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Carnegie-Mellon. Economics of the Firm reading list. Richard W. Roll, 1967

 

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that economists who were pack rats with respect to their professional and personal papers often provide a significant source of material from their colleagues. Martin Bronfenbrenner was one such paper hoarder. Whenever I stumble across an economist’s materials in someone else’s archival papers, I feel a disproportionate obligation to transcribe the stuff, since it is somewhat unlikely that a fellow historian of economics seeking material on economist X would search the papers of economist Y without having good cause. And so, stumbling upon the reading list for one of Richard Roll’s first Carnegie-Mellon courses in a folder of Martin Bronfenbrenner’s papers, I now add that course reading list below. 

Note: “GI” before the course number matches the course numbering for Carnegie Mellon seen in Bronfenbrenner’s papers, but 1968 is given in Roll’s own c.v. for the start of his assistant professorship there. This probably means he was initially hired as an ABD [“all-but-dissertation”] instructor and promoted upon the completion of the requirements for his Chicago Ph.D.

_____________________

Richard W. Roll

Born: October 31, 1939

1961, B.A.E. (Aerospace Engineering), Auburn University, 1961
1963, M.B.A., University of Washington
1968, Ph.D., University of Chicago

Ph.D. thesis. The Behavior of Interest Rates: An Application of the Efficient Market Model to U.S. Treasury Bills awarded the Irving Fisher Prize as best American dissertation in economics (1968).

 

1961-64 The Boeing Company, Seattle and New Orleans, Aeronautical Engineer

1968-73 Carnegie-Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Assistant and Associate Professor

1973-75 European Institute for Advance Studies in Management, Brussels, Belgium, Professor

1975-76 Centre d’Enseignement Superiéure des Affaires, Jouy-en-Josas, France, Professeur Associé

1976-2014 University of California, Los Angeles, The Anderson School
Professor of Finance, Allstate Chair, 1982-2002, Japan Alumni Chair, 2002-2011, Joel Fried Chair in Applied Finance, 2011-2014, Professor Emeritus, 2014-

1985-87 Goldman, Sachs & Co., New York, Vice-President and Director of Mortgage Securities Research

1985-2005 Roll and Ross Asset Management Corporation, Culver City, CA, Co-Chairman of the Board

1992-95 WP Capital Management, Greenwich, CT, Managing Director

2002 Visiting professor, Université de Toulouse, France

2003- Founder and Principal, Compensation Valuation, Inc.

2009-2012 Co-Founder and Research Director, Factor Advisors

2014- Linde Institute Professor of Finance, California Institute of Technology

 

1987, President, American Finance Association

Fellow, Econometric Society

Source: C.V. (July 15, 2015)

Fun fact:

At Boeing the early 1960s, Richard Roll worked on the Minuteman missile and the Saturn moon rocket.

Source: Richard W. Roll webpage (Mar 16, 2020) Caltech, Division of the Humanities and Social Sciences.

_____________________

ECONOMICS OF THE FIRM

R. Roll
GI-351
Fall, 1967

TEXT: Kalman J. Cohen and Richard M. Cyert, Theory of the Firm: Resource Allocation In a Market Economy, (1965)

A mid-term exam of 1½ hours will be given the week of Nov. 4. One-fourth of the final grade will be based on the mid-term and three-fourths on the final. Problem sets will be distributed periodically. These are intended to guide you in assessing your performance and will not usually be turned in.

Readings in the list below are divided into three categories:

  1. No preceding symbol indicates a required reading.
  2. A preceding * indicates an optional reading.
  3. A preceding $ indicates material that Ph.D. students should know.

Most of the material uses basic mathematics. The non-mathematician can be helped immeasurably by referring to R.G.D. Allen, Mathematical Analysis for Economists. Students will find that a thorough reading of J. Johnston, Econometric Methods, complements this course and will also be of aid in future courses.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

SUPPLEMENTAL TEXTS
(books)

Armen A. Alchian and William A. Allen, University Economics, (2nd edition, 1967)

R. G. D. Allen, Mathematical Analysis for Economists, (1964)

William J. Baumol, Economic Theory and Operations Analysis, (1965)

Gregory Chow, Demand for Automobiles in the United States, (1957)

Joel Dean, Managerial Economics, (1957)

Milton Friedman, Essays in Positive Economics, (1953)

J. R. Hicks, The Theory of Wages, (1963)

J. R. Hicks, Value and Capital, (1946)

H. S. Houthakker and Lester D. Taylor, Consumer Demand in the United States, 1929-1970, (1966)

J. Johnston, Econometric Methods, (1960)

J. Johnston, Statistical Cost Analysis (1960)

Richard H. Leftwich, The Price System and Resource Allocation, (1960)

Edwin Mansfield, Managerial Economics and Operations Research, (1966)

Alfred Marshall, Principles of Economics, Ninth (Variorum ) edition, (1961)

James Quirk and Rubin Saposnik, Introduction to General Equilibrium Theory and Welfare Economics, (1968)

Paul A. Samuelson, Foundations of Economic Analysis, (1963)

Ezra Solomon, The Management of Corporate Capital, (1959)

Milton H. Spencer and Louis Siegelman, Managerial Economics, (1964)

George J. Stigler, Essays in the History of Economics, (1965)

George J. Stigler, The Theory of Price, (1967)

Leon Walras, Elements of Pure Economics, (1954)

Leonard Weiss, Case Studies in American Industry, (1967)

John Kenneth Galbraith, The New Industrial State, (1967)

 

PERIODICALS

American Economic Review, (December, 1948), (June, 1964)

American Economic Review, Papers and Proceedings, (May, 1954) (June, 1958) (May, 1961)

Journal of Business, (October, 1955) (April, 1965)

Journal of Political Economy, (April, 1954) (Feb, 1957) (August, 1958)

Quarterly Journal of Economics, (August, 1967)

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

  1. Introduction to the Economic Problem, Resource Allocation

Text, Ch. 1
*Leftwich, pp. 1-22.

  1. The Methodology of Model Building

Marshall, pp. 29-37.

Text, Ch. 2
*$ “The Methodology of Positive Economics” in Friedman
*J. Johnston, Econometric Methods, pp. 3-39. (This reading requires an elementary knowledge of probability).

  1. The Fundamentals, Supply and Demand
    1. Price determination under perfect competition.

Text, ch. 4

*Weiss, “Pure Competition and Agriculture”, pp. 19-50
*Alchian and Allen, ch. 7
$George Stigler, “Perfect Competition, Historically Contemplated”, Journal of Political Economy, (Feb., 1957), reprinted in George J. Stigler, Essays…
*An example of model building and demand analysis, Gregory Chow, Demand for Automobiles in the United States

    1. Theory of Cost and Production
      1. Alternative costs

Stigler, Theory of Price, ch. 6

*W. Lee Hansen and Burton A. Weisbrod, “Economics of the Military Draft”, Quarterly Journal of Economics, (August 1967) Mimeographed copies on reserve.

      1. Theory of Production

Text, chs. 6-8

$Marshall, pp. 337-380
*Stigler, Theory of Price, chs. 7-8
$Samuelson, Foundations, ch. IV

      1. Estimating Cost Curves

Johnston, Statistical Cost Analysis, pp. 26-73

*Joel Dean, pp. 278-347
*Johnston, Statistical…pp. 136-194
$Apel, “Marginal Cost Constancy and its Implications”, American Economic Review, December, 1948

      1. Temporal cost allocation

Alchian and Allen, chs. 13-14

    1. Theory of Consumer Demand
      1. Utility Theory

Text, pp. 65-83

$J. R. Hicks, Value and Capital, chs. I-III

      1. Estimating Demand Curves

Text, pp. 83-87

*Stigler, “The Early History of Empirical Studies of Consumer Behavior”, J.P.E., (April, 1954), reprinted in Essays in the History…
*Joel Dean, “Estimating the Price Elasticity of Demand”, in his Managerial Economics, pp. 180-191. Reprinted in Mansfield, pp. 55-65.
*E.S. Houthakker and Lester D. Taylor, pp. 5-29, ch.4 presents estimated demand curves for 84 categories of personal consumption expenditures.

  1. Monopoly and Oligopoly
    1. Theory
      1. Monopoly

Text, ch. 10, pp. 187-200
Alchian and Allen, ch. 17

*Stigler, Theory of Price, ch. 11
*Galbraith, pp. 166-218

      1. Oligopoly

Stigler, Theory of Price, chs. 12-13

*Text, ch. 12

    1. Cases of monopoly

Text, pp. 200-203
Weiss, ch. 4

*Arnold C. Harberger, “Monopoly and Resource Allocation”, American Economic Review Papers and Proceedings, (May, 1954)

    1. Pricing and Advertising
      1. *Rules of thumb — Joel Dean, pp. 427-467
      2. $Peak-Load Pricing — Jacques Dreze, “Some Postwar Contributions of French Economists”, American Economic Review, (June, 1964), pp. 8-27. This article is bound in the back of the AER, Vol. 54, part 2.
      3. Advertising

Lester G. Telser, “How Much Does It Pay Whom to Advertise”, American Economic Review, Papers and Proceedings, 1961, pp. 194-205

*Kristian S. Palda, “The Measurement of Cumulative Advertising Effects”, Journal of Business, (April, 1965)

  1. Demand and Supply of Productive Services
    1. Theory

Stigler, Theory of Price, ch. 14
Text, Ch. 13

*Marshall, pp. 381-393

    1. Capital

Stigler, Theory of Price, ch. 17
Ezra Solomon, “Measuring a Company’s Cost of Capital”, Journal of Business, (October, 1955) reprinted in The Management of Corporate Capital, Ezra Solomon, ed.

$ Jack Hirshleifer, “On the Theory of Optimal Investment Decision,” Journal of Political Economy, (August, 1958) reprinted in Solomon
$Fraco Modigliani and Merton H. Miller, “The Cost of Capital, Corporation Finance and the Theory of Investment”, American Economic Review, (June, 1958) reprinted in Solomon

    1. Labor

Alchian and Allen, ch. 20

*Weiss, ch. 6
$Hicks, Theory of Wages, ch. I-III
*Alchian and Allen, ch. 21

  1. General Equilibrium, Welfare Economics and Government Participation in the Market Place

Baumol, ch. 13
Alchian and Allen, ch. 24
*Text, chs. 9, 14
$Walras, pp. 153-172
$Quirk and Saposnik, ch. 2
*Weiss, Ch. 3

Source: Duke University. David M. Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library. Economists’ Papers Archive. Papers of Martin Bronfenbrenner. Box 25, Folder “Micro-econ and Distribution 1 of 2, 1966-1971, n.d.”.

Image Source: Richard Roll in the Auburn University Yearbook, 1960 Glomerata, p. 134

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Chicago. Nutter ranks Soviet economy experts in reply to Friedman, 1962

 

From the January 1962 exchange of letters between Milton Friedman and G. Warren Nutter transcribed below, we learn that the University of Chicago was interested in potentially hiring some academic expert on the Soviet economy. Friedman asked Nutter to rank three possible candidates of interest. Nutter did just that and threw in a fourth name.

Long before turning to the history of economics as my major research interest, I entered academic economics in the field of comparative economic systems. One of the candidates mentioned in the correspondence, Francis Seton, wrote a signed [!] positive referee report for my 1986 article in the Journal of Comparative Economics, “On Marxian value, exploitation, and the transformation problem: A geometric approach“, that I honestly regard as one of my pedagogical high-water marks. Another one of the 1962 candidates, Gregory Grossman, was one of the distinguished outside referees to whom I owe a debt of gratitude for helping me clear the tenure hurdle at the University of Houston. It is a real pleasure to be able to add his Berkeley memorial and picture to this post.

___________________

Gregory Grossman (1921-2014)
IN MEMORIAM by Gerard Roland

Gregory Grossman, born in July 1921 in Kyiv, Ukraine, passed away on August 14, 2014. Grossman was one of the world’s most highly reputed scholars of the Soviet economic system. He was considered a towering figure in the study of the Soviet economy. His scholarly work shaped the thinking of generations of scholars in the US and throughout the world.

In early 1923 his family fled post-Russian Revolution chaos and famine and took a month-long journey on the Trans-Siberian Railway to Harbin, Manchuria. After completing high school in 1937 in Tientsin, China, he boarded a Japanese ocean liner en route to attend UC Berkeley where he completed his B.S. and M.A., respectively in 1941 and 1943. During World War II, Grossman served as artillery observer with the 731st Field Artillery Battalion during the Battle of the Bulge and completed his war duty in Czechoslovakia. He received a PhD in economics from Harvard University in 1953. He was a faculty member of the Department of Economics at Berkeley from 1953 until his retirement in 1992.

Grossman was the author of several books and many highly influential articles. He made key contributions to the understanding of the Soviet economic system. In a classic article, “Notes for a Theory of the Command Economy” (Soviet Studies, 1963), he coined the concept of the “command economy” to characterize the central planning system, where production and investment were guided by the commands of the communist party elite and where managers at all levels of the planning system strove to implement the commands embodied in the plan targets. In such a system, prices and money play no active role and serve only as accounting units. In such a system, autonomy of agents must be curbed to favor the implementation of plan commands. As his former student, Pennsylvania State University professor Barry Ickes, has noted: “His formulation of the command economy hypothesis provided the framework used by scholars of several generations.”

In an equally famous article “The ‘Second Economy of the USSR” (Problems of Communism, 1977), he also coined the complementary concept of the “second economy.” Because of the imbalances and shortages inherent in a necessarily imperfect planning system, decentralized forms of market exchange, though illegal, were necessary to correct the allocative mistakes of the command system. Grossman worked with professor Vladimir Treml of Duke University and others to conduct more than a decade of research on all aspects of this second economy, gathering massive amounts of evidence based on interviews with emigres from the Soviet Union. He had garnered detailed evidence on the extent of the second economy and on prices of goods and services in various locations of the USSR.

Grossman’s analysis of the Soviet economic system proved extraordinarily prescient. Over time, as the economic system became more complex, the second economy tended to expand and corrode the command system, which eventually collapsed while managers of state-owned enterprises appropriated the assets they controlled in a process of spontaneous privatization. This was the starting point of the transition to the market economy that was studied by the next generation of scholars.

Grossman was awarded in 1991 a lifetime achievement award from the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies. Citing Grossman’s works on the “command economy” and the “second economy,” the award also noted his earlier, path-breaking book, Soviet Statistics of Physical Output of Industrial Commodities (1960), saying that the book “provided the profession with basic rules for working with distorted Soviet economic statistics and avoiding the many pitfalls of that enterprise.”

A colleague at Berkeley, Benjamin Ward, said there was a period in the Cold War of maybe 20 years in which Grossman “was the most knowledgeable person in the world about the Soviet economy.”

Grossman was an appreciated teacher. For decades, he taught the main undergraduate course on the Soviet economic system. He also supervised throughout his career a great number of graduate students who later became themselves well-known scholars of Eastern European economies.

Grossman was a polymath who had a deep understanding of the political, ideological, social and cultural underpinnings of economic life in the Soviet Union. As a result, he was widely sought out by his peers for comments on their scholarship. He was also known to be a consummate gentleman. He remained calm and composed in all circumstances and was known for his great sense of humor and generosity.

Family members said that, while he traveled widely, he had a particular love for Berkeley and the Bay Area’s lifestyle, culture, beautiful vistas and good weather.

In 1952 he married Cynthia Green and they had two children, Joel Grossman of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and Amy Di Costanzo of Berkeley, California. In 1972, he married Joan Delaney, a UC Berkeley professor of Slavic Studies who stayed by his side until his death. He is survived by her; by his two children, six grandchildren and one great granddaughter.

Source: Senate of the University of California, Berkeley.

___________________

Francis Seton (Guardian obituary)

Francis Seton
An economist of ideal prices
By Maurice Scott

He was born Franz Szedo in Vienna, in the wake of the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian empire after the first world war. He was an only child; his parents had been born in Hungary, and were then citizens of Austria and had converted from Judaism to Christianity. His father ran a paper processing business in central Vienna, and Francis was educated there until 1938, when the Nazis were moving to annex Austria.

His interests lay in music and foreign languages, the latter taking him on visits to France and Britain. His parents, concerned at the Nazi threat, thought he should complete his studies abroad, and Francis contacted Balliol College, Oxford, when visiting England in 1937.

In March 1938, Germany invaded Austria. His father managed to arrange for Francis to go at once to London. Soon after, his parents also left Austria and Francis lost touch with them, fearing that they could be dead. But this story has a happy ending. In 1946 he learned that they had survived in Hungary.

From 1938 Francis read politics, philosophy and economics at Balliol, but by summer 1940 paranoia was widespread and he was classified as an enemy alien, albeit in category C, for those considered to pose the least danger. He was shipped to Canada in dreadful conditions.

By 1941 he was given the choice of freedom in Canada or return to Britain. As he wanted to fight the Nazis, he volunteered for His Majesty’s forces. Being still classed an enemy alien, he was allowed to join only the dogsbody Pioneer Corps. He met other aliens, including Arthur Koestler, Robert Maxwell and, most notably, a Russian soldier, who fired his interest in the language and the country.

By 1942, Francis was able to transfer to the Somerset Light Infantry, on detachment to Bicester. There, in spare moments he studied for an Oxford degree in Russian language and literature, helped by a refugee from the Bolshevik revolution who was at St Hugh’s, and this led, in 1946, to first class honours. In 1942, having been rejected on medical grounds as a glider pilot, his flair for languages led to a transfer to the Intelligence Corps.

In 1948, back at Balliol, Francis finally graduated with a first in PPE and became a British subject, having changed his name earlier. He was awarded a state studentship, to study the Soviet economy, the subject of his doctoral thesis. In 1950, he was elected to a Nuffield College research fellowship, followed by an official fellowship in 1953. He moved on from his interest in the Soviet Union to other countries in the developing world, and travelled widely. Eventually he became senior fellow, and took the lead in the election of two of Nuffield’s wardens.

Francis was immensely talented. His English literary style was a delight. He was multilingual, poetic, musical, and could play the piano with brilliance. For all this, and above all for his humour and friendship, he will be remembered.

He is survived by his wife, three children and nine grandchildren.

Francis Seton (Franz Szedo), economist, born January 29 1920; died January 7 2002.

Source:  The Guardian, March 21, 2002.

___________________

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE: Alexander Erlich

Alexander Erlich was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, in 1912. In 1918, shortly after the outbreak of the Bolshevik Revolution, his family immigrated to Poland where his father, Henryk, became a leader of the Jewish Labor Fund. After the execution of his father in 1941, Erlich and his family fled to the United States. Influenced by his father’s work and the political atmosphere of his youth, Erlich began his study of economics at Friedrich-Wilhelm University in Berlin and the Free Polish University in Warsaw. He completed these studies after moving to the US, earning his PhD from the New School for Social Research in New York City in 1953. His doctoral dissertation, The Soviet Industrialization Controversy, was the basis for his best known work, The Soviet Industrial Debate, 1924-1928, published in 1960. His lifelong devotion to the study of Soviet economic conditions and policies found Erlich a home at Columbia University. Beginning as a visiting lecturer in 1955, he received a tenured position as professor in 1959. He retired in 1981 only to return as a part-time lecturer and professor at Columbia University and Barnard College in 1982. Erlich died of a heart attack in January 1985 at the age of 72.

Source: Columbia University Archival Collections. Alexander Erlich papers, 1953-1985.

___________________

Obituary of Eugène Zaleski (1918-2001)

Slavic Review 61, no. 3 (Fall 2002), 681-682.

___________________

Arcadius Kahan (1920-1982)

After his arrival in the United States he earned a Masters in 1954 and Ph.D. in 1958 in Economics from Rutgers University.

He joined the Economics faculty at the University of Chicago in 1955. As a member of the Economics Department at the University of Chicago, Kahan straddled a fine line between the principles which he brought from his socialist youth and the neoclassical school of economic thought associated with the Department. He won the confidence of Milton Friedman with his work on the economic effects of the persecution of Jews in 19th century Russia. Kahan concluded that this had a significant impact on Russia’s economic backwardness, particularly as compared with western Europe. He argued that this was an example of dysfunctional governmental interference in the economy, which drew on the methodology of the neoliberals in the Chicago school.

Source: Arcadius Kahan, Wikipedia.

___________________

Carbon Copy of Letter
from Friedman to Nutter

January 16, 1962

Professor G. Warren Nutter
Department of Economics
University of Virginia
Charlottesville, Virginia

Dear Warren:

There is again some talk around here of getting a Russian expert and various names have come up in the discussion. Three names that seem to stand out are Seton, Grossman, and Alex Ehrlich [sic]. I wonder if I could impose on you to send me a brief and frank note on these three people in terms of their scientific capacities in general as well as their special competence in the Russian field.

As you may know, what is involved here is part of a broader program than one that the Department alone is involved in. I have no special responsibility for this and am just writing as a member of the Department.

I do not know what has happened with respect to Kahan. I know that the College here has proposed making him a permanent tenure offer. The Department while expressing concurrence in this has not been willing to make this a joint appointment. I know neither whether the appointment has been approved by central administration nor whether Kahan has accepted it. Needless to say, this is all highly confidential.

Trust things are looking up for the Center. Best regard and wishes.

Sincerely yours,

Milton Friedman

MF:mp

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

Nutter’s Reply to Friedman

University of Virginia
James Wilson Department of Economics
University Station
Charlottesville, Virginia

January 24, 1962

Professor Milton Friedman
Department of Economics
University of Chicago
Chicago 37, Illinois

Dear Milton:

I am glad to give my opinion on Seton, Grossman, and Erlich if it can be of help in the current deliberations of your department. I can indicate at the start that I consider Grossman to be the best of the three alternatives for reasons that will emerge from my comments.

I know Seton from his work, from listening to papers he read in England, and from various personal contacts with him. Seton writes with a lucid and interesting style as so many scholars trained in England do, but as is so often also the case the content does not measure up to the form. Most of his work, both analytical and empirical, seems to me to be quite superficial. As far as I know, he has not yet done a single piece of really serious research on an important problem. His one effort in the field of measuring industrial production has, in my opinion, received far mor attention than it deserves, aside from being wrong and misleading. In brief, I believe Seton still has to prove himself an original scholar of depth.

This cannot be said of Alex Erlich, whose work I know firsthand from his participation in the early stages in the N.B.E.R. project. Erlich has done some very creditable research, resulting in one book (his doctoral dissertation) and joint authorship of several other research papers of varying length. His major weakness on the empirical side is that he is somewhat slow and lazy, requiring continuous prodding to get work done. It is for this reason that most of his work has been done under somebody’s supervision. He has considerable difficulty in expressing himself orally, speaking very slowly and haltingly, but this does not carry over at all into his written work, which is generally clear and precise. Finally, he is weak and poorly trained on the theoretical side.

Grossman is clearly the most able economist in this group, and in addition he expresses himself extremely well. If anything, like Seton, he writes too well, being tempted to substitute pen and paper for thorough research. The only solid piece of research that he has done so far is the book that he wrote for us in the N.B.E.R. project. At the same time, he must be recognized as an able technician, thoroughly versed in economic theory and capable of making important contributions in the field of Soviet studies. The only problem to date is that he has not fully lived up to promise.

I should say that all three men are highly knowledgeable as far as detailed workings of the Soviet system are concerned, Erlich and Grossman probably more so than Seton. They are all three very agreeable and cooperative persons and would fit in well with any group of first-rate economists.

There is one person, less well known that the three you are considering but in my opinion very able, whom you should consider for this position. He is Eugene Zaleski, a Pole by birth but now a French citizen. While not an outstanding theoretical economist, he is the soundest person I know among Soviet specialists in interpretations of the working of the Soviet system. He is currently working on a long-range project on the Soviet planning mechanism and the relation between plan and outcome, the first volume of his work being scheduled to appear shortly. Unfortunately, he has been caught up in the French research apparatus with all the inevitable handicaps on successful individual research. Given the right opportunity, I feel that Zaleski could develop into an outstanding scholar in the field of Soviet studies. Among other things, he has a very quick and receptive mind, and he is a pleasure to work with.

I hope these brief comments will be of some use to you. To repeat, I think Grossman would be the best bet of the three persons you mentioned.

As to the Center, things are definitely looking up. We have already received since the conference $25,000 in essentially unrestricted grants, and the Lilly Endowment was most cordial and receptive to my pleadings and probably will contribute something.

Cordially,
[signed] Warren
G. Warren Nutter

GWN:jas

 

Source: The Hoover Institution Archives. Papers of Milton Friedman, Box 31, Folder 16 “Nutter, G. Warren.”

Image Source:  Gregory Grossman, Authority on Soviet Economy, Gregory Grossman, Passes Away, UC Berkeley News. August 25, 2014.

Categories
Chicago Economists

Chicago. Paul Douglas pleads for a staff position for Arnold Tolles, 1928

 

Newman Arnold Tolles (1903-1973) has already been included in our series “Meet an economics Ph.D. alumnus/a” as a 1932 Chicago Ph.D. From my research in the University of Chicago archives, I came across the following letter of recommendation written by Paul Douglas on Tolles’ behalf that I now add to the collection of artifacts.

Fun Fact: Virginius Frank Coe mentioned in the memo by Douglas below later attained infamy as “a United States government official who was identified by Soviet defectors Elizabeth Bentley and Whittaker Chambers as being an underground member of the Communist Party and as belonging to the Soviet spy group known as the Silvermaster ring.” [See: Wikipedia, “Virginius Frank Coe”]

________________________

The University of Chicago
The School of Commerce and Administration

May 14, 1928

Memorandum to: L.C. Marshall
From: Paul H. Douglas

Subject: TOLLES

I have gathered that you are not certain whether Tolles should be retained, and I am writing to express my very deep hope that we may keep him on our staff. I certainly feel that Tolles is one of the most promising youngsters in the country. He and Virginius Coe have been the two best undergraduates whom I have ever had. Tolles has benefited enormously by his work at Harvard and London. He was, as you know, the best man in his class at Harvard and made a very real impression on Taussig and Allyn Young. He also did good work at London from all that I can learn. He has been doing most interesting research work with me this year, testing the question as to whether the system of unemployment insurance in England so maintains wage rates as to throw such a heavy burden on industry that it cannot recover. The question is the basic one as to whether unemployment insurance does not in itself increase unemployment. This has involved in [sic] a series of very interesting detailed studies. We are planning a joint reply to Pigou in the autumn and in preparation of this, Tolles has computed for it an index of production for Great Britain, based on the British census of production for 1907-1923. He has used Fisher’s ideal formula and has made some very interesting contributions to statistics as well as to the detailed subject itself. I look to see Tolles’ articles when they appear next year make a real stir and I think in four or five years he will be recognized as one of the solid men in his field. He is just the sort of man I should like to see retained on the staff, and I hope very much that it may be possible to do so. Some time if you like I should like to talk fairly intimately on the possibility of making a place for him.

[signed]
P H Douglas

Source:  University of Chicago Archives. Department of Economics Records. Box 6, Folder 6.

Image Source:  Senior picture of Newman Arnold Tolles from University of Chicago, Cap and Gown 1924, p. 139.

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Economics Programs Economists Harvard Radical

Harvard. Leontief and Galbraith report on conflict within department, 1972

In December 1972 the conflict about opening the Harvard economics faculty to include “broader and necessarily ‘softer’ questions of social structure, social functions and social reform” exploded beyond the confines of the economics department. This post provides two letters/memos sent to Harvard’s President Derek C. Bok written by Wassily Leontief and John Kenneth Galbraith, respectively, that supported curriculum reform involving the continued appointments of young radical economists. It would appear from Leontief’s account that a relatively silent majority of the younger mathematical economists in the department was able to block the recommendation of their more senior colleagues to expand course offerings to meet the demand of students for courses outside the confines of “orthodox technical economics”…a revolution that devoured its own parents.

_____________________

Background tip:

Talk presented by Tom Weisskopf “The Origins and Evolution of Radical Political Economics” (September 25, 2012).

_____________________

Photocopy Leontief to Harvard President Derek C. Bok

HARVARD UNIVERSITY

Wassily Leontief
Professor of Economics

309 Littauer
Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138
(617) 495-2118

December 21, 1972

Mr. Derek Bok
President
Harvard University
Massachusetts Hall 1

Dear Derek:

I am writing in response to your request for my views on the conflict that for some time has been straining the relationships within the Executive Committee of our Department on the one hand and Executive Committee and the graduate student body on the other. It developed along rather familiar lines and finally broke into the open.

The controversy, as I see it, centers on the question whether the Department of Economics should widen the range of its intellectual concerns and of its teaching responsibilities beyond the narrowly delineated field of orthodox technical economics by inclusion of broader and necessarily “softer” questions of social structure, social functions and social reform: questions raised for example in the old Marxist and the new radical economics.

While a minority in the Executive Committee favors a move in this direction, arguing that it would reflect the natural growth and extension of our discipline, the majority opposes it on the grounds that this would amount to politicalization of the field and lowering of intellectual standards. Somewhat paradoxically, the minority favoring a change comprises mostly senior members of the Department while the core of the majority group consists of the younger mathematical economists. Needless to say, the students are on the side of the minority. While the minority did most of the talking, the majority was content with voting.

Last spring a mixed faculty-student committee appointed by the Chairman proposed a modest curriculum reform that would reflect the interest in the new subjects. After a stiff fight, the report was first accepted, then watered down, and finally scuttled.

The division within the Department was clearly reflected in a series of votes on new appointments. Three years ago, the junior staff contained four radical economists: Herb Gintis, Tom Weisskopf, Art MacEwan and Sam Bowles. All were let go. Gintis is now lecturer in the Department of Education, Tom Weisskopf was avidly acquired by the Department of Economics of the University of Michigan, Sam Bowles failed a week ago to receive a permanent appointment, and Art MacEwan was denied this week a second three-year appointment. The slate is clear except for Steve Marglin, who was elevated to full professorship before his interests had shifted into the field of institutional analysis and criticism.

Adverse votes are invariably based on lack of intellectual distinction and creditable contributions to knowledge by the candidate; this notwithstanding the fact that several permanent slots were filled in the past by scholars of admittedly indifferent stature on the ground that a vacancy had to be filled in some narrowly defined specialized field.

Reluctantly the minority on the Executive Committee came to the conclusion that its advice and counsel will be disregarded in the future as it was in the past; that crucial decisions will be made on the basis of an often silent, but invariably effective majority vote. The rising tension finally led to acrimonious exchanges at the last meeting of the Executive Committee.

The obvious frustration of the graduate students finds its expression in sharp verbiage used by the radical minority and sullen indifference and cynicism among the rest. I hardly need to add that the students are quite aware of the division within the Executive Committee.

This is where we stand now. At best one could observe that as a whole the senior teaching staff of the Economics Department is much less effective than one could have expected it to be considering the distinction of its individual members. At worst, the continuation of the conflict might result in resignations and damage all around.

After you called me up, Jim Duesenberry asked several members of the Department to serve on a committee that would review the intellectual problems involved and try to find some way out. The proposed composition of the committee (Arrow, Bergson, Dorfman, Galbraith and me) assures that its report will give full weight to the minority point of view.

I myself feel that nothing short of a clear-cut reversal in the present trend can prevent further deterioration of the situation. Needless to say, I will do all I can to bring about a constructive and peaceable solution of the difficult problems we are facing. Some counsel and some help from you and John [probably economist John T. Dunlop who was serving as Dean] most likely will be needed. Let me add that some of my colleagues who up to now held an opposing point of view have offered their full cooperation.

I have dictated this letter but had no time to proofread it since Estelle and I are leaving for London two hours from now. In case of need, please do not hesitate to call me. My secretary, Mary Conley, will know all the time where I can be reached.

With best wishes from Estelle and me to Sissele and you.

Sincerely,
[signed]
Wassily Leontief

WL:mc

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

Carbon copy Galbraith to Harvard President Derek C. Bok

December 22, 1972

President Derek C. Bok
Massachusetts Hall

Dear Derek:

This I hope will diminish the concern you may have had following my telephone call of the other evening. My personal anger, as usual, has been difficult to sustain although I surely intend to stay with this problem until things are put right. I’ve met with the young radicals and I think they are persuaded that Toronto is not a good forum and that neither Arrow nor I is the man they most want to embarrass. John has operated with usual skill and panache. He accepts the idea of a commission to consider and act before things get worse, and I am drafting up the terms of reference for discussion with Jim Duesenberry. I’ve gone over the rough outlines with Wassily. With considerable approval, I’ve raised the question of conflict of interest with external corporate enterprises. I enclose a document on that subject.

In any case, a Merry Christmas.

Yours faithfully,

John Kenneth Galbraith

JKG:kv

Enclosure

 

Source: John F. Kennedy Presidential Library. John Kenneth Galbraith Personal Papers. Series 5. Harvard University File, 1949-1990. Box 526. Folder “Harvard Dept. of Economics, Discussion of appointments, outside interests and reorganization, 1972-1973 (1 of 2)”.

Image Source: Wassily Leontief from Harvard Class Album 1957.

Categories
Economists Exam Questions Johns Hopkins

Johns Hopkins. Career of economics Ph.D. alumnus (plus doctoral exams), George H. Evans, 1925

 

This post began as a straightforward transcription of the final Ph.D. examinations of George Heberton Evans, Jr. who was to stay on at Johns Hopkins, becoming professor of political economy, then long serving chairman of the department (1942-1960), and finally serving as Dean of the Faculty of Philosophy (1959-1966).  But as I was typing the questions below, I had the feeling that I had seen these questions before and began to fear that maybe I was senselessly duplicating a previous post at Economics in the Rear-view Mirror. 

It turns out that the Johns Hopkins Department of Political Economy engaged in a fairly vigorous recycling of final Ph.D. examination questions over the years. I remember wondering what sense there was in having written final doctoral examinations in May for a degree to be awarded in June, literally weeks away. This practice of posing virtually identical examination questions would seem to indicate that the department did not regard the examinations as much more that an academic formality.

Cf. the very high correspondence of questions with those of the 1933 examinations. Incidentally the economic theory questions below are completely identical to those of the May 19, 1927 exam and in the applied economics questions below six of the questions are the same as the May 21, 1927 exam.

_______________________

Vital dates, George Heberton Evans, Jr.

Born January 20, 1900 and died October 12, 1979 in Baltimore, Maryland.

_______________________

Awarded the Ph.D. at the 1925 Commencement
of Johns Hopkins University

George Heberton Evans, Jr., of Maryland, A.B. Johns Hopkins University 1920. Political Economy, Political Science, Psychology

Dissertation Title: Apartment Rents in Baltimore, January 1917 Through October 1923.

Source: Johns Hopkins University, Conferring of Degrees at the Close of the Forty-Ninth Academic Year (June 9, 1925), p. 8.

_______________________

AEA 1969 Biographical Listing

Evans, George Heberton, Jr., academic; b. Baltimore, Md., 1900; A.B., Johns Hopkins U., 1920, Ph.D., 1925. DOC DIS. Apartment Rents in Baltimore January 1917 through October 1923, 1925. FIELDS 1bc, 7a, 6b. PUB. Business Incorporations in the United States, 1800-1943, 1948; Principles of Investment, 1940; British Corporation Finance, 1775-1850: A Study of Preference Shares, 1936. RES. History of American Business Corporations, 1800-1950. Prof. political economy, Johns Hopkin U. since 1942, dean, Faculty of Philosophy, 1959-66. ADDRESS Political Economy Dept., Johns Hopkins U., Gilman Hall 411, Charles and 34th Sts., Baltimore, MD 21218.

Source: American Economic Review, Vol. 59, No. 6. 1969 Handbook of the American Economic Association (January, 1970), p. 127.

_______________________

G.H. EVANS, JR.
May 21, 1925

EXAMINATION IN POLITICAL ECONOMY AS A PRINCIPAL SUBJECT
(Principles of Political Economy)

  1. What is the relation of Political Economy to economic history in scope and method of investigation?
  2. What important economic doctrines had been clearly formulated prior to the year 1600? [sic, in several other exams with nearly identical content “1800” so probably “1800” is correct]
  3. Discuss the personal contacts and doctrinal contrasts of Quesnay and Adam Smith.
  4. Contrast the theories of distribution formulated by (a) Adam Smith, (b) David Ricardo, (c) Alfred Marshall.
  5. What has been the development of the principle of population since the time of Malthus?
  6. Discuss the origin and development of the wage fund theory.
  7. What have been the most important contributions of the Austrian economists?
  8. What scientific theory of wages have your own studies of wage conditions tended to confirm?
  9. What assignable limit is there to the size of the modern industrial unit?
  10. What would be the theoretical effects of a horizontal increase of ten per cent in general wages upon the several classes of society?

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

G.H. EVANS, JR.
May 22, 1925

EXAMINATION IN POLITICAL ECONOMY AS A PRINCIPAL SUBJECT
(Applied Economics)

  1. What principles should govern the governmental commission in the fixture of railway rates?
  2. Outline the history of (a) metallic and (b) paper money in the United States since the adoption of the federal constitution.
  3. Discuss the history, the defects and the incidence of the General Property Tax.
  4. State and criticize the Quantity Theory of Money.
  5. On what grounds can the sale of protected manufactures in foreign markets at less than domestic prices be justified?
  6. Discuss modern industrial combinations in the light of an assignable limit to the growth in the size of the modern industrial unit.
  7. Trace the progress of the U.S. Tariff since the Civil War.
  8. State the theory of large numbers and explain the relation of the theory to the logic of chance.
  9. Compare the administrative organization of the Bank of France and the Reichsbank.
  10. What is the relation of labor legislation to economic organization? What are the natural limits of labor legislation?

Source: Johns Hopkins University. Eisenhower Library, Ferdinand Hamburger, Jr. Archives, Department of Political Economy. Series 6. Box 3/1, “Graduate Exams 1903-1932.”

Image Source: Johns Hopkins University, Sheridan Libraries, Graphic and Pictorial Collection. George Heberton Evans at approximately 40 years old.

 

Categories
Berkeley Economists Gender

Berkeley. Economics Ph.D. Alumna, Marjorie Ruth Clark, 1929.

 

Today’s post is another in the series “Meet an Economics Ph.D. alumna”. Marjorie Ruth Clark’s professional career took her from Berkeley (undergraduate and graduate education) to Nebraska (Home Economics) to Washington, D.C. (Departments of Agriculture and Labor) with about a fifteen year marriage/family “break” in between. 

______________________

Dates

Born 18 December, 1899 in Eureka, Walla Walla, Washington.

Returned from France in June 1927.

University of California (Berkeley) Ph.D. 1929: Thesis “French syndicalism (1910-1927).

Source: University of California Graduate Division. Record of Theses Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the University of California, 1926 -1931. Supplement to Record for 1885-1926 (University of California, 1932),p. 23.

1936: Assistant director of the Labor Relations Division of the Resettlement Administration, Washington, D.C.  “She has been associate research professor of economics at the University of Nebraska, and a member of the Research Staff of the American Federation of Labor.”

Married Max Allen Egloff  12 March 1941  in Washington, D.C.

1959: Bureau of Labor Statistics, Office of Assistant Commissioner, Publications and Program Planning. Office of Publications, Chief of the Special Publications Branch. Salary $9,890.

Source: United States Civil Service Commission. Official Register of the United States, 1959.

Died 16 March 1988 in Baltimore, Md. (Burial in Arlington National Cemetery)

______________________

From newspaper reports in Nebraska

“Saturday, Dec. 22 saw the marriage of Miss Marjorie Ruth Clark to William John Hiller.” [Note: I have not found any other reference to this, perhaps annulled?]

Source: Nebraska State Journal (Lincoln Nebraska) 27 Jan 1929, p. 21.

 

Dr. Marjorie Ruth Clark of the agricultural college. Report of her survey of 180 households raising chickens. 197 women started, less than a score have dropped out. “Dr. Clark pays each of the recorders $1 a month”.

Source: The Lincoln Star (Lincoln, Nebraska) 7 November 1929, p. 22.

 

Miss Marjorie Ruth Clark associate professor in home economics research at Nebraska university, spent August 1930 studying organized labor and observing labor conditions in Mexico. Most work done in Mexico City in the government libraries.

Source: The Lincoln Star (Lincoln, Nebraska) 28 Sep 1930, p. 4.

 

Marjorie Ruth Clark Ph.D., associate professor of economics at the University of Nebraska, was awarded one of the research fellowships for 1931 by the Social Science Research Council.

Source: The Lincoln Star (Lincoln, Nebraska) 8 March 1931, p. 5.

 

Marjorie Ruth Clark, assistant [sic] professor of home economics at the university of Nebraska. Received on of thirty research fellowships by the Social Science Research council. Her fellowship extended for four months. “received her degree as doctor of philosophy in California and came to the University of Nebraska in 1928. Her home is at 1144 So. 11th.”

Source: The Nebraska State Journal (Lincoln, Nebraska) 10 Apr. 1932, p. 12.

 

Granted four months leave of absence by the University of Nebraska (home economics department). Left Sunday for Washington “where she will work with the labor advisory board for the NRA and with the A.F. of L. in assisting in the representation of labor interests at code hearings and the preparation of labor briefs in connection with the various codes.”

Source: The Lincoln Star (Lincoln, Nebraska).. 4 October 1933, p. 7.

______________________

Washington Post Obituary

MARJORIE RUTH CLARK EGLOFF
Labor Economist

Marjorie Ruth Clark Egloff, 88, a labor economist who had worked for the Department of Labor and the Department of Agriculture in Washington, died of congestive heart failure March 16 at St. Joseph Hospital in Baltimore.

Dr. Egloff was born in Walla Walla, Wash. She graduated from the University of California at Berkeley. She studied at the Sorbonne in Paris, then returned to Berkeley where she received a doctorate in labor economics.

She was on the faculty at the University of Nebraska before moving to Washington in the 1930s and joining the Department of Agriculture as a specialist on French and Mexican labor movements.

In 1940 [sic] she married Max Allen Egloff. They lived in the Caribbean during the 1940s and early 1950s, then returned to the Washington area. After the death of her husband in 1956 Dr. Egloff went to work for the Labor Department. She retired in 1965.

She wrote several books on labor movements in Mexico, France and elsewhere, and in retirement she edited yearly presidential manpower reports.

Dr. Egloff was a member of the National Press Club, the Woman’s National Democratic Club and the Westmoreland Congregational Church.

She lived in Washington before moving to Towson, Md., in 1985.

Survivors include two children, Dr. Allen C. Egloff of Arnold, Md., and Susan Egloff Efnor of Redlands, Calif., and two grandchildren.

Source: The Washington Post, March 19, 1988.

______________________

Publications

Clark, Marjorie Ruth. The British Labour Government in Contemporary Opinion. University of California, Berkeley. M.A. thesis, 1925.

______________. Syndicalism in France, 1910-1927. University of California Publications in Economics (Vol. 8, no. 1), Berkeley, 1928. Ph.D. thesis, 484 pages.

______________ and Greta Gray. Water Carried for Household Purposes on Nebraska Farms. Bulletin, University of Nebraska, Agricultural Experiment Station, 234. Lincoln: University of Nebraska College of Agriculture, 1929.

______________. A History of the French Labor Movement (1910-1928). University of California Press, 1930.

______________. French Syndicalism of the Present. Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 38 (June 1930), pp. 317-27.

Grace Margaret Morton and Marjorie Ruth Clark, “Income and Expenditures of Women Faculty Members in the University of Nebraska,” Journal of Home Economics, 1930.

______________ and Greta Gray. The Routine and Seasonal Work of Nebraska Farm Women. Bulletin, University of Nebraska, Agricultural Experiment Station, 238. Lincoln: University of Nebraska College of Agriculture, 1930.

______________. The Contribution of Nebraska Farm Women to Farm Income through Poultry and Dairy Products.  Bulletin, University of Nebraska, Agricultural Experiment Station, 258. Lincoln: University of Nebraska College of Agriculture, 1931.

______________. Organized Labor and the Family-Allowance System in France, Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 39 (August 1931), pp. 526-37.

______________. History of the French Labor Movement (1910-1928). Diritto del labor, Vol. 5 No. 1, pp. 577ff.

______________. Organized Labor in Mexico. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1934.

______________. Recent History of Labor Organization. American Academy of Political and Social Science, Annals, Vol. 184 (March 1936), pp. 161ff.

______________. Recent History of Labor Organization. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 184 (1936): 161-68.

______________, and S. Fanny Simon. The Labor Movement in America New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1938.

______________. A Look at American Labor in 1959. Monthly Labor Review, Vol. 83, No. 1 (January 1960), pp. 10-17.

______________, ed. From the Best of the Monthly Labor Review. Monthly Labor Review, Vol. 88, No. 7, pp. 787-802.

 

Image Source: Marjorie Clark, junior year picture. University of California yearbook, The 1918 Blue and Gold, p. 358. (Record of 1916-17 published by the Junior Class in 1917)

 

Categories
Chicago Economists Exam Questions

Chicago. Economic Price Theory Prelim Exam taken by Zvi Griliches. Winter quarter 1955.

 

With this post Economics in the Rear-view Mirror adds two more preliminary exams from the University of Chicago (here, from the Winter Quarter of 1955) to its growing collection of artifacts that provide us a digital record of economics education through the years. The original document was found in Milton Friedman’s files which provide us the additional information of the names of the examination committee as well as names, together with Friedman’s own test scores and his answers to the True-False questions. Of interest to note: Zvi Griliches not only attained the greatest number of points awarded by Friedman (120 points of 185 possible points), but he finished far ahead of the rest of the pack–the second highest exam only received 86 points which incidentally was more than enough to clear this PhD requirement. The Committee failed two students and four students passed the exam for the M.A. degree. Milton Friedman appears to have been the toughest grader of the three members of the Committee.

_____________________________________

Economic Theory Examination Committee:
M. Friedman, chairman; F. H. Knight; D. G. Johnson.

There were 13 examinees for Economic Theory I. These included Zvi Griliches (who incidentally blew the top off the curve according to Friedman’s grades) and Walter Oi.

Griliches Interview with Alan Krueger and Timothy Taylor from June 21, 1999.
Memorial blogpost for Walter Oi by Steve Landsburg on December 26, 2013

There were 2 examinees for Economic Theory II.

_____________________________________

Previously transcribed and posted Preliminary and Field Exams
from the graduate program of the University of Chicago

Economic Theory I and II. Summer 1949
Economic Theory I and II. Summer 1951
Economic Theory I and II. Summer 1952
Economic Theory I. Summer 1955
Economic Theory I and II. Winter 1955
Money and Banking. Summer 1956
Economic Theory. Winter 1957
Money and Banking. Summer 1959
Economic Theory (Old Rules). Summer 1960
Price Theory. Winter 1964
Income, Employment and Price Level. Summer 1967
Money and Banking. Summer 1967
Price Theory. Winter 1969
Income, Employment, Price Level. Winter 1969
Money and Banking. Winter 1969
International Trade. Winter 1970
History of Economic Thought. Summer 1974
Price Theory. Summer 1975
Industrial Organization. Spring 1977
History of Economic Thought. Summer 1989

_____________________________________

Economic Theory I
Preliminary Examination
Winter, 1955
[Milton Friedman’s answers in square brackets]

Time: 4 hours.

Write your number and not your name on your examination paper. Please be brief in your replies.

  1. (30 points) Indicate whether each of the following statements is True, False, or Uncertain and justify your answer briefly.
    1. [False] Production of a commodity occurs under conditions of fixed proportions. The supply curve for A shifts to the right. It is to the advantage of the owners of A that expenditure on A shall have represented a small part of total costs.
    2. [False] A firm will not carry on production at a given level of output, if one factor exhibits increasing average returns at that output level.
    3. [appears to be False with True crossed out] When a firm is in equilibrium, the ratio of the price of a factor to the marginal physical product of the factor determines the marginal cost of production.
    4. [True or Uncertain] If the demand for output is perfectly elastic, a decline in the price of factor A will always increase the demand for factor B unless A and B are perfect substitutes (only two factors employed).
    5. [True] If the demand for output is less than perfectly elastic, a decline in the price of A may either increase or decrease the demand for factor B.
    6. [False] If a monopsonist is not a monopolist, it is possible to construct the monopsonist’s demand curve for a factor.
    7. [False] If all the factors used by a firm are paid the value of their marginal products, the sum of the payments will equal the total receipts of the firm.
    8. [False] If all factors are paid the value of their marginal products, it would not be possible to increase total real output of the economy by any change in the allocation of factors.
  2. (15 points) In an article on the British tobacco industry, the Economist remarked:
    “Since 1938 the industry has had to contend with a sixfold rise in the standard rate of tobacco duty, and a three- to fourfold increase in the average cost of its principal raw material—this includes the higher cost of dollar leaf bought since sterling devaluation. All eight duty increases have been automatically passed on to the smoker, but if duty is left out of account the increase in cigarette prices since 1938 has been no more than about 85 per cent.”
    What do you take “passed on” to mean in this sentence? What is its relation to the economic concept of “incidence”? What inference, if any, would you draw about the latter?
  3. (20 points) Assuming that a monopolist always fixes price so as to maximize profits, can the price of a commodity ever be lower when it is monopolized than when it is competitively produced?
  4. (30 points) Trace the development of the theory of consumer choice. Include in your answer an explanation of (a) the meaning attached by Smith to “effectual demand”, (b) the role assigned by Ricardo to demand in determining prices; (c) Jevons “the final degree of utility determines price”; (d) the contribution of Edgeworth, Fisher, and Pareto.
  5. (20 points) It is widely asserted that workers have less “bargaining power” than employers because there are more workers than employers. Discuss.
  6. (25 points) Discuss the following concepts (a) the “postponement” of consumption said to be involved in saving and investment, (b) “abstinence”, (c) “time preference”, (d) the “marginal efficiency of investment”, (e) the “marginal efficiency of capital”.
  7. (45 points) For each of the following methods of financing radio and television programs, indicate how the resulting structure of programs differs from the optimum: and under what conditions, if any, it would be an optimum. In interpreting “optimum”, assume that the only consideration is direct private benefit from the programs; neglect distributional effects, i.e., treat it as a purely allocative problem; and assume that there are no such public issues involved as “education” or “indoctrination”. On the technical side, assume throughout that there are a narrowly limited total number of frequencies or channels available in any one area. Make your answer as definite as possible in terms of the kind of people whose tastes are or are not catered to appropriately, the kinds of programs that are too numerous or too sparse, etc. In answering the question, assume throughout that it is possible without cost to know exactly the number and kind of people who listen to each program.
    1. The existing U.S. method of selling time to advertisers.
    2. Imposition of an annual license tax or fee on each set; auctioning off of time to private program producers; compensation of these producers by giving to each a share of the total tax collection equal to the fraction of total listener time devoted to his programs. Assume that advertising is forbidden.
    3. Some mechanical method whereby a subscriber can receive a particular program only if he pays through a coin-box arrangement for that particular program. The programs are to be provided by private producers who receive the payments, who buy time on the stations, as in the preceding case, and who can determine the amount charged for the programs they produce. Once again, assume that advertising is forbidden.

 

 

ECONOMIC THEORY II
Preliminary Examination
WINTER 1955

Time: 2½ hours.

Note: Write only your number, not your name, on your examination paper.

Answer question 1, and two others.

 

  1. Using the Table below, explain the variations in the real income, the price level, the velocity of circulation, the government and private investment, the rate of unemployment, the ratio of savings to income, and whatever else you consider significant.

TABLE

The following figures are based on the Economic Report to the President, 1955.
Note: (a) All figures except those for item A are expressed as percentages of the corresponding 1937 figure; (b) item F is defined to be equal to “gross private domestic investment” plus “government purchase of goods and services” plus“net foreign investment”, all in 1947 prices.

 1929

1933

 1937 1941 1945 1949

1953
A. Unemployment as percentage of civilian labor force

3.2

 24.9 14.3 9.9 1.9 5.0

2.5
B. Civilian employment 103

84

 100 109 114 127

134
C. Demand deposits and currency (non-deflated) 89

67

 100 164 346 376

441
D. National income (non-deflated) 119

55

 100 142 246 294

414
E. Consumer price index 119

90

 100 102 125 166

186
F. Gross national product less consumption (in 1947 prices) 100

41

 100 160 281 165

262
G.  D/C 134

82

 100 87 71 78

94
H.  D/E 100

61

 100 139 197 178

222
I.  H/B 97

72

 100 128 172 140

166
J.  F/H 100

67

 100 115 146 93

118
  1. It is often said that the U.S. economy is less likely to suffer a severe depression today than it was twenty or thirty years ago. List and discuss major changes which have taken place which bear on this statement.
  2. Suppose the tax on capital income (dividends, interest) is increased. What will be the effect on the demand for cash if the tax proceeds are spent on: (a) aid to foreign countries; (b) federal contribution to medical aid in the United States.
  3. In the Confederate States, the ratio of bank reserves to deposits grew rapidly during 1862-64. This ratio also grew in the period 1933-37 in the Unites States. Explain these phenomena. Evaluate the action taken by the Governors of the Federal Reserve Board in 1936 and 1937, when they raised the required minimum reserve ratio.
  4. The stock of money (currency and demand deposits) per capita was about 800 dollars in June 1953 as against about 100 dollars in June 1910. Explain the increase.

Source: Hoover Institution Archives. Milton Friedman Papers. Box 76. Folder 2 “University of Chicago, Economic Theory”.

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

Categories
Chicago Columbia Economists

Columbia. George Stigler reviews the department of economics, 1978

 

Somewhere between bibliometric departmental rankings and formal visiting committees lie the relatively casual responses to requests for outside opinions solicited by university administrators. In this post George Stigler provides his brief assessment of where the Columbia economics department was at the end of 1978 and what could be done to improve its relative standing.

Stigler’s message was essentially to add “More Cowbell“, i.e. outside hires of senior heavy-weights as opposed to the selection and cultivation of internal candidates for promotion.

As a former active “area expert” on the GDR economy, I am delighted to have found this explicit obiter dicta that expresses Stigler’s contempt for regional studies. 

“I also approve of [the Columbia economics department’s] conscious policy of withdrawing from the quite excessive number of special geographical area commitments into which Columbia entered.” 

Also worth noting is that Edmund Phelp’s “departure” from Columbia  lasted only 1978-79. Because of a salary dispute, Phelps left Columbia for New York University. Perhaps Stigler’s letter helped warm the Columbia administration to accepting Phelp’s terms (which they did and Edmund Phelps indeed returned the next year).

_________________________

Stigler’s View of Columbia from Chicago

December 8, 1978

Professors Louis Henkin and Steven Marcus
Columbia University
211 Low Memorial Library
New York, New York 10027

Dear Professors Henkin and Marcus:

Let me attempt to reply to your inquiries about the Department of Economics.

  1. The department was probably rated too low in 1969, and I think it is about as strong today relative to other universities, yielding a ranking around 9th or 10th. The department has suffered 2 major losses in the past decade or so (Becker and Phelps) but made a number of excellent appointments of younger people and one almost major appointment (Mundell, who dominated international trade theory in the 1960’s but has apparently stopped working). The department lacks flashy, controversial figures and this may account for its unduly low ratings. But the fact is that it is a good department.
  2. I would not quarrel with its size or general balance. I also approve of its conscious policy of withdrawing from the quite excessive number of special geographical area commitments into which Columbia entered.
  3. The department is especially strong in international trade. I consider it seriously weak in the basic fields of microeconomics and industrial organization, even though Lancaster is very good,—I would consider this its top need. There is some weakness in macroeconomics: Cagan is no longer a major figure, and Phelps’ departure emphasizes the weakness in the area. Mincer is superb in labor economics.
  4. There is strength in the intermediate levels, with good appointments such as Taylor and Calvo and Rodriguez. I do not know many of the assistant professors, and have only a mild suspicion that they are mostly not first class.

On reflection, in the last decade the department has not made a single appointment (except possibly Dhrymes and still more uncertainly Mundell) who would be considered a catch by the other major economics departments. While Harvard was getting Jorgenson and Griliches and Arrow, and Chicago was getting Becker and Lucas and Rosen, Columbia was making good junior appointments. I believe that it is a rule that a major department will make most of its senior appointments from outside, not by promotion. If I am right, the department will not rise in relative standing until it is ready and able to draw in major scholars at the height of their productive careers. It now contains major scholars such as Vickrey and Mincer—will it be able to replace them?

Sincerely,

George J. Stigler

GJS:ip

 

Source:  University of Chicago Archives. George Stigler Papers, Box 3. Folder “U of C, ECON./MISCELLANEOUS”.

Image Source: George J. Stigler, University of Chicago Photographic Archive, apf1-13366, Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library.

Categories
Economists

CUNY, Queens College. Reviewing Minsky on Keynesian Economics, Abba Lerner, 1977

 

This post is in the spirit of “restoring the director’s cut” for a commercial film, except for a book review. Abba Lerner was given only two pages to review Hyman Minsky’s 1975 book John Maynard Keynes in the popular economics magazine Challenge. Lerner identified Minsky’s value-added to the Keynesian tradition of macroeconomics with the model of “how optimisim leads to a fragility of the financial economic structure through the accumulation of enormous ratios of debt to equity financing [and how] the ‘double risk’ of borrowers and lenders amplifies movement in both directions.” Lerner’s basic criticism of the “intractable instability” thesis of Minsky is that Lerner believes “an intelligent Keynesian monetary and fiscal policy would […] be able to prevent the normal myriad disturbances throughout the economy from developing into general expansions or contractions large enough to start up Minsky’s intractable oscillations.” [I’ve taken the liberty to drop Lerner’s double negative in the interest of simplicity of expression].

It turns out that Lerner had a further laundry list of objections and quibbles that I transcribe below.

Review of John Maynard Keynes by Hyman P. Minsky. New York: Columbia University Press, 1975.  Challenge, May-June 1976, pp. 69-70.

At the time of publication of the review, Abba Lerner was Distinguished Professor of Economics at Queens College, City University of New York.

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Lerner’s Critical Laundry List

The following is a list of items which I had to omit from my review of Minsky’s “John Maynard Keynes” to keep it within the limits demanded by Challenge.

  1. The misunderstanding of user cost as if it were equivalent to the expected future return on capital or in some uses to the mark up over variable cost.
  2. The misunderstanding of Keynes’ repudiation of Viner’s argument in 1937 Journal of Political Economy where Keynes was not repudiating the logic of the neo-classical “synthesis” but rather was objecting to Viner’s confusion about “voiding” in particular Viner’s claiming that voiding could not be very important because there were no great changes in the quantity of money in existence. Keynes point was that it showed itself not in changes in the quantity of money, but in changes in the price of money for the rate of interest.
  3. Minsky’s toying with the Cambridge post-Keynesian tautologies. Minsky used these under the title of “Budget Constraints.”
  4. To object to his calling the marginal efficiency schedule a caricature. What is a caricature? is to suppose as Minsky does that this goes suppose not to move [sic].
  5. To point out that there is also uncertainty about the current demand and that there is essential part in explaining the setting of a price with a markup up in a society where the price is in about [sic, above?] the marginal cost which is why there exists the profession of salesmanship.
  6. A possible confusion between marginal user cost and average user cost
  7. A discussion of the relevance or irrelevance of the “joylessness” of American affluence.
  8. A discussion of what is meant by debt deflation sometimes it seems to be the argument that this is necessary for the health of the economy, and other times it seems to be merely pointing out that we have a depression in which some firms go broke. In this way some of the debts disappear. There is possible also a suggestion that the damage done by the accumulating debts could be washed away by inflation.
  9. The carrying over of the Cambridge post-Keynesian tautologies in the form of budget restraints to what becomes a repetition of the ancient tautologies of MV=PT especially where he uses delta M as being the cause of a change in income where delta M Keynes describes as being due either to a change in the quantity of money or to a change in the velocity of circulation. This becomes especially tautological in which it changes in [illegible] may changes in M or V.[sic]
  10. In reference to Keynes’ occasional stress on instability of the boom carrying in itself the seeds of its own destruction taken by Minsky as being a universal truth where as I understand it only as describing what happens in the absence of a policy for regulating the level of economic activity.
  11. In connection with the tautologies the use of the [a blank here] in places where they are not necessary at all when what he is proving is the same as the Robinson definition in which an excess of investment [over?] saving is not the cause or even the result of a change in income but merely another way of saying that there is or has been or will be a change in income. The result is [the difference?] between income [of the current?] period of the income of the next period and there is no meaning left to the distinguishing of the one [from the other?].
  12. Some comment on his declaration that “the fundamental unemployment is the unemployment of capital assets”
  13. The emphasis on the construction unions has been the moving element in causing stagflation. i.e. inflation in times of depression. This confuses the causes of inflation with the ideal of monopoly. A monopoly can raise a price or a wage relative to other prices and wages. It could conceivably be the beginning of an upward movement of prices when other prices and wages tried to keep up with an increase originally started by a monopoly but this is important only in the beginning. The further increases in the monopoly (construction workers) is now in the course of the progress of exactly the same kind as of the competitive wages which tried to keep up with the construction wages.

This is the end of my list of items omitted in my reviews of Minsky’s “John Maynard Keynes”.:

Abba P. Lerner
February 26, 1967 [sic, should be 1977].

Source: U. S. Library of Congress, Manuscript Division. The Papers of Abba P. Lerner. Box 15, Folder 4 “Minsky, Hyman P. 1972-76”.

Image Sources:  Hyman P. Minsky page at the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College. Abba Ptachya Lerner chapter, web edition, in Biographical Memoirs, vol. 64, p. 208, The National Academies Press, 1994.

Categories
Economists Gender Home Economics Johns Hopkins Vassar

Johns Hopkins University. Economics Ph.D. Alumna, social economist/home economist, Helen Potter, 1942

 

Looking for examination artifacts to transcribe, I went through my files for the Johns Hopkins University Department of Political Economy and decided (arbitrarily) to sample from the 1941-42 academic year’s graduate examinations. The exams in the folder were tailored as exit exams for those candidates for the PhD  who had completed dissertations. The name of the PhD candidate for two of the exams (transcribed in the next post) was Helen Potter. I figured this was serendipity begging for an addition to the Meet-an-economics-PhD-alumna/us gallery. And so the hunt was on to find out what ever became of Helen Potter.

While I have not been able to double-check every academic claim listed in the materials included below, in particular confirmation of degrees from New York University and Purdue (perhaps honorary), the main stations of Helen Potter’s professional career can indeed be verified. One may presume her 1969 AEA biographical listing would have included an assistant professorship at Johns Hopkins, if she ever had one (It doesn’t! But her Lafayette obituary does.).

Helen Potter, a 1933 Vassar graduate, almost immediately became active in the newly founded Catholic Economists’ Association (later re-named Association for Social Economics) upon receiving her PhD from Johns Hopkins in 1942. Her service included decades of editorial work for the Association’s journal as well as the establishment of the Helen Potter award in 1975 which turns out to harvest most of the Google-hits found when conducting a search on her name. The Association for Social Economics can be fairly characterised as one of the older heterodox bins of economics. Ultimately Helen Potter was able to return home to Lafayette, Indiana for a professorship in Home Management and Family Economics at Purdue University.

Helen Potter’s papers at Purdue: included in the collection of her father’s (Andrey A. Potter) papers:   Personal Papers of Dr. Helen C. Potter, ca. 1920’s-1986

Fun-fact: Helen Potter’s parents were personal friends of Frank and Lillian Gilbreth of Cheaper by the Dozen fame. Frank Gilbreth, a scientific management guru, was a colleague of Helen’s father on the faculty at Purdue University.

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AEA Biographical Listing 1969

POTTER, Helen Catherine, academic; b. Manhattan, Kan., 1911; A.B., Vassar Coll., 1933; Ph.D., Johns Hopkins U., 1942. DOC. DIS. Federal Protection for the Consumer, an Economic Analysis, 1942; History of Life Insurance Companies in the U.S., 1934 [published in volume 8 of the Vassar Journal of Undergraduate Studies].  FIELDS 10b, 4a, 6b. PUB. “Consumption,” Chapt. 27, Modern Econs., 1952; Money Management and Mental Health, Jour. of Psychiatric Therapy, 1969; Guidelines for Consumer Education-one of authors of this curriculum guide line for high schools of Illinois, 1969. RES. Evaluation of Consumer Education Today—Purdue Grant from U.S. Office of Ed.; Family Financial Management—Grant Purdue Experiment Station. Asso. prof. econs., Seton Hill Coll., 1943-51; asso. specialist family econs., U. Calif., Davis, 1951-53; asso. prof. fin., Loyola U., 1953-68; prof. family econs., Purdue U. since 1968. ADDRESS 517 Russell St., W. Lafayette, IN 47906.

Source: Biographical Listings of Members, The American Economic Review, Vol. 59, No. 6, 1969 Handbook of the American Economic Association (Jan., 1970), p. 349.

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PURDUE STUDENT KILLED IN WRECK NEAR LAFAYETTE
(September 1933)

Raymond H. Hilb, 21, of Chicago, a Senior in the mechanical engineering school at Purdue, was instantly killed, and Miss Helen Potter, 18, student at the Lafayette Business College was severely injured last Friday night on the new Delphi-Lafayette paved road, 25, when an automobile in which they were riding with two other persons, was struck by another car driven by George Weckerly, of Delphi, and occupied by Glen Clark, 16-year-old high school student, and Misses Dorothy Gerbens and Mildred Bowman, Delphi high school students. According to Clark’s version of the accident the car in which Hilb was riding drove onto the highway from the Black and White filling station and barbecue, where the car had been filled with gasoline. It was hit in the rear by the car driven by Weckerly. The collision came with terrific force and Hilb was thrown to the pavement, suffering a fractured skull. In the car with Hilb and Miss Potter were Bernard Amber of Gary, and Miss Mary Mitchell, of Lafayette. Hilb was manager of the Purdue University base ball team and was very popular on the college campus.

Source: Flora Hoosier Democrat of Flora, Indiana (September 23, 1933).

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Work for the National Catholic Community Service
(& Consumers League of NY, BLS, Wells College, Western College)

“Miss Helen Potter, West Lafayette, Ind., has recently taken up her duties as Resource Secretary for the Division.” [Women’s Division of the National Catholic Community Service]…”Miss Potter has served as field worker for the Consumers League of New York, Social Economist in the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Instructor of Economics at Wells College Aurora, N.Y., and Western College, Oxford, O.”

Source: Catholic News Service, Newsfeeds, 30 June 1941.

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Ph.D. 1942, Johns Hopkins University

Helen Potter of the District of Columbia, A.B. Vassar College, 1933.

Political Economy. Thesis: “Federal protection for the consumer: an economic analysis”.

Source: Johns Hopkins University Commencement. June 2, 1942.

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Miss Potter Joins Purdue Faculty as Prof
(Feb. 21, 1968)

Miss Helen C. Potter has been appointed professor in the Department of Home Management and Family Economics at Purdue university effective Sept. 1.

Miss Potter, a native of Kansas, grew up in West Lafayette where her parents, Dean Emeritus and Mrs. A. A. Potter, still reside. She received her AB degree at Vassar College and her PhD degree from Johns Hopkins University in Political Economy.

She is professor in the Department of Finance at Loyola University in Chicago. Prior to her appointment to Loyola, Miss Potter taught at the University of California at Davis; Seton Hill College in Pennsylvania; Western College in Ohio, and Wells College in New York.

She has been an associate economist in the Bureau of Human Nutrition and Home Economics in the U.S. Department of Agriculture. She also has been associated with the Bureau of Labor Statistics in the U.S. Department of Labor.

[…]

Source:   Journal and Courier of Lafayette, Indiana (Feb. 21, 1968), p. 26.

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Prof. Helen Potter Comes Home to Teach
(Dec. 4, 1968)

[…]

Prof. Potter grew up in West Lafayette where her father — Dean Emeritus A. A. Potter — still resides. She received her AB degree at Vassar and her PhD from Johns Hopkins University in political economy.

Presently, she is a professor in the Department of Home Management and Family Economics at Purdue, but the road home for her was a long one by way of New York, California and Washington, not to mention a great portion of the Midwest where she taught or consulted in the exciting and complex world of finance.

Her professional experience includes many years as a professor of economics, at several American universities including Loyola of Chicago. In addition she has had government posts with the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Labor.

What’s a professor of finance doing in Purdue’s School of Home Economics? “It’s simple,” explains Miss Potter. “Consumer economics and the relations between business and customer are extremely important parts of our curricula.”

At the core of this education it is the individual who looks at himself to see what he wants out of life and how he can most effectively attain it. “It teaches the consumer how to make decisions for using limited resources to satisfy unlimited wants,” says the fragile looking professor who’s spent the last 15 years teaching male executives from some of the largest businesses about their dependence on society and their reciprocal responsibilities.

Equally important to Miss Potter is teaching the consumer how to use his time, energy and money to obtain a better life. “While showing him the relevance of economic principles to personal economic competence, it gives him the basic understanding which is a requisite for citizenship,” she added.

[…]

In addition to her teaching, Prof. Potter is involved in the research assignment of cataloging present consumer education in this country — a gigantic task. For her, it is tremendously exciting. “You might even say it’s a hobby,” she muses, “for all my life I’ve collected materials in consumer education.”

Looking thoroughly relaxed, surrounded by hundreds of volumes on property insurance, statistical methods and investments, the animated professor speaks warmly about her homecoming. “I’ve found life here very exciting both in the community and at the university. The inter-disciplinary activity among the schools is splendid, and I find my students to be the best I’ve ever had.”

Having taught men for so many years, Miss Potter had the notion that women would be less interested in the subject matter and that they would be weighted down with insurmountable family problems, since all are graduate students some returnees with growing children and much family responsibility. Instead, she finds them hardworking, studious and dedicated.

[…]

Source: Journal and Courier of Lafayette, Indiana (Dec. 4, 1968), p. 12.

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Helen C. Potter, 75, retired Purdue professor
Obituary (October 23, 1986)

Helen C. Potter, 75, a, retired professor of home management and family economics at Purdue University, died at 9:46 a.m. Tuesday in St. Elizabeth Hospital, where she had been a patient one week. Miss Potter, 814 S. 14th St., was the daughter of the late Professor A.A. and Eva Burtner Potter. He was a former dean of engineering at Purdue. The new engineering building was named in his honor.

Miss Potter was born March 18, 1911, in Manhattan, Kan. She received degrees from Vassar College, Johns Hopkins University, New York University and Purdue. She graduated from West Lafayette High School in 1928.

She taught and lectured at the University of California, Davis, was an associate professor and chairman of -the department of economics at Seton Hill College in Greensburg, Pa., was assistant professor at St. Francis College in Lafayette, was an instructor and chairman of the department of economics at Western College in Oxford, Ohio, was an assistant professor in the Department of political economy at Johns Hopkins University.

She also was an assistant at the College of Notre Dame in Baltimore, taught at Wells College in Aurora, N.Y., and was an associate professor in the Department of Finance at Loyola University.

Besides her teaching responsibilities, Miss Potter spent one year at the Library of Congress doing research on economics, worked for the Better Business Bureau in Pittsburgh, Pa., was an associate economist of human nutrition and home economics for the U.S. Department of Agriculture in Washington, D.C., was a statistician and director of personnel for the National Catholic Community Service, and was a junior social economist for the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor.

She organized and served as chairman of the Tippecanoe Consumers Council, worked with the League of Women Voters, National Council of Catholic Women, the American Association of University Women, and was active in the National Association for Social Economics.

Miss Potter was a member of St. Boniface Catholic Church, Mary L. Mathews Home Economics Club and the Parlor Club. She also served as deanery president of the National Council of Catholic Women in the Lafayette Diocese.

Surviving is a brother, James G. Potter of Indialantic, Fla.

Source: Journal Courier of Lafayette, Indiana (October 23, 1986), p. 22.

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A Memorial Tribute from the Association for Social Economics

Member of the first (May 1948) board of editors of the journal Review of Social Economy, associate editor up to her death October 21, 1986. Also an official portrait Helen C. Potter in included with the brief note.

Source: “IN MEMORIAM.” Review of Social Economy 45, no. 3 (1987).

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Helen C. Potter Scholarship, Johns Hopkins University

This scholarship is awarded to students in the field of political economy.

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Helen Potter Award of the the Association for Social Economics

The Helen Potter Award was created and endowed in 1975. It is presented each year to the author of the best article in the Review of Social Economy by a promising scholar of social economics. Award recipients receive a plaque and a $500 prize.

Recent recipients:

2019 Céline Bonnefond & Fatma Mabrouk
2018 C. W. M. Naastepad & Jesse M. Mulder
2017 Michael J. Roy & Michelle T. Hackett
2016 Caroline Shenaz Hossein
2015 Karen Evelyn Hauge
2014 Peter-Wim Zuidhof
2013 Ayman Reda
2012 Pavlina Tcherneva
2011 Adel Daoud
2010 Aurelie Charles
2009 Huascar F. Pessali
2008 Sebastian Berger
2007 Nuno Martins
2006 Mark Hayes
2005 Benedetta Giovanola
2004 Ellen Mutari
2003 Geoffrey E. Schneider
2002 Stephen T. Ziliak
2001 Wilfred Dolfsma
2000 John E. Murray

Source: The Association for Social Economics website.

 

Image Source:  Portrait of Helen C. Potter, A.B., Instructor of Social Science.  Western College for Women (Oxford, Ohio) Yearbook, Multifaria 1941.