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Berkeley and Dartmouth. Frank Knight’s economist brothers Melvin M. Knight and Bruce Winton Knight

 

Pairs of siblings becoming professors of economics are infrequent but hardly rare. A trio of siblings becoming professors of economics becomes easier to imagine when one considers families with nine children as was the case for Frank H. Knight and his brothers Melvin Moses Knight and Bruce Winton Knight. This post provides images and official university obituaries  for Melvin and Bruce. 

Seeing “salty individualist” in the first line of an obituary tells us something about Melvin, perhaps that he was not an easy-going, cheery colleague?  

The previous post unearthed a ballad (The Ballad of Right Price) from the early 1920’s written by Bruce Knight who was a graduate-student quizmaster for University of Michigan professor Fred M. Taylor at the time.

The only photo I could find of the eldest of the three, Melvin, is cropped from the image of his passport application of June 1917. At the  online archive of the Dartmouth Alumni Magazine one can find a few different pictures of the youngest, Bruce.

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Melvin Moses Knight, Economics: Berkeley
1887-1981
Professor Emeritus

The University of California has numbered many salty individualists among its faculty. M.M. (Melvin Moses) Knight must figure high among them. Born April 29, 1887 on a farm near Bloomington, Illinois, he was one of nine children. Three were to be distinguished economists, M.M. at Berkeley, Frank at the University of Chicago, and Bruce at Dartmouth. Life on the farm was not always easy. At age 13, M.M. found himself responsible for running the farm. A self-taught man, he never attended high school. For a time he worked as a locksmith and bicycle mechanic. He later showed skills as plumber and musician. At age 23 he managed to qualify for entrance into Milligan College, Tennessee. After two years, he transferred to the University of Tennessee, where he studied physics and economics. He took an A.B. at Texas Christian University in English in 1913, followed the next year by an M.A. in history. He studied for a while at the University of Chicago and finally earned a Ph.D. in sociology at Clark University in sociology, with a thesis, Taboo and Genetics. His studies continued at other institutions, including the New School for Social Research and the University of Paris in such fields as geology, geography, genetics, mathematics, and theology. Later his wide interdisciplinary interests showed up in his teaching and writing.

He was no stranger to war. During World War I he served as a volunteer ambulance driver with the French army and later with the intelligence section of the Air Service of the American Expeditionary Force. In 1919 he served as a volunteer with the Romanian Field Hospital, Regina Maria, in Transylvania and Hungary. He was discharged as a captain and decorated with the Romanian Cross of Merit. During World War II, by then too old for active duty, he served as Assistant Chief, Division of Economic Studies, Department of State.

M.M.’s academic career began in 1920 at Hunter College, followed by brief periods at the Universities of Utah and California. From 1923 to 1926 he was in the Department of History at Columbia University. In 1926 an Amherst Memorial Fellowship took him to Europe and North Africa to examine the French colonial system. In 1928 he joined the Department of Economics of the University of California, Berkeley, where he remained until his retirement in 1954.

In teaching, writing, and dealings with colleagues, M.M. displayed the keenly interdisciplinary character of his studies and a probing curiosity. His first publication was a Dictionnaire Pratique d’Aeronautique, prepared for the U.S. Air Service in 1918. After that came a number of articles on the contemporary economy and the political problems of eastern Europe, economic history, and colonial questions. His “Water and the Course of Empire in French North Africa” (Quarterly Journal of Economics, 1925) is a masterly exposition of the millennial relation between physical changes in man’s environment and the structure of economic organization. By the mid-1920s he entered upon a spate of publication: Economic History of Europe to the End of the Middle Ages (1926), later translated into French; co-authorship of Economic History of Europe to Modern Times(1928); The Americans in Santo Domingo(1928), a condensation of a much larger manuscript, published as well in a number of Spanish editions; an English translation of Sée’s Economic Interpretation of History (1929); Introduction to Modern Economic History (1940); and numerous articles in the Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences.

M.M. Knight’s concerns in economics are best summarized in the tribute to him written by Giulio Pontecorvo and Charles F. Stewart in 1979 (Exploration in Economic History, 16:243-245):

The theoretical apparatus of contemporary economics is focused on general equilibrium analysis and the solution of welfare problems within that static framework. In the simplest sense, Knight departs from today’s emphasis and this line of inquiry by his deep fundamental concern with the problem of the nature of economic scarcity and society’s response to scarcity through time rather than with the determinants of real income and the social implications of alternative income distributions.

He transcends Veblen and especially Galbraith and Rostow by his concern with the evolution and the full extent of economic structures. While Veblen was concerned with the industrial economy and its linkages to other elements, e.g., finance, etc., Knight’s view is both more holistic and more focused on the evolutionary and disequilibrium properties of economic systems.

Unlike the American institutional position, as it is typically presented, Knight adds a strong sense of geography, of place, and the ecology of place. In this particular way, he reveals his links both with his rural origins and with the traditions of French economic history…

Each society is constrained by its own geographic and resource endowments. Each therefore responds to the problem of scarcity in its own way and creates its own institutions or transforms those it borrows. Regardless of the form of the response, the process of expansion works over time to use up the opportunity… Once an opportunity is used up, it requires both technological development and a reordering of social institutions to create a new set of human opportunities and this is a formidable social task of the true long run… unlike the essentially optimistic cast of Marxian inevitability, Knight has a strong sense that systems run down and because they are located in space as well as in time, systems that have exhausted themselves do not necessarily get transformed and revived but tend to be replaced, as were Egypt and Rome and North Africa.

While in Paris, Knight married Eleanor Gehmann in what proved to be a long, happy companionship in his years of active service and after his retirement in 1954. She died in February, he on June 12, 1981.

W.W. Borah M.M. Davisson C.A. Mosk

 

Source: Melvin Moses Knight, 1887-1981. Economics: Berkeley. University of California (System) Academic Senate. 1988, University of California: In Memoriam, pp. 76-78.

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Obituary, Bruce Winton Knight

Bruce Winton Knight, for 36 years a member of the Dartmouth economics faculty, died on May 28 at Mary Hitchcock Memorial Hospital in Hanover after a long illness. He would have been 88 on June 27.

Knight, who retired in 1960, was a vigorous opponent of what he called “pseudo-liberalism” and “state paternalism” in government. He was introduced to the conservative concepts he taught in courses on economic principles and the economics of international peace by his elder brother, the late Frank Knight, widely honored as the founder of the “Chicago school of economics.”

A native of Colfax County, Ill., Knight attended Texas Christian University and earned a B.A. from the University of Utah in 1920 and an M.A. from the University of Michigan in 1923.

He taught economics at the University of Michigan and the University of Wisconsin, where he met his wife, the former Myrtle Eickelberg. He joined the Dartmouth faculty as an instructor in economics in 1924 and became a professor in 1934. He was also a member of Sigma Chi fraternity and had served for a number of years on the Dartmouth College Athletic Council.

Knight wrote three books on economics and a book on peace, entitled How to Run a War, published by Alfred Knopf in 1936. Despite his authorship of these four books and a solid record of writing for scholarly journals, he opposed the academic doctrine of “publish or perish.” He felt that faculty members should only write when they wished, not simply to gain recognition and status. He was cited by the Freedom Foundation of Valley Forge, Pa., for an article he wrote in the Dartmouth Alumni Magazinein December 1949 entitled “Our Greatest Issue,” which he identified as “pseudo-liberalism.”

During World War I, he served with the U.S. Army infantry for two-and-a-half years, including more than a year in the Philippines.

Knight had also been an avid baseball fan ever since his days as a pitcher in college, and he rarely missed a Dartmouth varsity baseball game.

He is survived by his wife, a son, a daughter, three brothers,aand two sisters.

 

Source:  Dartmouth Alumni Magazine June 1980, p. 93.

Image Sources:

Die Drei von der Tankstelle, classic German film from 1930.

Melvin Moses Knight from National Archives and Records Administration (NARA); Washington D.C.; Roll #: 366; Volume #: Roll 0366 – Certificates: 54301-54700, 31 May 1917-06 Jun 1917.

Bruce Winton Knight from Dartmouth Alumni Magazine, February 1954, p. 18.

Categories
Chicago Columbia Sociology Teaching Undergraduate

Columbia. Encyclopedia article on teaching and university research in sociology. Tenney and Giddings, 1913

 

 

About a dozen posts ago I provided the text to a 1913 article on economics education written by E. R. A. Seligman and James Sullivan that was published in A Cyclopedia of Education, edited by Paul Monroe and published by Macmillan. Since the field of sociology was a fraternal twin of economics in many academic divisions at the time and not an uncommon field for graduate students of economics to choose as one of their fields of examination, this post provides now the text for the analogous article on sociology education published in the same 1913 “Cyclopedia”.

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SOCIOLOGY.

Alvan A. Tenney, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Sociology, Columbia University.

Franklin H. Giddings, Ph.D., LL.D.
Professor of Sociology and the History of Civilization, Columbia University.

Scope of the Subject. —

Sociology is the scientific study of society. Men, and many of the lower animals, live in groups. The scientific problem is to dis cover, by means of observation, induction, and verification, quantitative expressions for the regular ways in which group life operates, i.e. what, in quantitative terms, are the consequences of the fact that “man is a political animal.” Study of this problem necessitates inquiry into the origin, composition, interrelationships and activities of groups. It includes consideration of the environmental, biological, and psychological factors which, historically, have conditioned the character of such groups as the process of evolution has produced. It requires investigation also of such differences and resemblances among groups as are of significance in explaining the control which the group exercises over the individuals composing it. For quantitative expression the statistical method must be used. The ultimate aim of such study is to create a scientific basis for the conscious control of human society, to the end that evolution may be transformed into progress both for the race and for the individual. Unfortunately the scope of the subject has not been always thus conceived by teachers who label their courses Sociology. The latter half of the nineteenth century, the pioneer period in scientific sociology, witnessed a remarkable development of interest in the problems of philanthropy and penology. Inquiries into the causes of poverty and crime stimulated inquiry into the broader field of social causation in general, and the term sociology was used loosely to cover any portion of these fields. (See Social Sciences.) The term “applied sociology” for some time was equivalent to philanthropy and penology (q.v.). Recognition of the fact, however, that a theory of sociology can be “applied” in the guidance of public policy in every department of social life has initiated a movement, in America especially, to segregate the special problems of philanthropy and penology under the term social economy. This movement has not worked itself out fully, and there are still many courses given as sociology that should be called social economy. Sociology, in the scientific sense, of necessity uses the materials of history, and the demonstration or the concrete illustration of sociological principles has led naturally to systematic treatment of the historical evolution of society. It has been customary, therefore, to include, as a legitimate part of the scientific study of society, the history of social institutions. Beyond these limits there is a more or less indefinite zone of subjects such as social ethics, civics, social legislation, or even certain special questions in political economy and philosophy that have been included under the term sociology. The popular tendency, however, to make the term cover discussion of any social question whatsoever is gradually disappearing.

The present status of sociology as a science has been a direct result of the history of the subject itself. No one has yet done for sociology what Marshall did for economics. None of the textbooks is entirely satisfactory nor has entire agreement yet been reached as to the subjects which should receive most attention in a fundamental course. Nearly all the pioneers in sociology, with the exception of the very earliest, still retain leadership both in the science itself and in university chairs. Though all such leaders agree on fundamental points, each has naturally emphasized in his teaching that phase of the subject to which he has contributed most. At the present time, however, both the leaders and the large body of younger teachers who have been trained by them are beginning to place somewhat the same relative emphasis on the various factors that have been found useful in explaining the problems of the science. Nevertheless, even now the teacher is compelled to organize his own courses to a considerable extent on the basis of his own reading and such special training as he may be fortunate enough to have had. The particular form which that organization takes in any given instance is usually dependent to a considerable degree upon the university at which the teacher has studied and upon the sources with which he has become familiar. The conditions which have made this situation inevitable can be appreciated only by understanding the history of the subject itself and thus realizing both the richness of the field and the freedom in choice of material which is open to the teacher.

History of the Subject. —

The beginning of sociology, in the study of society itself, must have commenced far earlier than historical records permit proof of the fact; for the propensity of individuals to take thought as to how a group of men may be controlled can hardly be considered a recently acquired trait. Primitive man early developed systematic methods for teaching youth the means whereby both nature and man could apparently be controlled, and the teaching of that part of primitive magic which pertained to social control must have constituted one of the first courses in sociology. Problems of warfare, leadership, and group dominion must have also led both to practical knowledge of the nature of group activity and to the transmission of that knowledge from generation to generation.

Of necessity the statesman has ever been a sociologist. Likewise the philosopher has always busied himself with the relation of man to his fellow man. When Plato wrote the Republic and Aristotle the Politics the philosophical study of the subject was well advanced. A considerable part of the education of a Grecian youth was thus definitely in the field now called sociology. Later, when the evolution of world-empires led to the study of how great bodies of heterogeneous groups might be maintained in a single organized and harmoniously working system, men began to construct theories of group action, e.g. those of sovereignty and of the contractual nature of the state. Machiavelli, Bodin, Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau each added elements to the growing body of social theory and helped to render the theory of group action more precise. Finally, in the nineteenth century, when the bounds of knowledge had become world-wide, when the development of the natural sciences had demonstrated the utility of exact scientific method and when the rise of modern nations, the growth of the industrial system, the ideals of democratic government, and the theory of evolution had begun to influence men, Comte and Spencer led the way in the construction of a comprehensive theory of society, utilizing scientific method to elucidate modern problems of social evolution and of social progress. August Comte (q.v.) first used the word sociology in the Cours de Philosophie positive, and it was he who first insisted upon the use of the positive method in the development of the subject. It was Herbert Spencer, however, who in Social Statics, in the various volumes of the Synthetic Philosophy, and in The Study of Sociology attempted by wide observation to demonstrate that universal laws operate in human society. The work of many other men ought, however, to be included in a fuller statement of the important contributors to the development of scientific sociology in the latter half of the nineteenth century. To the influence of Charles Darwin and his kinsman Francis Galton, for example, must chiefly be credited that intensification of interest in the part which biological influences play in society which has resulted in the so-called eugenic school. (See Eugenics.) In the comparative study of institutions the pioneer work of Sir H. S. Maine cannot be forgotten, nor in the philological method of tracing social relationships, that of the Grimm brothers. In anthropo-geography and ethnology, moreover, there were such men as Ratzel, Robertson-Smith, McLennan, Morgan, and many others. Without the work of these men and their followers sociology must have rested upon a far more speculative foundation than is now the case.

Concerning the chief writers who have followed these leaders and who have contributed more particularly to sociological theory in the narrower sense of the term, it must suffice merely to mention names and to indicate the portion of the field in which each has done his chief work. Of such writers Durkheim has particularly emphasized division of labor as the essential factor in the explanation of society; Tarde, imitation; Le Bon, the impression of the mass on the individual; Gumplowicz, the struggle of races; Ratzenhofer, the motivating power of interests; De Greef, social contact and social contract ; Simmel, the forms of society and the process of socialization; Ward, the importance of human intelligence and inventiveness ; Sumner, the unconscious processes in the evolution of institutions; Giddings, sympathy and likemindedness as subjective causes of the origin and maintenance of groups, the tendency to type formation, and the identification of type form with that of the group; Small, the interests to which men react and the methods of the subject; Ross, social control; and Cooley, social organization.

The competent teacher of sociology to-day utilizes the work of all of these men and that of many others who have elucidated less striking phases of the subject. If, perchance, he be capable of contributing to the science, he may be aiding in the recently inaugurated effort to place the entire subject on a quantitative basis.

The Teaching of Sociology.—

The organized teaching of sociology as a university subject began long after the questions with which it deals had gained a firm hold upon the public mind. Little by little teachers of other political or social sciences which had already attained a recognized place in the educational system began to introduce sociological material into their courses and sometimes without sufficient justification to call the result sociology. Popular courses of lectures under the authority of recognized institutions of learning and dealing with almost every conceivable social question sprang up in nearly every civilized land and were called sociology. It was on this inclusive basis that in 1886 a report was made to the American Social Science Association that practically all of some hundred or more universities and colleges in the United States gave instruction in some branch of social science. A similar report could doubt less have been made for every country in Europe.

The first teaching of scientific sociology as a regular part of a college curriculum appears to have been in the United States when Professor Sumner in 1873 introduced Spencer’s Study of Sociology as a textbook at Yale. In 1880 the Trustees of Columbia College established the School of Political Science in that institution, and in it Professor Mayo-Smith received the chair of adjunct professor of political economy and social science. The first department of social science was created at Chicago University in 1894. In the same year the first chair of sociology definitely so called was created in Columbia, and was held then, as now, by Professor Giddings.

The entire decade in which these last mentioned events occurred, however, showed a marked increase of interest, by educators, in sociology. By 1895 the University of Chicago announced numerous courses in the subject and at least twenty-five other colleges and universities in the United States were teaching sociology proper. As many more had made provision for instruction in charities and correction. In Belgium the Université Nouvelle de Bruxelles, established in 1894, with the eminent sociologist Guillaume de Greef as its first Rector, was itself launched largely because of a revolt against the conservatism of other universities with respect to the social sciences. De Greef’s work is now largely supplemented by that of Professor Waxweiler and his staff of the Institut Solvay in the same city. Instruction is both in scientific sociology and social economy. In Switzerland as late as 1900 the only instruction in the subject consisted of a course by Professor Wuarin, the economist, given at Geneva, and one by Dr. Ludwig Stein, Professor of Philosophy at Bern. Italy has produced a number of sociologists of eminence, e.g.Lombroso, Ferri, Sighele, Ferrero, and Sergi, but even in 1900 not one of them was teaching in a university. In that year also there did not exist a single chair of sociology, so called, in Germany. Throughout the preceding six academic years, however, or during one or more of them, courses in sociology were given by Simmel (Berlin), Sombart (Breslau), Bernheim (Greifswald), Sherrer (Heidelberg), Tönnies (Kiel), and Barth (Leipzig). Schäffle of Stuttgart had also become known as the chief representative of the “organic” school. France, the land of the early physiocrats in economics and the home of Comte, was almost the last to organize instruction in the social sciences. During the first three quarters of the nineteenth century no other social sciences were taught in France than the strictly juridical and moral. At the beginning of the last quarter, however, a place for political economy was made in the examination for the bachelor’s degree in law. Even in 1900, according to Professor Gide, sociology was not taught anywhere in France in the form of a regular course, but three professors of philosophy and one of law were delivering free lectures on the subject, Durkheim at Bordeaux, Bouglé at Montpellier, Bertrand at Lyon, and Haurion at Toulouse. Letourneau, however, had by this time achieved a reputation in Paris. The privately supported Collège Libre des Sciences Sociales, had been found in 1892, but the courses included in its somewhat glittering program consisted of but ten lectures each, and were not well attended. Nevertheless, the most celebrated of French sociologists, Gabriel Tarde, first delivered at that institution in 1897 the lectures that subsequently appeared as his Lois Sociales. The school was later organized as the École des Hautes Études Sociales. At the Collège de France, also, certain courses in sociology were given after 1895, honoris causa.

In Austria Gumplowicz and Ratzenhofer have been the most noted names. The former taught at Graz. Russia contributed Lilienfeld and Novicow, but did not establish chairs for them. In Great Britain there was no chair or lectureship in the subject in any university prior to 1904 in spite of the fact that the Sociological Society was already in existence. The first important systematic series of lectures on sociology in the University of London was given in that year. Prior to that, however, Professor Geddes had been lecturing in Glasgow, and at the London School of Economics the sociological movement had received encouragement.

Such were the beginnings of systematic instruction in sociology. It is not practicable here to follow in detail the later development of the movement in all countries. The United States has introduced the subject in institutions of learning more rapidly than has been the case elsewhere. Nevertheless there has been advance in all countries. The present status of the subject in educational institutions in the United States is well reflected by the report of December, 1910, upon the questionnaire issued by the committee on the teaching of sociology of the American Sociological Society. The questionnaire was sent to 396 institutions, of which over 366 were known to give courses in sociology. One hundred and forty-five replies were received. One hundred and twenty-eight institutions reported one or more courses in sociology. In addition to universities and colleges, five theological and twelve normal schools answered the questionnaire. In an effort to gauge the character of subject matter chiefly emphasized in the 128 institutions the number of times various types of subject matter were specifically mentioned in the replies was tabulated and resulted in the following classification and marks: historical subject matter, 84 ; psychological, 80; practical, 56; economic, 22; descriptive and analytic, 21; biological, 16; In addition, definite reference to “sociological theory” occurred 40 times and to “social pathology” 13 times. Under the first subject was included specific mention of anthropology, ethnology, institutions, and social evolution; under the second, social psychology, association, and imitation; under the third, congestion, housing, philanthropy, criminology, and “social problems”; under the fourth, industrial and labor conditions and socialism; under the fifth, physical influences and the study of a specific social group; under the sixth, eugenics and statistical treatment of population. These figures and classes do not imply exclusive or preponderating attention to any one of the classes of subjects mentioned, but merely indicate roughly the type of sociological subject matter which is primarily emphasized in the educational institutions of the country at large. Eighty-six specific suggestions for subject matter to form a fundamental course distributed emphasis as follows historical, 28; psychological, 25; practical, 16; biological, 7; descriptive and analytic, 7; economic, 3. The same report includes a statement of texts and authorities cited in five or more replies to the questionnaire.

From the foregoing it is possible to understand clearly why sociology has not as yet made its way into the high school. The subject is already beginning to find a place in the curricula of normal schools, however, and sooner or later it will make its way in a simple form either to supplement or eventually to precede elementary courses in economics, civics, and history. Logically, a discussion of the fundamental bases of social organization should precede any of the questions that assume the existence of a particular sort of social organization, and there is, in reality, no reason at all why the essential factors that cooperate to produce the activities of social groups cannot be explained in such a way that a child may appreciate the simpler modes of their operation and thus be helped to understand later the complex relations of the social life of modern civilization.

Methods of Teaching Sociology. —

The subject matter of sociology, as is evident from the preceding review, lends itself most conveniently to the lecture method of presentation — at least when it is taught as a university subject. This is preeminently true if the historical evolution of society is to be treated in an adequate fashion. No student can be required to do the reading necessary for independent judgment upon the disputed points which often baffle the expert, nor would it be possible to discuss all phases of the subject in the brief time which the ordinary student can devote to sociology. The teacher may usually consider his work in this field fairly satisfactory if he succeeds in making clear the fact that the causes of social evolution can be subjected to scientific analysis as truly, if not as exactly, as any other phenomena whatsoever, if he is able to explain how the combination of various factors — physical environment, race, dynamic personality, economic, religious, and other cultural institutions — created the various types of society that have existed from the earliest forms of tribal organization to the modern world society, if he indicates the sources of information and their trustworthiness, and if in the presentation of these subjects he develops in the student a realization of the historical perspective from which it is necessary to view mankind’s development whenever rational criticism of public policy is required.

In the more closely analytical study of sociological theory more use can be made of existing texts. Even with these, however, the teacher must be ready to illustrate, explain, supplement, and criticize on the basis of reading inaccessible to the student or too extensive for him to master. Discussion of special problems in theory that arise from assigned readings in original sources is indispensable, however, if independent thinking is to be gained. For this purpose source books are a valuable aid. Many teachers have found it possible to stimulate intense interest and thought by setting each student the task of independently observing and interpreting for himself by the Le Play monographic method the phenomena of sociological significance in a concrete social group or community with which he himself is or may become familiar (e.g. his home town, college, or club). By collecting, through observation of such a group, data concerning situation, healthfulness, resources, economic opportunities, racial types, religious, educational, political, and other cultural traits, sex and age classes, nationality, ambitions and desire for wealth, justice and liberty, degree of self-reliance or dependence, amount of cooperation, constraint, discipline, tolerance, emotional and rational reactions, relations with other groups and other such matters, the student gains a lively appreciation of the factors which make or mar the efficiency of the group of which he is himself a member. By comparison of the results of such study in the seminar, characteristic and important differences may be made vivid and vitality given to discussion of the regular antecedents of social activities.

More general studies in demography, based on the census or other official records, and pursued in such a way as to throw light on current problems such as immigration, race questions, growth of cities, significant movements of population, mortality, birth, marriage and divorce rates, or sanitary conditions, often serve to give a concreteness to theory that could not otherwise be gained. Such work, moreover, often forms an excellent preparation for the more difficult task of analyzing the mental phases of collective activity, such as mob action and the formation of rational public opinion, or of determining the conditions under which social choice is free or controlled, conservative or radical, impulsive or deliberate, governed by tradition or based on scrutiny of evidence.

In addition to methods of this sort some teachers have even inspired their students with enthusiasm for making sociology a quantitative science by first grounding them well in statistical methods and then setting them simple though definite and concrete sociological problems that involve the use of that method. For example, it is quite within the power of any college class acquainted with such a simple text as Elderton’s Primer of Statistics to count the number of hours per week spent by each person in a group upon such recreational activities as are carried on, plot out the result, find the prevailing tendency, apply the usual statistical measures, median, mode, quartiles, etc., and gradually acquire facility in attacking more extensive data. (See Graphic Curve.) For instruction of this character the regular meeting of seminars or practicums for report by students upon their particular tasks becomes the most convenient pedagogical device to promote independent criticism and discussion. The seminar method is also useful for the discussion of special reports upon readings in the works of the more prominent sociological writers. In order that the observational method may be successfully applied it is evident that the canons of inductive method must be thoroughly understood by the student. It is also apparent that in the review of extant theory there must be appreciation of the criteria for judging the value of evidence. Above all, encouragement must be given to every inclination on the part of the student to investigate particular problems for himself. He must be made to realize, moreover, that sociologists must be as willing to undertake protracted and laborious tasks in the assembling of data as are the biologists, the psychologists, or the chemists.

The foregoing methods are applicable chiefly to the university student. In college or in high school the methods employed are naturally more useful if they arouse the student’s interest in problems that pertain to civic welfare, and if they aid him in understanding the forces that make or mar the efficiency of the particular social groups in which he is himself to play a part. For such purposes the method of studying current social problems becomes extremely useful, provided the teacher is skillful in the selection of the topics for discussion and can utilize sociological principles of interpretation. By using the ordinary facts present in every town or village, it is possible much earlier than is usually supposed to have the pupil observe significant sociological facts and become familiar with the scientific mode of interpreting them.

In addition to these simple statements of method it is, perhaps, unnecessary to remark that in the teaching of the science itself the most inspiring instructor is he who is himself able to employ successfully the usual deductive, inductive, comparative, historical, and statistical methods in the discovery of new truth.

References: —

Bagehot, W. Physics and Politics. (New York, 1887.)

Bernard, L. L. The Teaching of Sociology in the United States. Amer. Jour. of Sociology, Vol. XV, p. 164. (1909-1910.)

Carver, T. N. Sociology and Social Progress. (Boston, 1905.)

Chapin, F. S. Report of the Questionnaire of the Committee on Teaching of the American Sociological Society. Publications of the Amer. Sociological Society, Vol. V. (1900.)

Clow, F. R. Sociology in Normal Schools. Amer. Jour. of Sociology, Vol. XVI, p. 253. (1910- 1911.)

Cooley, C. H. Social Organization. (New York, 1909.)

Dealey, J. Q. The Teaching of Sociology. Publications of the Amer. Sociological Society, Vol. IV, p. 177. (1909.)

Ellwood, C. A. How Should Sociology be Taught as a College or University Subject? Amer. Jour. of Sociology, Vol. XII. p. 588. (1906-1907.)

Giddings, F. H. Modern Sociology. The International Monthly, Vol. II, No. 5. (Nov., 1900.)

___________. Democracy and Empire. (New York, 1901.)

___________. Principles of Sociology. (New York, 1896.)

___________. Sociology. Columbia Univ. Series on Science, Philosophy, and Art. (New York, 1908.)

___________. Sociology as a University Subject. Political Science Quarterly, Vol. VI, p. 635. (1891.)

___________. The Province of Sociology. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. I, p. 76. (1890.)

Hobhouse, L. T. Social Evolution and Political Theory. (New York, 1911.)

Howerth, I. W. The Present Condition of Sociology in the United States. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. V, Pt. I, p. 260. (1894.)

Ross, E. A. Foundations of Sociology. (New York, 1905.)

___________. Social Control. (New York, 1908.)

Semple, E. C. Influences of Geographic Environment. (New York, 1911.)

Small, A. W. General Sociology. (Chicago, 1905.)

Spencer, H. First Principles, Pt. II. (London, 1887.)

___________. Principles of Sociology. (London, 1885.)

___________. The Study of Sociology. (New York, 1884.)

Sumner, W. G. Folkways. (Boston, 1907.)

Tarde, G. Laws of Imitation. (New York, 1903.)

Tenney, A. A. Some Recent Advances in Sociology. Political Science Quarterly, Vol. XXV, No. 3. (Sept., 1910.)

Thomas, W. I. Source Book for Social Origins. (Chicago, 1909.)

Ward L. F. Contemporary Sociology. Amer. Jour. of Sociology, Vol. VII, p. 476. (1900-1901.)

___________. Pure Sociology. (New York, 1907.)

___________. Applied Sociology. (Boston, 1906.)

___________. Sociology at the Paris Exposition of 1900. Rep. U. S. Com. Ed., 1899-1900, Vol. II, pp. 1451-1593.

For a list of textbooks, together with statistics of their use in institutions of learning, see Reportof the Committee on Teaching of the American Sociological Society in Publications of the American Sociological Society, Vol. V., p. 123. (1910.)

 

Source: A Cyclopedia of Education, Paul Monroe (ed.), Vol. 5. (New York: Macmillan, 1913), pp. 356-361.

Image Source: Franklin H. Giddings in University and their Sons. History, Influence and Characteristics of American Universities with Biographical Sketches and Portraits of Alumni and Recipients of Honorary Degrees. Editor-in-chief, General Joshua L. Chamberlain, LL.D. Vol. II, pp. 453-5.

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Chicago Economists Kansas Minnesota

Chicago. Economics PhD alumnus. Jens Peter Jensen, 1926

 

Born in Denmark and educated at Dakota Wesleyan University, University of Minnesota, and the University of Chicago, Jens Peter Jensen is now officially added to our Meet-an-Economics-Ph.D. series with the profile below written for the 1937 yearbook at the University of Kansas.

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From the List of Economics Ph.D. dissertations of the University of Chicago
(1894-1926)

1926. Jensen, Jens Peter.

Thesis Title: The general property tax.

A.B. Dakota Wesleyan University, 1913; A.M. University of Minnesota, 1917.

1883, April 8. Born in Trustrup, Denmark.
1900. Emigrated to U.S.
1917-18. Fellow in Political Economy, University of Chicago.
1918-19. Taught at Beloit College.
1919. Instructor, University of Chicago.
1919-21. Assistant Professor of Economics and Commerce. University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kan.
1921-. Associate Professor of Economics and Commerce. University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kan.
1924. Problems of Public Finance. New York, Thomas Y. Crowell Company.
1930-31 (Visiting) Associate professor of economics, University of Chicago.
1931. Professor of Economics, University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kan.
1937. Government Finance. New York, Thomas Y. Crowell Company.
1938. Professor of Economics, University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kan.
1942, August 26. Died in Brush, Colorado.

Obituary:  In Memoriam: Jens P. Jensen, 1883-1942 by John Ise in The American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Vol. 2, No. 3 (Apr., 1943), pp. 391-392.

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Profile of Kansas Economics Professor Jens Peter Jensen (1937)

… Jens Peter Jensen, native of Denmark, gives advice to the state of Kansas on problems of taxation, public revenues, and text collections. In February, 1935, he was a member of the commission which surveyed the state government of Oklahoma and its system of public finance. Frank Marland, then Sooner governor-elect, proposed the plan that caused this commission to be organized.

Since 1925, Mr. Jensen has written the annual report of progress in the field of land and public taxation and corporation and bank taxation for the American Yearbook.

For the Tax Research Foundation (under the New York Tax Commission), he prepares the Kansas charts to indicate the status of tax law and legislation in this state.

Since 1920, Mr. Jensen has been a member of the National Tax Association, has been Kansas’ delegate to its annual conventions, and has served three years on the association’s executive committee. Too, he was for a time an associate editor of the association’s official Bulletin.

Under the auspices of the Kansas State Chamber of Commerce. Mr. Jensen, with Harold Howe, professor of agricultural economics at Kansas State College, Manhattan, prepared “Tax Studies in 13 Lessons.” Distributed by the sponsors, these lessons were used in study clubs and civic organizations of the state for adult education in public finance.

Among the books which Mr. Jensen has written are A Text in Public Finance, Property Taxation in the United States, The Tax System in Colorado, and Government Finance. He has contributed articles to the Annals of the American Association of Social and Political Economy, Law and Contemporary Events (published by Duke University), American Economic Review and Journal of Political Economy.

Especially noteworthy is the fact that Mr. Jensen has done all of this work in 31 years. Born of a Swedish father and a Danish mother on April 8, 1883, twenty-one-year-old Jens Jensen left Denmark in 1905. Son of a poor family, he had to terminate his common school education in the eighth grade to work on the farm and then to learn to creamery trade.

Landing in the United States with only his tradesmen’s knowledge, he journeyed to Minnesota, got a job. But by 1907 he left his job, went to Mitchell, South Dakota, where he enrolled in the Academy and College of Dakota Wesleyan University, graduated with an A. B. degree in 1913. His alma mater honored him within honorary doctor of laws degree only last spring. In 1917, he received his A. M. degree from the University of Minnesota; his Ph.D. degree from the University of Chicago in 1926.

Since 1919, Mr. Jensen has been associated with the University of Kansas. He has taught in two summer sessions at the University of West Virginia. In 1930-31, he was given leave of absence to do a year’s work on research and government finance of counties. He did this work at the University of Chicago.

Married, Mr. Jensen has one daughter. His hobby is traveling, and he has been in three-fourths of the states of the United States and in all but two of the Canadian provinces. He returned for his first visit to Denmark in 1926, visiting also Scotland, England, Norway and Sweden.

Here is a member of the Trinity Lutheran Church, the Lawrence Chamber of Commerce, and the University club. The most tedious three months in his life, he says, were spent in the Student Army Training Corps at the University of Minnesota in 1918. Previous to his enlistment he was statistician and economist for the food administration under the then Secretary of Commerce, Hoover.

 

Source of text and image: University of Kansas, Jayhawker (yearbook). Christmas number, 1937, p. 100.

 

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Chicago Fields Suggested Reading Undergraduate

Chicago. Recommended public finance textbooks. Viner’s list, 1924

 

The original memo sent to Jacob Viner asking for the names of a few textbooks suitable for college class in the field of public finance is a carbon copy of a common memo, except for the name “Mr. Jacob Viner” and field “Public Finance” that are both clearly typed onto the carbon copy. It appears that the chairman L. C. Marshall might have been surveying his Chicago colleagues to assemble a list of college textbooks by field. There might be other such inquiries with responses, but judging from where I found this memo to Viner, one would have to plow through the Chicago economic department records where the memos are filed by recipients. I’ll keep my eyes open.

The first textbook listed by Viner was written by the 1926 Chicago Ph.D., Jens Peter Jensen, whose dissertation was on the general property tax.

Obituary:  In Memoriam: Jens P. Jensen, 1883-1942 by John Ise in The American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Vol. 2, No. 3 (Apr., 1943), pp. 391-392.

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From the Preface of Jens P. Jensen’s (Department of Economics, University of Kansas) Problems of Public Finance, p. ix.

“Professors Roy G. Blakey of the University of Minnesota and H. A. Millis of the University of Chicago were my teachers in public finance, and through them my interest in the field was aroused and quickened. Dr. J. Viner of the University of Chicago has carefully read the manuscript and suggested many redeeming changes.”

____________________

The University of Chicago
The School of Commerce and Administration

Memorandum to Mr. Jacob Viner from L.C. Marshall
October 2, 1924

Will you please jot down on this sheet the names of two or three texts suitable for college class use in the field of Public Finance?

LCM:OU

*  *  *  *  *  *

Viner’s reply

Jens [Peter] Jensen. Problems of Public Finance.  Crowell [1924]

C. J. Bullock. Selected Readings in P. F. Ginn & Co. [2nded., 1920]

W. M. Daniels, Elements of Public Finance [including the Monetary System of the United States]. Holt & Co. [1899]

H. L. Lutz has a good text in press [D. Appleton and Company, 1924;  fourth edition, 1947]

J.V.

Source: University of Chicago Archives. Department of Economics. Records. Box 35, Folder 14.

Image Source: Jacob Viner (facing camera) playing bridge with Mr. Grabo, Mr. Prescott, and Ralph Sanger, instructor of Mathematics. University of Chicago Photographic Archive, apf1-08487, Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library.

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Cambridge Chicago Columbia Economists Germany Harvard History of Economics Johns Hopkins LSE Oxford Teaching Undergraduate Wisconsin Yale

Survey of Economics Education. Colleges and Universities (Seligman), Schools (Sullivan), 1911

 

In V. Orval Watt’s papers at the Hoover Institution archives (Box 8) one finds notes from his Harvard graduate economics courses (early 1920s). There I found the bibliographic reference to the article transcribed below. The first two parts of this encyclopedia entry were written by Columbia’s E.R.A. Seligman who briefly sketched the history of economics and then presented a survey of the development of economics education at  colleges and universities in Europe and the United States. Appended to Seligman’s contribution was a much shorter discussion of economics education in the high schools of the United States by the high-school principal,  James Sullivan, Ph.D.

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ECONOMICS
— History —

Edwin R. A. Seligman, Ph.D., LL.D.
Professor of Political Economy, Columbia University

The science now known as Economics was for a long time called Political Economy. This term is due to a Frenchman — Montchrétien, Sieur de Watteville — who wrote in 1615 a book with that title, employing a term which had been used in a slightly different sense by Aristotle. During the Middle Ages economic questions were regarded very largely from the moral and theological point of view, so that the discussions of the day were directed rather to a consideration of what ought to be, than of what is.

The revolution of prices in the sixteenth century and the growth of capital led to great economic changes, which brought into the foreground, as of fundamental importance, questions of commerce and industry. Above all, the breakdown of the feudal system and the formation of national states emphasized the considerations of national wealth and laid stress on the possibility of governmental action in furthering national interests. This led to a discussion of economic problems on a somewhat broader scale, — a discussion now carried on, not by theologians and canonists, but by practical business men and by philosophers interested in the newer political and social questions. The emphasis laid upon the action of the State also explains the name Political Economy. Most of the discussions, however, turned on the analysis of particular problems, and what was slowly built up was a body of practical precepts rather than of theoretic principles, although, of course, both the rules of action and the legislation which embodied them rested at bottom on theories which were not yet adequately formulated.

The origin of the modern science of economics, which may be traced back to the third quarter of the eighteenth century, is due to three fundamental causes. In the first place, the development of capitalistic enterprise and the differentiation between the laborer and the capitalist brought into prominence the various shares in distribution, notably the wages of the laborer, the profits of the capitalist, and the rent of the landowner. The attempt to analyze the meaning of these different shares and their relation to national wealth was the chief concern of the body of thinkers in France known as Physiocrats, who also called themselves Philosophes-Économistes, or simply Économistes, of whom the court physician of Louis XVI, Quesnay, was the head, and who published their books in 1757-1780.

The second step in the evolution of economic science was taken by Adam Smith (q.v.). In the chair of philosophy at the University of Glasgow, to which Adam Smith was appointed in 1754, and in which he succeeded Hutcheson, it was customary to lecture on natural law in some of its applications to politics. Gradually, with the emergence of the more important economic problems, the same attempt to find an underlying natural explanation for existing phenomena was extended to the sphere of industry and trade; and during the early sixties Adam Smith discussed these problems before his classes under the head of “police.” Finally, after a sojourn in France and an acquaintance with the French ideas, Adam Smith developed his general doctrines in his immortal work. The Wealth of Nations, published in 1776. When the industrial revolution, which was just beginning as Adam Smith wrote, had made its influence felt in the early decades of the nineteenth century, Ricardo attempted to give the first thorough analysis of our modern factory system of industrial life, and this completed the framework of the structure of economic science which is now being gradually filled out.

The third element in the formation of modern economics was the need of elaborating an administrative system in managing the government property of the smaller German and Italian rulers, toward the end of the eighteenth century. This was the period of the so-called police state when the government conducted many enterprises which are now left in private hands. In some of the German principalities, for instance, the management of the government lands, mines, industries, etc., was assigned to groups of officials known as chambers. In their endeavor to elaborate proper methods of administration these chamber officials and their advisors gradually worked out a system of principles to explain the administrative rules. The books written, as well as the teaching chairs founded, to expound these principles came under the designation of the Chamber sciences (Camiralia or Cameral-Wissenschaften) — a term still employed to-day at the University of Heidelberg. As Adam Smith’s work became known in Germany and Italy by translations, the chamber sciences gradually merged into the science of political economy.

Finally, with the development of the last few decades, which has relegated to the background the administrative and political side of the discipline, and has brought forward the purely scientific character of the subject, the term Political Economy has gradually given way to Economics.

Development of Economic Teaching

Edwin R. A. Seligman, Ph.D., LL.D.
Professor of Political Economy, Columbia University

— Europe —

As has been intimated in the preceding section, the first attempts to teach what we to-day would call economics were found in the European universities which taught natural law, and in some of the Continental countries where the chamber sciences were pursued. The first independent chairs of political economy were those of Naples in 1753, of which the first incumbent was (Genovesi, and the professorship of cameral science at Vienna in 1763, of which the first incumbent was Sonnenfels. It was not, however, until the nineteenth century that political economy was generally introduced as a university discipline. When the new University of Berlin was created in 1810, provision was made for teaching in economics, and this gradually spread to the other German universities. In France a chair of economics was established in 1830 in the Collège de France, and later on in some of the technical schools; but economics did not become a part of the regular university curriculum until the close of the seventies, when chairs of political economy were created in the faculties of law, and not, as was customary in the other Continental countries, in the faculties of philosophy. In England the first professorship of political economy was that instituted in 1805 at Haileybury College, which trained the students for the East India service. The first incumbent of this chair was Malthus. At University College, London, a chair of economics was established in 1828, with McCulloch as the first incumbent; and at Dublin a chair was founded in Trinity College in 1832 by Archbishop Whately; at Oxford a professorship was established in 1825, with Nassau W. Senior as the first incumbent. His successors were Richard Whately (1830), W. F. Lloyd (1836), H. Merivale (1838), Travers Twiss (1842), Senior (1847), G. K. Richards (1852), Charles Neate (1857), Thorold Rogers (1862), Bonamy Price (1868), Thorold Rogers (1888). and F. Y. Edgeworth (1891). At Cambridge the professorship dates from 1863, the first incumbent being Henry Fawcett, who was followed by Alfred Marshall in 1884 and by A. C. Pigou in 1908. In all these places, however, comparatively little attention was paid at first to the teaching of economics, and it was not until the close of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth that any marked progress was made, although the professorship at King’s College, London, dates back to 1859, and that at the University of Edinburgh to 1871. Toward the close of the nineteenth century, chairs in economics were created in the provincial universities, especially at Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Sheffield, Bristol, Durham, and the like, as well as in Scotland and Wales; and a great impetus to the teaching of economics was given by the foundation, in 1895, of the London School of Economics, which has recently been made a part of the University of London.

— United States —

Economics was taught at first in the United States, as in England, by incumbents of the chair of philosophy; but no especial attention was paid to the study, and no differentiation of the subject matter was made. The first professorship in the title of which the subject is distinctively mentioned was that instituted at Columbia College, New York, where John McVickar, who had previously lectured on the subject under the head of philosophy, was made professor of moral philosophy and political economy in 1819. In order to commemorate this fact, Columbia University established some years ago the McVickar professorship of political economy. The second professorship in the United States was instituted at South Carolina College, Columbia, S. C, where Thomas Cooper, professor of chemistry, had the subject of political economy added to the title of his chair in 1826. A professorship of similar sectional influence was that in political economy, history, and metaphysics filled in the College of William and Mary in 1827, by Thomas Roderick Dew (1802-1846). The separate professorships of political economy, however, did not come until after the Civil War. Harvard established a professorship of political economy in 1871; Yale in 1872; and Johns Hopkins in 1876.

The real development of economic teaching on a large scale began at the close of the seventies and during the early eighties. The newer problems bequeathed to the country by the Civil War were primarily economic in character. The rapid growth of industrial capitalism brought to the front a multitude of questions, whereas before the war well-nigh the only economic problems had been those of free trade and of banking, which were treated primarily from the point of view of partisan politics. The newer problems that confronted the country led to the exodus of a number of young men to Germany, and with their return at the end of the seventies and beginning of the eighties, chairs were rapidly multiplied in all the larger universities. Among these younger men were Patten and James, who went to the University of Pennsylvania; Clark, of Amherst and later of Columbia; Farnam and Hadley of Yale; Taussig of Harvard; H. C. Adams of Michigan; Mayo-Smith and Seligman of Columbia; and Ely of Johns Hopkins. The teaching of economics on a university basis at Johns Hopkins under General Francis A. Walker helped to create a group of younger scholars who soon filled the chairs of economics throughout the country. In 1879 the School of Political Science at Columbia was inaugurated on a university basis, and did its share in training the future teachers of the country. Gradually the teaching force was increased in all the larger universities, and chairs were started in the colleges throughout the length and breadth of the land.

At the present time, most of the several hundred colleges in the United States offer instruction in the subject, and each of the larger institutions has a staff of instructors devoted to it. At institutions like Columbia, Harvard, Yale, Chicago, and Wisconsin there are from six to ten professors of economics and social science, together with a corps of lecturers, instructors, and tutors.

Teaching of Economics in the American Universities. — The present-day problems of the teaching of economics in higher institutions of learning are seriously affected by the transition stage through which these institutions are passing. In the old American college, when economics was introduced it was taught as a part of the curriculum designed to instill general culture. As the graduate courses were added, the more distinctly professional and technical phases of the subject were naturally emphasized. As a consequence, both the content of the course and the method employed tended to differentiate. But the unequal development of our various institutions has brought great unclearness into the whole pedagogical problem. Even the nomenclature is uncertain. In one sense graduate courses may be opposed to undergraduate courses; and if the undergraduate courses are called the college courses, then the graduate courses should be called the university courses. The term “university,” however, is coming more and more, in America at least, to be applied to the entire complex of the institutional activities, and the college proper or undergraduate department is considered a part of the university. Furthermore, if by university courses as opposed to college courses we mean advanced, professional, or technical courses, a difficulty arises from the fact that the latter year or years of the college course are tending to become advanced or professional in character. Some institutions have introduced the combined course, that is, a combination of so-called college and professional courses; other institutions permit students to secure their baccalaureate degree at the end of three or even two and a half years. In both cases, the last year of the college will then cover advanced work, although in the one case it may be called undergraduate, and in the other graduate, work.

The confusion consequent upon this unequal development has had a deleterious influence on the teaching of economics, as it has in many other subjects. In all our institutions we find a preliminary or beginners’ course in economics, and in our largest institutions we find some courses reserved expressly for advanced or graduate students. In between these, however, there is a broad field, which, in some institutions, is cultivated primarily from the point of view of graduates, in others from the point of view of undergraduates, and in most cases is declared to be open to both graduates and undergraduates. This is manifestly unfortunate. For, if the courses, are treated according to advanced or graduate methods, they do not fulfill their proper function as college studies. On the other hand, if they are treated as undergraduate courses, they are more or less unsuitable for advanced or graduate students. In almost all of the American institutions the same professors conduct both kinds of courses. In only one institution, namely, at Columbia University, is the distinction between graduate and undergraduate courses in economics at all clearly drawn, although even there not with precision. At Columbia University, of the ten professors who are conducting courses in economics and social science, one half have seats only in the graduate faculties, and do no work at all in the college or undergraduate department; but even there, these professors give a few courses, which, while frequented to an overwhelming extent by graduate students, are open to such undergraduates as may be declared to be advanced students.

It is necessary, therefore, to distinguish, in principle at least, between the undergraduate or college courses properly so-called, and the university or graduate courses. For it is everywhere conceded that at the extremes, at least, different pedagogical methods are appropriate.

The College or Undergraduate Instruction. — Almost everywhere in the American colleges there is a general or preliminary or foundation course in economics. This ordinarily occupies three hours a week for the entire year, or five hours a week for the semester, or half year, although the three-hour course in the fundamental principles occasionally continues only for a semester. The foundation of such a course is everywhere textbook work, with oral discussion, or quizzes, and frequent tests. Where the number of students is small, this method can be effectively employed; but where, as in our larger institutions, the students attending this preliminary course are numbered by the hundreds, the difficulties multiply. Various methods are employed to solve these difficulties. In some cases the class attends as a whole at a lecture which is given once a week by the professor, while at the other two weekly sessions the class is divided into small sections of from twenty to thirty, each of them in charge of an instructor who carries on the drill work. In a few instances, these sections are conducted in part by the same professor who gives the lecture, in part by other professors of equal grade. In other cases where this forms too great a drain upon the strength of the faculty, the sections are put in the hands of younger instructors or drill masters. In other cases, again, the whole class meets for lecture purposes twice a week, and the sections meet for quiz work only once a week. Finally, the instruction is sometime carried on entirely by lectures to the whole class, supplemented by numerous written tests.

While it cannot be said that any fixed method has yet been determined, there is a growing consensus of opinion that the best results can be reached by the combination of one general lecture and two quiz hours in sections. The object of the general lecture is to present a point of view from which the problems may be taken up, and to awaken a general interest in the subject among the students. The object of the section work is to drill the students thoroughly in the principles of the science; and for this purpose it is important in a subject like economics to put the sections as far as possible in the hands of skilled instructors rather than of recent graduates.

Where additional courses are offered to the Undergraduates, they deal with special subjects in the domain of economic history, statistics, and practical economics. In many such courses good textbooks are now available, and especially in the last class of subject is an attempt is being made here and there to introduce the case system as utilized in the law schools. This method is, however, attended by some difficulties, arising from the fact that the materials used so quickly become antiquated and do not have the compelling force of precedent, as is the case in law. In the ordinary college course, therefore, chief reliance must still be put upon the independent work and the fresh illustrations that are brought to the classroom by the instructor.

In some American colleges the mistake has been made of introducing into the college curriculum methods that are suitable only to the university. Prominent among these are the exclusive use of the lecture system, and the employment of the so-called seminar. This, however, only tends to confusion. On the other hand, in some of the larger colleges the classroom work is advantageously supplemented by discussions and debates in the economics club, and by practical exercises in dealing with the current economic problems as they are presented in the daily press.

In most institutions the study of economics is not begun until the sophomore or the junior year, it being deemed desirable to have a certain maturity of judgment and a certain preparation in history and logic. In some instances, however, the study of economics is undertaken at the very beginning of the college course, with the resulting difficulty of inadequately distinguishing between graduate and undergraduate work.

Another pedagogical question which has given rise to some difficulty is the sequence of courses. Since the historical method in economics became prominent, it is everywhere recognized that some training in the historical development of economic institutions is necessary to a comprehension of existing facts. We can know what is very much better by grasping what has been and how it has come to be. The point of difference, however, is as to whether the elementary course in the principles should come first and be supplemented by a course in economic history, or whether, on the contrary, the course in economic history should precede that in the principles. Some institutions follow one method, others the second; and there are good arguments on both sides. It is the belief of the writer, founded on a long experience, that on the whole the best results can be reached by giving as introductory to the study of economic principles a short survey of the leading points of economic history. In a few of the modem textbooks this plan is intentionally followed. Taking it all in all, it may be said that college instruction in economics is now not only exceedingly widespread in the United States, but continually improving in character and methods.

University or Graduate Instruction. — The university courses in economics are designed primarily for those who either wish to prepare themselves for the teaching of economics or who desire such technical training in methods or such an intimate acquaintance with the more developed matter as is usually required by advanced or professional students in any discipline. The university courses in the larger American institutions which now take up every important subject in the discipline, and which are conducted by a corps of professors, comprise three elements: first, the lectures of the professor; second, the seminar or periodical meeting between the professor and a group of advanced students; third, the economics club, or meeting of the students without the professor.

(1) The Lectures: In the university lectures the method is different from that in the college courses. The object is not to discipline the student, but to give him an opportunity of coming into contact with the leaders of thought and with the latest results of scientific advance on the subject. Thus no roll of attendance is called, and no quizzes are enforced and no periodical tests of scholarship are expected. In the case of candidates for the Ph.D. degree, for instance, there is usually no examination until the final oral examination, when the student is expected to display a proper acquaintance with the whole subject. The lectures, moreover, do not attempt to present the subject in a dogmatic way, as is more or less necessary in the college courses, but, on the contrary, are designed to present primarily the unsettled problems and to stimulate the students to independent thinking. The university lecture, in short, is expected to give to the student what cannot be found in the books on the subject.

(2) The Seminar: Even with the best of will, however, the necessary limitations prevent the lecturer from going into the minute details of the subject. In order to provide opportunity for this, as well as for a systematic training of the advanced students in the method of attacking this problem, periodical meetings between the professor and the students have now become customary under the name of the seminar, introduced from Germany. In most of our advanced universities the seminar is restricted to those students who are candidates for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, although in some cases a preliminary seminar is arranged for graduate students who are candidates for the degree of Master of Arts. Almost everywhere a reading knowledge of French and German is required. In the United States, as on the European continent generally, there are minor variations in the conduct of the seminar. Some professors restrict the attendance to a small group of most advanced students, of from fifteen to twenty-five; others virtually take in all those who apply. Manifestly the personal contact and the “give and take,” which are so important a feature of the seminar, become more difficult as the numbers increase. Again, in some institutions each professor has a seminar of his own; but this is possible only where the number of graduate students is large. In other cases the seminar consists of the students meeting with a whole group of professors. While this has a certain advantage of its own, it labors under the serious difficulty that the individual professor is not able to impress his own ideas and his own personality so effectively on the students; and in our modern universities students are coming more and more to attend the institution for the sake of some one man with whom they wish to study. Finally, the method of conducting the seminar differs in that in some cases only one general subject is assigned to the members for the whole term, each session being taken up by discussion of a different phase of the general subject. In other cases a new subject is taken up at every meeting of the seminar. The advantage of the latter method is to permit a greater range of topics, and to enable each student to report on the topic in which he is especially interested, and which, perhaps, he may be taking up for his doctor’s dissertation. The advantage of the former method is that it enables the seminar to enter into the more minute details of the general subject, and thus to emphasize with more precision the methods of work. The best plan would seem to be to devote half the year to the former method, and half the year to the latter method.

In certain branches of the subject, as, for instance, statistics, the seminar becomes a laboratory exercise. In the largest universities the statistical laboratory is equipped with all manner of mechanical devices, and the practical exercises take up a considerable part of the time. The statistical laboratories are especially designed to train the advanced student in the methods of handling statistical material.

(3) The Economics Club: The lecture work and the seminar are now frequently supplemented by the economics club, a more informal meeting of the advanced students, where they are free from the constraint that is necessarily present in the seminar, and where they have a chance to debate, perhaps more unreservedly, some of the topics taken up in the lectures and in the seminar, and especially the points where some of the students dissent from the lecturer. Reports on the latest periodical literature are sometimes made in the seminar and sometimes in the economics club; and the club also provides an opportunity for inviting distinguished outsiders in the various subjects. In one way or another, the economics club serves as a useful supplement to the lectures and the seminar, and is now found in almost all the leading universities.

In reviewing the whole subject we may say that the teaching of economics in American institutions has never been in so satisfactory condition as at present. Both the instructors and the students are everywhere increasing in numbers; and the growing recognition of the fact that law and politics are so closely interrelated with, and so largely based on, economics, has led to a remarkable increase in the interest taken in the subject and in the facilities for instruction.


Economics
— In the Schools —

James Sullivan, Ph.D., Principal of Boys’ High School, Brooklyn, N.Y.

This subject has been defined as the study of that which pertains to the satisfaction of man’s material needs, — the production, preservation, and distribution of wealth. As such it would seem fundamental that the study of economics should find a place in those institutions which prepare children to become citizens, — the elementary and high schools. Some of the truths of economics are so simple that even the youngest of school children may be taught to understand them. As a school study, however, economics up to the present time has made far less headway than civics (q.v.). Its introduction as a study even in the colleges was so gradual and so retarded that it could scarcely be expected that educators would favor its introduction in the high schools.

Previous to the appearance, in 1894, of the Report of the Committee of Ten of the National Educational Association on Secondary Education, there had been much discussion on the educational value of the study of economics. In that year Professor Patten had written a paper on Economics in Elementary Schools, not as a plea for its study there, but as an attempt to show how the ethical value of the subject could be made use of by teachers. The Report, however, came out emphatically against formal instruction in political economy in the secondary school, and recommended “that, in connection particularly with United States history, civil government, and commercial geography instruction be given in those economic topics, a knowledge of which is essential to the understanding of our economic life and development” (pp. 181-183). This view met with the disapproval of many teachers. In 1895 President Thwing of Western Reserve University, in an address before the National Educational Association on The Teaching of Political Economy in the Secondary Schools, maintained that the subject could easily be made intelligible to the young. Articles or addresses of similar import followed by Commons (1895), James (1897), Haynes (1897), Stewart (1898), and Taussig (1899). Occasionally a voice was raised against its formal study in the high schools. In the School Review for January, 1898, Professor Dixon of Dartmouth said that its teaching in the secondary schools was “unsatisfactory and unwise.” On the other hand, Professor Stewart of the Central Manual Training School of Philadelphia, in an address in April, 1898, declared the Report of the Committee of Ten “decidedly reactionary,” and prophesied that political economy as a study would he put to the front in the high school. In 1899 Professor Clow of the Oshkosh State Normal School published an exhaustive study of the subject of Economics as a School Study, going into the questions of its educational value, its place in the schools, the forms of the study, and the methods of teaching. His researches serve to show that the subject was more commonly taught in the high schools of the Middle West than in the East. (Compare with the article on Civics.)

Since the publication of his work the subject of economics has gradually made its appearance in the curricula of many Eastern high schools. It has been made an elective subject of examination for graduation from high schools by the Regents of New York State, and for admission to college by Harvard University. Its position as an elective study, however, has not led many students to take it except in commercial high schools, because in general it may not be used for admission to the colleges.

Its great educational value, its close touch with the pupils’ everyday life, and the possibility of teaching it to pupils of high school age are now generally recognized. A series of articles in the National Educational Association’s Proceedings for 1901, by Spiers, Gunton, Halleck, and Vincent bear witness to this. The October, 1910, meeting of the New England History Teachers’ Association was entirely devoted to a discussion of the Teaching of Economics in Secondary Schools, and Professors Taussig and Haynes reiterated views already expressed. Representatives of the recently developed commercial and trade schools expressed themselves in its favor.

Suitable textbooks in the subject for secondary schools have not kept pace with its spread in the schools. Laughlin, Macvane, and Walker published books somewhat simply expressed; but later texts have been too collegiate in character. There is still needed a text written with the secondary school student constantly in mind, and preferably by an author who has been dealing with students of secondary school age. The methods of teaching, mutatis mutandis, have been much the same as those pursued in civics (q.v.). The mere cramming of the text found in the poorest schools gives way in the best schools to a study and observation of actual conditions in the world of to-day. In the latter schools the teacher has been well trained in the subject, whereas in the former it is given over only too frequently to teachers who know little more about it than that which is in the text.

See also Commercial Education.

 

References: —

In Colleges and Universities: —

A Symposium on the Teaching of Elementary Economics. Jour. of Pol. Econ., Vol. XVIIl, June, 1910.

Cossa, L. Introduction to the Study of Political Economy: tr. by L. Dyer. (London, 1893.)

Mussey, H. R. Economies in the College Course. Educ. Rev. Vol. XL, 1910, pp. 239-249.

Second Conference on the Teaching of Economics, Proceedings. (Chicago, 1911.)

Seligman, E. R. A. The Seminarium — Its Advantages and Limitations. Convocation of the University of the State of New York, Proceedings. (1892.)

In Schools: —

Clow, F. R. Economics as a School Study, in the Economic Studies of the American Economic Association for 1899. An excellent bibliography is given. It may be supplemented by articles or addresses since 1899 which have been mentioned above. (New York, 1899.)

Haynes, John. Economics in Secondary Schools. Education, February, 1897.

 

Source: Paul Monroe (ed.), A Cyclopedia of Education, Vol. II. New York: Macmillan, pp. 387-392.

Source: E.R.A. Seligman in Universities and their Sons, Vol. 2 (1899), pp. 484-6.

 

Categories
Chicago Economist Market Economists Harvard Radical

Harvard/Chicago. Gottfried Haberler and Milton Friedman on Samuel Bowles, 1970

 

The following exchange between Gottfried Haberler and Milton Friedman is really quite remarkable. It is the second observation by Economics in the Rear-view Mirror of Gottfried Haberler trashing a liberal/radical economist on the q.t. The first instance involved John Kenneth Galbraith in 1948 (though I cannot say that I would personally fault Haberler for his having ranked Paul Samuelson above John Kenneth Galbraith as an economist). It will come as a surprise to some people that Milton Friedman defended the scholarly honor of one of the leading, if not the leading, radical economists in 1970. As we see below Friedman in no uncertain terms let Haberler know that he still considered his earlier support of Samuel Bowles for an untenured appointment at the University of Chicago to have been based solely on the analytical merits displayed by Bowles. 

You do not want to miss the Harvard anecdote relayed by Roy Weintraub that is posted below as a comment!

__________________

PERSONAL

May 14, 1970

Professor Milton Friedman
Department of Economics
University of Chicago
Chicago, Illinois 60637

Dear Milton:

I was told that Chicago has made an offer to Sam Bowles and that you supported it warmly. Frankly, I am somewhat surprised. He has certainly some analytic abilities but in general he is very radical, almost as wild as Arthur MacEwan, and thoroughly demagogic in his interventions in faculty meetings and talks to students. I would really like to know whether it is true that Chicago offered him a job.

Sincerely yours,

Gottfried Haberler

H:w

__________________

THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO
DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMICS
1126 EAST 59THSTREET
CHICAGO—ILLINOIS 60637

May 19, 1970

Professor Gottfried Haberler
Department of Economics
Harvard University
326 Littauer Center
Cambridge, Masachusetts 02138

Dear Gottfried:

Some years back I had occasion to read some of the work which Bowles had done in connection with our consideration of him at that time. I was very favorably impressed indeed by the intellectual quality of the work and the command that it displayed of analytical economics. At that time I was very much in accord with our decision to make him an offer of a position. He turned us down to stay at Harvard.

I have very vague recollections about what has happened this year. I do not know for certain whether or not we did make an offer to him this year. We may have done so; and if so, I would not have objected since the only consideration I would have considered relevant would have been his intellectual qualities.

I will try to find out more definitely and let you know.

Sincerely yours,
[signed, “Milton”]
Milton Friedman

ah

[Handwritten addition: P.S. I have checked. No offer was made to him this year. We made an offer some years ago at the Ass’t Prof level when he first went to Harvard. We made a later offer a couple of years ago again on a term basis. There is no offer outstanding now.]

Source:  Hoover Institution Archives. Gottfried Haberler Papers. Box 12, Folder “GH—Milton Friedman”.

Image Source: University of Massachusetts Amherst . Police Department, “Board of Trustees fee increase demonstration: Economics professor Samuel Bowles speaking to protesters, April 15, 1976“, University Photograph Collection (RG 110-176). Special Collections and University Archives, University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries.

Categories
Chicago Exam Questions Problem Sets

Chicago. Price Theory, Part II. Friedman, Spring 1951

 

Milton Friedman’s price theory reading assignments, problem sets, and final exams from his courses Economics 300A and 300B taught during the academic year 1951-52 at the University of Chicago were transcribed in an earlier post. During the previous academic year, W. Allen Wallis and Lloyd A. Metzler taught the first quarter course, Economics 300A.  Milton Friedman and Lloyd A. Metzler taught the second quarter course, Economics 300B. Problem set and final exam for Friedman’s section have been transcribed for this post.

________________

ECONOMICS 300B
Problems for Reading Period
Spring, 1951

  1. “Productivity” is a catch-word in most general discussions of wage policy, as for example in the following quotation:

“General increases in wage rates exceeding the average growth of productivity raise costs and will ordinarily result in high prices,” from which it is implied that wage rates “ought” to rise by the same percentage as “productivity”. Sometimes, this argument is carried over to particular industries or occupation; and sometimes, the conclusion is drawn that wages “cannot” “on the average” rise by more than “productivity”.

Discuss from the point of view of price theory, with special reference to the meaning of the concepts used and the validity of the inferences drawn. Do not get involved in business cycle, or income and employment theory.

  1. Consider a hypothetical society in which there is no investment, either net or gross. All capital is completely permanent, not subject to change in form but capable of being used for different purposes. There is no selling or buying of capital goods: whoever owns the capital goods is forced by the laws or conventions of society to hold them and is permitted only to read them out (i.e., all capital is subject to the conventions that now govern human capital). Lending or borrowing is prohibited, so that there is no market rate of interest that matters, and all saving takes the form of hoarding of cash. The total amount of money in society is fixed in nominal units (say dollars).
    1. Although this economy is stationary in the aggregate, it is not static. Explain the meaning of the sentence and its bearing on the willingness of people to hold money.
    2. Wages are initially rigid (by law or otherwise) and the society is in the state of Keynesian unemployment equilibrium. Explain. What is it that assures that the aggregate amount actually saved is equal to zero? What is it that assures that the aggregate amount people wish to save is equal to zero?
    3. Wages are now made flexible. Describe the process of adjustment to a new equilibrium position. Does this new position involve unemployment? What is the equilibrium condition on saving? What forces operate to bring about the satisfaction of this condition?
    4. Discuss the factors that determine the rent of capital goods and the wages of labor at equilibrium when both are flexible.
    5. Lending and borrowing is [sic] now introduced, but all other assumptions are retained, so that all loans are in essence “consumption loans”. What determines the equilibrium rate of interest? What effect, if any, would the introduction of lending and borrowing have on the price level?

 

 

Final Examination
Economics 300B
June 12, 1951

  1. “The statement that wages tend to equal the net product of the worker’s labor… is not, as some have thought, an independent theory of wages, but only a particular way of wording the familiar doctrine that the value of everything tends to be equal to its expense of production.” (Marshall)
    1. Explain why “the statement that wages tend to equal the net product of the worker’s labor” is not “an independent [i.e., complete] theory of wages.”
    2. Prove that it is “only a particular way of wording the familiar doctrine…” in doing so, interpret “everything” to mean “final products,” not “labor.”
  2. (a) Discuss the meaning of “profits” in connection with the theory of distribution. Outline briefly “a” theory of “profits.”
    (b) A private enterprise economy is frequently described as motivated by the desire to maximize “profits.” Is the word “profits” in this statement used in the same sense as in the discussion under (a)? Explain any difference.
  3. “Rent is but the leading species of a large genus.” Discuss.
  4. The income of farmers from the sale of their products depends on the prices at which the products sell. The general level of agricultural prices, in turn, depends primarily on the income of the nonfarm population. But the income of the nonfarm population depends on the prices of nonfarm products which, in turn, depends partly on the income of farmers.
    This kind of analysis is often criticized as circular reasoning and hence is incapable of leading to any useful conclusions. Is this criticism valid? Explain your answer.
  5. Beef sold in rural New England is mostly purchased from Chicago. Yet it is said that the retail price of the better cuts of beef is substantially less than in Chicago for the same grade of meat. Assuming that this is in fact the case. How would you explain this phenomenon in strictly economic terms? (I.e., do not give the easy – and probably wrong – explanation of irrationality, gouging, or the like). How would you test the validity of your suggested explanation?
  6. Suppose that legislative hearings were to be held on the following (a) A national bill to make the minimum wage rate very regionally, so it would be lower in the South than in the North; (b) A bill in a particular state to make it legal for manufacturers to enforce a minimum retail price on their products (a so-called “fair-trade” law).
    Indicate what groups you would expect to be testifying for and against each bill, and why you would expect them to do so.

Source:  Hoover Institution Archives. Milton Friedman Papers, Box 76, Folder 10.

Image Source: Milton Friedman (undated). University of Chicago Photographic Archive, apf1-06230, Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library.

Categories
Chicago Third Party Funding

Chicago. Sources of private graduate fellowship funding, 1905-1923

 

To give a sense of the real magnitudes involved below, here the following table that provides estimates of annual expenses exclusive of tuition for thirty-six weeks of a student residing with the quadrangles in 1919.

Lowest

 Average

Liberal
Rent and care of room

$60.00

 $105.00

$225.00
Board

$162.00

 $193.00

$240.00
Laundry

$18.00

 $30.00

$45.00
Textbooks and stationery

$10.00

 $20.00

$50.00

Total

$250.00

 $353.00

$560.00

Source:  University of Chicago.  The Colleges and Graduate Schools. Circular of Information Vol. XIX, No. 4 (April 1919), p. 9.

______________________

THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO
STATEMENT OF THE
POLITICAL ECONOMY FELLOWSHIPS

In February, 1905, through the efforts of members of the Department of Political Economy, the sum of $1,000.00, in the form of ten gifts of $100.00 each from Chicago business men was received, to be used for Special Fellowships in the Department of Political Economy. This was the beginning of an interest which has continued year by year with gifts of varying amounts, and which gives promise at the present time of increasing, inasmuch as larger gifts from new sources have recently been received. As reported by the President to the Board of Trustees at the meeting held May 18, 1922, Marshall Field III, now of New York, proposes to give $1,000.00 annually until such time as he is able to provide the principal sum which will yield an annuity of that amount. His first payment of $1,000.00 was received on April 14, 1922.

Since 1905 to date, a total of $12,190.00 has been contributed by the following:

 

Hart, Schaffner & Marx $4,640. A. C. Bartlett $ 100.
Marshall Field I 100. Ira N. Morris 100.
Marshall Field III 1,000. Victor Moravitz 100.
George M. Reynolds 300. Stuyvesant Fish 100.
C. R. Crane 1,100. Santa Fe Railway Co. 100.
Frank O. Lowden 850. H. H. Swift 2,000.
Samuel Insull 800. P. Wasburg 100.
Byron L. Smith 375. From friends, through J. L. Laughlin 425.

During the period, a total of $9,668.94 has been used for fellowships, leaving a balance of $2,521.06 unused. Only three fellowships are being used at the present time, but plans are under way for extensive work under these fellowships for the year 1923-24.

The contributions and expense of the fellowships by years are as follows:

Year Gifts Expended for Fellowships
1904-05 $1,000.00
1905-06 600.00 $1,600.00
1906-07 720.00 640.00
1907-08 670.00
1908-09 325.00 650.00
1909-10 720.00 386.65
1910-11 820.00 347.21
1911-12 820.00 1,011.09
1912-13 645.00 1,136.53
1913-14 325.00 463.19
1914-15 645.00 249.97
1915-16 620.00 792.77
1916-17 172.22
1917-18 320.00
1918-19 11.11
1919-20 320.00 88.88
1920-21 320.00 541.66
1921-22 2,320.00 300.00
1922-23 (part) 1,000.00 1,277.66
$12,190.00 $9,668.94
Balance                   2,521.06
$12,190.00 $12,190.00

Respectfully submitted,
[Signed]
N. C. Plimpton

March 31, 1923

 

Source: University of Chicago Archives. Office of the President. Harper, Judson and Burton Administrations. Records. Box 43.   Folder “Fellowships, 1896-1924”.

 

Categories
Chicago Exam Questions Fields

Chicago. Industrial Organization Prelim. 1977

 

The following five questions come from what appears to be a draft of the prelim exam in industrial organization for the Spring of 1977 that is found in the George Stigler papers at the University of Chicago. The draft clearly has the title “Industrial Organization Prelim” but the date is a handwritten addition. Also there is no explicit “University of Chicago”  to be found, though given the location in George Stigler’s papers, this identification seems rather certain.

___________________

[handwritten note:  5-2-77]

Industrial Organization Prelim

Answer all questions:

  1. It is sometimes alleged that periods of economic depression are more conducive to the growth of economic regulation than prosperity. Develop a theory which elaborates the link between the level of economic activity and the propensity to regulate. Include a discussion of whether the goals of regulatory agencies (old as well as new) are likely to differ with the level of economic activity.
  2. Sales of some firms are occurring at prices below average variable cost. Suppose there were no legal restrictions on merger. Under what conditions, if any, would the firms in the industry prefer merger as a means of reducing industry output?
  3. A recent treatise on antitrust law lists the following as among the factors favorable to collusion in an industry.
    1. No fringe of small buyers.
    2. Inelastic demand at competitive price.
    3. Entry takes a long time.
    4. Many customers.
    5. A standardized product.
    6. High ratio of fixed to variable costs.

Discuss for each factor the effect, if any, it has on probability of collusion.

  1. What problems for profit maximizing collusion among the firms in the book publishing industry would arise because of each of the following conditions:
    1. There are two classes of books, fiction and nonfiction. Publishers generally publish both types although some publishers specialize in nonfiction.
    2. Sales and profits from n fictional books behave like n independent random variables drawn from the same distribution. Sales of a given fictional book in a given year are independent of the sales in the previous year. There is a positive probability of sales coming to a halt in a given year and remaining zero thereafter.
    3. Nonfiction is of two types, textbooks and “how-to-do-it” books. The expected number of years of positive sales for a nonfiction book is greater than for a fiction book.
    4. Retail outlets and mail order sales are the only channels of distribution to the final users of books.
    5. The cost function of a book publisher is proportional to the number of titles and the quantity printed of each title.
    6. Every title has the protection of a copyright. Assume that the Xerox machine and similar devices do not exist.
    7. Anyone can arrange to have a book printed by a printing company and can arrange for its distribution.
  2. How do you explain the following empirical findings for manufacturing industries?

Let

Nit= number of companies in the 4-digit industry i in year t
Cit= 4-firm concentration ratio, industry i, year t.
Qit= index of real output industry i, year t
Rit= measured rate of return of all firms in industry i, year t.

    1. For each t, holing log Nitconstant, Ritis an increasing function of Cit.
    2. For each t, holding Citconstant, Ritis an increasing function of log Nit.
    3. For each t, Cit and log Nitare negatively correlated.
    4. Between 1947 and 1967 the correlation between the change in Citand the change in log Nitis 0.55.
    5. Between 1947 and 1967 the correlation between the change in Citand the change in log Nitis zero. The correlation is also zero between the change in log Qitand the change in Cit.
    6. There has recently been renewed interest in the social optimality of various devices for the public regulation of pollution. Among popular proposals to deal with the problem: emission taxes, subsidies for pollution control, transferable rights to emit pollutants, maximum limits on pollution discharges from each source. Assume that the optimality conditions for public regulation have been met. Evaluate the relative efficiency of these four devices and any others you wish to add to the list.

Source: University of Chicago Archives. George Stigler Papers, Addenda. Box 33, Folder “Exams & Prelim Questions”.

Image Source:  George Stigler page at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business website.

Categories
Chicago Exam Questions Undergraduate

Chicago. Introduction to money and banking. Final exam. A.G. Hart, Summer 1933

 

 

In an earlier post you will find (i) the official course description for the undergraduate course “Introduction to Money and Banking” taught by A. G. Hart at the University of Chicago during the mid-1930s as well as (ii) the course syllabus.

A subsequent post provides the final exam for the Fall Quarter 1932; midterm exam for the Summer Quarter 1933; final exam for the Winter Quarter 1933; final exam for the  Winter Quarter 1934; and final exam for the Fall Quarter 1935.

Today I found the following misfiled final examination for the summer quarter of 1933. Before I forget to fill the gap, I add this item to the Economics in the Rear-view mirror collection of artifacts.

_______________________

A.G. Hart
Econ 230

FINAL EXAMINATION, AUGUST 25, 1933

Answer the first two questions and any two others. (One hour)

  1. It has been proposed to require that no bank in the U.S. be permitted to accept deposits to an amount over five times its capital and surplus; any bank wishing to expand deposits after reaching this limit would then have to increase its capitalization. Would this regulation make the depositor’s position more secure than at present? Explain.
  2. Briefly contrast the monetary series of Fisher and Hawtrey.
  3. Discussed the advantages and disadvantages of the scheme just going into effect for guaranteeing bank deposits through a central fund derived largely from assessments on the insured banks.
  4. The circulation of Federal Reserve Notes has decreased from about $4,300,000,000 on March 15 to about $3,000,000,000 last week. Officials of the Federal Reserve System deny that this constitutes deflation, and insisted does not run counter to the government’s announced program of inflation. Is the denial justified? Discuss.
  5. Outline an explanation for the rise of the price of francs from a bit less than four cents early in April to over five cents recently. If prices in this country do not rise appreciably above the present level, what is likely to happen to the price of francs in dollars over the next year? How will these prospects be affected by repudiation or resumption of foreign war debt payments due to the U.S.? Justify your answer.
  6. By what means can the Federal Reserve Banks stop an undesirable credit expansion? An undesirable credit contraction? Evaluate the effectiveness of these powers.
  7. Explain the difference between Federal Reserve Notes and the recent issues of  Federal Reserve  Bank  Why is there just now a tendency for the circulation of the former to contract and that of the latter to expand from week to week?

 

Source:  Columbia University Libraries, Manuscript Collections. Albert Gailord Hart Collection. Box 60, “Folder Exams: CHI Qualifying”.

Image source: “Albert Gailord Hart, Economist, Dead at 88.” Columbia University Record, Vol. 23, No. 5 (October 3, 1997)