Month: January 2024

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Economists Germany Public Finance Transcript

Germany. Wolfgang Stolper’s Seminarschein for a public finance seminar. Schumpeter, 1932

Back in the day before German universities began awarding Bachelor and Master degrees instead of their historical Diplom and Magister degrees (a process initiated in August 2002 and essentially completed by 2010), German students collected their certificates seminar-by-seminar, signed by their instructors, that together constituted their entry tickets required for degree examinations. I began teaching in a German university (Freie Universität Berlin) in 1994 and have signed such “Seminarscheine” for my students. The printed fonts had changed and typed insertions replaced hand-written ones, but the Scheine themselves were essentially identical to those used by earlier generations.

Below we have the image of the Seminarschein obtained by Wolfgang Stolper who attended Joseph Schumpeter’s advanced seminar in public finance in 1932. Official course transcripts are of considerable informational value but when it comes to antiquarian charm, I’ll take a stack of Seminarscheine any day over a registrar’s one page (stamped) transcript.

__________________________________

Stolper’s Seminarschein
for a Schumpeter seminar
in Bonn, 1932

Staatswissenschaftliches Seminar
der Universität Bonn

Bonn, den 26 Juli 1932
Herr Wolfgang Stolper hat im Sommer-Winterhalbjahr 1932 an meinem finanzwissenschaftlichen Vollseminar—Proseminar
Besprechungen zur _____________________________
mit gutem Fleiß und gutem Erfolg teilgenommen und folgende Arbeiten geliefert:

Hausarbeiten

Aufsichtsarbeiten
mit Auszeichnung:
gut:  ___1___
voll befriedigend:
genügend:
nicht genügend:

[signed] Schumpeter

Translation

Political Science Seminar
of the University of Bonn

Bonn, 26 July 1932
Mr. Wolfgang Stolper was enrolled in my public finance advanced/ introductory seminar during the summer/winter semester 1932.
Tutorial on  _______
His participation demonstrated good work and good performance, completing the following assignments:

Written home assignments

Proctored written examinations
with distinction: [blank]

[blank]
good:  ___1___

[blank]
satisfactory: [blank]

[blank]
sufficient: [blank]

[blank]
insufficient: [blank]

[blank]

[signed] Schumpeter

Source: Duke University. David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Economists’ Papers Archive. Wolfgang F. Stolper papers, 1892-2001. Add. 02/207: Box 23, Folder unlabeled (job search 1940-41 correspondence).

Image Source: Harvard University Archives, from Schumpeter’s 1932 German passport. J. Schumpeter Papers. Box 2 (Correspondence and Papers relating to death of JAS), Folder “Dept of Labor–citizenship”.

 

Categories
Economists Harvard War and Defense Economics

Harvard. Account of his government service during WWI. Gay, 1920

Edwin Francis Gay

Edwin F. Gay was an 1890 alumnus of the University of Michigan (A.B.) whom the Harvard Class of 1890 elected to honorary class membership its 25th anniversary. Five years later we find in the 30th anniversary report of the class a short note paying tribute to Gay’s war service. That note is posted below. Rather than overthink what might be new information worth putting into the digital record here, Economics in the Rear-view Mirror simply decided to transcribe the entire artifact. 

The previous post highlights the role Edwin F. Gay and Wesley Clair Mitchell played at the creation of the “Survey of Current Business” of the Department of Commerce, an important legacy of then Secretary of Commerce, Herbert Hoover.

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In-depth look at the life and career of Edwin Francis Gay

Herbert Heaton. A Scholar in Action, Edwin F. Gay. Harvard University Press, 1952.

Contents

Introduction—The man and his work

    1. A Scholar in the Making, 1867-1902
    2. Harvard, 1902-1917
    3. Wartime in Washington, 1917-1919
    4. The New York “Evening Post,” 1919-1923
    5. Harvard and the Squirrel Cage, 1924-1936
    6. In and Out of the Ivory Tower, 1936-1946

________________________

From the 1920 Report
of the Harvard Class of 1890

EDWIN FRANCIS GAY

DEGREES: (Harvard) LL.D. (Hon.); (Berlin) Ph.D.; (University of Michigan) A.B. 1890.

OCCUPATION: Publisher New York Evening Post.

Offices held in Harvard: instructor in Economics, 1902-03; assistant professor of Economics, 1903-1906; professor of Economics, 1906-1919; dean of Graduate School of Business Administration, 1908-1919. Graduated from the University of Michigan in the class of 1890 and came to Harvard as the dean of the School of Business Administration. He was elected an honorary member of our class at the time of our twenty-fifth anniversary. During the war he went to Washington where he was in charge of the allocation of shipping and at the close of the war he came to New York as the editor of the New York Evening Post where he now is.

Gay really did a wonderful work in Washington in bringing his statistical data to practical results. He started in on the Shipping Board and conceived the idea of restricting imports that were not particularly needed for war work and thus gaining space in ships for carrying munitions, food and men for our Army and those of our Allies from this country abroad. He established a splendid number of expert statisticians, each one of whom made a certain commodity a specialty. These were mostly college deans and professors who quickly acquired a book knowledge of needs and supplies of these various commodities.

For instance, a man would be devoted to the study of rubber. He would know the whole subject and have at his fingers’ ends the amount of rubber imported into this country during the last ten years; the growth of the use of rubber, and what percentage of this total could properly be called essential – to which amount importations might be safely limited without in any way injuring our war preparations. Another man would have similar knowledge of wool; another of minerals; fruits; peanuts; rabbit skins for hats; rattans and reeds for furniture; tobacco, etc., down the list of hundreds of raw materials. In this way over seven hundred and fifty thousand tons of shipping were found for the necessities of the war.

So successful was Gay in quickly starting this bureau that he was made a member of the War Trade Board, and afterwards the War Industries Board, and was the strongest man on both. He was a tremendous worker himself, and had the magnetism to inspire enthusiasm in others. It was generally conceded that he was one of the few strong men in Washington who made it possible for men and supplies to get across the water; a man of great knowledge, but no bigotry. His department was as full of Socialism as were all others in Washington. These college professors were so enthusiastic in keeping out unnecessary commodities that they laughed with glee when an unfortunate business man faced ruin as a result; but the main business was to win the war and it was confidently planned that if the armistice had not come on November 11th, on the following July the United States would have had four million men in Europe and the necessary munitions and supplies.

Source: Harvard College, Class of 1890.Thirtieth Anniversary, 1920, Secretary’s Report, No. 7, pp. 76-77.

Image Source: Portrait of professor Edwin Francis Gay (colorized by Economics in the Rear-view Mirror) from the Harvard Class Album 1914.

Categories
Federal Government Statistics Suggested Reading

Government Statistics. Centenary History of the U.S. Survey of Current Business. Reamer, 2020

While trawling the internet for a ca. 1920 photo of Edwin Francis Gay for another post (coming attraction), I found the following history of the Department of Commerce’s publication “Survey of Current Business” commissioned for the occasion of the centenary celebration of its founding. We encounter Herbert Hoover, Wesley Clair Mitchell, Edwin Francis Gay, and Simon Kuznets on page one of the history…

_______________________

The Origins of
the Survey of Current Business:
A Window on the Evolution of Economic Policy, Research, and Statistics

By Andrew D. Reamer

For decades, the Survey of Current Business, the flagship monthly publication of the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), has provided macro-, industry, international, and regional economists with data, analysis, and methodological research concerning the national economic accounts. This was not always so.

The Survey was founded in July 1921 as Department of Commerce (DOC) Secretary Herbert Hoover’s primary tool to promote macroeconomic stabilization. Specifically, the Survey published current, detailed industry-specific data from hundreds of public and private secondary sources so businesses might make better operational and investment decisions. One decade and a Great Depression later, the extensive statistical clearinghouse feeding the Survey became the foundation for Simon Kuznets’ famed study of national income and the subsequent development of national economic accounting.

The Survey’s creation and its later repurposing were the results of efforts by economists Edwin Gay and Wesley Mitchell, largely through a series of collaborations with Hoover between 1921 and 1933. As members of Hoover’s Joint Census Advisory Committee, Gay and Mitchell recommended the Survey’s development, modeled on the statistical clearinghouse they created to guide federal economic planning in the First World War. As founding leaders of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), they guided path-setting studies of national income and business cycles, several commissioned by Hoover; trained and hired Kuznets, who contributed to several NBER studies, including one for Hoover; and detailed Kuznets to the DOC to prepare the groundbreaking national income report.

This article begins by describing the Survey’s role in economic stabilization policy in the 1920s and the development of national economic accounting in the 1930s. The succeeding sections unpack this story by delving into how the Survey came to play these successive roles, particularly through Gay, Mitchell, and Hoover’s efforts. …

Source: From “Chronicling 100 Years of the U.S. Economy,” Survey of Current Business Vol. 100, No. 10 (October 2020)

Links to archived versions of the full article: htm; pdf.

Image Source: Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover, ca.1921. From the blog of the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum.