cartels and Commodity Agreements. McGraw-Hill.

Morgan, T.; The Development of the Hawaiian Economy, 1778-1876. Stanford Press. (In press)

In addition to the above books, some 72 articles have been contributed to scientific journals. We feel particularly happy in having been able to carry our publications, the Quarterly Journal of Economics and the Review of Economic Statistics, through the war period without serious alterations. Both publications are in sound financial condition. Actually, the Review of Economic Statistics will be in a much sounder position financially at the end of the current fiscal year than at the beginning of the war. However, increased publication costs are a matter for concern.

We have added two volumes to the Harvard Economic Series and published a revision of one. Three more volumes are now in the press. Again, increasing publication costs constitute a serious problem.

As mentioned above, all of the permanent officers of the Department had returned to active duty in Cambridge at the beginning of the year. A few officers have maintained contacts with various Washington departments and on occasion are called upon for consultation. In this connection, Professor John D. Black has served as Chairman of the Committee on Food Supplies for the Food and Nutrition Board of the National Research Council and also has served actively with at least four other agencies. Professor John T. Dunlop has served as Consultant in the Office of Economic Stabilization and the Office of War Mobilization and Reconversion. Professor Seymour E. Harris has served as Consultant for the office of Price Administration. Professor Edward S. Mason has served as Consultant for the Department of State.

Very sincerely,

H. H. Burbank

Dean Paul H. Buck
5 University Hall

_______________________

Source: Harvard University Archives. Department of Economics, Correspondence and Papers 1930-1961 (UAV 349.11). Box 2, Folder “Provost Buck—Annual Report of Dept.”

Image Source: A Harvard Army ROTC unit on parade along Memorial Drive, July 1943. From the Harvard Archives published in: Coreydon Ireland,  “To Honor the Living and Dead“, The Harvard Gazette (November 10, 2011).

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Economics Programs Graduate Student Support Harvard Undergraduate

Harvard. Economics Chairman’s Report to the Dean. Harris, 1956

 

The previous post provided transcriptions of the annual reports to the Dean by the chairman of the economics department from 1932 through 1941. This post skips ahead to the middle of the 1950s to give us a glimpse of the post-war Harvard economics department. Seymour Harris’ big take-aways from his 45 year survey of undergraduate and graduate economics courses taught by Harvard economics faculty: (i) “the proportion of undergraduate courses given by full professors has fallen from 75 to 35 percent” and (ii) “graduate courses are relatively 5 times as numerous as they were in 1909-10.” (from July 3, 1956 cover letter to Dean McGeorge Bundy that accompanied the report transcribed below).

It is also interesting to note that the economics department’s continues to plead for more funds to compensate it for “…about one half the teaching burden of the G.S.P.A. and students in the G.S.P.A. account[ing] for about one third of all the graduate students in economics (on a full-time basis)…”. Harris wrote this report two decades after the Graduate School of Public Administration had opened for business.

____________________________

CONFIDENTIAL

June 30, 1956

Report to the Dean of the Faculty for the Academic Year 1955-56
by Seymour E. Harris, Chairman of the Department of Economics

Contents

Undergraduate Instruction

  1. More Mature Staff for Economics 1.
  2. Contents of Economics 1.
  3. Staff Meetings of Economics 1.
  4. Lectures in Economics 1.
  5. Economics Tutorial.
  6. High Honors Concentrators.
  7. Seminars for Honors Graduates.

Allocation of Resources

  1. Enrollment of Undergraduates in Graduate Courses and Vice Versa.
  2. Increase in the Number of Undergraduate Courses, 1909-10 to 1955-56.
  3. Increase in the Number of Graduate Courses, 1909-10 to 1955-56.
  4. Table 1 – Distribution of Courses by Academic Rank, 1909-10 to 1955-56.
  5. Table 2 – Courses Given by Faculty, 1909-10 to 1955-56, by Rank.
  6. Table 3 – Percentage of Courses, Undergraduate and Graduate.
  7. The Increased Importance of Graduate Instruction.
  8. Reduced Undergraduate Instruction by Higher Ranking Members of Faculty.
  9. Ibid., Statistical Summary.
  10. Number of Faculty by Rank.

Relations with G.S.P.A.

  1. Teaching Responsibilities of Economics Department in G.S.P.A.
  2. Contributions of G.S.P.A. to Economics Department.
  3. Overall Consideration of Number of G.S.P.A. Seminars.

Library Problems

  1. Library Problems.

Fellowships

  1. Inadequate Fellowships.
  2. Campaign for Additional Money.
  3. Outside Fellowships.

Research and Personnel Problems

  1. Competition of Research Fellowships for Potential Teachers.
  2. Research Projects.
  3. Financing of Pay of Director of Research Projects.
  4. Small Research Grants.
  5. Secretarial Help.
  6. Personnel Changes.
  7. Honors, etc.

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

Undergraduate Instruction

The Department is especially concerned with the problem of undergraduate instruction. Confronted with a trend away from economics the country over (see my Memo to the Alumni of the Harvard Graduate School in Economics, May, 1956, p. 4) and the competition of an unusually able corps of undergraduate teachers in competing fields at Harvard and notably in history and government we are paying increased attention to our undergraduate instruction. In the last year we have taken the following steps:

  1. More Mature Staff for Economics 1. We are using a larger proportion of instructors and assistant professors in Economics 1. We expect that half the Economics 1 staff will consist of instructors and assistant professors in 1956-57 as compared with 20 per cent in 1955-56.
  2. Contents of Economics 1. We are revising Economics 1 for 1956-57. Economics 1 has become too technical. One advantage of increasing the average age of the staff is that the older men are less inclined to teach the highly technical economics they get in graduate courses. Probably less than 20 per cent of those enrolled in Economics 1 are, or are likely to become, concentrators in economics; and no more than 1-2 per cent will become economists. Our major responsibility is to give the student in Economics 1 relatively simple economic theory and relate it to the major issues of public policy. We intend to devote more time to integrating our economics with history and political science. Macroeconomics will continue to receive a major part of our attention, but less time will be given to the economics of the firm.
  3. Staff Meetings of Economics 1. The Chairman now meets with the Economics 1 staff for 1½ hours every 2 weeks and in every possible way is trying to make the teaching fellow and other junior members, who contribute so much time and enthusiasm to our teaching program, feel as though they are an important part of our department staff.
  4. Lectures in Economics 1. This year we doubled our lectures in Economics 1 — a lecture every other week. In these lectures we try to go over ground not covered in the readings and also incidentally to give the undergraduate an opportunity to listen to some of the top economists in the country. We are now not disposed to increase the number of lectures further but we shall continue the experiment. Of this I am convinced — lectures are not likely to be as important in Economics 1 as in the elementary course in government and history (Social Science). The undergraduate probably gets much more from discussions of economics in small sections than from lectures.
  1. Economics Tutorial. Tutorial in economics is not as good as it ought to be. We are wrestling with this problem. We intend to have more meetings of tutors and to impress upon them the importance of tutorial. At one of our Executive Committee meetings, we had a frank discussion with the seven masters and several senior tutors concerning our tutorial work. Our Junior tests, tied to house tutorial, seem to be working well. This year we prepared an extensive reading list for Sophomore tutorial; and next year we intend to integrate tutorial and Economics 1 more than in the past. We hope that tutorial in the second half of the Sophomore year will deal with some of the theoretical problems that will be excluded from Economics 1.
  1. High Honors Concentrators. This year we had periodic meetings with all first and second group men in economics. At these meetings (one evening every two weeks) we try to encourage discussions of important problems in the seminar manner.
  1. Seminars for Honor Graduates. Economics 100 and 102 are two new courses (to be introduced in 1956-57 and 1957-58) to be open to Junior and Senior honors students. They will be run on a seminar basis, limited in enrollment, and will be integrated with tutorial. The student will get an opportunity to deal with theoretical problems and their empirical counterpart.

Allocation of Resources

  1. Enrollment of Undergraduates in Graduate Courses and Vice Versa. Here are some tables which throw some light on the allocation of resources between undergraduate and graduate courses. Generally courses for undergraduates and graduates are taken primarily by undergraduates, and courses for graduates primarily by graduates. Hence, we assume that the courses for undergraduates and graduates are in fact courses for undergraduates and courses for graduates are in fact courses for graduates. (In the spring term 1956 the percentage of Arts and Science graduate enrollment in courses for undergraduates and graduates was 14 or 1 per cent of the 1181 enrolled in these courses; the enrollment of undergraduates in courses primarily for graduates was 10 of 482, or 2 per cent).
  2. Increase in the Number of Undergraduate Courses, 1909-10 to 1955-56. Table 1 reveals relatively unimportant changes in the number of courses for undergraduates; and the net change in the number of courses for undergraduates and graduates (in fact undergraduate courses) in the last 40-50 years has not been large. In 1909-10, there were 10½ undergraduate courses (inclusive of half courses for undergraduates and graduates and exclusive of bracketed courses); in 1955-56, there were 14½ of such courses.
  3. Increase in the Number of Graduate Courses, 1909-10 to 1955-56. It is especially in graduate courses that the rise has been spectacular. In 1909-10 there were 1½ graduate courses in Economics (exclusive of bracketed ones); by 1929-30, there were 11; by 1939-40, there were 12½ courses; by 1949-50, there were 21½ courses; and by 1955-56, there were 24. All these totals include half courses.
  1. Table 1 — Distribution of Courses by Academic Rank, 1909-10 to 1955-56*
    (Refers to Units of Full Courses)
  1909-10 1919-20 1929-30 1939-40 1949-50 1955-56
Rank U G U G U G U G U G U G
Full Prof. 8 1 3 7 4 ½ 7 7 ¼ 16 ¾ 8 15 ¼ 5 18
Assoc. Prof. — — — — 3 3 3 ¼ 1 ¾ 1 3 ¼ 3 2 ½
Asst. Prof. 1 ½ ½ 3 ½ 2 ½ 1 — ½ — 2 ½ — 4 2
Instructor & Lecturer 1 — 3 1 1 ½ 1 1 ½ 1 3 3 2 ½ 1 ½
Total 10 ½ 1 ½ 9 ½ 10 ½ 10 11 12 ½ 19 ½ 14 ½ 21 ½ 14 ½ 24
  1. Table 2 — Courses Given by Faculty, 1909-10 to 1955-56, by Rank*
    (Refers to Nearest Decimal point)
  1909-10 1919-20 1929-30 1939-40 1949-50 1955-56
Rank U G U G U G U G U G U G
Full Prof. 76 66 32 67 45 64 58 86 55 73 35 75
Assoc. Prof. — — — — 30 27 26 9 7 14 21 10
Asst. Prof. 14 — 36 24 10 — 4 — 17 — 27 8
Instructor & Lecturer 10 34 32 9 15 9 12 5 21 13 17 7
Total 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100

* U = “undergraduate” and “undergraduate and graduate”;  G = “graduate”.
Source: Compiled from Course of Study Volumes.

  1. Table 3 — Percentage of Courses, Undergraduate and Graduate
Total No. of Courses % of Total Courses
(Exclusive of Bracketed Courses)
“Undergraduate” and
“Undergraduate & Graduate”		 Graduate
(Inclusive of G.S.P.A. Economics Courses)
1909-10 12 88 12
1929-30 21 56 44
1939-40 32 39 61
1949-50 36 41 59
1955-56 38½ 38 62

From 1909 to 1929-30 the percentage of graduate courses was up from 12 to 44 per cent; but since 1929-30 the rise has been less spectacular. In Table 2, we note the courses, both undergraduate and graduate, given by men of various rank, from 1909-10 to 1955-56. The following points should be noted.

  1. The Increased Importance of Graduate Instruction. In 1909-10 there were but 1½ out of 12 courses, or 12 per cent, graduate courses. By 1929-30 courses were roughly evenly divided between graduate and undergraduate. By 1939-40 and 1949-50 the ratio was about 60 per cent graduate courses; and by 1955-56, 62 per cent of all courses were graduate courses, or 5 times as much relatively as in 1909-10.
  2. Reduced Undergraduate Instruction by Higher Ranking Members Faculty. Whereas in 1909-10 full professors accounted for 76 per cent of undergraduate course work, by 1955-56 they gave only 35 per cent of these courses; and there has been a marked decline since 1949-50. The total of undergraduate courses taught by them dropped from 1949-50 to 1955-56 by 3, or 37 per cent, and of graduate courses rose by 2¾ or 18 per cent. A similar trend is evident for associate professors, though from 1949-50 to 1955-56, the percentage of undergraduate courses taught by associate professors rose. It is a striking fact that in 1955-56, full professors taught 37 per cent less undergraduate courses and 1700 per cent more graduate courses than in 1909-10. In the former year there were 4 full professors, each responsible on the average for 2 full undergraduate courses and ¼ graduate courses. In 1955-56, 13 full professors averaged 1/3 of 1 undergraduate course and 1.4 graduate courses. (All 13 were not on full time). It is clear that the trend is away from undergraduate teaching for permanent members of the Department.
  3. Ibid., Statistical Summary. As might be expected, the percentage of all graduate courses taught by full professors tends to rise and of undergraduate courses to fall — the latter courses taught by professors declined from 76 per cent in 1909-10 to 45 per cent in 1929-30, and to 35 per cent by 1955-56.
  4. Number of Faculty by Rank. In this connection, the number at different ranks is of some interest. The full professors account for a somewhat larger proportion (teaching fellows omitted) than 50 years ago; but permanent appointments are an increased percentage.
  1909-10 1929-30 1939-40 1949-50 1955-56
Professors 4 5 12 13 13
Assoc. Professors — 3 3 2 4
Asst. Professors 1 2 1 4 4
Lecturers and Instructors 3 2 3 4 3
Visiting, etc. Professors 2
(part-time)		 3
(part-time)		 — — 1
Total (excl. Visiting) 8 12 19 23 24
———— ———— ———— ———— ———— ————
% Full Prof. (excl. Visiting) 50 42 63 57 54
% Permanent (incl. Permanent Lecturers) 50 67 89 74 75

Relations with the Graduate School of Public Administration

  1. Teaching Responsibilities of Economics Department in G.S.P.A. Our relations with the G.S.P.A. are of great importance. It is now close to 20 years since the G.S.P.A. was founded and yet the Department of Economics has never taken a long look at our relations. The Economics Department accounts for about one half the teaching burden of the G.S.P.A. and students in the G.S.P.A. account for about one third of all the graduate students in economics (on a full-time basis).
  2. Contributions of G.S.P.A to Economics Department. The G.S.P.A. has made an important contribution towards the Economics Department. It provides some research and secretarial help, good physical facilities, useful library, central facilities for students and faculty, an opportunity to give our students excellent seminars, and to meet outstanding scholars and practical men in government.
  3. Over-all Consideration of Number of G.S.P.A. Seminars. It may be that a decision should be made concerning the number of seminars. We tend to add one at a time, and the numbers now are at such a level that we may be putting a disproportionate amount of energy into these seminars. At any rate, net additions should be considered with care, given our available manpower. At present only 6 of the 18 permanent members of our faculty are not associated with the G.S.P.A.; and of the 6, Professors Dorfman and Duesenberry are about to participate. Of 27 courses to be given by permanent members of the Department, 7¼ will be as seminars in the G.S.P.A.

Library Problems

  1. Library Problems. Professor Arthur Cole retires this year. He has for many years been responsible for the acquisition of books in economics. Unless this responsibility is assumed by another, our economic collection will deteriorate. So far we have not been able to work out an arrangement acceptable to the Dean and the Director of the library. In my opinion, there is need for a central responsibility for library acquisitions in economics.

Fellowships

  1. Inadequate Fellowships. One of our most serious problems is fellowships. A study of fellowship funds announced as available to students suggested that Harvard was falling way behind. In a recent period of 5 years, five institution which are our strongest competitors had 30, 23, 20, 10, and 5 times as much money available for fellowships per Ph.D. granted in these five years. Increasingly we are losing the best students to rival institutions.
  2. Campaign for Additional Money. We have discussed this problem with Dean Bundy and Dean Elder, and also with our Visiting Committee. We have set up a committee consisting of Dean Mason, Professors Slichter, Dunlop and Harris to seek aggressively more fellowship funds. We are seeking these funds in the expectation that the major part of new funds will be available as additional funds for the Economics Department. Our goal is 6 fellowships at $2500 per year, or $15,000 per year additional. We discovered last year that by offering large fellowships to a limited number, we were more successful than in the past in attracting the more able candidates.
  3. Outside Fellowships. Our fellowship problem is eased by the availability of fellowships given by outside groups — governments, foundations etc. For example, Harvard received 5 of the 15 Wilson National fellowships for 1956-57. But it should be observed that there is often pressure to deny applicants access to the major universities and especially to Harvard. There is pressure to distribute widely, Moreover, a large proportion of these fellowship holders are often below our usual fellowship standards.

Research and Personnel Problems

  1. Competition of Research Fellowship Money for Potential Teachers. It is becoming increasingly easy for graduate students writing theses to receive fellowships that generally pay at least as much as a teaching fellowship. This year we lost 10 potential teachers as a result of these lucrative fellowships.
  2. Research Projects. Many of the Senior members of the staff are associated with large research projects, some of them of great significance. At least 9 of these projects may be classified as giant projects, three of them involving outlays of one half million or more dollars in the next 3-5 years. In 1955-56, Professor Leontief received almost one half million dollars to continue the projects of the Harvard Economic Group, and Dean Mason received $450,000 for a study of the New York Metropolitan area.
  3. Financing of Pay of Directors of Projects. It has always seemed to the Chairman, at least, that the foundations ought to pay part of the salary of the faculty members who direct these projects. When these projects are the major interest of those responsible for them, a case could be made for the foundation paying part of the salary of the relevant members of the faculty.
  4. Small Research Grants. It would be helpful to get some help from the Ford Foundation for small research projects especially for those who do not participate in the giant projects. I have had some preliminary discussion with the Ford Foundation, and I believe they would look with favor on an application for $25,000-30,000 per year for research help. Grants might vary from a few hundred dollars to $1,000-2,000 and be tied with specific projects. The great danger here is abuse of the privileges. Hence any such grant would have to be carefully administered – with some representation of outside economists on the committee.
  5. Secretarial Help. A related problem is that of secretarial help. Most of the Senior members, through administrative posts, control of seminars, editorial work, and research grants, manage to get the minimum amount of secretarial help. But 5 of our permanent members have virtually no access to secretaries and this is also true of most of our assistant professors. It would be helpful if some provision could be made for secretarial help for those without it. We realize this raises serious problems of finance.
  6. Personnel Changes. Professor Hansen retires this year and Professor Williams next year. We thus lose the best combination in money, cycles, and fiscal policy available anywhere. It is going to be difficult to fill this gap. Professor Black’s departure has also left a serious gap. We have added 2 very able assistant professors, Drs. J. Henderson and Valavanis, aside from two appointments (Drs. Moses and Conrad) in which the Economics Department shares one quarter of the cost. For 1957-58 and 1958-59, the Economics Department will have the services of Dr. E. Hoover for 3/7 of his time. We probably have the most able group of assistant professors in our history. It is not going to be easy to fill the gaps noted above, and make the most effective use of the young talent now in the Department. The Visiting Committee is again raising the question of a Professor of Business Enterprise, a matter to which we should give earnest attention. President Conant and Provost Buck were apparently prepared at the last discussion of this problem to provide an additional appointment for this purpose.
  7. Honors, etc. Dean Mason received an honorary degree from Harvard, and was a United States Representative at the United Nations Conference in Geneva on Peaceful Use of Atomic Energy.

Professor Hansen gave the Walgreen lectures at the University of Chicago.

Professor Harris served as Chairman of the Nor England Governors” Textile Committee,

Professor Galbraith advised the Indian Government on their Five Year Plan.

Professor Smithies was a Visiting Professor at Oxford and Professor

Kaysen at the London School of Economics.

 

Books:

Galbraith and Holton: Marketing Efficiency in Puerto Rico.

Harris: Keynes: Economist and Policy Maker.

Harris: New England Textiles and the New England Economy: Report to the Conference of New England Governors.

Kaysen: United States v. United Shoe Machinery Corporation: An Economic Analysis of an Anti-Trust Case.

Kaysen and Harris were two of the four co-authors of the American Business Creed.

 

Source: Harvard University Archives. Department of Economics, Correspondence and Papers (UAV 349.11). Box 2,  Folder: “Departmental Annual Reports to the Dean, 1955-”.

Image Source: Seymour E. Harris in The Harvard Class Album 1957.

 

Categories
Economics Programs Harvard Undergraduate

Harvard. Economics Chair annual reports to Dean, 1932-1941

 

This post takes us from the trough of the Great Depression to the eve of the U.S. entry into the Second World War. The items below are transcriptions of copies of reports written by the Harvard economics department chairmen of the time (Harold Hitchings Burbank (a.k.a. Burbie to his Buds) and Edward Hastings Chamberlin. Some chest-thumping, some whining, no notes of irony and definitely no flashes of wit…we all know this art form. Nevertheless some raw intelligence of value for working historians of economics of the present and future.

____________________________

November 12, 1932

Dear Dean Murdock,

Under the Faculty vote of December, 1931, the Chairman of each Department is requested to report in each half year to the Dean of the Faculty on the working of the plan recommended by the Committee on Instruction concerning Hour Examinations and Other Course Requirements. My report for the Department of Economics follows.

Acting on the Report from the Committee on Instruction, the Department of Economics on January 12, 1932 voted to observe the recommendations of the Committee. Following the Department meeting, I reported to you to the effect that the requirements of the Department of Economics were substantially in accord with the principles laid down by the Committee on Instruction. Ordinarily, we require not more than one Hour Examination in any one half year; ordinarily, we require not more than one thesis or report in any one half year. It is the standing rule of the Department of Economics and of the Division of History, Government, and Economics, that Senior candidates for Honors, who are writing Honors theses, shall be excused from the writing of any theses in courses within the Division. After a long discussion and with considerable reluctance, the Department voted that for Seniors who are candidates for Honors in the Division, Hour Examinations in courses within the Department shall be optional.

The vote of the Department was made known immediately to the students and observed in all of our undergraduate course (not of an introductory nature) during the second half of last year, and it is being observed in the current half year.

In the Division of History, Government, and Economics, we have had for many years a rule that all Seniors in good standing shall be exempted from final examinations in courses within the Division in their last half year. The result has been, of course, that after the April Hour Examinations, Seniors have paid little attention to courses within in the Division, and their attendance has been hardly more than occasional. The members of the Department who are more interested in courses than in General Examinations, and who perhaps doubt the efficacy of General Examinations, view this situation with increasing criticism.

When the Department voted the making of Hour Examinations optional for Seniors who are candidates for Honors, the doubting members were highly critical, fearing that our courses elected largely by Seniors would be entirely disrupted. From all that I can learn, I cannot see that there have been any untoward or undesirable results. In most of our “Senior” courses, the attendance until the Easter recess was satisfactory. Honors candidates attended lectures and, I believe, completed most of the required readings. Their records on the General Examinations were excellent. The Honors theses were among the best we have ever had.

A number of members of my Department and not a few members of the Departments of History and Government are strongly opposed to the new order. They make the point that we have in substance permitted an additional reduction in courses, that Senior Honor candidates are simply required to register in courses, but they have nether to attend them nor to do the work. All of these allegations are true enough, but it seems to me they are beside the point. To the extent that we have confidence in our examiners and tutors, I do not believe that in effect the requirements regarding the quality and quantity or work have been reduced.

The Department of History has recommended to the other departments of the Division the consideration of a motion which would require all senior candidates for Honors to complete whatever courses in History they elect. I think that probably the departments of the Division will consider in full detail the questions this motion involves.

Sincerely yours,
H. H. Burbank

Dean Kenneth B. Murdock
20 University Hall

Source: Harvard University Archives. Department of Economics, Correspondence and Papers (UAV 349.11). Box 2, Folder “Report to the Dean on the Department 1932-…”

____________________________

1933
[not found]

A copy of the report is not found with the others included in this post: Harvard University Archives. Department of Economics, Correspondence and Papers (UAV 349.11). Box 2, Folder “Report to the Dean on the Department 1932-…”

____________________________

October 15, 1934

Dear Dean Murdock,

I beg to submit the following report for the Department of Economics:

In this period of rapid economic evolution the problems presented to a group of university economists are both stimulating and perplexing. The changing pattern of our social and economic structure offers new data for analysis and at the same time calls for a testing of principle that involves new fields for both teaching and research.

There have been few periods in modern history more difficult to interpret, yet the responsibility for interpretation seems foremost among the duties devolving upon educational institutions. For many years the keystone of the introductory course in economics has been that the community has the right to expect political and economic leadership from the graduates of its colleges. Our undergraduate courses are directed toward the attainment of this end. But the teaching of political economy is an art not easily mastered even by those who give abundant evidence of intellectual leadership. In the instruction of undergraduates and in the training of teachers and scholars in our graduate school, the difficulties inherent in our subject must not be overlooked. The presentation of the data of economics makes demands upon the staff not felt in many other departments of the University. Looking toward the strengthening of our undergraduate instruction, the Department is now associating a number of the junior members of the staff with the senior members who are now in charge of the large lecture courses. In Money and Banking, in the Relations of Government to Industry, and in Public Finance, this experiment is advanced sufficiently to indicate its desirability.

At the same time that our teaching problems have become intensified the need for the results of research is pressing. In periods of accelerated social evolution involving political and economic experimentation, the demand for accurate data is insistent. Relatively, economics is a young science. The foundations of fact are still being established. Investigations that may have an important bearing upon government policy should not be delayed. The economists of this University have contributed largely to their subject, but always with scant facilities in material equipment and in time.

Among the many problems confronting us as a group, that of securing the time necessary for research is perhaps the most troublesome. To our exacting teaching requirements must be added the demands for public service. Since the establishment of this Department, the requests for such service heave been continuous. Of late the increasing calls have raised a question which must be considered by the University administration. The opportunities for service to governments are gratifying. Undoubtedly these services belong among the necessary functions of a university. But obviously they do divert a considerable part of our time and energy from our strictly defined duties. Over the years the University is enriched by such services, but at any given time the responsibilities attaching to teaching and research are interrupted. If the University Includes public service among its important functions, the personnel of the staffs affected should be so adjusted that the work can be performed without overtaxing our internal activities.

During the past your, the leave of absence of Professor John M. Williams was continued to allow him to serve as Economist of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to advise on monetary and credit policies, and to direct research. In the latter part of the year, Professor Williams was called by the Department of State to investigate certain conditions in Brazil, Uraguay [sic], Argentina, and Chili [sic]  and to formulate policies of exchange controls. Daring the second half-year, Assistant Professor Edward H. Chamberlin was granted leave of absence to work with the Committee on Government Statistics and Information Services in Washington. Also, during the second half-year, though leave was not requested, Assistant Professor William T. Ham was in Washington frequently, serving as a member of the staff of the Labor Advisory Board of the National Recovery Administration. And also, though no leave was requested, Professor John D. Black devoted a substantial part of the year to public service. He served on a number of committees connected with the Agricultural Adjustment Administration and land utilization. At the request of Secretary Wallace, he organized and directed the activities of committees outlining programs of economic research in (1) the marketing of farm products and (2) farm population and rural life. Also at the request of the Secretary of Agriculture, he served with two others to coordinate the work of the Agricultural Adjustment Administration and the Bureau of Agricultural Economics of the United States Department of Agriculture. In the summer months, Drs. Alan Sweezy and Lauchlin B. Currie were called to the Treasury Department to serve as special investigators.

Owing to his illness, Professor Emeritus William Z. Ripley was unable to fulfill his duties as President of the American Economic Association. In his absence, Professor Abbott P. Usher, first Vice-President of the Association, was in charge of the December, 1933 session.

Notable among our publications of the year were Twenty Years of Federal Reserve Policy, by S. E. Harris, and The Theory of Monopolistic Competition, by E. H. Chamberlin. Because of its significance for immediate practical application, I am including at this point the Report of the Committee on Model State and Local Taxation, by Professor C. J. Bullock’s committee of the National Tax Association. Also at this point, mention should be made of Economics of the Recovery Program, by seven members of the Department. In the course of the year, about forty-five articles were contributed to scientific journals by various members of the Department.

Within the limitations described above, the research work of the staff is going forward at a satisfactory rate. Investigations in the following subjects are well advanced: History of the Industrial Revolution; Development of Banking and Credit in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries; Evolution of English Company Law; Economic Fluctuations; Nature and Effects of Inflation; Index Numbers; Municipal Ownership of Public Utilities; State and Local Taxation; Unbalanced Budgets; The National Income; New England Agriculture; The Economics of Agricultural Production; German Trade Unionism; The Fundamentals of Sociology; Economics and Politics; Socialism as an International Movement.

A considerable number of these projects are nearing completion and should be ready for publication shortly. A large project on the relation of Government to Industry involving the efforts of a number of the staff is in its initial stages. This subject is of such immediate importance that other plans for research are being put aside until it can be carried to its completion. The Quarterly Journal of Economies has continued its usual high standard. During the year, five substantial volumes were added to the Harvard Economic Studies.

Again I would press the point that the potential research capacity of the Department is severely handicapped by the demands of teaching and public service.

Sincerely yours,
H. H. Burbank

Dean Kenneth B. Murdock
20 University Hall

Source: Harvard University Archives. Department of Economics, Correspondence and Papers (UAV 349.11). Box 2, Folder “Report to the Dean on the Department 1932-…”

____________________________

October 18, 1935

Dear Dean Birkhoff:

I beg to submit the following report for the Department of Economics.

In the report of last year the effects of the contemporary political and economic situation upon our problems of teaching and research were discussed briefly. More than ever we are aware of the responsibilities incumbent upon the teacher of Economics in this period of rapid and far-reaching change. Our undergraduate instruction had been, and is, receiving particular attention. A few years ago we began experimentally the association of a number of the junior members of the staff with the senior members who are nominally in charge of the larger lecture courses. We are quite convinced that this method of instruction is most effective. Also there is a positive, although perhaps incidental, advantage in this arrangement in that it relieves the pressure for the multiplication of undergraduate courses.

I find it necessary to stress again the problem presented by the demands upon our staff for services to the public. We believe that public service belongs among the necessary functions of a university. But under existing conditions large demands for public service at any given time bring serious interruptions to both research and instruction. “If the University includes public service among its important functions the personnel of the staffs affected should be so adjusted that the additional work can be performed without taxing severely our internal activities.”

I am very happy, to write that Professor Chamberlin’s “The Theory of Monopolistic Competition”, published somewhat over a year ago, has won immediate recognition as a foremost contribution to economic theory. During the past year two books of unusual importance have appeared,—Professor John D. Black, “The Dairy Industry and the A.A.A.”, and Professor Sumner Slichter, “Towards Stability”. Six manuscripts have been completed, and should appear in book form during the present year. It is significant that five of these books have been written by the younger members of our Department whose teaching duties have been mainly of a tutorial nature. Among the publications I should note the report submitted to the Treasury Department on the “Objectives and Criteria of Monetary Policy” by Dr. Alan Sweezy, and the report to the State Department on “Foreign Exchange Control in Latin America” by Professor John Williams.

In addition to the above volumes and reports the members of the Department published somewhat over fifty articles in the scientific journals of our subject. Some of these contributions are of major importance.

The investigations of the staff are being carried forward as satisfactorily as possible with the limited facilities that are at our disposal. Two researches on a very large scale have to do with the general subject of the Trade Cycle and the Relation of Government to Industry. Numerous important, but less extensive, investigations are in process.

Perhaps I should note here that a generous grant from the Rockefeller Foundation enabled the Department to undertake the continuation of the Review of Economic Statistics and the fundamental research that is involved in this publication, The Quarterly Journal of Economics long published by the members of this Department, together with the Review of Economic Statistics, are among the more important activities of the Department. In the course of the year three volumes more added to the Harvard Economic Studies.

As in my last report, I would again bring to your attention the disturbing fact that the potential research capacity of the Department is handicapped severely by the demands of administration, teaching, and public service.

Very sincerely yours,
H. H. Burbank

Dean George D. Birkhoff

Source: Harvard University Archives. Department of Economics, Correspondence and Papers (UAV 349.11). Box 2, Folder “Report to the Dean on the Department 1932-…”

____________________________

October 15, 1936

Dear Dean Birkhoff:

I beg to submit the following report for the Department of Economics.

I find it necessary to emphasize again the effects of the contemporary political and economic situation upon our problems of teaching and research. It had been necessary to bring these matters to your attention in both of the preceding years, since they present such important problems to us. We feel an increasingly positive responsibility regarding out undergraduate instruction in this period of rapid and far-reaching change.

We have continued the experiment begun some few years ago of the association of a number of the junior members of the staff with the senior members who are in charge of the large lecture courses. We believe that we are improving our instruction by this method, and at the same time this arrangement tends to relieve the pressure for the multiplication of undergraduate courses.

Perhaps as a result of the general social situation the elections of our undergraduate courses and the number of concentrators in Economics have increased very heavily. The problems of instruction presented by these overwhelming numbers are intensified perhaps by the personnel situation in which the Department finds itself. During the last dozen years the personnel of this Department—one of the largest in the University—has been changed completely. For a quarter of a century a group of eminent economists brought great prestige to the University. With the resignation of Professor Gay the active services of this group has come to an end. One cannot speak of replacing these scholars. They were unique both as individuals and as a group. Their leadership and their scholarship has left a lasting impression on the development of Economics. In the course of the passing of this group a now Department has been brought together. This new and younger Department is assuming full responsibility at the very time when questions of teaching and new methods of research are becoming insistent.

The demands upon members of our staff for public service continue. It has seemed expedient to encourage some few members to give their time and energy for public purposes. But with a minimum teaching force it has not been possible for all members of the Department to comply with the requests made. The public service relations of faculty members remains a question for the University to consider.

The Quarterly Journal of Economics celebrates this year its fiftieth anniversary. For forty years this Journal has won and held its prestige under the editorship of Professor F. W. Taussig. Professor Taussig, now emeritus, has graciously consented to continue as editor during the present year, but very shortly it will be necessary for us to provide for the editorial direction of this very important publication.

In an earlier report to you I indicated the activities of the Department in connection with the Review of Economic Statistics. The scientific work underlying this publication, as well as the journal itself, is now under the direction of a committee of the Department. The Review continues as a vehicle of publication of the results of investigations here and elsewhere regarding the business cycle. We have ambitious plans for the Review, and we have every reason to believe that its scientific usefulness will increase.

There is little question that, the research activities of practically all members of the staff have been curtailed by the heavy teaching loads which have been imposed. However, the research programs of various members and of various groups within the Department have shown marked progress in the past year. As I have indicated in an earlier report the research activities of our members are of two somewhat different types. Numerous members of the staff working altogether independently are pursuing their own researches while others working as a group are developing particular aspects of a well devised project in research. In the social sciences this latter type of work is rapidly assuming importance. In general it is this type of research which receives the support of the large foundations. Within our own group there are a number of projects of this character. Messrs. Mason, Chamberlin, Wallace, Cassels, Reynolds, and Alan Sweezy are developing Industrial Organization and Control. In the process of the exploration of this subject numerous independent volumes and studies will appear. Professors Mason, Chamberlin and Dr. Wallace are already well advanced in their study of monopolistic combinations and expect to complete it in about one year. Professor Cassels and Dr. Reynolds expect to finish their study on Canadian combinations this year, and Dr. Alan Sweezy is at work on investment policies. Dr. Wallace’s monograph, Market Control in the Aluminum Industry, is now going to press, and Dr. Abbott’s monograph on The Rise of the Business Corporation has just appeared and is being, used by our undergraduate courses. The full development of this program will take a number of years, but its completion will mark, I believe, a very significant chapter in research in the relation of government to industry.

Another cooperative project on the Farm Credit Administration is being carried on by Professors Black and Harris and Dr. Galbraith, largely with the assistance of grants from the Committee on Research in the Social Sciences. Professor Black is working on the cooperative aspects of the Farm Credit Administration’s policies. Professor Harris is working on the monetary and recovery aspects of the Farm Credit Administration’s loan operations. Dr. Galbraith is working on the structural aspects of the Farm Credit Administration and the mortgage, credit and production loan policies. Numerous articles resulting from this research have been published in scientific periodicals.

Professors Crum, Wilson, and Black are conducting a study of the relation of weather and other natural phenomena with the economic cycle. This study is partly financed by the United States Department of Agriculture.

I believe I have mentioned to you and to President Conant in conversation the plans which are being developed for large research projects in collaboration with the National Bureau of Economic Research.

In addition to these cooperative projects all members of the Department are pursuing work along the lines of their individual interests. Professor Schumpeter’s study of time series and cyclical fluctuations is practically completed, and he hopes to send it to press by December. Professor Haberler’s major contribution—The Theory of International Trade and Its Application to Commercial Policy has been translated and is now available in English. For the past two years Professor Haberler has been working at Geneva on the Nature and Causes of the Recurrence of Economic Depressions which is soon to be published by the League of Nations. We are hoping to provide facilities for him so that the important research may be continued at Harvard. Professor Frickey’s study on a Survey of Time Series Analysis and Its Relation to Economic Theory is well advanced. The statistical work on the first volume has been completed, and he hopes to have it written by the middle of this present academic year. The statistical work on the second volume has been completed in part. Already two significant articles have been published. Professor Cole’s recent study in Fluctuations in American Business, written in collaboration with Professor W. B. Smith, was published late in 1935. Dr. Oakes’ investigations in Massachusetts Town Finance, the winner of the Wells Prize for 1935-36, is now being printed. Professor Chamberlin has continued to elaborate his Theory of Monopolistic Competition which is winning wide recognition among economist the world over. Numerous articles, some sixty in number, from members of the staff have appeared in various scientific periodicals in the course of the year.

Very sincerely yours,
H. H. Burbank

Dean George D. Birkhoff
20 University Hall
Cambridge, Massachusetts

[Separate sheet following: I should have included Professor Harris’ Exchange Depreciation, Its Theory and History. We believe that this new book, which is being published today, will take Its place beside the significant contributions Professor Harris has made in the last half-dozen years, particularly his Monetary Problems of the British Empire and Twenty Years of Federal Reserve Policy.]

Source: Harvard University Archives. Department of Economics, Correspondence and Papers (UAV 349.11). Box 2, Folder “Report to the Dean on the Department 1932-…”

____________________________

October 21, 1937

Dear Dean Birkhoff:

I beg to submit the following report for the Department of Economics.

Previous reports of the Department of Economics have brought to your attention the effect of the political and economic situation upon our problems of teaching and research. It is still necessary to point out that the positive responsibility of the Department regarding undergraduate instruction has not lessened.

The election of our undergraduate courses remains at substantially the high level of recent years, while the number of concentrators continues to increase.

Last year I mentioned that with the resignation of Professor Gay the active services of the senior members of this Department, had come to an end. At this point it seems necessary to put into writing a matter I have discussed with you in conversation which has important ramifications. Coincident with the resignation of Professor Gay there were increased elections in certain of our courses that involve a large degree of individual instruction and also on an increase in the number of students demanding tutorial supervision. To meet these latter problems it was necessary to add to our staff a group of young men to carry on the instruction in the elementary course, Accounting, Statistics, Money and Banking, and so on. With increased numbers in courses demanding increased instruction, increased cost cannot be avoided; but it seems to us that this increasing cost because of increasing should not result in less effective intellectual leadership. To transfer a considerable part of the salary released by a retiring professor of distinguished accomplishment to the support of routine instruction in middle group courses seems to us not to be wise University policy.

Professor Taussig has resigned as editor of the Quarterly Journal of Economies. For the time being, committee of the Department will undertake the editorial direction of this publication.

The Review of Economic Statistics, which appears under the direction of a committee of the Department, is financed by funds from the Rockefeller Foundation. Should the grant be continued, it is expected that the research activities of the committee will be increased.

Not less than ten members of the Department are concerned with the activities of the Graduate School of Public Administration. In some instances—as in the case of Dean Williams—their work in the School has been compensated by a reduction of work in the Department, but for the most part the activities in the new School are simply in addition to the duties of the staff members.

The Committee on Research in the Social Sciences, of which Professor Black is Chairman, is working in close cooperation with the National Bureau of Economic Research and its cooperating University agencies. Principle among them is the project upon Fiscal Policy for which Professor Crum is acting as Chairman.

The responsibilities and activities of members of the Department tend in some instances to change the direction of our research, but in only too many instances they also tend to retard our research.

In all directions, however, the research activities of the members of the Department were sustained, with six books and approximately sixty articles appearing. Special mention should he made of the following books:

Three Years of the AAA by John D. Black

A Study of Fluid Milk Prices by John M. Cassels. Wells Prize Essay of 1934-35

Professor Chamberlin’s significant volume, The Theory of Monopolistic Competition has been revised.

Prosperity and Depression by Gottfried Haberler

Exchange Depreciation by S. E. Harris. (Came from the press last fall, and mentioned a year ago.)

Studies in Massachusetts Town Finance by E. E. Oakes. Wells Prize Essay of 1935-36

Professor Schumpeter’s book on Business Cycles has been completed, and is now ready for the press.

Economic History of Europe since 1750 by Usher, Bowden, and Karpovich

Explorations in Economics. Essays in Honor of F. W. Taussig contains contributions by most of the members of the staff.

Very sincerely yours,
H. H. Burbank

Dean George D. Birkhoff
20 University Hall
Cambridge, Massachusetts

Source: Harvard University Archives. Department of Economics, Correspondence and Papers (UAV 349.11). Box 2, Folder “Report to the Dean on the Department 1932-…”

____________________________

October 15, 1938

Dear Dean Birkhoff,

I beg to submit the following report for the Department of Economics.

As in previous years I am very happy, to be able to record that the research activities of the officers of the Department have been sustained. In the last two years I have been, able to enumerate an unusually large number of books actually published together with numerous contributions to our periodical literature. In the present year the number of volumes is smaller since the research activities of our staff are still in process. The most notable volumes are Professor Hansen’s Full Recovery or Stagnation and Professor Wallace’s Market Control in the Aluminum Industry. Professor Haberler devoted the major part of the year, and spent the summer abroad, revising his Prosperity and Depression. Also the volume by Professor Crum and Associates on Economic Statistics has been revised.

In all, some fifty or sixty periodical contributions have been made by members of the staff. Notable among these contributions have been the articles by Professor Slichter on “The Downturn of 1937” in the Review of Economic Statistics for August, 1938.

It fell to the lot of the officers of this Department, together with the officers of the Department of Government, to develop instruction in the Littauer School of Public Administration during the past year. Without going into the details of the principles upon which this instruction is based, it may be noted that research courses of a very advanced nature constitute the core of the work of the School. Professors Williams, Hansen, Black, Mason, Slichter, and Wallace are devoting a considerable proportion of their time to this work. It is expected and hoped that these activities will result in an increase in our contributions.

The grant of funds from the Rockefeller Foundation to subsidize the research underlying the Review of Economic Statistics expired with the closing of the fiscal year. This contribution made it possible to continue the Review, and to maintain the scholarly level of the contributions. In the course of the year the Review published a number of the contributions of the staff. Other contributions are nearing completion, and will be published in the present year. The accomplishments or Professors Crum and Haberler as Managing Editors of the Review should be noted. They have succeeded in restoring the very high level of scholarship which characterized the Review a decade ago. We believe that the Review in its present form adds materially to the prestige of the Department and the University.

Also I am happy to note that the Quarterly Journal of Economics under its new editorial staff is maintaining its high position.

There is little to be added to the points which have been discussed in previous reports. The Department finds itself fully occupied with the continuation of its traditional activities and the assumption of such new duties as are involved in the Graduate School of Public Administration. If the personnel of the Department remains constant, it will be necessary to reduce our activities, either in research, in teaching, or in both.

Last fall at a dinner of the Committee to Visit the Department of Economics I reported in some detail regarding the increasing activities of members of the Department. This report led to the appointment of a committee to investigate the budgetary situation of the Department. The investigation conducted under the direction of Mr. George May of Price, Waterhouse, made some very interesting disclosures regarding the increasing load of the Department.

I believe that problems of undergraduate and graduate instruction, the tutorial situation, and the public service contributions of our members have been discussed sufficiently in previous reports. I can only repeat that “there is little question that the research activities of practically all members of the staff have been curtailed by the heavy loads of teaching and administration.

Very sincerely yours,
H. H. Burbank

Dean George D. Birkhoff
20 University Hall
Cambridge, Massachusetts

 

Source: Harvard University Archives. Department of Economics, Correspondence and Papers (UAV 349.11). Box 2, Folder “Report to the Dean on the Department 1932-…”

____________________________

October 16, 1939

Dear Dean Ferguson:

In accord with your recent request, I submit herewith a report of the work by the Department of Economies for the past year.

Honors have been bestowed upon members of the Department as follows: Professor Schumpeter has received an honorary Ph.D. from the University of Sofia, Bulgaria, and Professor Leontief has been elected a Fellow of the Econometric Society. Professor Williams was elected a Vice-President of the American Economic Association.

In the field of publications, the outstanding event is the final appearance of Professor Schumpeter’s two volume work on Business Cycles: A Theoretical, Historical and Statistical Analysis of the Capitalistic Process. The fruition of years of study and research, this book is of especial interest as the first major work of Professor Schumpeter in the English language, his well-known Theory of Economic Development having appeared first in German before its translation into English much later. Other books actually appearing within the academic year (the fall of 1938) were referred to in our last report, such as Professor Hansen’s Full Recovery or Stagnation?, a revision of the volume on Economic Statistics by Professor Crum and associates, and a new, enlarged and revised edition of Prosperity and Depression by Professor Haberler (published by the League of Nations). During the year arrangements have been completed for the translation into Japanese of A History of Mechanical Inventions by Professor Usher. For some years Professor Emeritus F. W. Taussig has been at work on a thorough-going revision of his textbook on the Principles of Economics. Volume I appeared last spring, Volume 2 is in the press and will appear very shortly. This much needed revision (the last was in 1921) may regain for Professor Taussig’s text some of the preeminence it held in an earlier period before it had become so badly out of date. Politics, Finance and Consequences by Professor Emeritus C. J. Bullock, the result of continuing research since his retirement, has been published during the past year in the Harvard Economic Studies. A book of which Mr. Paul M. Sweezy was a prominent co-author, An Economic Program for American Democracy, is popularly supposed to have been influential in putting the stamp of economic authority upon recent economic policies of the Federal Government. Finally, some sixty-odd articles, addresses, and reviews by members of the Department have appeared in journals, both professional and popular, during the past year.

A matter not mentioned in our last report was a new policy adopted by the Quarterly Journal of Economics of publishing at intervals of approximately one year a series of supplements devoted to articles and studies of interest to scholars but of such length as to make their publication in the regular issues impractical. These supplements are sent to subscribers without charge, and additional copies are sold separately. The first of these appeared in May 1938, Rudimentary Mathematics for Economists and Statisticians by Professor Crum. Two other manuscripts have been accepted and will appear shortly.

The Committee on Problems of the Business Cycle has carried on the publication of the quarterly Review of Economic Statistics but because of the expiration of its grant of research money many of its new research investigation have been greatly curtailed. Quarterly issues of the Review of Economic Statistics, in addition to carrying the studies of current economic history which present a quarterly record of economic statistics for the United States with their interpretation, have published a wide range of articles on various aspects of the trade cycle problem. Several of these articles have been contributed by foreign specialists but more than half were produced by American writers (in this connection we may note that about one-fourth of the subscribers are located abroad). In addition to the normal research activities involved in studying current history the Committee has financed during the year a continuation of the special investigation by Dr. J. B. Hubbard of the remarkable developments in the issuance of securities since 1933. A further article in Dr. Hubbard’s series will appear in the issue of November 1939.

Mention has been made in previous reports of the burden placed upon particular members of the Department and thus upon the group as a whole by the responsibilities of public service. These responsibilities have continued and expanded during the past year. The adjustment of this burden is a pressing problem. Its immediate influence upon both teaching and research is adverse, yet no ready solution appears at hand. The additional burden of uncompensated teaching in the Graduate School of Public Administration presents an even more serious problem. For the most part the seminars and other activities of this School constitute a net additional load for those members of the Department responsible for them, and inevitably throw a heavier burden of administrative and other work upon others not directly concerned. Budgetary allowance for courses given within the School is an obvious answer to this problem, whenever it may become possible.

You have asked, among other things. for an account of “any changes in the methods of instruction”, of the Department. The changes here have been revolutionary. Over a long period of years there has been built up in the Department a staff of trained instructors and tutors, carrying on established traditions of teaching and constantly experimenting in the adaptation of methods to new problems. These men were sifted constantly, and the best of them retained for a substantial period, after which, if not advanced, they were without exception placed to advantage elsewhere. In view of the singular success with which in the past the personnel problem has been handled in Economics, it is not surprising that the Department is unanimous in viewing with dismay and discouragement the situation in which we now find ourselves. Fifteen teachers and tutors at the instructor or assistant professor level have left us within the past year, seven the preceding year. The general effect upon teaching may be indicated by the tutorial situation. Sixty-seven per cent of the students concentrating in Economics this year are tutored by men of two years or less experience, forty-three per cent by men of no tutorial experience whatsoever, Furthermore, it has been our policy in the past to stagger new men as between tutoring and Economics A, having them start in with either one alone and take up the other the following year. This fall we have been obliged to take on five men who are both teaching Economics A and tutoring for the first time. It has been our policy also to provide more experienced instruction in middle group courses through a period of apprenticeship in Economics A. This fall we have been obliged to put men of no classroom experience whatever directly into middle group courses. We are already experiencing in acute form the devastating effects upon instruction of a rapid turnover, brought on by the mass exodus of last year.

It takes time (and patience on the part of someone) to train men in the discussion method of teaching Economics which has been developed with such success in Economics A at Harvard University. Much is learned by slow experience, by making mistakes and by discussing techniques with fellow instructors, especially with those who have been through the mill. It is impossible to assimilate new men unless the collective experience of the group is maintained at a fairly high level. Furthermore, it seems unlikely that anyone in the Department will be interested in training them unless a substantial portion stay long enough to make it worth while.

Very sincerely yours,
H. H. Chamberlin

Dean W. S. Ferguson
20 University Hall
Cambridge, Massachusetts

Source: Harvard University Archives. Department of Economics, Correspondence and Papers (UAV 349.11). Box 2, Folder “Report to the Dean on the Department 1932-…”

____________________________

October 15, 1940

Dear Dean Ferguson:

I submit herewith a report of the work by the Department of Economics for the past year. There is very little to report—no events or changes of outstanding importance, and only a few isolated items which might be of interest.

Professor Black has been elected to honorary membership in the Swedish Royal Society of Agriculture. Professor Slichter has been honored by appointment as Lamont University Professor.

In the field of publications there is the usual long list of articles in the professional periodicals, but no major work of importance by any member of the Department. Professor Usher’s History of Mechanical Inventions was during the year translated into Japanese. Also in the field of publications it is of interest that there has been begun under the supervision of a committee in the Department and financed in part by a grant from the A. W. Shaw Fund a new series entitled The Harvard Studies in Monopoly and Competition. The first two volumes of this series appeared within the year, — the first, Corporate Size and Earning Power, by Professor W. L. Crum, and the second, Control of Competition in Canada, by Lloyd Reynolds.

The Committee on Problems of the Business Cycle has continued publication of the quarterly Review of Economic Statistics. In place of the general reviews of current economic developments in the United States, which in earlier years had been regular features of each quarterly issue, the Review introduced this past year the policy of presenting each quarter an article pertaining to some specific problem of current interest. The November 1939 issue contained a study of the impact of the war on America commodity prices; the February 1940 number included a study of the current gold problem and the American economy; a review of recent developments in agriculture and the influences of the war on American agriculture appeared in May; while the August 1940 issue presented a comparison and evaluation of various estimates of unemployment in the United States. These studies have been made by members of the Department, with the Committee staff contributing assistance, whenever it was desired, in the preparation of the articles for publication. As in previous years, the Review has also presented articles covering a wide range of studies on various trade cycle problems; and the Review staff has continued the compilation of selected current economic series which have been used in research studies by Department members and graduate student within the Department.

There have been no important changes in policy in the year by the Quarterly Journal of Economics. The policy begun the previous year of publishing occasional supplements sent to subscribers without charge has been continued. Two supplements appeared during the year, Exchange Control in Austria and Hungary and Exchange Control in Germany, both by Professor Howard S. Ellis. Through an arrangement with the Harvard Economic Studies they will shortly appear in that series as a single volume.

During the year Professor Emeritus Frank W. Taussig attained his eightieth birthday. A tribute and greeting was presented to him on this occasion signed by some two hundred of his former students.

I call attention again to the continuing problem of the added burden to members of the Department for uncompensated teaching in the Graduate School of Public Administration. The situation here remains substantially as described in my last report. It remains one of the most serious problems which the Department has to meet in maintaining the standards of its instruction.

The quality of instruction given by the Department continues to suffer from the heavy losses in the junior personnel during the past few years. Sixty-four per cent of the students concentrating in Economics this year are tutored by men of two years or less experience, fifty-five per cent by men of one year or less. The difficulties of maintaining satisfactory instruction with such a rapid turnover remain almost insuperable, and concentration in Economics which has fallen off steadily over the past four years slumped most disastrously for the year 1940-41. Although most of the liquidation of our more experienced instructors and tutors had taken place before the year on which I am reporting, we have during that year again lost a number of our best men because of the limited inducement which could be offered for them to remain with us even for a short period.

Sincerely yours,
H. H. Chamberlin

Dean W. S. Ferguson
5 University Hall
Cambridge, Massachusetts

 

Source: Harvard University Archives. Department of Economics, Correspondence and Papers (UAV 349.11). Box 2, Folder “Report to the Dean on the Department 1932-…”

____________________________

October 15, 1941

Dear Dean Ferguson:

I submit herewith a report on the work of the Department of Economics covering the past year.

Professor Slichter has been elected President of the American Economic Association. This is the third time in the past five years that this honor has gone to an economist from Harvard, Professor Sprague having been elected in 1937-38 and Professor Hansen in 1938-39.

In the field of publications there have appeared, in addition to the usual long list of articles, several books of possible importance. I should mention especially Professor Slichter’s Union Policies and Industrial Management, Professor Leontief’s The Structure of American Economy: An Empirical Application of Equilibrium Analysis, and Dr. Triffin’s Monopolistic Competition and General Equilibrium Theory. The latter appeared in the Harvard Economic Studies of which there have now been published 70 volumes, four within the past year. The new series of Harvard Studies in Monopoly and Competition has been augmented by two new volumes during the past year, bringing the total to four. Professor Usher’s History of Mechanical Inventions has again been translated, this time into Spanish. During the past year an arrangement was made with the Rockefeller Foundation (for the current year only) which if continued may prove to be of real importance to the members of our Department. Professor Crum has been relieved of one-half of his teaching duties for research through the payment by the Foundation of the salary of someone to replace him in his teaching assignment. In addition to providing possibilities for research to members of the Department, such an arrangement would have the added advantage of making it possible to invite to Harvard for short period either possible candidates for permanent appointments or others whose presence here for one year would prove stimulating to our students.

Again I call attention to the problem of the added burden to members of the Department for uncompensated teaching in the Graduate School of Public Administration. This has been from the beginning a serious matter in maintaining standards of instruction. It is especially a factor in concentrating the activities of the older members of the Department in the graduate field, leaving undergraduate instruction to be taken care of in undue degree by younger men whose experience on the average seems to decline further each year.

The quality of instruction by the junior staff continues to be a grave concern to our Department. Last year I mentioned that 64 per cent of the students concentrating in Economics were tutored by men of two years or less experience. This year the percentage has increased to 72, and the problem of finding enough experienced and competent tutors in the right fields for distinction seniors has become impossible to solve. The general situation is reflected also in Economics A where the percentage of new instructors has jumped alarmingly for the current year. For the five years 1936-41 the sections taught by new men averaged 24 per cent of the total. For the current year 39 per cent of the sections are taught by new men. For the same five years the sections taught by men of one year or less experience averaged 45 per cent of the total. For the current year this figure has advanced to 61 per cent. The large volume of complaints on the part of students as to the inexperience of their tutors and Economics A section instructors leaves no doubt in the minds of the Department that the continuing decline in concentration in Economies is mainly a reflection of this situation. In view of the competing opportunities for our younger men which have repeatedly been pointed out the problem for our Department continues to be not to maintain a high rate of turnover as the present rules of tenure seem designed to do, but to be able through more flexible arrangements both with respect to tenure and to salaries to maintain a staff sufficiently experienced to give satisfactory instruction to our undergraduates. Such instruction is clearly not being given at the present time.

Sincerely yours,
H. H. Chamberlin

Dean W. S. Ferguson
5 University Hall
Cambridge, Massachusetts

Source: Harvard University Archives. Department of Economics, Correspondence and Papers (UAV 349.11). Box 2, Folder “Report to the Dean on the Department 1932-…”

Image Source: Harold Hitchings Burbank from the Harvard Class Album 1934.

 

Categories
Chicago Economics Programs Economist Market Economists

Chicago. Memos discussing guests to teach during summer quarter, 1927

 

 

Apparently the 1926 summer quarter course planning at the Chicago department of political economy in 1926 was so wild that the head of the department, Leon C. Marshall, decided to start the discussion for 1927 on the second day of Summer, 1926. Four of the seven colleagues responded with quite a few suggestions.

This post provides the first+middle names where needed in square brackets. Also links to webpages with further information about the suggested guests have been added.

______________________

Copy of memo from
Leon Carroll Marshall

THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO
Department of Economics

Memorandum from L. C. Marshall. June 22, 1926

To: C. W. Wright, J. A. Field, H. A. Millis, J. Viner, L. W. Mints, P. H. Douglas, W. H. Spencer

We really must break through the morass we are in with respect to our summer quarter. Partly because of delayed action and partly because of an interminable debating society in such matters we finally get a patched up program which is not as attractive as it should be.

I shall proceed on the basis of the homely philosophy that the way to do something is to do something. I shall try to secure from every member of the group a statement of his best judgment concerning the appropriate course of action for the summer of 1927 and then move at once toward rounding out a program.

Won’t you be good enough to turn in to E57 within the next few days your suggestions and comments with respect to the following issues.

  1. Do you yourself expect to be in residence the summer quarter of 1927?
  2. If you do, what courses do you prefer to teach? Please list more than two courses placing all of the courses in your order of preference. In answering this question, please keep in mind the problem of guiding research. Should you offer a research course?
  3. What are your preferences with respect to hours? Please state them rather fully and give some alternatives so that a schedule may be pieced together.
  4. What courses or subject matter should we be certain to include in the summer of 1927?
  5. What men from outside do you recommend for these courses which we should be certain to include? Please rank them in the order of your preference.
  6. Quite aside from the subject matter which you have recommended above, what persons from the outside ought we try to make contact with if our funds permit? This gives an opportunity to aid in making up the personnel of the summer quarter in all fields.
  7. Please give any other comments or suggestions which occur to you.

Yours very sincerely,

LCM:G

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Response from
Jacob Viner

The University of Chicago
Department of Political Economy

July 1, 1926

Dear Mr. Marshall

I will want to offer 301 (Neo-class Ec.) & 353 (Int Ec. Pol) as usual next summer, though if we have a good outside theorist to give 301, I would like to give a course on Theory of Int Trade in addition to 353. I think we need someone especially in Banking, next in theory. Beyond these we should offer work in some of the following, if we can get first rankers: statistics, private finance, transportation, economic history of Europe & ec. Hist. of U.S.

I suggest the following from which selections could be made:

Banking

 Theory Statistics Transportation

Ec. Hist.
[Eugene E.]
Agger

 

[Benjamin Haggott] Beckhart

 

[Allyn Abbott]
A.A. Young

 

[Chester Arthur]
C. A. Phillips

 

[Oliver Mitchell Wentworth]
Sprague

 

[James Harvey] Rogers

 

[Ernest Minor] E.M. Patterson

 [Allyn Abbott]
Young

 

[Jacob Harry]
Hollander[Frank Hyneman] Knight

 

[Albert Benedict] Wolfe

 

[Herbert Joseph] Davenport

 [Henry Roscoe] Trumbower

 

[Homer Bews] Vanderblue

 [Melvin Moses] M.M. Knight

 

[Abbott Payson] A.P. Usher

As other possibilities I suggest [George Ernest] Barnett, [James Cummings] Bonbright, [Edward Dana] Durand, [Edwin Griswold] Nourse, [Sumner Huber] Slichter, John D. [Donald] Black, Holbrook Working, [Alvin Harvey] Hansen.

[signed]
J Viner

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

Response from
Paul Howard Douglas

The University of Chicago
The School of Commerce and Administration

June 29, 1926

Professor L. C. Marshall
Faculty Exchange

Dear Mr. Marshall:

You have hit the nail on the head in your proposal to get under way for next summer, and I am very much pleased at your action. Answering your questions specifically may I say—

  1. That I do not expect to be in residence for the summer quarter of 1927.
  2. &3. Since I shall not be in residence no answers to these questions are, I take it, necessary.

 

  1. We should, I think, be certain to include adequate work in the following fields (a) Economic theory, (b) Monetary and banking theory, (c) Labor problems, (d) Statistics and quantitative economics, (e) Taxation and Public finance, (f) Economic history.
  2. As regards men from outside, I would recommend the following in each field: (a) Economic theory—[Herbert Joseph] H. J. Davenport, [John Rogers] J. R. Commons, [Frank Hyneman] F. H. Knight; (b) Monetary and banking theory—[Allyn Abbott] A. A. Young, [Oliver Mitchell Wentworth] O.M.W. Sprague, [James Waterhouse] James W. Angell; (c) Labor problems—Selig Perlman, Alvin [Harvey] H. Hansen; (d) Statistics and quantitative economics—[Frederick Cecil] F. C. Mills, [Robert Emmet] R. E. Chaddock, [William Leonard] W. L. Crum; (e) Taxation and public finance—[Harley Leist] H. L. Lutz, [William John] William J. Shultz; (f) Economic history—[Norbert Scott Brien] N. S. B. Gras.
  3. As people from outside to try for, might it not be possible to secure some one from England, such as [John Atkinson] John A. Hobson, Henry Clay, or [Dennis Holme] D. H. Robertson? Might it not also be possible to get Charles Rist from France or [Werner] Sombart from Germany?

Faithfully yours,
[signed]
Paul H. Douglas

P.S. The news that [Henry] Schultz and [Melchior] Palyi are to be with us next year is certainly welcome. Should we not let everyone know that they are coming, and should not a news note to this effect be sent on to the American Economic Review? [Handwritten note here: “Mr. Wright doing this”]

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

Response from
Lloyd Wynn Mints

The University of Chicago
The School of Commerce and Administration

July 16, 1926

Memorandum to L. C. Marshall from L. W. Mints, concerning the work of the summer quarter, 1927.

  1. It is my present intention not to be in residence during the summer quarter, 1927, although I will be in the city, I suppose.
  2. It appears to me that we should attempt to get men from the outside who would represent some of the newer points of view rather than the orthodox fields. I should suppose that it would be desirable to have a man in statistics and, if he could be found, somebody to do something with quantitative economics. For the statistics I would suggest [William Leonard] Crum, [Frederick Cecil] Mills, [Frederick Robertson] Macaulay, [Willford Isbell] King, [Bruce D.] Mudgett, [Robert] Riegel. I am ignorant of the particular bents of some of the statistical men, but I should suppose that in quantitative economics [Holbrook] Working, [Alvin Harvey] Hansen, or [William Leonard] Crum might do something. Perhaps [Edmund Ezra] Day should be added to the men in Statistics.
    In economic history, as I remember it, we have had no outside help for a long time. I should like to see either [Noman Scott Brien] Gras or Max [Sylvius] Handman give some work here in the summer.
    Particular men who represent somewhat new points of view, and who might be had for the summer, I would suggest as follows: [Lionel Danforth] Edie, [Oswald Fred] Boucke, [Morris Albert] Copeland, [Sumner Huber] Slichter.
    In addition I should like very much to see either [Edwin Robert Anderson] Seligman or [John Rogers] Commons here for a summer.

[signed]
L.W.M.

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

Response from
Harry Alvin Millis

Answers to questions re Summer Teaching, 1927

  1. Yes, I feel that I must teach next summer unless that plan you have been interested in goes through.
  2. 342 [The State in Relation to Labor] and 440 [Research].
  3. 342 at 8; 440 hour to be arranged.
  4. 5. 6.: Should get a better rounded program than we have had. Should have an outstanding man in economic theory and another in Finance. For the former I would mention [John] Maurice Clark, [John Rogers] Commons, and [Frank Hyneman] Knight—in order named. For the latter I would mention [Allyn Abbott] Young, [James Harvey] Rogers. If we can get the money I should like to see [George Ernest] Barnett brought on for statistics and a trade union course.

 

  1. Would it be possible to have a seminar which would bring together the outside men and some of the inside men and our mature graduate students—these hand-picked? It might be made very stimulating.

[Signed]
H. A. Millis

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

Response from
Chester Whitney Wright

The University of Chicago
The Department of Political Economy

Memorandum to Marshall from Wright

Summer 1927
First term some aspects of economic history
1:30 or 2:30
May have to teach the whole summer but hope I can confine it to first term.
Can teach any phases of subjects in any fields suitable for term.

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

Response from
James Alfred Field

[No written answer in the folder: however L. C. Marshall noted that Field would not be teaching in the summer term of 1927]

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

Response from
William Homer Spencer

The University of Chicago
The School of Commerce and Administration
Office of the Dean

July 12, 1926

Mr. L. C. Marshall
The Department of Political Economy

My dear Mr. Marshall:

As Mr. [Garfield Vestal] Cox does not wish to teach during the Summer Quarter of 1927, I wish the Department of Political Economy would try to get Mr. [Edmund Ezra] Day of Wisconsin [sic, Michigan is correct] who could give both a course in statistics and a course in forecasting. Forecasting is not given this summer and unless we get someone from the outside to give it, I presume it will not be given next summer.

Why does not the Department of Political Economy for the coming summer get someone like Mr. [Leverett Samuel] Lyon to give an advanced course in economics of the market for graduate students? The Department of Political Economy could handle half of his time and I perhaps could handle the other half for market management

Now that it appears that the Department of Political Economy cannot get any promising young men in the Field of Finance, why do you not try for [Chester Arthur] Phillips of Iowa? He will give good courses and will draw a great many students from the middle west to the University.

So far as my own program is concerned, I have not made much progress. I tried to get [Roy Bernard] Kester of Columbia, but he turned me down. I am placing a similar proposition before [William Andrew] Paton of Michigan. In the Field of Marketing, I am trying for [Frederic Arthur] Russell of the University of Illinois to give a course in salesmanship primarily for teachers in secondary schools. Otherwise I have made no progress in getting outside men for next summer.

Yours sincerely,
[signed]
W. H. Spencer

WHS:DD

Source:  University of Chicago Archives. Department of Economics. Records. Box 22, Folder 7.

Categories
Exam Questions Harvard Suggested Reading Syllabus

Harvard. Labor Problems. Course outline, cases for discussion, exams. Slichter, 1938-1939

Sumner H. Slichter was in his day a really big gun in economics at Harvard. As an early “dean of labor economics”, he definitely deserves a post of his own, but one I’ll postpone for later. 

Fun Facts: One of the teaching assistants for the course, Spencer Drummond Pollard, was a Rhodes scholar, went on to teach at UC Berkeley and Los Angeles, Whittier College and has two filmwriting credits listed in the internet movie data base. He married the screenwriter Helen Deutsch in 1946, but that marriage lasted less than one year. Not incidentally he was James Tobin’s undergraduate economics tutor who suggested that they devote their sessions to “this new book from England,” The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money.

________________________

Teaching Assistants

Spencer Drummond Pollard (1910-1989)
Harvard Economics Ph.D. (1939)

Spencer Drummond Pollard, A.B. (Harvard) 1932.

Subject, Economics. Special Field, Labor Problems. Thesis, “Some Problems of Democracy in the Government of Labor Unions, with special reference to the United Mine Workers of America and the United Automobile Workers of America.” Director, Educational Film Institute, New York University, and Supervisor, New York University Film Library.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College, 1938-39, p. 197.

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

Lloyd George Reynolds (1910-2005)
Harvard Economics Ph.D. (1936)

Lloyd George Reynolds, B.A. (Univ. of Alberta) 1931, M.A. (McGill Univ.) 1933.

Subject, Economics. Special Field, Labor Problems. Thesis, “The British Immigrant: his Social and Economic Adjustment in Canada.” Instructor in Economics and Tutor in the Division of History, Government, and Economics.

Source: Harvard University.  Report of the President of Harvard College, 1935-36, p. 161.

________________________

Course Enrollment, 1938-39

[Economics] 81a. Professor Slichter, Mr. Pollard and Dr. Reynolds.—Labor Problems.

Total 63: 1 Graduate, 30 Seniors, 25 Juniors, 4 Sophomores, 3 Others.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College, 1938-39, p. 98.

________________________

Course Outline, 1938-39

ECONOMICS 81
LABOR PROBLEMS

Outline and Readings for the First Term
[Pencil: “38-39”]

Introduction

  1. The Subject Matter of the Course—the Operation of the Institution of Wages under Private Capitalism

Part One
Wages and Labor Conditions Under Competition

  1. The Labor Force and the Labor Market

Required:

Goodrich, Carter, Migration and Economic Opportunity, Appendix A.
Lynd, R.L., Middletown in Transition, Chap. 2.
Woytinsky, W.S., Labor in the United States, pp. 16-24, 30-42.

Suggested for Reference:

Douglas, P.H., Real Wages in the United States, Chaps. 1 and 32.
Florence, P.S., Theory and Fatigue and Unrest, Chaps. 2,3.
Fortune, “Labor and Steel”, May, 1936.
Hammond, J.L., The Town Labourer
Lescohier, D., The Labor Market, Chaps. 1,6.
MacDonald, Labor Problems and the American Scene, Part 2.
Recent Social Trends, v. I, Chap. 6.

  1. The General Factors determining Wage Rates and the Income of Wage Earners
    1. The trend of real wages since 1890
    2. The marginal productivity theory of wages
    3. Factors influencing the supply of labor
    4. Factors influencing the demand for labor
    5. Technical progress, wages, and employment
    6. Cyclical fluctuations of wages

Required:

Douglas, P.H., Theory of Wages, pp. 34-49, 68-96
Hansen, A. Economic Stabilization in an Unbalanced World, Chap. X.
Meade, J.E., Economic Analysis and Policy, Part 1, Chap. 7.
Recent Social Trends, v. I, Chaps. 1, 2.
Slichter, S.H., Towards Stability, pp. 114-24, 133-42.

Suggested for Reference:

Florence, P.S., Economics of Fatigue and Unrest, Chaps. 6-11
Hicks, J.R., Theory of Wages, Chap. 1
Jerome, H., Mechanization of Industry, Chaps. 3, 6, and pp. 326-403
Recent Economic Changes, v. I. pp. 96-146
Slichter, S.H., Modern Economic Society, Chap. 24

  1. Wage Differences
    1. Bargaining advantages of employers
    2. Bargaining strength of workers, strategic position of some workers, reductions in supply
    3. Differences among industries—growing, declining industries, differences in labor cost, etc.
    4. Selling competition and wage rates
    5. Wage differences between occupations
    6. Wage differences between regions

Required:

Dobb, M., Wages, Chaps. 5, 6
Mathewson, Restriction of Output among Unorganized Labor
Taussig, F.W., Principles of Economics, v. II, Chap. 47

Suggested for Reference:

Dollard, Caste and Class in a Southern Town
Edwards, A.M., “Social-Economic Grouping of the Gainful Workers of the United States”, Journal of the American Statistical Association, December, 1933, pp. 377-397.
Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, Article on the Company Town
Feldman, H., Racial factors in American Industry
Frain, H., Machine-tool Occupations in Philadelphia
Mathewson, Restriction of Output among Unorganized Labor
Pigou, A.C., Economics of Welfare, Part III, Chaps. 9 and 14

  1. Hours and Working Conditions

Required:

Millis, H.A. and Montgomery, R.E., Labor’s Progress and Problems, v. I, pp. 488-516.
Slichter, S.H., Modern Economic Society, Chap. 25

 

Part Two
Problems of Trade Unionism and Collective Bargaining

  1. The Development of Labor Unions in the United States
    1. Origin and form of the earliest unions
    2. Fluctuation of membership with business activity 1800-1885
    3. The three business upswings accounting for most of the present membership of labor unions
      1896-1903
      1914-1918
      1933-1938
    4. Comparison of three major union groups
      Knights of Labor
      F. of L.
      C.I.O.

Required:

Perlman, S., History of Trade Unionism in the United States, Chaps. 12, 13 and 14
Encyclopedia of Social Sciences, 15 pages selected from the following articles: American Federation of Labor (7 pages), Knights of Labor (3), Labor Parties (12), Labor Movement (14), Trade Unions (52).

Suggested for Reference:

Gompers, Samuel, The American Labor Movement—its Makeup, Achievements, and Aspirations
Gompers, Samuel, Seventy Years of Life and Labor

  1. The Contemporary Scene in American Unionism
    1. The principal industries organized
    2. The focal areas of organization
    3. Kinds of inter-union organizations—federations, city centrals, regional groups, etc.
    4. Major areas of struggle in the present situation
    5. Changes in the pressure-alignments of community life in the unionized areas

Suggested for Reference:

Brooks, R.R., When Labor Organizes, Chap. 6
Walsh, R., The C.I.O.

  1. Comparison with Labor Movements in Other Countries
    1. The major periods of the English Labor Movement
    2. Major events and trends in the English Movement 1920-1938
    3. Characteristics of French, German, and Scandinavian Unionism
    4. The spread of unionism to industrially outlying regions
    5. Special factors molding the course of unionism in the United States
    6. The future of the relation between Labor and Politics in this country

Required:

Norgren, P.H., “Sweden, Where Employers Compromise”, Harvard Business Review, Summer Issue, 1938.
Report of the President’s Commission on Industrial Relations in Great Britain

Suggested for Reference:

Clapham, J.H., Economic History of Modern Britain, Machines and National Rivalries, Chap. 8 and Epilogue
Perlman, S., A Theory of the Labor Movement, Chaps. 1, 3, and 4
Richardson, J.H., Industrial Relations in Great Britain
Saposs, D.J., The Labor Movement in Post-War France

  1. Trade Union Structure and Government
    1. The parts of a trade union—locals, districts, nationals
    2. How local unions function
    3. How national unions function
    4. Trends in trade union government
      1. Centralization of finances
      2. Centralization of control over strikes
    5. The leaders and the rank and file—democracy in trade unions

Required:

Hoxie, R.F., Trade Unionism in the United States, Chap. 7

Suggested for Reference:

Brooks, R.R., When Labor Organizes, Chap. 9
Furniss, E.S., Labor Problems, pp. 280-303
Hoxie, R.F., Trade Unionism in the United States, Chap. 5
Mitchell, John, Organized Labor, Chap. 10

  1. Collective Bargaining—the Regulation of Working Conditions
    1. Trade agreements
      1. What are the problems with which trade agreements attempt to deal
      2. Local, regional, and national agreements
      3. Procedure agreements v. regulating agreements
      4. Handling cases under trade agreements
    2. The regulation of the opportunity to work
      1. Control of hiring
      2. The control of layoffs
      3. The conflict between the worker’s interest in opportunity and his interest in security
      4. Problems of seniority and equal-division-of-work
      5. Efforts of unions to protect the older worker
    3. The efforts of unions to deal with technological change
      1. Opposition
      2. Competition
      3. Control of new processes and machines
      4. Compensation
      5. Make work
    4. The attitude of unions toward “scientific management”
    5. Union-management-cooperation

Required:

Block, Louis, Labor Agreements in Coal Mines, Chaps. 2, 3, 5, and 6, and pp. 217-247.
Slichter, S.H., “The Contents of Collective Agreements”, Journal of the Society for the Advancement of Management, January, 1938

Suggested for Reference:

Barnett, G.E., Chapters on Machinery and Labor
Encyclopedia of Social Sciences, Articles on Coal Industry (18), Collective Bargaining (4), Construction Industry (17), Garment Industries (12), Glass and Pottery Industries (7), Iron and Steel Industry (7), Labor-Capital Cooperation (5), Railroads (7), Textiles (6), Trade Agreements(3)
McCabe, D.A., Industrial Relations in the Pottery Industry
Monthly Labor Review, September, 1936, “Collective Bargaining in the Hosiery Industry”
Nyman, R.C., Union-Management Cooperation in the Stretch-Out
Perlman, S., A Theory of the Labor Movement, Chaps. 6 and 7
Whitehead, T.N., Leadership in a Free Society
Wood, L.A., Union-Management Cooperation on the Railroads, Chaps. 7, 8, 9, and 14

  1. Collective Bargaining—Fixing the Price of Labor
    1. The movement of bargained wages and “free” wages
    2. The effect of bargained wage rates upon employment and unemployment
    3. The effect of bargained wage rates upon saving
    4. The effect of bargained wage rates upon the credit of employers and upon investment opportunities
    5. Some problems of price fixing under collective bargaining
      1. Problems presented by non-union competition
      2. Problems presented by market shifts and inter-industry competition
      3. Problems presented by the business cycle

Required:

Feldman, H., Problems in Labor Relations, Problems 5 and 65
Palmer, Gladys, Union Tactics and Economic Change, Chaps. 3, 4, & 6
Slichter, S.H., “The Adjustment to Instability”, Proceedings of the American Economic Association, March, 1936

Suggested for Reference:

Blum, S., Labor Economics, Chap. 18
Robertson D.H., “Wage Grumbles” in Economic Fragments
Slichter, S.H., “Notes on Collective Bargaining” in Explorations in Economics

  1. Collective Bargaining—the Administration of Trade Agreements

Required:

Metcalf, H.C., and Others, Collective Bargaining for Today and Tomorrow, Chaps. 4, 5, and 6
Gilbertson, H.S., “Management and Collective Bargaining”, Harvard Business Review, Summer Issue, 1938
Leiserson, W.M., Right and Wrong in Labor Relations
Slichter, S.H., “Collective Bargaining at Work,” Atlantic Monthly, January, 1938
Steel Workers Organizing Committee, How to Handle Grievances
Taylor, Don H., “Problems in Collective Bargaining”, in Collective Bargaining and Cooperation
Taylor, George W., “Experiences in Collective Bargaining” in Collective Bargaining and Cooperation

 

Part Three
Public Policy and Collective Bargaining

  1. Protection of the Right to Organize
    1. The principle of non-interference by employers
    2. The adjustment of disputes over representation
    3. The obligation to bargain
    4. Should the worker’s freedom of choice be protected against interference from other workers

Required:

Brooks, R.R., When Labor Organizes, Chaps. 3 and 5
Douglas, P.H., “American Labor Relations Boards”, American Economic Review, December, 1937
Feldman, H., Problems in Industrial Relations, Problems 56 and 57
Slichter, S.H., “The Government and Collective Bargaining”, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences, March 1935, v. 178, pp. 107-122.

Suggested for Reference:

Frankfurter, F., Mr. Justice Holmes and the Supreme Court
National Labor Relations Board, Annual Report, 1937
National Labor Relations Board, Governmental Protection of Labor’s Right to Organize

  1. The Adjustment of Industrial Disputes
    1. Mediation
      1. Why can mediation sometimes help
      2. The machinery and methods of mediation
    2. Arbitration
      1. The uses of arbitration
      2. Should mediators arbitrate or arbitrators mediate
      3. Some problems of arbitration—does it tend to interfere with the process of negotiation
    3. Emergency boards

Required:

Either Witte, E.E., The Government in Labor Disputes, Chap. 11 and Appendix A or
Twentieth Century Fund, Labor and the Government, pp. 114-122, and Chap. 8

Suggested for Reference:

Barnett, G.E., and McCabe, D.A., Mediation, Investigation, and Arbitration in Industrial Disputes
Maclaurin, W.R., “Compulsory Arbitration in Australia”, American Economic Review, March, 1938, v. XXVIII, pp. 65-82
Selekman, B., Law and Labor Relations—a Study of the Industrial Disputes Investigations Act of Canada

  1. The Control of Industrial Warfare
    1. The legality of strikes and lockouts
    2. The legality of boycotts
    3. The legality of strike activities
    4. Remedies—injunctions, damage suits

Required:

Baldwin and Randall, Civil Liberties and Industrial Conflict
Feldman, H., Problems in Labor Relations, Problem 58
Witte, E.E., The Government in Labor Disputes, Chaps. 2, 3, and 4

  1. The Enforcement of Trade Agreements
    1. The legal status of trade agreements
    2. Scattered experience in the United States
    3. The experience of the National Boards of Adjustment on the Railroads
    4. Foreign experience

Suggested for Reference:

Rice, W.G., Jr., “Collective Agreements”, Harvard Law Review, v. 14, pp. 572-608
Witte, E.E., The Government in Labor Disputes, pp. 14-17

  1. The Regulation of Trade Unions
    1. Incorporation; Suability
    2. Registration
    3. Publication of accounts
    4. Safeguarding the democratic process within trade unions
    5. Civil rights within trade unions
    6. Government control versus self-regulation

Required:

City Club of New York, The Responsibility of Trade Unions
Witte, E.E., The Government in Labor Disputes, pp. 149-150

Suggested for Reference:

Black, F.R., “Should Trade Unions and Employers’ Associations Be Made Legally Responsible”, Special Report of the National Industrial Conference Board
Brandeis, L.D., Greenbag, v. 15, pp. 11-14
Landis, J.M., The Administrative Process
Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics, Annual Report, 1906, pp. 125-144
Swabey, Marie, Theory of the Democratic State

Source: Harvard University Archives. Syllabi, course outlines and reading lists in Economics, 1895-2003. Box 2. Folder “Economics, 1938-39”.

________________________

Reading Period, First Term

Economics 81: Read the following:

Pigou, A.C., Economics of Welfare, Part III, Chap. IX, XIV, XVI;
and 200 pages from one of the following:

      1. Barnett, G.E., Chapters on Machinery and Labor.
      2. McCabe, D.A., The Standard Rate in American Trade Unionism.
      3. Ward, L.A., Union-Management Cooperation in the Railroads.

Source: Harvard University Archives. Syllabi, course outlines and reading lists in Economics, 1895-2003. Box 2. Folder “Economics, 1938-39”.

________________________

ECONOMICS 81
LABOR PROBLEMS

Outline and Readings for the Second Term
[Pencil: “38-39”]

Part Four

  1. The Public Regulation of Wages and Hours
    1. Minimum wages as a substitute for collective bargaining
    2. Minimum wages as a basis for collective bargaining
    3. The economic principles involved in the setting of minimum rates
    4. The pressure politics of minimum rate setting
    5. The economic consequences of specific rates for other wage rates, for employment and for non-wage groups
    6. Special problems in minimum wage setting
      1. Problems of applying a minimum in piece working plants
      2. The competition of home work
      3. The problem of geographical differentials
      4. The problem of allowances for learners and handicapped workers
    7. Some problems of law in the Federal regulation of wages
    8. Some problems of administration under the Wages and Hours Act of 1938
    9. Net experience with minimum wage regulation in other countries

Required:

Millis, H.A., and Montgomery, R.E., Labor’s Progress and Some Basic Labor Problems, pp. 278-375

Suggested for Reference:

Burns, E.M., Wages and the State
Commons, J.R., and Andrews, J.A., Principles of Labor Legislation
Foenander, O. deR., Toward Industrial Peace in Australia (1937 edition)
Pound, Roscoe, ed., The Supreme Court and Minimum Wage Legislation
Riches, E.J., “Conflicts of Principle in Wage Regulation in New Zealand”, Economica, August, 1938
Women’s Bureau, U.S. Department of Labor, “Special Studies of Wages Paid to Women and Minors in Ohio Industries Prior and Subsequent to the Ohio Minimum Wage Law”, Bulletin 145

Part Five
The Problem of Unemployment

  1. The Kinds of Unemployment
    1. Seasonal unemployment
    2. Technological unemployment
    3. Frictional unemployment
    4. Cyclical unemployment
    5. Stranded areas
    6. Who are the unemployed
    7. Why unemployment is difficult to measure

Required:

Millis, H.A., and Montgomery, R.E., Labor’s Risks and Social Insurance, Chap. 1

Suggested for Reference:

Douglas, P.H., and Director, A., The Problem of Unemployment, Chaps. 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 and 11
Gilboy, E., “Unemployed: Income and Expenditure,” American Economic Review, 1937
Lubin, I., The Absorption of the Unemployed by American Industry
Myers, R.J., “Occupational Readjustment of Displaced Skilled Workers”, Journal of Political Economy, August, 1929, v. XXXVIII, pp. 473-489

  1. Unemployment Policies
    1. Policies designed to reduce unemployment
      1. Public employment exchanges
      2. Transference and training
      3. Planning of public works
    2. Policies designed to support the unemployed
      1. Work spreading
      2. Flexible working week
      3. Direct relief
      4. Work relief
      5. Unemployment compensation

Required:

Davison, R.C., British Unemployment Policy, Chap. 6
Millis, H.A., and Montgomery, R.E., Labor’s Risks and Social Insurance, Chaps. 2 and 3, or Hill, A. C. C., and Lubin, I., The British Attack on Unemployment, Chaps. 4, 5, 6

Suggested for Reference:

Atkinson, R. C., Adencrantz, L.C., and Deming, B., Public Employment Service in the United States, Chaps. 1 and 3
Beveridge, W.H., Unemployment
Chegwidden, T.S., and Myrddin-Evans, G., The Employment Exchange Service of Great Britain
Davison, R.C., British Unemployment Policy
Douglas, P.H., and Director, A., The Problem of Unemployment, Chaps. 6-11, 18-21
Gilson, M.B., Unemployment Insurance in Great Britain
Kiehel, C.A., Unemployment Insurance in Belgium
Spates, T.G., and Rabinovitch, G.S., Unemployment Insurance in Switzerland
Stewart, B.M., Unemployment Compensation in the United States, Chaps. 19 and 22

  1. Some Problems of Unemployment Compensation
    1. Coverage
    2. Contributions
      1. Should employees contribute
      2. Should the state contribute
      3. The incidence of unemployment contributions
    3. Pooled versus plant reserve funds
    4. Merit rating
    5. Benefits
      1. Amount
      2. The waiting period
      3. Duration
      4. Partial unemployment
      5. Flat rate v. credits for dependents
      6. Eligibility for benefits
      7. Testing the willingness to work
      8. Problems presented by seasonal industries
    6. Interstate workers
    7. Federal-state relations
    8. Coordination of employment service and unemployment compensation service
    9. Protecting the solvency of the reserve fund

Required:

Haber, W. Some Current Problems in Social Security
Hill, A.A.C., Jr., and Lubin, I., The British Attack on Unemployment, Chaps. 11, 12, 13, 15, and 16
Lewisohn, Sam A., “Some Major Issues in Unemployment Insurance”, Proceedings of the Academy of Political Science, June, 1935, pp. 339-345
Stewart, Bryce M., “Federal and State Unemployment Insurance”, Proceedings of the Academy of Political Science, June, 1935, pp. 346-364

Suggested for Reference:

Davison, R.C., British Unemployment Policy
Kulp, C.A., Social Insurance Coordination
Kulp, C.A., “European and American Social Security Parallels”, American Labor Legislation Review, March, 1938
Matcheck, Walter and Atkinson, R.C., The Administration of Unemployment Compensation Benefits in Wisconsin
Neuberger, Otto, The Administration of Short-Time Benefits in Germany
Simpson, Smith, “Should Unemployment Compensation be Based on Earnings or Need”, American Labor Legislation Review, September, 1938, pp. 136-140
Stewart, B.M., Planning and Administration of Unemployment Compensation in the United States
Weiss, H., “Unemployment Prevented Through Unemployment Compensation”, Political Science Quarterly, March, 1938, pp. 14-35
Wunderlich, Frieda, “What Next in Unemployment Compensation”, Social Research, February, 1938, pp. 37-54

  1. Relations between Unemployment Compensation and Relief

Required:

Hill, A.C.C., and Lubin, I., The British Attack on Unemployment, Chaps. 11 and 12
Somers, H.M., “Job Finding Joins Relief”, Survey, August, 1938, pp. 263-264

Suggested for Reference:

Burns, E.M., and Malisoff, H., “Administration Integration of Unemployment Insurance and Relief in Great Britain”, Social Service Review, September, 1938
Davison, R.C., British Unemployment Policy, Chaps. 2 and 4

  1. Problems of Relief and Relief Administration

Required:

Eckler, A. Ross, and Fairley, L., “Relief and Reemployment”, Harvard Business Review, Winter, 1938
Haber, William and Somers, H.M., “The Administration of Public Assistance in Massachusetts”, Social Service Review, v. XII, September, 1938
Hill, A.C.C., and Lubin, I., The British Attack on Unemployment, Chap. 15

Suggested for Reference:

Fortune Magazine, “Relief”, February, 1936
MacNeil, D.H., Seven Years of Unemployment Relief in New Jersey

 

Part Six
The Problem of Industrial Accidents and Occupational Disease

  1. The Magnitude of the Problem
  2. Employers’ Liability
  3. Workmen’s Compensation
    1. Rights
    2. Standards
    3. Administrative problems
    4. Medical care
  4. Accident Prevention
  5. Rehabilitation of Injured Workers

Suggested for Reference:

Dodd, W.F., Administration of Workmen’s Compensation
Downey, E.H., Workmen’s Compensation
Millis, H.A., and Montgomery, R.E., Labor’s Risks and Social Insurance, Chap. 4
Vernon, H.M., Accidents and their Prevention

 

Part Seven
The Problem of Sickness Among Wage Earners

  1. The Amount and Incidence of Sickness
  2. Insurance Against Loss of Time
  3. Medical Care and Benefits
  4. Compulsory Health Insurance Abroad
  5. Problem of Health Insurance

Required:

Millis, H.A., and Montgomery, R.E., Labor’s Risks and Social insurance, Chaps. 5, 6, and 7
Syendstricker, E., “Health Insurance and the Public Health,” Proceedings of the Academy of Political Science, June, 1935, pp. 284-292

Suggested for Reference:

Committee on the Costs of Medical Care, Final Report, Chaps. 1-6
Williams, P., The Purchase of Medical Care, Chap. 1

 

Part Eight
Security for Old Age

  1. The Problem of the Older Worker in Modern Industry

Required:

Brown, D., “Proposals for Federal and State Cooperation for Old Age Security”, Proceedings of the Academy of Political Science, June, 1935, pp. 276-281
Twentieth Century Fund, More Security for Old Age, Chap. 1

  1. Private Pension Plans

Required:

Twentieth Century Fund, More Security for Old Age, pp. 69-73

  1. State Old Age Assistance Plans

Required:

Twentieth Century Fund, More Security for Old Age, pp. 69-73

  1. The Federal Old Age Pension Plan
    1. An outline of the plan
    2. Why a federal plan
    3. Why a contributory plan
    4. Problems of the Reserve Fund
    5. Some proposed modifications of the law

Required:

Advisory Council on Social Security, Final Report
Brown, J. Douglas, “The Development of the Old Age Insurance Provisions of the Social Security Act”, Law and Contemporary Problems, April, 1936
Brown, J. Douglas, “Old Age Security, a Problem of Industry and Government”, American Management Association, Economic Security, Pensions and Health Insurance, Personnel Series 20, pp. 3-9
Haber, W., Some Current Problems in Social Security
Linton, M.A., “The Quest for Security in Old Age”, Proceedings of the Academy of Political Science, June, 1935, pp. 373-389
Twentieth Century Fund, More Security for Old Age, pp. 73-158, and 31-68

Suggested for Reference:

Aldrich, W.W., “An Appraisal of the Federal Social Security Act”
Witte, E.E., “Old Age Security in the Social Security Act”, Journal of Political Economy, February, 1937, pp. 1-44

 

Part Nine
Personnel Administration

  1. Should Business Enterprises Formulate Definite Labor Policies
  2. The Matters with which a Labor Policy should Deal
  3. The Determination of Personnel Policies
  4. The Execution of Personnel Policies—the Relation between the Personnel Department and Operating Officials
  5. Some Problems of Personnel Administration
    1. Selection of employees
    2. Training of employees
    3. Handling discharge cases
    4. Problems in making layoffs
  6. The Role of Personnel Administration under Collective Bargaining with Trade Unions
  7. The Contribution of Personnel Administration to the Improvement of the Conditions of Labor

Required:

Bergen, H.B., “Basic Factors in Present-Day Industrial Relations”, Personnel, November, 1937
Bergen, H.B., Fundamentals of a Personnel and Industrial Relations Program
Tead, Ordway and Metcalf, H.C., Principles of Personnel Administration, Chaps. 4, 12 and 25

Source: Harvard University Archives. Syllabi, course outlines and reading lists in Economics, 1895-2003. Box 2. Folder “Economics, 1938-39”.

________________________

Reading Period, Second Term

Economics 81: No additional assignment.

Source: Harvard University Archives. Syllabi, course outlines and reading lists in Economics, 1895-2003. Box 2. Folder “Economics, 1938-39”.

________________________

Twelve Case Studies

Economics 81
1.

A labor manager of a large plant recently expressed the opinion that he would rather have a national union among his employees than so-called “independent” association.

Recently the C.I.O. attempted to organize the plant by typical organizing methods. It had loud speakers outside the plant at the noon hour and it passed out literature containing strong and none-too-accurate attacks on the company and its management. The personnel manager of the plant had made it his business to become acquainted with the international president of the union. He got the president on long distance and said: “If I didn’t know any better how to organize the plant than you do, I would go out of business. Let me know when you will be in town at the Statler Hotel. I will see that twenty-six of our men come down to see you. If you can’t organize them into a union, you are no good.”

Discuss from the point of view of management, the advantages and drawbacks of national and “independent” unions. What do you think of the personnel manager’s technique in handling the organization problem?

 

Economics 81
2.

During the summer of 1937 negotiations in the railroad industry were carried on first with the non-transportation employees and later with the transportation employees. Suppose there are several unions of varying strength in the same plant. Discuss from the point of view of (1) the unions, and (2) the employer the desirability of (1) negotiating with each union separately, or (2) negotiating with them all simultaneously. It is quite usual in the building trades, for example, for the contractors to negotiate changes in wages and hours with all or most of the crafts simultaneously. The six unions in the railroad shops have pursued the policy of negotiating as a unit. On the other hand, in the printing industry, the photo-engraving union has pursued the policy of negotiating independently of the other unions. Can you suggest an explanation for these differences?

 

Economics 81
3.

In the railroad industry it is customary to make trade agreements of indefinite duration—that is, the agreement remains in effect until one side or the other gives notice of desiring a change. The agreements require notice of not less than a certain number of days or weeks.

What advantages to each side do you see in this type of agreement? Do you think that agreements of indefinite duration, such as cancelation on given notice, would be advisable in the building trades, in the shoe industry, in the street railway industry, in department stores?

 

Economics 81
4.

A large airplane line has three shops. In one of them virtually all of the employees belong to the machinists’ union. In each of the other two, the men have organized an independent union. The management wishes to negotiate agreements with its employees. In your judgment, does it make any difference where the management begins?

 

Economics 81
5.

The manager of a company complains that the employees take their grievances to the business agent rather than settling them through the shop steward. This suggests that something is wrong somewhere. What would you look for?

 

Economics 81
6.

For years the manager of a leather plant has taken some pains to avoid the risk of a strike because a large amount of product might be spoiled by the workers going out. The plant manager was not sure whether the president of the company would back him in case a strike occurred or whether the president might hold him responsible for the large losses and, in consequence, remove him from his job. The union gradually discovered that by taking a strong stand it could bulldoze the manager on many matters. It has succeeded in preventing the management from introducing machines into the finishing department. It has also succeeded in preventing the management from revising its piece rates in certain departments. As a result, the piece rates are far above what they should be in view of changes that have been made in methods and working conditions.

Assume that you are the president of the company and that you have just discovered this situation. What possible lines of action might you pursue?

 

Economics 81
7.

Some unions attempt to restrict the employers’ freedom to make layoffs by enforcing equal-division-of-work; others by enforcing layoff in accordance with seniority (sometimes modified by recognition of ability), and some by a combination of equal-division-of-work and seniority. In the women’s garment industry there are two principal busy seasons in the course of the year. The peak demand in each season lasts from four to six weeks. Between the busy seasons, the volume of employment becomes very low. Goods are produced in the main by small plants; a considerable proportion of the plants go out of business each year—in fact, in the New York market during the twenties the annual business mortality rate was over 30 per cent.

Do you think that the union in this industry would be well advised to attempt to regulate layoffs by seniority rule? If not, what kind of rule would you suggest to the union?

 

Economics 81
8.

Among the questions which arise in administering seniority rules is whether seniority shall be on a plant basis, a department basis, an occupational basis, or, in the case of multiple plant companies, on a plant basis. Discuss from the standpoint of both labor and employer the advantages and disadvantages of the different bases. Some employers have said that any seniority rule which suits the union will suit them provided it permits the employer to take some account of ability. Subject to this qualification, some employers have offered to let the union write its own seniority rule. What do you think of this position?

Suppose that the general rule is that seniority in a company will be based upon length of service in a department. How would you handle the case of a man transferred from one department to another at (1) his own request; (2) at the company’s request. Would your answer depend upon whether the transfer is temporary or permanent?

 

Economics 81
9.

A small furniture manufacturer writes: “We are negotiating for the renewal of our contract with the union and are not making the progress which we should. Heretofore the union has always stipulated and insisted that foremen are not eligible and should not become members of the union. This year they have reversed their position and insist that all foremen become members.”

The company has a closed shop contract with the union. Competition in the industry is intense. Would you advise the employer to concede the demand? If not, what line of action would you suggest that he pursue?

 

Economics 81
10.

A union in a factory making a food product limits itself to 180 batches in eight hours. The men are working under the Bedaux system which means that for output above a given amount they receive a bonus. The production of 180 batches enables the men to earn a small bonus. Improved machinery introduced since the Bedaux standards were set makes it possible for the men to turn out considerably more than 180 batches.

What should the employer do about this situation?

 

Economics 81
11.

At the 1934 Convention of the Glass Bottle Blowers Association, the Committee on Feed and Flow Automatic Machines recommended that “No firm with whom we have contractual relations shall be given any special privileges either by our National President or by any member of the Executive Board.” This would have prevented the union officers from signing agreements which gave some employers lower wages than other employers were paying.

Vice President Campbell, speaking on this question, said:

“This is an important question and I ask the privilege of speaking. I came in contact with it many places in the trade last year, and statements made here seem to refer to it. Some delegates are in favor and others are opposed, so it is a debatable question—this separate agreement; but if we go back in our history, we always had a separate agreement. We used to meet the Owens Company from year to year in a separate conference, which was necessary at that time; and the manufacturers used it in our conferences. President Maloney yesterday told you that it was pointed out to us that the ‘Big Boys’ were not in the conference; ‘Bring them in,’ they said. Before we organized the Owen-Illinois the Independent Manufacturers pointed out to us that this particular company was not paying the same wages they and other plants were. In some instances that was true. A few years ago the wage scale in some of their plants was not equal to our minimum rate. There was not so much complaint, because their wage scale in the Flow and Feed Department was on a par with ours. But in recent years, after the organization of the Owens-Illinois plants, we were able to secure better wages and the time came when they were paying better wages than our independent manufacturers. Then we began to hear complaints, and naturally so. But I think the separate agreement will work to our advantage, especially now, more so than in years gone by.”*

*Minutes of Proceedings of Fifty-Second Convention, Glass Bottle Blowers Association, July 9-16, 1934, p. 241.

Discuss the issues raised by this question.

 

Economics 81
12.

“When the number of employees in a department is increased or decreased the employer agrees to give consideration to the relative merit and ability of all employees in such department, and where, in the opinion of the employer, merit and ability are equal, then the factor of length of service in such department shall be recognized. In the case of a transfer from one department to another, an employee shall not lose any of the recognition herein referred to.”

Employee X is employed in a factory for six years having worked four years in Department A, and was thereafter transferred to Department B where he worked for the ensuing two years. Because of slowness of business in Department B, it becomes necessary to reduce the personnel of that department and the person with the least seniority (merit and ability being equal) is laid off.

Under the seniority rule quoted, how many years seniority does Employee X have. Assuming that Employee X is laid off in Department B, would he be permitted (merit and ability being equal) to “bump” an employee in Department A with (1) five years’ seniority, or (2) three years’ seniority?

Source: Harvard University Archives. Syllabi, course outlines and reading lists in Economics, 1895-2003. Box 2. Folder “Economics, 1938-39”.

________________________

Final Examinations

1938-39
HARVARD UNIVERSITY
ECONOMICS 81a
[Mid-Year Examination, January or February 1939]

(Answer five out of six, including Question IV)

I

In 1936, the index of real wages was approximately 250 for the United States, 100 for Great Britain, 40 for Roumania and Poland. What factors would you take into account in explaining these differences?

II

“The introduction of new machinery appears to reduce the number of jobs. Its true effect, however, is to widen the opportunities for employment and to raise real wages.” Do you agree? Explain.

III

Analyze the conditions which determine the ability of a labor organization to practice successfully the policy of controlling new machines. What do you mean by a policy of control?

IV

Through years of experience in the negotiation and administration of trade agreements, certain practices, procedures, and organization arrangements have been developed which have contributed substantially to the smoother operation of collective bargaining. Indicate some of the more important of these, explaining their significance, and, where their application is limited, explaining what these limitations are.

V

Union-management cooperation involves certain problems which, unless properly handled, lead to strained industrial relations. Point out some of the more important of these problems and indicate what an employer might do about them.

VI

What are the relations between collective bargaining and unemployment?

 

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University, Final examinations 1853-2001. Box 4, Bound volume: Mid-Year Examinations—1939. Papers Printed for Mid-Year Examinations [in] History, History of Religions, …, Economics, …, Military Science, Naval Science. January-February, 1939.

 

1938-39
HARVARD UNIVERSITY
ECONOMICS 81a
[Final Examination, June 1939]

I

Discuss the issues which arise in attempting to write a satisfactory seniority rule for a collective agreement.

II

“Collective bargaining is both a necessary and a dangerous institution.” Discuss.

or

“Industrial democracy is essential to make political democracy effective, but industrial democracy poorly operated can bring about the downfall of political democracy.” Discuss.

III

(a) Discuss the incidence of the old age pension contributions.

(b) State and comment briefly on the arguments for the large pension reserve.

IV

(a) Discuss the desirability of replacing the present schemes of unemployment insurance benefit with flat rate payments.

(b) What are the merits of merit rating?

V

Discuss some of the problems of policy created by the interrelation of unemployment compensation and relief.

 

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, 1939.

Image Sources:

Sumner H. Slichter (left) Harvard Class Album 1947-48.

Spencer D. Pollard (middle) from the Harvard Class Album 1932.

Lloyd G. Reynolds (right). Photo from the Johns Hopkins Sheridan Library Photography Collection (April, 1940).

 

Categories
Economics Programs Harvard

Harvard. Galbraith’s Proposal to Split the Economics Department, 1973

 

During the early 1970s the Harvard economics department went through an identity crisis in which the orthodox mainstream was challenged by a not-so-silent minority of proto-heterodox economists and a dissatisfied graduate student body. The following three artifacts from the discussion of that time come from John Kenneth Galbraith’s papers. I would not exclude the possibility that some/much of the December 26, 1972 memo from the dean of the faculty of arts and sciences was inspired, if not directly penned, by Galbraith.

Galbraith was incapable of writing even an intrauniversity memo without flashes of wit as both the draft and final versions of his memo clearly demonstrate. And yet, there remains an overwhelming pathetic, quixotic note to his proposal of dividing the economics department in order to save its diverse, social elements.

____________________________

When the Dean Asks
How to Fix the Harvard Economics Department

December 26, 1972

From: THE DEAN OF THE FACULTY OF ARTS AND SCIENCES

To: THE CHAIRMAN OF THE DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMICS

Re: TERMS OF REFERENCE FOR A STUDY OF AND RECOMMENDATIONS ON THE DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMICS

Recent developments and discussions suggest problems of some concern in the Department of Economics. In the belief that such problems, if attacked in timely fashion and a spirit of goodwill, will be more readily resolved than if allowed to persist and be aggravated, I am proposing action which I trust will meet with the approval of all concerned. I shall first identify those matters on which, I believe, there will be general agreement and then suggest terms of reference for the appropriate action.

  1. The Department of Economics has become very large. In the current catalogue I count 25 tenured members, 56 non-tenured members, 5 visiting professors and 13 economists in associated departments principally the Kennedy School, in addition to the large force of teaching assistants. It is not surprising that so large a body should have problems in maintaining a sense of common purpose and identity.
  2. There has of late been a deep difference of view on appointments in the Department. This has led to the suggestions that the Department, its size notwithstanding, is not emphasizing an adequate representation of diverse, socially unpopular or methodologically different positions, and that standards for promotion operate to exclude or minimize the representation of such views.
  3. There will be agreement that a majority may be less urgently seized of the need for representation of a minority view than the minority.
  4. In recent years there has been dissatisfaction among students, principally graduate students, with instruction in the Department. Again I state the fact without passing on the merits of the position. I do note that, historically, students have found satisfaction and pride in their association with the Department.
  5. The question has been raised whether some appointments are being appraised in accordance with contribution or non-contribution to or effect on corporate profit-making which, however useful and legitimate, is external to the scientific work and teaching of the Department.

In light of the foregoing I propose to ask the three past presidents of the American Economic Association together with the two American Nobel Prize winners who are engaged in active teaching (one of whom is also current President of the American Economic Association), together with the Chairman of the Department of Economics to examine the Department as a matter of urgency and to report. The following are the terms of reference for this examination:

  1. The group shall be denoted the Special Study Committee, and hereafter as the Committee.
  2. In its deliberations the Committee will consult to the fullest extent with students of the Department as well as with tenured and non-tenured members of the Department, and will discuss its provisional findings with students and faculty.
  3. The Committee will consider and report on whether the present personnel of the Department reflects an appropriately broad spectrum of method and view and, as necessary, on corrective steps. Corrective steps may specifically include recommendations for change in past action.
  4. The committee will consider whether the present teaching of economics is sufficiently broad, and specifically whether there should be a second and alternative track to a doctorate in economics embracing both course work and examinations and in which the primary emphasis would be on history of economic thought, institutional economics and socialist thought, or subject matter disciplines not required by the present framework.
  5. The Committee shall consider possible division or subdivision or other reorganization of the Department to provide greater knowledge of candidates for appointment or promotion, greater corporate responsibility for instruction and other possible gains from smaller size. In this connection special attention should be given to the relationship with the Kennedy School of Government.
  6. The effect of external corporate or other activities of Departmental members as these may bear on appointments, teaching or research, shall be examined with recommendations.
  7. The report of the Committee shall be made public and, in the absence of specific and fully-supported objection, it is my hope that its conclusions will be found acceptable to the Department. There is no intention to alter the constitutional arrangements by which tenured members, as now or in a suitably reorganized or subdivided Department, if that is the decision, are responsible for appointments and instruction.

____________________________

Galbraith Draft Statement (undated)
[handwritten additions in bold italics]

Draft #2

MEMORANDUM

MEMO:

The President
The Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences
Members of the Department of Economics

From: John Kenneth Galbraith

 

In these last weeks tensions long present in the Department of Economics at Harvard have come to the surface. The consequences are attracting interest and discussion well beyond the confines of the Department and the University. It is doubtful if anyone, and certainly any active participants, can state the issues with complete impartiality but some of the basic circumstances admit of agreement. They are.

(1) The Department has become very large—the current catalogue lists twenty-five regularly tenured professors, thirty-five nontenured professors, thirteen members in an adjunct relationship from other parts of the University and five visiting professors. In addition there are a large number of teaching assistants. The Department has become a parliamentary and not a corporate body. Long before the recent explosion I expressed my concern not only to my colleagues but also to the top management over our increasingly ungainly and ineffective mass and its dangers. I encountered little or no disagreement.

(2) The Department has for some years been deeply divided in its views. There has been an ineffective and mostly unchanging minority, and an effective and largely unchanging majority.

(3) While the basis of the division is diverse, including the polemical folk-tendencies of academic life, our learned delight in self assertion, our sensitivity to the intellectual shortcomings of others, differences in reaction to change, political attitudes, it is also a difference in the view of economics. I doubt that any statement of this difference can avoid prejudice. I shall content myself with being dull. It partly involves the acceptance or rejection of the established economic institutions; partly acceptance or rejection of accustomed preconceptions of economic thought, partly the trade-off between precision in established modalities and lesser precision in more innovative, critical or experimental work; partly it has to do with the degree of commitment to measurement and mathematics.

(4) While the underlying fact is a difference in the view of the subject (including the importance of representing the minority views) the argument over appointments invokes competence. Each side with no slight sense of moral righteousness defines competence in its own image. What is unscientific or soft to one side is irrelevant or unreal or unuseful to the other. Certainty in these positions is enhanced by the effect of professional esteem on ego. The members of the majority rightly reflect on the high regard in which precision and excellence of their work is held in their particular spheres of econometric, mathematical or applied work. The members of the minority rejoice similarly on their standing in the profession generally. Given these attitudes, the likelihood that one side will yield gracefully to the other is (if possible) even further reduced. Thus the absolute certainty of continued conflict.

(5) The difference comes to a head over appointments. This reflects a clear view of the reality. It is recognized by all that it is people who determine what is taught and investigated—and wholly so in such an unstructured environment as Harvard. The majority, not unnaturally, has prevailed. In this context a minority should not be expected to acquiesce. To do so is to accept eventual extinction. No one who is serious about his views or methods should countenance that.

(6) The students, once pridefully associated with the Department, are discontented. Their affiliation is largely, although by no means completely, with the minority. As a consequence some members of the majority hold or harbor the thought that the minority is acting less out of conviction than a desire to seek popularity or appease student opinion. Members of the minority react with a strong (and in my own case previously undisclosed) concern for the quality of our institution.

(7) There is a question as to the bearing of subjective judgments formed in connection with the business activities of members—or in consequence of those activities—on promotion of those whose disposition or work leads to criticism of cherished and remunerative economic institutions.

Aggravated problems sometimes allow of simple choices. This is so in the present case. One course is to continue as now, and enjoy the acrimony and continue to invite, by our public bickering, disesteem for the subject, the Department, the University, our students and ourselves. The other is to move to the obvious and forthright resolution, on which will be to the benefit of all concerned.

The solution is to divide the present vast Department into two parts. One part, a Department or Division of General Economics*, would reflect the specialized interests and scientific purpose of the majority, including those whose identification with the minority has been based not on identity of professional interest but concern for academic diversity. A second part would be the Department of Social Economics. This initially much smaller Department would consist of those tenured and untenured members whose active identification with the social issues of planning, economic structure, criticism, or socialism or institutionalism leads them to make the transfer. The new Department, born out of a need to ensure diversity, would itself be under the normal academic obligation to perpetuate diversity. It would develop an undergraduate and graduate curriculum and degree requirements compromising nothing in depth and rigor, in accordance with the interests of its members and of students. Subject to established ad hoc procedures—and its resources—it would make its own promotions and appointments.

*No difficulty should be made over a name. The parent Department could be called the Department of Economics.

The initial resources of the new Department would consist of the present financial commitment to those making the change. There would, some minor administrative costs apart, be no added burden on the University budget. I would make the transfer and make the revenues from the Paul M. Warburg Professorship, including the supporting research revenues (on neither of which I have drawn in net amount in recent years) available for a new professorial appointment. I believe, not without knowledge, that money for one or two added professorships as well as for research could be raised from sources not presently open either to the University or the Department. Scholarship funds would be divided in accordance with student demand. I am willing to commit a good share of personal time in the next year to money raising, a task in which, unlike my economics, my competence has been sufficiently established.

May I note in summary the advantages of the foregoing proposal.

(1) The basic cause of distress and conflict in the present Department of Economics would be removed. Each of the new Departments or Divisions will be in a position to develop the subject in full accordance with its own lights. Neither will be in the academically repellant position (however agreeable in practice) of imposing its standards or preferences on the other.

(2) The problem of excessive scale and consequent diminution in sense of communal responsibility for teaching, research and appointments is solved in the case of the new small Department or Division. It is alleviated for the larger parent Department.

(3) The Department of Social Economics if it is to attract, retain and place its graduate students, will have to demonstrate itself in competition with its older and more prestigious parent. This competition will be exceedinglyhealthy for both. This is an appealing point. While businessmen favor competition more often in principle than in practice, this is not an error into which any good economist will allow himself to fall.

(4) Undergraduate instruction in the new Department will benefit no alone from the members’ commitment to their subject matter but also from the greater sense of community as between teaching assistants, tenured and non-tenured faculty in a much smaller department and the present Department will be better. In the present Department not even all tenured and untenured members are known to each other. Teaching assistants are known only to a fraction of the faculty members and even less is known about their performance. And again in undergraduate teaching the vigorous competition of the new Department will be good for the older one.

(5) Problems associated with the corporate business activities of professors will be at least partly resolved. No question of concern for attitudes of business clients, however subjective, will be thought to influence those who are passing on appointments in the new Department. Subject no doubt, to appropriate safeguards the activities of present members of the Department with their potential for useful employment, income and information could perhapsremain.

(6) The two Departments through a coordinating committee might [illegible word] combine for the time being on the elementary course.

(7) The creation of the new Department with an admixture of old and new members intent on developing both old and new lines of inquiry will affirm, as nothing else, Harvard’s avidly proclaimed commitment to free inquiry by people of the highest calibre and to whatever result.

(8) Nothing is forever. If, after say ten years, there is demand for reunification, why not.

With so much to be gained—and also so much trouble to be avoided—I hope that we can proceed to consider this solution with a minimum of delay. Needless to say—perhaps on the basis of past departmental performance it is very necessary that I say—I am ready at any notice to lend a hand.

____________________________

Memo On Splitting the Harvard Economics Department
[Apparent Final Draft]

June 18, 1973

From:  JOHN KENNETH GALBRAITH

To:

PRESIDENT DEREK C. BOK
DEAN-DESIGNATE HENRY ROSOVSKY
PROFESSOR JAMES S. DUESENBERRY
MEMBERS OF THE DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMICS

Re: THE DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMICS

The Department of Economics is, I would judge, entering into a period of considerable calm and tranquility. The older dissidents and heretics in the Department will, with one or two exceptions, soon be retiring. And, in any case, they are now a harmless minority. Within a year or so the younger generation of dissidents will be safely gone. Thus the expectation of a period of scholarly calm.

My purpose in this memorandum is to suggest that the prospect is not as happy as these developments imply. And it is to suggest some steps which, without unduly disturbing the equanimity of the situation, the Department and the Administration would be wise to consider. May I note that these are matters on which I have no personal, as distinct from general, professional concern. I am one of those who will be contributing, however modestly, to a more seemly, tranquil and comfortable life by a comparatively early departure.

The problems remaining after the prospective changes are two. There is first the fact that, while faculty affairs have been generally arranged to the satisfaction of all, the students remain deeply dissatisfied. Let no one doubt this or seek, by the usual academic rationalizations, to explain it away. I was much exposed to this in the special seminar last autumn; I determined then to inform myself in a minor way during the spring, which I have done. The students, over a wide political spectrum, deeply dislike their work and the Department. This is especially true of the first-year students who, in a puzzling exercise in public relations reflecting an odd attitude toward education, are now blithely told at the outset to expect the worst year of their lives. Those who have been here two or three years also look back with discontent on their educational experience. My first year of graduate work was one of the most vital and interesting of my life. So, I believe it was with most of my generation.

The complaint of the students is straitforward. They are squeezed, especially in their first year but increasingly as a test in later work, into a narrow model-building, problem-solving, quasi-mathematical routine that they find boring and unrelated to the world in which they live. The emasculated careerist may accept the routine and do well. The student who thought that economics was a window on the problems of the world is abjectly disappointed.

These student reactions are heavily discounted by most although not all of the senior faculty. The rationalization is that such student attitudes are inevitable—that the modern student is inherently lazy, feckless, radical and dissatisfied. It is even suggested, not without scholarly vigor, that those who express concern about students are courting a student popularity in a sadly unscholarly tradition. As I say, this rationalization seems to me unwise and something that very soon will have a more practical consequence. A bad reputation in these matters is not easily kept a secret. It could happen that eventually the Department will have very few graduate students of indigenous origin of any consequence, a few committed careerists, mathematicians and model-builders apart. Numbers and quality of applicants will decline. In consequence, the ratio of faculty to active, teachable graduate students, which is now approaching one to one, will pass that point and will widen as a ratio of students to teachers. This is not hyperbole. A course was recently described to me by a graduate student in which he was the only participant along with three faculty members. We have a fair number of seminars with only a handful of students, sometimes but one. Faculty life will continue in comfort. Workshops will serve, as already now, to disguise the shortage of students. But still there will be nervousness.

There is another and more subjective danger. The harmony which one now foresees is based on a general commitment to neoclassical economics or its applied refinements. Accomplishment in model-building and refinement is, I think nearly all will agree, an increasingly stern requirement. We would not again hire a labor economist who, like Professor Dunlop or Professor Slichter, made his career out of a practical association with the unions and the problems of labor mediation. Professor Leontief, were he now showing the experimental tendencies that marked his early career, would be in trouble. Even his work, when firmly established, was not strongly supported. We would not have an economist who was too much preoccupied with the practical details of tax reform—unless he protected his flank by suitable theoretical or econometric exercise. My own past tendencies would certainly not be acceptable for promotion—although on the merits of this, with characteristic tact, I disqualify myself. What is not in doubt is that we are now very strong in the journals but much less strong in the obscenely practical matters on which many people, including many students, expect economists to be useful. This could be damaging to the reputation of the Department. The latter has always depended in appreciable measure not on the great scientists but on its vulgar practitioners.

Now let me say a word on reform. Mention of reform leads to thoughts of reform of the Department—so it is with faculty and also students. The present course of instruction is wrong. Let us find the right one. The problem is that no one line of graduate economic instruction can now serve all interests, reflect all points of view. Nor does it deal with the highly important fact that instruction is far less important than the inclination of the people who guide it. The Department is now a vast parliamentary body. So long as there is only one educational track, as a matter of course it will reflect the preferences of the majority. All of us, in the oldest of academic traditions, appraise excellence using ourselves as the yardstick. Reform requires that we begin to provide real choices as to teachers and as to work. Three possibilities occur to me:

  1. We should have in the Department of Economics two tracks to two Ph.D.’s. One of these would be in economics, another in (say) social economics. Professors in the Department would be grouped into two broad Executive Committees around these tracks. And each of these two Executive Committees would have responsibility not only for developing graduate work in its track and for examination therein but also for recruitment and promotion. This would broaden the choice for students; would mean that we would have two more nearly corporate bodies rather than one parliamentary body to guide instruction and appointments; would foster the kind of competition which all economists intrinsically and devoutly applaud; and would reduce by half the present parliamentary tendency to exclude the minority view. The first track would continue the present program with all of its neoclassical and model-building rigor. The second track would be experimental, humane and with a much stronger orientation to the emerging issues of our time. It would not, and this must be emphasized, involve any less effort.
  2. The second possibility would be to establish within the Department an institute—an Institute for Economic Innovation. This would enlist the members of the senior faculty so inclined, would develop a program purely of graduate instruction and would lead also to a degree which would reflect its own course of instruction. The purpose of constituting this as an institute would be twofold: to get the energy and attention of one man who would see the institute as the projection of his own efforts, and to use the institute as a device for raising new funds for both chairs and research. It is my near certainty, based on some experience as a medicant, that this enterprise, properly presented, would be very attractive to donors. I am not sure, however, that given the present size of the Department, it would not be wiser simply to allot some Graustein appointments to the Institute for the next few years.
  3. The third and final possibility would be to have two Departments of Economics—one Department of Economics and one Department of Social Economics. There are advantages to this—again the healthy competition in which all economists theoretically rejoice, elimination of the present diseconomies of scale, the much more clearly defined differentiation of purpose. It would not be as difficult a solution as seems at first glance. Those who approve of the Department as it is would remain with the Department of Economics. The rest would make the new Department. It would form its character from those who join it in the feeling that a more strongly innovative, humane and applied—in the modern sense—approach to economics is in order. The problem is, of course, that it involves the largest disruption in established institutional arrangements. That is not something to be undertaken lightly. Sometimes, though, that is good.

I am persuaded that in one or another of the above arrangements lies the only hope for a satisfactory future. For a while the tranquility that is in prospect will be greatly enjoyed. Given the sterile tendencies of the accepted economics and the attitudes of the students, it will be, if not the tranquility of the tomb, certainly that of a kind of somnambulant decay.

J.K.G.

Source: John F. Kennedy Presidential Library. John Kenneth Galbraith Personal Papers. Series 5. Harvard University File, 1949-1990. Box 526. Folder “Memorandum on Reorganization of the Department of Economics”.

Image Source: Harvard Class Album 1958.

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Columbia Economists Harvard NBER Stanford

Columbia. Economics Ph.D. alumnus. Moses Abramovitz, 1939

 

 

The professional career of Moses Abramovitz shows what a blend of Harvard and Columbia training in economics crowned by an NBER post-doc could get you back in the day. His contributions to the study of long-term growth and to the Stanford economics department’s rise to prominence are truly important legacies.

The first item of the post gives us Abramovitz’s personal quarter-century report to his Harvard classmates of 1932. This is followed by excerpts from Abramovitz’s memoir for his family that provide a rich account of his economics training at Harvard and then Columbia. A link to download the entire memoir is provided below. The post closes with a memorial resolution written by Abramovitz’s Stanford colleagues. But the real treat, is found in Moses Abramovitz’s description of his economics education and economists important for his development. Among other things we learn, the chairman of the Harvard economics department, Harold Burbank, was indeed anti-Semitic enough for Abramovitz not to have dignified him by name. Also we learn that in 1934 “Milton [Friedman] was much less ideological then than he later became, so he was a very pleasant and agreeable companion.”

_______________________

From the 25th reunion report of the Harvard Class of 1932

MOSES ABRAMOVITZ

Home address: 543 W. Crescent Drive, Palo Alto, Calif.
Office address: Dept. of Economics, Stanford University, Stanford, Calif.
Born: Jan. 1, 1912, Brooklyn, N.Y.
Parents: Nathan Abramovitz, Betty Goldenberg.
Prepared at: Erasmus Hall High School, Brooklyn, N.Y.
Years in College: 1928-1932.
Degrees: A.B. summa cum laude, 1932; Ph.D. (Columbia Univ.), 1939.
Married: Carrie Glasser, June 13, 1937, Brooklyn, N.Y.
Child: Joel Nathan, July 19, 1950.
Occupation: Professor of economics, Stanford University; member research staff, national Bureau of Economic Research.
Offices Held: Member editorial board, American Economic Review, 1951-54.
Member of: American Economic Association; American Statistical Association; American Economic History Association; Royal Economic Society; American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Publications: Price Theory for a Changing Economy; Inventories and Business Cycles; The Economics of Growth; “Capital Formation and Economic Growth,” editor; The Growth of Public Employment in Great Britain (with Vera Eliasberg).

I LEFT Harvard supported by a Sheldon Fellowship and exhilarated by the prospect of a year in Europe—no small piece of luck at any time and a pot of good fortune in 1932. Together with Dave Popper, I saw Paris and the Rhine country as they were before the second deluge. We saw our first Storm Trooper rallies in Heidelberg and, if we were not too innocent, we were certainly too full of good spirits to be greatly disturbed. But those charming days were suddenly cut short. From Nuremberg, I was called home by my father’s death.

Back in New York I began graduate work in economics at Columbia and continued there until 1935. In 1936, I was lucky enough to be brought back to Harvard as an instructor for two years and had the fun and satisfaction of being again in Cambridge as a teacher while my memories of life at college were still warm. At Columbia I had met another young economist whom I had known years before. I shall stick to the essentials. The young economist was a woman. We were married in 1937, so Carrie has had a year at Harvard, too.

In 1938, we were back in New York again, this time to work at the National Bureau of Economic Research. In the years that followed I learned what I know about scientific investigation from Wesley Mitchell and Arthur F. Burns. Together they were in the midst of their wide-ranging investigation of business cycles. They set me to work studying inventory fluctuations. In the fullness of time I got some results and published a book, a hefty volume called Inventories and Business Cycles. It got some notice and caused some controversy, and a certain number of copies continue to serve as ballast for bookcases that might otherwise be disturbed by a fresh breeze.

Early in 1942, I went to Washington to help Bob Nathan and the W.P.B. Planning Committee, first to goad the military into laying out programs big enough to make use of a national productive capacity they could not believe existed, and then to keep them from losing the munitions they really needed under the load of programs too large for even our capacity. A year later I was at O.S.S. working for Professor Langer and Dean Mason on German economic intelligence. My particular job was probably of little use during the war itself, but it produced a collection of materials and a few more or less knowledgeable individuals, and both were needed after the German defeat. I became involved in the negotiations about German reparations and in that way came to see Moscow in the months right after V-E Day. Our work, as we all now know, foundered in the general wreck of American-Soviet relations. Together with many other stalemated delegations on many other subjects, ours eventually came to Potsdam to be witnesses at the beginning of the partition of Germany and Europe.

Since 1948 I have been a professor at Stanford. We have one child, a boy now six. We think living here near San Francisco as comfortable and delightful as it can be; so I rush back east as often as I can to disgorge the lotus and discharge my guilt.

My chief activity is still, as it has been for many years, research in economics—a stubborn, unyielding, frustrating and altogether exasperating subject from which I don’t know how to shake loose. What do I believe? One’s bent of mind is shaped by one’s work. Mine is inclined to skepticism, not beliefs, still less belief. Very likely I have much to learn. Oh yes! I believe both parties are right – in what each says about the other.

Source:  Harvard Class of 1932, Twenty-fifth Anniversary Report (1957), pp.6-8.

_______________________

Undergraduate and graduate student days: memories of Harvard and Columbia

…My fourth course [freshman year at Harvard] was different. It was elementary economics. I was lucky. I drew an excellent instructor named Bigelow. Using Frank W. Taussig’s Principles, he introduced us to the general logic of the neoclassical theories of relative prices of commodities and of the factors of production, land, labor, and capital, to the distribution of income among these primary factors, to the theory of international trade, and to the virtues of free markets. He offered us a list of supplementary readings, one of which was called simply Supply and Demand, by an English economist, H.D. Henderson. It was a thin book, but it was a notable example of the lucid presentation of the logic of the economics of value and distribution. One could see all around one examples in ordinary life of the validity and importance of the theory. The way in which the various parts of the subject hung together in an interdependent system seemed not only analytically deep; it emerged as a beautiful structure, an aesthetic as well as a logical and tested structure. More than any other experience, it was this little book that drew me to go on with economics. When I returned to Harvard in September 1929, therefore, I chose economics as my field of concentration. And, indeed, when the economy began its collapse in October of that year, it confirmed me in my choice. It was a decisive experience.

Concentrating in Economics

Having chosen to concentrate in economics, I was assigned a tutor. Here again I was lucky. He was Edward S. Mason, then a still young assistant professor. But he was destined for both academic leadership and, as my story unfolds, for a real influence on practical affairs. Even more important for me, however, was the fact that this young man was already recognizably “wise,” a man of good judgment in both scholarly decisions and practical matters. He took a liking to me, and he remembered his friends! He was due to turn up with support and help at several critical junctures in my story.

My very first meeting with Mason was an exciting moment. It was late September or early October in 1929, that fateful year. We chatted, and then, more brash than usual, I said, “Well, Professor, when is the stock market going to break?” He answered, without hesitation, “Almost immediately.” And when I returned for our second meeting, it had happened. And then, still brash, I said, “Well, Professor, you must have made a mint of money.” And then I learned something about him and perhaps most academics of the time. He said, “Are you crazy? I have never owned a share of stocks in my life.”

… Like many, but not all, of the young economists of the time, who had no deep commitment to mainstream economics, I saw clearly enough that mainstream theory offered us no guidance in understanding the Great Contraction and Depression, and it was consequently a poor basis for public policy. Something new was needed, a theory that dealt more adequately with recurrent recessions and expansions of business and particularly with the very serious depressions and eventual recoveries which in the U.S. had succeeded one another at intervals of about 15 to 20 years since the 1830s. For the moment, I did not get beyond dissatisfaction with the older wisdom, Real enlightenment came only in 1936 with the publication of J.M. Keynes’s General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money. When I had absorbed Keynes’s reasoning, I became an enthusiasticKeynesian and I remain so to this day.

There was also a quite personal effect of these developments on my own work history. They prepared me to join the National Bureau of Economic Research when the chance came in 1937 and to do empirical research on business cycles under the direction of Wesley Mitchell and Arthur Burns, the most notable people doing such work at that time.

Still an undergraduate in 1929, however, at the beginning of the economic contraction and depression, I still had three years of undergraduate work to do. Guided by Mason and later by Douglas V. Brown, I took Taussig’s famous course in price theory at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. Taussig was then the leading American price theorist of his time and by far the most influential person in the Economics Department. In these courses, conducted by Socratic methods, he clearly formed a good opinion about me. I am sure he was of help to me behind the scenes at several junctures. I also remember two enlightening courses, Sumner Slichter on Labor Economics and John Williams on Money and Banking. In Williams’s course, I read Keynes’s earlier books and began to become familiar with his way of thinking. Anyhow, I did well in all these courses and in others in economics, history, and in one really interesting course in literature. That was Irving Babbett on Rousseau and Romanticism. I was apparently a natural-born good student and exam taker. The upshot was that I was graduated summa cum laude and I was given a Sheldon Traveling Fellowship.

For me, this last was more than an honor and more than a year of support and European travel and study at a time when money was so scarce and jobs for new college graduates almost nonexistent. My tutors and professors, including the influential Taussig, had already been encouraging me to think about going on to graduate study in economics and to an eventual academic career. To my parents and my brother, such a course was strange and uncertain. Abe began to call me “meshugana Moishele.” But it was clear that in the end they would support me in any decision I made. And the fellowship, which was tangible proof of the good opinion of the Harvard faculty, confirmed me in a career choice I had already more than half made: It was a decisive event.

[late June of 1932 left for Europe but Moses Abramovitz’s father died in September 1932]

… I resigned my scholarship and in that September of 1932 walked along Nostrand Avenue to Eastern Parkway and took the subway (IRT, Broadway and 7th Avenue Line) to Broadway and 116th Street. Half a block away, one entered Columbia. I walked in and registered and began three years of graduate work in economics. This was a big departure from the program I had thought lay before me, but I cannot remember any feeling of distress or resistance. I was glad to provide some degree of solid continuity for my mother, and I felt confident about the future. Columbia would also be a good start.

 

Columbia as a School of Economics

By forgoing Vienna, Cambridge, and Harvard, I had made a bigger change than I realized when I started in Columbia. Vienna, Cambridge, and Harvard were all centers in which understanding of the domestic economy of a country and of its international economic relations was squarely based on theoretical economics. This, in turn, was a doctrine logically derived from certain basic primary assumptions: that economic agents (consumers, savers, business firms, investors generally) were well informed, foresighted, and rational, and acted to promote their own individual interests, that they faced competitive markets and, as business firms, acted under the pressures of competition; they operated subject to the constraints of income and wealth and of market prices which they could not by their own actions significantly influence. Actions in this context were perceived as leading to an equilibrium of prices, wages, profits, etc., and of consumer satisfactions in which change might be harmful to some but would be more than offset by benefit to others. Thus, there was no room or occasion for public action except such as was necessary to enforce contracts, maintain competition, prevent or punish fraud and generally keep the peace. Changes in technology and in consumer tastes would lead to a new equilibrium of prices, rewards, incomes, etc., but such changes were viewed as “exogenous,” not the result of economic action or motivation and beyond the ken of economics.

The Columbia economists, however, rejected this structure of theory or, at least, its general application. They conceded its usefulness in explaining very simple matters: why a grand piano cost more than a pair of shoes, and, in general, why there is a rough association between the prices of commodities and their costs of production. They were skeptical, however, about the theoretical assumptions that agents were foresighted, well-informed, and rational. They saw markets as characterized by various degrees of monopoly power, with business firms capable not only of profiting by constraining production and raising prices more than costs alone would justify; they also often had the power to shape consumer tastes, for example by advertising, and, most important, to invest in research and development and so to advance and sometimes to retard—technological progress. They tended to see the economy as a whole, not as tending to an equilibrium, but as generating long-term growth of productivity, income, and wealth. This tendency did not, however, emerge continuously and at a stable rate but subject to recurrent fluctuations, loosely called “cyclical,” in which advance was sometimes fast,sometimes slow, and sometimes negative.

As I absorbed all this, I saw the justice of the Columbia outlook and came to appreciate its radical departure from the economics in which I had been trained as a Harvard undergraduate. Columbia economics, as it stood in the Thirties, however, had its own serious limitations. It was well advanced in its understanding of two subjects. One was in the study of the behavior of firms that had acquired and enjoyed various kinds and degrees of monopoly power. This was the province of Arthur Robert (“Columbia”) Burns—not the Arthur Frank (“Bureau”) Burns with whom I later did research on business cycles.

The other subject was another sphere of monopoly power, that of labor unions. Why were they so much less important in the U.S.A. than in Europe? What activities were successfully unionized and which not? And why? This was the area over which Leo Wolman ruled. Wolman later played a considerable role in the Roosevelt Administration, especially in connection with the disorders in the labor market stemming from the organizing drives of the AFL/CIO. He worked as chairman of the Automobile Labor Board, where he tried to keep the peace in that important industry—an effort that won him no friends in the unions. Wolman’s teaching, however, was as far from academic as can be imagined. It came directly from his own experience with labor unions. Although a professor at Columbia, he also worked as the economic advisor of Sidney Hillman, the president of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers, the men’s clothing union. Wolman learned as much as he advised. He saw clearly that in the flexible and mobile population conditions of the American continent, the only unions that could exercise strong and stable monopoly power were those operating in industries frozen in location. The newsprint industry was an example. The book print industry was not. Where the industry could move, it could flee from a union whose wage and other demands were excessive. Such a condition faced the Amalgamated, and Wolman used his influence to restrain labor’s demands. Even so, the industry moved from New York City to upstate New York, then down South, then to Chicago and on to California. It was the barrier to movement posed by small nation-states that made European unions stronger and more stable than America’s.

These subjects then were well taught at Columbia, and I felt I learned much from A.R. Burns and Leo Wolman. The basic academic tone of the faculty, however, stemmed from Wesley Mitchell. He had been the dominating influence on the faculty since he joined it just before the First World War. According to Mitchell’s own view of himself, his outlook stemmed in part from his early Midwestern origins. He was the son of a physician who was a small town practitioner in central Illinois. The down-to-earth pragmatism of the neighboring family farmers ran strongly in his personality. It was quite natural, therefore, that he should have been drawn to the philosophical schools of William James and John Dewey when these became prominent. Experience, not the logical implications of some generalized ideal, had to be our guide to life. He told about teasing his good Baptist grandmother and her conception of a God of Love who could yet condemn unbaptized infants to the torments of Hell.

[…]

Mitchell carried out his scheme and reported his findings, together with his evidence, in a large book with the simple title, Business Cycles. The book began with a summary of earlier work relevant to the subject together with the “speculations” (one of Mitchell’s favorite characterizations of largely theoretical but inadequately verified ideas). He used these as suggestions of subjects needing investigation. There followed Mitchell’s own quantitative studies of these and other subjects: production (agricultural and other), income, sales, retail, wholesale, manufacturing, etc., commodity prices, the prices of stocks and bonds, and the profits and interest rates they paid. Mitchell’s quantitative descriptions involved tracing the fluctuations of the behavior in these activities and of their long-term trend and seasonal fluctuations so that the fluctuations connected with business cycles could be seen free of the influence of trends and seasonal factors. The book ended with a statement of Mitchell’s views of how the concatenation of the behavior of the separate activities led to expansions of business activities in general followed by similarly general contractions, which in turn produced the conditions that generated another business expansion.

Mitchell’s book made a notable impression on economists. This was partly because now, for the first time, students of economics could base their attempts to explain business cycles and to develop a theoretical model based on definite quantitative information about the typical behavior of the major business activities. But it was partly, perhaps mainly, because it gave economists at large a new vision of how economic research could be carried on. It need not mainly consist of logical deductions from a set of preannounced assumptions. It could instead take the form of observed behavior, together with empirical tests of the hypotheses so formed based on fresh observations independent of those from which the hypotheses originally proposed had been drawn. It was this vision of an empirically based economics that was the spirit of the Columbia program, and it stood in sharp contrast to the program at Harvard, where I was introduced to the subject, and, indeed, with the economics then taught in the other leading universities.

I did not give up my allegiance to Harvard easily. Two episodes illustrate my resistance. Mitchell gave a course on business cycles. I chose to take it. It was a course that, in a sense, was a duplicate of his 1913 book, refreshed by data not available in 1913. But as I listened to Mitchell’s “analysis” of one time series after another—amplitude, lead or lag relative to the “reference” peak or trough (that is, relative to the peak or trough of the general business cycle), rates of expansion or contraction in successive thirds of the fluctuations, and more—I could make nothing of it. After some weeks I dropped the course. Mitchell signed the necessary form without demur and, apparently, never held it against me—a characteristic of his liberal and tolerant attitude.

In other respects, my year was pleasant and rewarding. I found Eli Ginzberg and began a lifelong friendship, the closest and most intimate in my life. Like other graduate students, I occupied a “cubicle” on the top floor of the new Butler Library—just enough space for a table, chair, and file cabinet. A friend said: “It’s all right if I am in there alone, but if I get an idea, I have to move into the corridor.” One day, there was a knock on my door, and in walked Eli. He had just returned from a scholarship, traveling the country and interviewing business executives, union bosses, politicians, etc. On his return, he asked Mrs. Stewart, the all-knowing department secretary, what new people were interesting. She mentioned me, and there he was. He sat down and began to tell me about his travels, the first of many sessions on the same subject.

One early reward of my new friendship was to come to know his parents. They occupied an eighth-floor apartment on 114th Street, directly behind the Butler Library. Eli’s father, Louis Ginzberg, was a professor in the Jewish Theological Seminary at 120th Street. He was perhaps the most notable Jewish scholar of his time, a specialist in Talmudic history and interpretation based on a wide knowledge of ancient Middle Eastern languages and in the history of its peoples. Eli began to bring me to their Friday evening suppers. I found old Louis to be a wise and humorous man, a fine companion and host for a pleasant evening.

On one of my first visits, Eli took me into Louis’s study to show me a lampshade that one of Louis’s students had made. The parchment shade was decorated. All around the shade were drawn the spines of books, and on each spine there appeared the title of one of Louis’s books, perhaps 14 or 15 in all. And then the student had an inspiration. He added one more spine and on it drew the title of Eli’s first book, his Ph.D. dissertation, The House of Adam Smith. At the time, we wondered whether Eli could duplicate his Father’s achievement. In fact, he did so many times over, in quantity at least, if not always in depth—something to which Eli did not aspire.

[…]

Now back to my struggle between Harvard and Columbia economics. In that second year at Columbia, the internal conflict found two new exponents. On the Columbia side was Eli. He was someone of great personal interest to me, but as an economist, he was an eccentric. He was a skeptic about anything theoretical and served mainly as an exemplar of Columbia’s tolerance for talent in whatever way it showed itself. On the Harvard side, there now appeared a powerful supporter. He was Milton Friedman, who had come to Columbia on a scholarship for a year of graduate work. We soon became good friends. It emerged that we two were the only Columbia students who had had a real training in neoclassical price theory, the very bedrock of the economics of the time. The faculty, moreover, refused to sanction a course in the subject, and the students realized what they were missing. Milton and I undertook to do something to fill the gap. We organized a student-run seminar, worked out a list of topics, assigned students to prepare papers, and guided the presentation and discussion. The other students benefitted and so did we. We were having our first teaching experience. For the moment, however, it helped keep my mind running in the grooves of my Harvard training

My friendship with Milton was solidified when a Columbia classmate invited us to join him in a long holiday in his family’s fishing camp on the French River in Northern Ontario, still a wild and unsettled area. It turned out, however, that our friend was ordered to work in his family’s business concern for the summer. We were invited to use the camp ourselves, and we did. So we spent a wonderful six weeks together. We drove north in my Model A Ford roadster until we reached a tiny settlement on the French River called Bon Air. There we parked the car at a general store where we hired some cots, some cooking utensils, a gasoline cookstove, and a canoe, and where we bought some canned and packaged foods as well as eggs and Canadian back bacon. The general store owner piled all these objects in his motorboat and, with the canoe in tow, took us out to our camp 3½ miles down the river on a tiny island in the stream. We were the only inhabitants. There he literally threw our stuff on the shore and took his leave. From now on, we had to depend on our canoe to get back and renew supplies at Bon Air.

Neither of us at first knew anything about canoeing, but we had good teachers by example in the Indians from a reservation across the river. Watching them, we soon learned the J stroke and became fairly competent. We canoed to Bon Air twice weekly and soon organized our camp. We had a privy some 50 yards away. We had the usual first experience trying to cook rice, but we learned to get along. We swam twice a day, and, as we gained confidence in the canoe, took overnight canoe trips down the river. These were fun, especially because of occasional rapids which we could run going down the river but had to portage around on the way back. The one thing we did not try was fishing. In fact, we became known along the river as those strange boys who did not fish, so many men returning in the late afternoon would throw us a fish or two. We had a valuable supplement to our diet of canned goods.

The thing we did do all day long, every day, was talk—about everything, but mostly economics. Milton was much less ideological then than he later became, so he was a very pleasant and agreeable companion; that was especially important in 1934, in the depths of the Depression when Roosevelt’s New Deal was just taking shape, when it included so much that was controversial, and when the menace of Hitler was becoming clearly visible.

As things turned out, however, the most important thing for me in that academic year of 1933-34 was the advent of Carrie [whom he would marry]. But that belongs in a chapter of its own.

…When I finished my graduate course work in 1935, I was given an instructorship at Harvard, I owed it to the sponsorship of Ed Mason, my old tutor. With all this arranged, we determined to get married. I was to have a first year to get started at Harvard, and Carrie was to have a year to complete her Columbia course. We would marry in June 1937. We told our parents and friends. Everyone was pleased.

…You will recall that on completing my graduate work at Columbia, I returned to Harvard as an instructor and tutor in 1936. I spent the first year on my own; then, following our marriage, Carrie joined me there. We lived in a comfortable little apartment at 31 Concord Avenue, near the RadcliffeYard.

It turned out to be an unsatisfactory time, which brought each of us into our only serious confrontations with discrimination. For Carrie it was a brush with what would now be called “sexism.” She heard that Wellesley was looking for a young instructor. She thought correctly that her graduate work and teaching experience qualified her. She appeared for an interview, which was conducted by John Dunlop, a Harvard professor. They reviewed her background, and, he conceded, she was qualified. And then he told her, with expressions of regret, that her application could go no further. Wellesley, a women’s college, wanted only a male.

My own problem was an example of that anti-Semitism that still infected Harvard and most other universities. During my time back at Harvard, I had taught Ec A and a course in Labor Market Economics, and I had tutored a full quota of economics majors in my tutorial rooms in Dunster House. I thought it had gone pretty well.

To this I should add the tale of an amusing development. When I returned to Cambridge in September 1937 together with Carrie, I was told by the department chairman that my salary, then $2,500 a year, would be raised by $200. And then he carefully explained that that was not because, as a married man, my expenses were higher. It was because I was married that he could add Radcliffe girls to my list of tutees. Needless to say, the relation of women to men has since changed radically. Harvard and Radcliffe are now fully merged. Women and men are now equally Harvard professors and Harvard students. The days when Radcliffe girls were thought to be at special and intolerable risk if they met an unmarried tutor have long gone.

In the spring of 1938, I received another summons from the chairman [Harold Burbank]. He received me cordially, and after the usual preliminary politenesses, he explained that it was time we discussed my future at Harvard. His opening was itself a warning about what was to come. “Now, Moe, we are both men of the world.” And then he went on to say that I had done well. I had a promising future. “But you must understand; we could not promote Jakey, so you must not expect to stay on here.” I had formed no such expectation, but I understood perfectly. “Jakey” was Jacob Viner, a truly notable economist. He had done brilliant theoretical work early. He was Taussig’s favorite student. Clearly, Harvard’s president at the time was a bar. He would not accept the appointment of Jews, something widely whispered. They might be scholars, but, by Lowell’s Boston Brahmin standards, they could not be gentlemen. So all this was hardly a complete surprise. But my chairman’s quiet but open expression of anti-Semitism was a shock.

I have often wondered whether it was not really a subtle way of ending my appointment without saying that I simply had not measured up. Perhaps, but that could hardly apply to Viner, who went on to do brilliant work, and who ended his career as a colleague of Einstein at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton. Had a Nobel Prize for Economics existed at the time, he would certainly have been a Nobel laureate.

So I left the interview knowing that I had to make plans to move. My opportunity was not long in coming. Later that same spring, I appeared again at Columbia for the defense of my dissertation, the last step on the way to the doctorate. The committee was chaired by Wesley Mitchell, the man whose course on business cycles I had dropped six year earlier. It made no difference to the examination. Apparently, I passed easily. Indeed my thesis won the Seligman Prize for the best of the year. When the committee adjourned, Mitchell asked me to stay behind. He wanted to ask me whether I would be willing to join the National Bureau to work with him on the Bureau’s business cycles project. My salary would be $3,500 year, a thousand dollars above my Harvard salary. In my circumstances it did not take me long to decide. In a couple of days he had my answer. I would be delighted. So now, after our first summer in Maine, Carrie and I moved to New York. I can guess now how the Bureau appointment had come about. My friend Milton Friedman (see Chapter Six), had just joined the Bureau with an appointment like my own, but to work on another subject. Milton was a friend and also the favorite student of Arthur F. Burns, at the time Mitchell’s chief assistant, who was already the really effective head of the business cycles work. My guess is that Milton became aware of Burns’s interest in finding an associate for business cycles to work especially on the cyclical role of inventories. My dissertation included a chapter on inventories. So he probably told Burns, and then events took their course.

 

Source:  Moses Abramovitz, Days Gone By: A Memoir for my Family (2001), pp. 32-34, 41-49, 77-79. (Link to download the memoir as .pdf)

_______________________

Stanford Faculty Memorial Resolution

MOSES ABRAMOVITZ
(1912-2000)

Moses Abramovitz, William Robertson Coe Professor of American Economic History Emeritus, died December 1, 2000, at Stanford University Hospital, just one month before reaching his eighty-ninth birthday.

Known by his family, friends, and colleagues as “Moe,” Abramovitz was one of the primary builders of Stanford’s Department of Economics. He taught at Stanford for almost thirty years, taking leave only during 1962-63 to work as economic advisor to the secretary general of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in Paris. He served as chair from 1963 to 1965, and from 1971 to 1974, both critical junctures in the department’s history. During his tenure at Stanford and after his retirement in 1976, Moe gained international renown and admiration for his pioneering contributions to the study of long-term economic growth.

Moe was born in Brooklyn, New York, to a Romanian Jewish immigrant family. After graduating from Erasmus Hall High School, he entered Harvard in 1928. Like many of his generation, Moe’s interest in economics was stimulated by the experience of the Great Depression. So, in 1932 he continued his undergraduate studies of the subject at Columbia University, where he received his Ph.D. in 1939. At Columbia, Moe began a lifelong friendship with Milton Friedman. In later years, Moe liked to joke that he had been debating with Friedman for more than fifty years, and consistently winning — except when Milton was present. Columbia connections also led Moe to join the National Bureau of Economic Research in 1937, where he helped to launch the business cycle studies for which the Bureau became famous, working with such figures as Wesley Mitchell, Simon Kuznets and Arthur Burns.

Also at Columbia, Moe became re-acquainted with his Erasmus classmate Carrie Glasser, who was also working for her doctoral degree in economics. Moe and Carrie were married in June of 1937, and were devoted to each other until Carrie’s death in October 1999. When Moe came to Stanford in 1948, Carrie began what became a highly satisfying and successful career as a painter, sculptress and collage artist. Their only son, Joel, born in 1946, is a practicing neurosurgeon in Connecticut.

During World War II, Moe served first at the War Production Board, working with Simon Kuznets to analyze the limits of feasible production during wartime. He then moved to the Office of Strategic Services as chief of the European industry and trade section. During 1945 and 1946, he was economic advisor to the United States representative on the Allied Reparations Commission. Moe’s modest but strong character was well displayed in an episode during the postwar reparations debate. Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau had proposed a plan to deindustrialize the German economy. An OSS research team headed by Moe wrote a memorandum arguing that this plan would destroy Germany’s capacity to export, leaving it unable to pay for food and other essential imports. At a meeting with Moe and two other OSS economists, Ed Mason and Emile Despres, Morgenthau angrily asked: “Who is responsible for this?” Moe recalled: “Mason looked at Despres, and Emile looked at me. I had no one else to look at. The buck stopped with me. So, rather meekly, I said I was responsible.”

This anecdote and many others may be found in a charming memoir that Moe completed shortly before his death, “Days Gone By,” accessible on the Stanford Economics Department website.

At Stanford Moe began the studies of long-term economic growth that established his reputation among professional economists. A 1956 paper provided the first systematic estimates showing that forces raising the productivity of labor and capital were responsible for approximately half of the historical growth rate of real U.S. GDP, and close to three quarters of the growth rate of real GDP per capita. Subsequently he made seminal contributions in identifying the factors promoting and obstructing convergence in levels of productivity among advanced and developing countries of the world. For these studies and others, Moe received many academic honors. He was elected to the presidency of the American Economic Association (1979-80), the Western Economic Association (1988-89), and the Economic History Association (1992-93). From abroad came honorary doctorates from the University of Uppsala in Sweden (1985), and the University of Ancona in Italy (1992); he took special enjoyment from an invitation to become a fellow of the prestigious Academia Nazionale de Lincei in 1991 — “following Galileo with a lag,” he said, with a characteristic self-deprecatory twinkle.

Committee:

Paul A. David
Ronald McKinnon
Gavin Wright

Source: Stanford Report, July 9, 2003.

Image Source: Harvard Class of 1932, Twenty-fifth Anniversary Report (1957).