Category: Economists

Categories
Economists Germany Harvard

Harvard. Thomas Nixon Carver’s German Summer of 1902.

 

Preparing the previous blog post which provides the syllabus with reading assignments for Thomas Nixon Carver’s 1902-03 Harvard course, Economics 14 “Methods of Social Reform, including Socialism, Communism, the Single Tax, etc.”, I came across the following brief description of his trip with his family to Germany during the summer of 1902. In his autobiography, Carver briefly recounted his contact with colleagues at economic seminars in Halle and Berlin.

For visitors who can read German, I strongly recommend the website “Die Geschichte der Wirtschaftswissenschafte an der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin”. During the Winter Semester of 2012, Till Düppe harnessed raw student seminar power to assemble much interesting material about people, organizational structures and the developing curriculum in the Berlin University and its East Berlin successor, the Humboldt University.

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Thomas Nixon Carver’s European Summer Vacation (1902)

I had never been abroad and had always wanted to see something of Europe. At the end of the academic year 1901-1902 we decided to make the trip. I got permission from President Eliot to leave Cambridge as soon as examinations were over without waiting for commencement. Just a few days before sailing, I came down with the grippe, as it was then

called. It looked for a day or two as though we might have to cancel the trip, but with Dr. F. W. Taylor’s help I recovered sufficiently to undertake it. I had a Ph.D. examination to conduct during the afternoon of the evening we had to start. The rest of the family called at the University for me with a hack, on the way to the South Station, where we took the train for New York, from which we sailed for Antwerp.

… We went armed with a supply of Baedeckers, American Express Company checks, and several letters of introduction….

Our destination was Germany where we planned to spend a few weeks first at Eisenach and then to Berlin….At Eisenach we stayed at a pension which had been recommended by Professor Albert Bushnell Hart. …

After a week or two I … went on to Berlin, stopping for a few days at Halle, where I visited Professor [Johannes] Conrad and attended one meeting of his seminar. There I met George Thomas, who had been at Harvard but was about to take his Ph.D. at Halle and who has since become president of the University of Utah. One afternoon I went with him to call on Professor Conrad at his home. He offered us beer or cold tea, both in bottles. He had been in America, had a daughter living in Buffalo, New York, and knew that many Americans did not drink liquor. He himself drank no liquor except wine.

I also took time to visit the breeding farm attached to the University of Halle where they were experimenting with all sorts of crossbreeding of animals brought from the ends of the earth.

In Berlin I took rooms in a pension and found it pretty well filled with American students, with a few from Russia, Romania, and Hungary. Edwin F. Gay had been recommended for a position in economic history, to follow Professor Ashley, at Harvard. He was in Berlin finishing his work for the Ph.D. degree at the university. I looked him up almost at once, called on him, and we had several talks. He had made a distinguished record at the university and was soon to take his final examination, which he passed with flying colors. His appointment as instructor at Harvard was confirmed by the Governing Boards and he began his teaching the following autumn.

While in Berlin I attended seminars by Professors [Adolph] Wagner in taxation, Schmoller in economic history, Ausserordentlich Professor [Adolph von] Wenckstern on socialism, and Professor [Max] Zering on Agrarpolitik. Wenckstern, a young man, had been in the army and still held the rank of lieutenant. One night after one of our sessions he invited me with the seminar group to his country place. We left the university about 10 p.m., took a train and traveled nearly half an hour, got off at a country station, walked a mile or so through fields and came to a sizable country house. …

Professor Wagner was getting along in years but seemed fairly vigorous. He was reasonably courteous when he was convinced that I was really an assistant professor at Harvard. My visiting card had merely said “Mr. Thomas N. Carver,” after the American custom, whereas a German would have had all his titles and degrees embossed on his visiting card. Schmoller was genial but dignified. His classes were crowded and he was very busy conferring with his students.

After about four weeks Flora and the children joined me in Berlin. Soon after they arrived Professor and Mrs. Charles J. Bullock turned up in Berlin, also a Miss McDaniels of Oberlin, who had been one of my students. Together we visited Dresden, mainly for the purpose of seeing the famous Art Gallery….

Source:   Thomas Nixon Carver, Recollections of an Unplanned Life (1949), pp. 135-139.

Image Source: The Friedrich Wilhelm University in the old Palace of Prince Heinrich (ca. 1820)

 

Categories
Economists Gender Harvard Johns Hopkins Michigan

Michigan, Johns Hopkins and Harvard. Three Generations of Economics PhDs. Orcutt-Nakamura(s)

 

 

In an earlier post we met the Ruggles Family Dynasty, three generations of economists with Harvard economics Ph.Ds. Silly me that I thought that this might have been a unique constellation, but in the meantime I have “discovered” a second observation. Meet the Orcutt-Nakamura dynasty of economists!  Painstaking empirical analysis reveals that both dynasties display a greater frequency of women economists (including the spouses), than the frequency for the entire population of economists.

Thus, with all the power vested in me  from this second observation, I hereby declare Collier’s conjecture on economist-dynasties:  the economist-gene is carried on the X chromosome.

__________________

1st Generation: Guy Henderson Orcutt
(Ph.D. from Michigan, 1944)

Guy Henderson Orcutt (b. 5 July 1917 in Wyandotte, Michigan; d. 5 March 2006 in Bowie, Prince Georges, Maryland)

B.S.  with honors, Physics (1939)
M.A. Economics (1940)
Ph.D. (1944) University of Michigan

Dissertation Title: Statistical Methods and Tools for Finding Natural Laws in the Field of Economics

Taught or affiliated with MIT, Cambridge, Harvard, Wisconsin, and Yale, IMF, World Bank and The Urban Institute.

Guy Orcutt material transcribed for Economics in the Rear-view Mirror:

Economics 110. Introduction to Econometrics. Harvard, Spring Semester 1950.
A Bibliography of Books and Articles on the Scientific Method

Economics 110a. Empirical Economics. Harvard, Fall Semester 1950.
Course Readings

Autobiographical/Biographical material

Guy Orcutt, “From engineering to microsimulation: An autobiographical reflection” In Special issue “Orcutt Festschrift” Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization. Vol. 14, No. 1 (September 1990), pp. 5-27.

Harold W. Watts. An Appreciation of Guy Orcutt, Distinguished Fellow of the American Economic Association. Journal of Economic Perspectives  Vol. 5, No. 1 (Winter 1991) pp. 171-179.

Guy Henderson Orcutt page at the Prabook website.

Image source: Ugo Colombino’s lecture Microsimulation and Microeonometrics: Survey, Interpretation and Perspectives. (Università degli studi di Torino, Campus Luigi Einaudi) April 1, 2015. Slide #3.

 

2nd Generation: Alice Orcutt Nakamura
(Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins, 1972)

Alice O. Nakamura (b. Boston, Mass., 1945)

B.S. in Economics (Political Science minor), University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1968
Ph.D. in Political Economy with a minor in Sociology, Johns Hopkins University, 1973

Dissertation Title: State and Local Police Expenditures: An Empirical Investigation.

Professor of Finance and Management Science at University of Alberta

Biographical/Professional Information

Apr. 4, 2019 archived webpage of Alice Orcutt Nakamura.

Alice O. Nakamura’s c.v. (June 2017)

Alice O. Nakamura’s Short Biography
March 31, 2019 archived

Alice Nakamura is a Professor of Finance and Management Science at the University of Alberta. She holds a Ph.D in Economics from John Hopkins University and a B.S. from the University of Wisconsin at Madison. She is a Fellow of the Canadian Economics Associations. In 1994-95, she served as President of the Canadian Economics Association. She has received numerous honors, including begin an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Western Ontario, the Kaplan Award for Excellence in Research, and the McCalla Research Professorship. She has also held numerous public policy and advisory roles, including being a member of the Axworthy Social Security Reform Task Force, the Statistics Canada Price Measurement Advisory Committee and the Co-chair of the Canadian Employment Research Forum (CERF). Her publications are in the areas of labour economics, econometrics, price and productivity measurement, social policy, and genomic statistics among other topics. She has numerous publications in the most prestigious journals in economics and statistics, including the American Economic Review, Econometrica, the Journal of Econometrics, the Journal of the American Statistical Association, the Review of Economics and Statistics and the Canadian Journal of Economics.

Image Source: Alice Nakamura’s webpage.

Alice Nakamura is married to Masao Nakamura

B.S., Keio University (Tokyo), 1967 in Administration Engineering
M.S. Keio University (Tokyo), 1969 in Administration Engineering
Johns Hopkins University Ph.D. 1972 in Operations Research/ Industrial Engineering

Title of Dissertation: Mathematical analysis and optimization of health services systems.
Dissertation Adviser: Rodger Parker

Professor of Commerce & Business Administration (Emeritus)
Strategy & Business Economics Division, Sauder School of Business
University of British Columbia

Masao Nakamura’s c.v. (April 2016)

Masao Nakamura’s Personal webpage (Nov. 30, 2018)

 

2nd Generation: Harriet L. Orcutt Duleep

Harriet L. Orcutt born 1953.

B.A., Oberlin Conservatory/College, 1973
B.A., in Economics, University of Michigan, 1976
Ph.D. in Economics, M.I.T., 1986

Title of Dissertation: Poverty and Inequality of Mortality.
Advisers:  Jerry Hausman and Lester Thurow.

Research Professor of Public Policy, College of William and Mary since 2007.

Harriet Orcutt Duleep’s c.v.

 

3rd generation: Emi Nakamura
(Harvard Ph.D., 2007)

Emi Nakamura (b. 1980)

A.B. (summa cum laude) Princeton University, 2001
A.M. Economics, Harvard University, 2004.
Ph.D. Economics, Harvard University, 2007.

Dissertation Title: Price Adjustment, Pass-through and Monetary Policy
Advisers: Robert Barro and Ariel Pakes

Emi Nakamura is Chancellor’s Professor of Economics, University of California, Berkeley since 2018.

Emi Nakamura’s c.v. (January 2019)

Image source: Emi Nakamura’s home page.

From an Interview with Emi Nakamura

Can you tell us something about growing up in an academic family of economists?

My parents love their work and really wanted to give me a sense of what they did. That’s easy when your parents are firemen or policemen, but harder when your parents spend all their time sitting at a desk reading books and running regressions. How do you explain to a kid what it means to do research? So my mom brought me to a number of economics conferences when I was a child. Of course, I didn’t understand much, but I did get some sense of what it meant to be an academic economist. It also led to some funny conversations when I grew up and met colleagues like Kevin Lang, who I’d first met as a child. Because of my parents, I also got to take a bunch of economics classes at the University of British Columbia when I was in high school and over the summer when I was home from college in Vancouver, including a number of classes on economic measurement from Erwin Diewert. Measurement is a really understudied topic in economics today and you don’t learn much about it even in grad school, so that was a unique opportunity. I have since written several papers on measurement issues where this experience was very useful.

Source: CSWEP News. 2015 Issue 2.  From “An Interview with Emi Nakamura” by Serena Ng.

HUGE UPDATE: John Bates Clark Medal 2019 awarded to Emi Nakamura!

Emi Nakamura is married to:

Jón Steinsson also Chancellor’s Professor of Economics at UC Berkeley.

Jan. 2019 c.v.  of Jón Steinsson.

Note: Emi Nakamura and Jón Steinsson have two children…[to be continued?]

Image: Guy Orcutt, Alice Nakamura, Emi Nakamura.

Categories
Economists M.I.T. Yale

Yale. Economics Ph.D. alumnus (1939) and later high-ranking CIA official (Bay of Pigs). R. M. Bissell

 

Serendipity is always a dear and welcome companion when entering an archive, especially during initial visits. The archive in question for today is the digitized historical archive of the Yale Daily News that I decided to probe with the search-term “Keynes”. I was curious to see when the ideas of the General Theory might have received first mention in this student newspaper.

I was surprised to see that already in November 1936 the young instructor of economics, Richard M. Bissell, spoke to the Yale Government Forum on “The Intellectual Implications of Mr. J. M. Keynes”. Next, I looked to see what else I might find in the Yale Daily News about Bissell, and we see below that he certainly appears to have been inclined to raise the theoretical level of undergraduate economics instruction, including the application of formal mathematical models. The title of Bissell’s 1939 Yale Ph.D. dissertation was “The Theory of Capital under Static and Dynamic Conditions.”

Something else of interest that I stumbled upon is that Bissell was involved in the America First movement and even spoke at a rally held at Yale October 12, 1940 that featured guest speaker Charles A. Lindbergh. Serendipity enters the picture when I next discovered that at the February 14, 1941 rally opposing the Lend-Lease Bill featuring guest speaker Philip F. LaFollette, Kingman Brewster, Jr. (President of Yale, 1963-1977) was also a speaker. Academically, Kingman Brewster was an expert on anti-trust law and international commerce and a research associate in the economics department at M.I.T. in 1949-50.

But wait, there is more…

In 1954 Richard Bissell joined the CIA [Official biographical page for Bissell at CIA] where he was a champion of high-tech data collection as seen in the U-2 spy plane program and use of satellites for gathering data. His CIA career crashed and burned with the failure of the Bay of Pigs operation. [Richard Bissell—The Connecticut Yankee Behind the Bay of Pigs from the New England Historical Society]

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Richard M. Bissell Jr. Biographical Note
from the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library

Richard Mervin Bissell Jr. (September 18, 1909 – February 7, 1994) was born in Hartford, Connecticut in a home formerly owned by author Mark Twain. His parents were Richard Mervin Bissell Sr. (Vice President of the Hartford Fire Insurance Company) and Marie Truesdale (National Director of Volunteer Services for the American Red Cross.) In childhood he attended the Kingswood School in his former childhood home and later the Groton School in Massachusetts. He entered Yale in 1928 and graduated with an A.B. in history in 1932. After studying at the London School of Economics, Bissell earned a PhD in economics from Yale in 1939 and remained as an active assistant professor through October 1941 and went on leave until April 1942. During this period and throughout the rest of his life, Bissell would serve as a business consultant to a variety of professional concerns.

Bissell entered public life by joining the Department of Commerce as Chief Economic Analyst of the Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce. He served in a variety of positions for federal agencies from 1942 until 1955 including the War Shipping Administration, the Office of War Mobilization and Reconversion, the Economic Cooperation Administration and the Mutual Security Agency. During this period Bissell returned to higher education as an associate professor (later professor) of economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1946 until 1952. While at MIT, Bissell consulted for the Ford Foundation and authored “Notes on U.S. Strategy” following the preparation of National Security Council paper (NSC-141) on the allocation of resources to U.S. security programs. In writing the NSC paper, Bissell worked in conjunction with Frank Nash and Paul Nitze under the direction of the Secretary of State Dean Acheson, Secretary of Defense Robert Lovett, and Director of Mutual Security William Averell Harriman. Bissell described it in his autobiography as, “the Truman administration’s last will and testament on issues of national security.” Using what he had learned from authoring NSC-141, Bissell wrote “Notes on U.S. Strategy” which dealt with the international military, political, and economic policy of the United States in the atomic age.

Bissell joined the CIA in 1954 as Special Assistant to the Director. In 1959 he was made Deputy Director of Plans and remained so until he left the agency. Bissell was responsible for overseeing the U-2 program and the planning of the Bay of Pigs invasion among other projects. Bissell was offered a new position in the CIA following the failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion that, in his estimation, amounted to a demotion. Faced with the prospect of having to accept a position he did not want, Bissell retired from federal service on February 28, 1962. Shortly afterwards he received the National Security Medal from President John F. Kennedy.

Bissell embarked on careers outside of the federal government following his departure from the CIA. He joined the Institute for Defense Analysis and eventually came to serve as president in July of 1962. The Institute of Defense Analysis (IDA) served (and continues to serve) as a federally-funded independent research organization responsive to the U.S. government on issues of national security. Bissell indicates in his autobiography that he encountered considerable obstacles and frustration in attempting to reshape IDA before he was eventually asked to resign. After carefully weighing his options and considering multiple opportunities, Bissell joined the United Aircraft Corporation in 1964 as director of Marketing and Planning. By his admission the work was not as stimulating as what he encountered in government service and he retired early in 1974. His UAC secretary, Francis T. Pudlo, left with him and continued to serve in the same capacity through the remainder of his life, eventually co-authoring his autobiography with Jonathan E. Lewis.

Bissell embarked on a variety of business consulting jobs after departing UAC both as an employee of others as well as a freelancer in his own right. In his final years he served as president of the Friends of Hill-Stead Museum and as treasurer of the board of directors of the Duncaster Life Care Center. He died in his home in Farmington Connecticut on February 7, 1994.

Bibliography:

Bissell, Richard M. Jr., with Jonathan E. Lewis and Frances T. Pudlo. Reflections of a Cold Warrior: From Yalta to the Bay of Pigs. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1996. [a review by H. Bradford Westerfield]

Biographical Chronology

September 18, 1909 Born in the Mark Twain House in Hartford, Connecticut
1916 – 1922 Kingswood School
1922 – 1928 Groton School
1928 – 1932 Yale University (A.B.)
1932 – 1933 London School of Economics
1934 Research assistant at Yale University
1935 – 1938 Instructor at Yale University
1936 – 1941 Economic Advisor to the Connecticut Public Utilities Commission
1937 – 1939 Consultant to Fortune magazine
1939 Ph.D. from Yale University
September 1939 – April 1942 Assistant Professor at Yale University (On leave from October 1941 to April 1942)
July 6, 1940 Married Ann Cornelia Bushnell
October 1941 – June 1942 Chief Economic Analyst, Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce, Department of Commerce
April 1942 – June 1942 Assigned to the War Shipping Administration from the Department of Commerce
April 1942 – October 1942 Assistant to the Deputy Administrator, War Shipping Administration
October 1942 – July 1943 Director, Division of Economic Policy, War Shipping Administration
October 1942 – December 1945 Economist to the Combined Shipping Adjustment Board and Assistant to the Deputy Administrator, War Shipping Administration
July 1943 – December 1945 Director of Ship Requirements, War Shipping Administration
October 1944 – December 1945 Executive Officer of the Combined Shipping Adjustment Board, War Shipping Administration
March 1945 – December 1945 Secretary, Shipping Employment Policy, Committee of the United Maritime Authority, War Shipping Administration
December 1945 – March 1946 Economic advisor to director of Office of War Mobilization and Reconversion
March 1946 – September 1946 Deputy Director of Office of War

Mobilization and Reconversion
September 1946 – November 1946 Consultant to the Cosmopolitan Shipping Company
September 1946 – August 1947 Consultant to the United States Steel Corporation of Delaware
October 1946 – July 1948 Associate Professor of Economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
April 1947 – July 1948 Consultant to Scudder, Stevens and Clark
June 1947 – July 1947 Consultant to the Coordinator of Exports
June 1947 – July 1948 Consultant to the Brightwater Paper Company
July 1947 – January 1948 Executive Secretary of the President’s

Committee on Foreign Aid (Harriman Committee)
January 1948 – July 1948 Consultant to the Asiatic Petroleum Company
February 1948 – July 1948 Consultant to the United States Steel Corporation of Delaware
February 1948 – July 1948 Consultant to the Gray and Rogers Advertising Agency
April 1948 Consultant, Economic Cooperation Administration (ECA)
May 1948 Assistant Deputy Administrator, Economic Cooperation Administration (ECA)
July 1948 – July 1952 Professor of Economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
1949 Honorary M.A. degree, Yale University
June 1949 Assistant Administrator for Programs, Economic Cooperation Administration (ECA)
October 1950 – December 1951 Deputy Administrator, Economic Cooperation Administration (ECA)
December 30, 1951 – January 18, 1952 Deputy Director & Acting Director, Mutual Security Agency (MSA)
January 18, 1952 – January 1954 Consultant to the Ford Foundation and director of a research project through the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
September 29, 1952 – August, 22 1955 Consultant to the Director, Mutual Security Agency (MSA)
February 1, 1954 – January 2, 1959 Special Assistant to the Director, Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)
January 2, 1959 – February 28, 1962 Deputy Director of Plans, Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)
September 1961 – February 1962 Co-director of the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO)
March 1, 1962 Awarded National Security Medal by President John F. Kennedy
March 1, 1962 – July 1962 Executive Vice President, Institute for Defense Analysis (IDA)
July 1962 – September 1964 President, Institute for Defense Analysis (IDA)
September 1964 – September 1974 United Aircraft Corporation, Director of Marketing and Economic Planning
1965 – 1971 Regent, University of Hartford
1973 President of the Farmington Historical Society
1974 – 1976 Trustee, Mark Twain Memorial
1974 – 1977 Secretary of the Farmington Bicentennial Committee
1974 – 1981 Member, Board of Directors of Covenant Mutual and Covenant Life Insurance Company
1974 – 1994 Independent business consultant
1975 – 1981 Member, Board of Directors of the World Affairs Center
1980 – 1984 President, Friends of Hill-Stead Museum
1981 – 1988 Treasurer, Board of Directors of Duncaster Life Care Center
February 7, 1994 Died in his home in Farmington, Connecticut

Source:  Dwight Eisenhower Library. Papers of Richard Bissell. Finding Aid.

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Bissell Addresses Government Forum
Government Must Regulate Usury, Says Economist
(November 17, 1936)

Richard M. Bissell, 1928 [sic, class of 1932 is correct], instructor of economics, addressed the Government Forum in the Hall of Graduate Studies last night. His subject was “The Intellectual Implications of Mr. J. M. Keynes,” which resolved itself into an interpretation of Mr. Keynes’ theories and the delineation of his conceptions of ideal economic government.

Mr. Bissell illustrated the trade cycle, as applied to the recent depression. “In the boom years there was extensive investment; gradually, however, the more flagrant holes in the producing equipment of the nation were filled in, and there was a great slackening in the demand for capital. The rate of interest for borrowing money, however, continued at the same standard.”

Depression Ended Itself

“With the falling off of investment,” he went on, “there was a falling off in the demand for consumers’ goods, and the effect became cumulative. But the depression brought itself to an end. The goods bought before the onset of the depression wore out, and new products were invented all of which stimulated investment.”

“The government must see to it,” said Mr. Bissell, “that the rate of interest falls when the demand for capital falls; but in emergencies when this is an insufficient stimulating force, the government itself must invest. It should deliberately plan upon an unbalanced budget.

“In the ideal government,” the speaker concluded, “in which the rate of interest were completely controlled by the state, in the course of 20 years’ investment most of the opportunities for profitable borrowing would be used up, and the rate of interest would of course continue to fall with the demand for capital. The eventual rate would probably be under one per cent, a situation which would do away with many of the evils of capitalism resulting from usury.”

Source: The Yale Daily News (November 17, 1936), pp. 1, 3.

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Announcement
(May 6, 1936)

Meeting of the Undergraduate Math Club. “Mr. Richard Bissell will speak on ‘The nature of the applications of mathematics to economics.’”

Source: Yale Daily News, May 6, 1936 p. 8.

_______________________

Letter to the editor
(May 14, 1938)

To the Chairman of the News.
Dear Sir:

The alumni have recently been receiving communications about new blood in undergraduate teaching. I want to put in a word on the economics department, which I think has a large hole in it, although it is the selection of such a large group for majors.

The department at Yale has excellent men on various select subjects, public control, railroads, international policy, banking, and supplementary Sheff courses in statistics and so forth. The integration of these courses however leaves much to be desired. Mr. Bissell teaches Theory, but apparently his course is for the select few; and the theory taught in the regular course is so weak and sparse that the institutional study of railroad rates etc., is far more valuable. Since the days of Irving Fisher, Yale has had no one teaching undergraduates with an up to date broad view of society.

The average undergraduate, I believe, goes through an economic major with only the sketchiest idea of theory to hang his facts upon; he regards the work of Keynes, Hawtrey, Pigou, Robbins and Cassell as graduate work. Rarely does Yale economics teach one to read these people intelligently. The size of their field is beyond the reach of static pictures, where demand is given, and purchasing power is discussed three weeks later. All Cambridge undergraduates are taught to criticize these men, perhaps at the expense of institutional knowledge, but I think they get more fun out of economics.

Someone is needed at Yale to teach a course in general theory as apart from distribution, and money as apart from banking alone (lack of broad training is partly what makes Mr. Rogers’ seem difficult), someone who knows geometry and calculus and can simplify theories enough to throw them at current problems to keep the work thrilling…

Very sincerely,

Carter C. Higgins,
Class of 1937

Source: The Yale Daily News (May 14, 1938), pp. 2, 3.

Image Source:  The Yale Daily News (February 14, 1941), p. 1.

 

Categories
Economists Harvard Suggested Reading

Harvard. Economics Ph.D. alumnus. Edgar M. Hoover, 1932

 

The Harvard economics Ph.D. alumnus for this post is someone who had both CEA and CIA lines on his c.v. Edgar Malone Hoover also taught at the University of Michigan and Harvard before settling at the University of Pittsburgh. A course Hoover taught during the second term of 1935-36 while an instructor at Harvard was on the location of economic activity. It attracted two graduate students. Hoover served as president of the Regional Science Association in 1962 and was an important contributor to the theory of spatial price discrimination.

Vital data for Edgar M. Hoover: born February 22, 1907 in Boise, Idaho, d. July 24, 1992 in Santa Barbara, California.

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Hoover index

It is equal to the portion of the total community income that would have to be redistributed (taken from the richer half of the population and given to the poorer half) for there to be income uniformity.

See: Edgar Malone Hoover Jr. The Measurement of Industrial Localization, Review of Economics and Statistics, 18, No. 4 (November, 1936) 162–171.

Source: “Hoover index” in Wikipedia.

____________________

 

From the 1974 AEA Directory

Hoover, Edgar M., b. Boise, Idaho, 1907. Educ. A.B., Harvard, 1928; A.M., Harvard, 1930; Ph.D., Harvard, 1932. Doc. Dis. The Location of the Shoe Industry in the United States, 1932. Pub. Location Theory and the Shoe and Leather Industries, 1937; The Location of Econs. Activity, 1938; An Introduction to Regional Econs., 1971. Prev. Pos.  Dir. Econ. Study, Pittsburgh Regional Planning Assoc., 1959-63, Vis. Prof. Econs., Harvard U., 1957-59. Cur. Pos.  Emeritus Prof. Econs., U. of Pittsburgh, Address 15331 Bollman Rd., Saratoga,,CA 95070.

Source: 1974 Directory of Members. American Economic Review, Vol. 64, No. 5 (October 1974), p.182.

____________________

Resignation from the University of Michigan to work at the CEA, 1947

Dr. Edgar M. Hoover, Professor of 
Economics and a faculty member since 1936, has resigned to accept an appointment as staff member on the 
Council of Economic Advisers at Washington, D.C.

Winner of the Henry Russel Award 
in 1940, Dr. Hoover received his A.B., A.M. and Ph.D. degrees from Harvard
University, and taught there for four years before joining the faculty at Ann Arbor. He has specialized in problems of the location of industry, and in 1939 was invited to participate in a conference organized by the National Bureau of Economic Research and by the New York State Planning Commission. He spent four years on leave 
from the University as a member of 
the National Resources Planning Board and the fuel-rationing branch of the OPA, and later as a member of the Office of Strategic Services.

 

Source: The Michigan Alumnus (427) from the University of Michigan’s Faculty History Project.

____________________

PITT NAMES HOOVER UNIVERSITY PROFESSOR
Press Release: March 28, 1966

Dr. Edgar M. Hoover has been named University Professor of Economics at the University of Pittsburgh. His appointment was announced today by Dr. Charles H. Peake, vice chancellor for the academic disciplines.

Dr. Hoover, director of the Center for Regional Economic Studies, came to Pitt in 1959 as professor of economics. At the inception of the Center in 1962, he was named director, a post he will continue to hold.

“The appointment of Dr. Hoover as University Professor is in recognition of his outstanding contributions,” Dr. Peake said. “He is an authority in the field of regional economics and under his direction the Center has conducted studies of national and international concern.” Among the Center’s activities have been studies of Appalachia, flood plain usages, industrial growth and potential, and new trends in urban economics.

Dr. Hoover currently is co-administrator for a $200,000 Ford Foundation training and research program in economics and demography. Under the project, employees of planning commissions from underdeveloped countries will study demography, in particular, the relation of population to economic change. Dr. Hoover has Just returned from India, where he laid groundwork for parts of the program.

Recently, Dr. Hoover published, in four volumes, the results of an Economic Study of the Pittsburgh Region which he directed for the Pittsburgh Regional Planning Association.

Dr. Hoover came to Pitt from Harvard University where he was visiting professor. Previously, he had worked with Princeton University’s Office of Population Research on a project estimating the future population of India. From 1952 to 1954, he was a member of the Board of National Estimates of the Central Intelligence Agency and between 1947 and 1951 he served as a senior staff member of the Council of Economic Advisors. He also has taught at the University of Michigan and was an economist in the U.S. Office of Strategic Services.

Dr. Hoover received his Ph.D., A.M. and A.B. degrees from Harvard. He is a member of the Phi Beta Kappa, the American Economic Association, the Population Association of America, and the Regional Science Association. He was president of the latter group in 1962.

Source:  University of Pittsburgh Press Release, March 28, 1966. Records of the University of Pittsburgh.

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Harvard Ph.D. awarded in 1932 to Edgar Malone Hoover, Jr.

Hoover, Edgar Malone, Jr., A.B. 1928, A.M. 1930.

Subject, Economics. Special Field, Economic Geography. Thesis, “The Location of the Shoe Industry in the United State.” Research Assistant in Economics.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College, 1931-1932, p. 120.

 

____________________

Class Enrollment

[Economics] 56 2hf. Dr. Hoover.—The Location of Economic Activity

Total 2: 2 Graduates.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College, 1935-1936, p. 84.

____________________

RESERVE SHELF LIST FOR ECONOMICS 56—Feb. 4, 1936.

E. M. Hoover

  1. Friedrich, C.J., Alfred Weber’s Theory of the Location of Industries.
  2. Sorokin, P., Contemporary Sociological Theories.
  3. Semple, E.C., American History in its Geographic Conditions.
  4. 4. Fetter, F., The Masquerade of Monopoly [The Economic Law of Market Areas] in Quarterly Journal of Economics, vol. 38 [No. 3 (May, 1924), pp. 520-529.]
  5. Keir, Malcolm, Manufacturing.
  6. Black, J.D., Production Economics.
  7. Weber Alfred, Ueber den Standort der Industrien (Vol. 2 only, consisting of 8 monographs by different people).

Source: Harvard University Archives. Syllabi, course outlines and reading lists in Economics, 1895-2003. Box 2, Folder “Economics, 1935-1936”.

Image Source: Economics instructor Edgar M. Hoover. Harvard Class Album 1932.

 

 

Categories
Economists Harvard

Harvard. Economics Ph.D. Alumnus. Arnold M. Soloway, 1952

 

 

An earlier post provided the syllabi for the Harvard economics department public finance course (actually consolidated into a single document for the undergraduate and graduate versions of the course) taught by J. Keith Butters and Arnold M. Soloway in 1954-55.

Since both instructors received their doctorates in economics from Harvard, I have added this post that provides some biographical information about Arnold M. Soloway. The previous post did the same for J. Keith Butters.

Before getting his economics training at Harvard, Soloway was a Phi Beta Kappa, two-way tackle at Brown University. He was such a good athlete that he was included in the Sports Illustrated 25th Anniversary All-American Team (see below).

I begin with the vital dates: Arnold M. Soloway was born December 3, 1920 in New York City and he died April 13, 2016 in Westwood, Massachusetts.

_______________________

Harvard Ph.D. (1952)

Arnold Michael Soloway, A.B. (Brown Univ.) 1942, A.M. (ibid.) 1948. Special Field, Public Finance. Thesis, “The Purchase Tax and British Economic Policy, 1940-1950.”

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College, 1951-52, p. 178.

_______________________

Arnold M. Soloway
Obituary

Arnold M. Soloway, former Harvard economics professor, real estate developer, state chairman of Americans for Democratic Action, prominent 1960s Democratic Party leader, and well known expert on Israel and the Middle East, died at his home in Westwood, MA on Wednesday, April 13, 2016. He was 95.

Arnie graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Brown University in 1942, where he also starred on the football team. Following WWII, he returned to Brown as an economics instructor and assistant football coach, where he coached a young quarterback from Brooklyn, NY named Joe Paterno. He left Brown in 1948 and came to Harvard where he taught for more than 10 years and received his PhD in economics. During this same period, in 1948, Arnie also founded Camp Walt Whitman, a co-ed summer camp in New Hampshire, which he ran with his brother for more than twenty years and which today remains one of the nation’s highest rated summer camps. After leaving Harvard, he was an economics and business consultant for more than a decade.

He helped lead then-Boston Mayor John Collins’s “New Boston Committee” and its seminal study on Boston’s housing challenges, and later went on to serve on the consumer advisory council established by then-Attorney General Edward J. McCormack. In the years that followed he became increasingly active in Massachusetts and national democratic politics, including managing McCormack’s Senate campaign against Edward M. Kennedy in 1961 and his later gubernatorial campaign against John Volpe in 1966; chairing the Massachusetts chapter of Americans for Democratic Action; managing the Massachusetts campaign for Hubert Humphrey in his 1968 presidential campaign, and serving as a senior advisor to the late Senator Henry M. “Scoop” Jackson in 1976.

In the early 1960s, Arnie led the renovation of the old Bellevue Hotel next to the state Capitol into an apartment complex and built the landmark “Jamaicaway Towers,” across from Jamaica Pond, at the time the tallest high rise apartment complex in New England. He later founded Design Housing, Inc., through which he built a number of residential developments including the Townhouses at Lars Andersen in Brookline, Allandale Farms in Boston, and Lochstead in Falmouth.

In addition, Arnie was the first Chairman of the Facing History and Ourselves Foundation, which was created when the now-internationally acclaimed holocaust-based curriculum began to spread beyond its roots in the Brookline schools. He also chaired and was an early backer of the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting (CAMERA) and founded the Center for Near East Policy Research, through which he published numerous monographs and papers on Middle East issues.

He received the Louis Brandeis Award from the Zionist Organization of America in 1996 and was inducted into the Brown University Athletic Hall of Fame in 1993. In 1968, Sports Illustrated named him to their 25th Anniversary All American Football team.

Arnie is survived by three children: Nathaniel (Nick) of Helena, MT; Stan of Washington, DC; and Belle of Westwood, MA; a daughter-in-law Kathy, also of Washington, DC; and seven grandchildren: Aaron of San Francisco; Mollie of Orford, NH; Anna and Sonya of Washington, DC; and Daniel Robinson of San Francisco, Eugene Robinson of East Lansing, MI, and Hannah Robinson of Westwood, MA. He was pre-deceased in 2004 by his wife of 56 years, Joan Field Soloway.

Services at the Levine Chapels, 470 Harvard St., Brookline on Friday, April 15 at 1:00pm.

Burial in Sharon Memorial Park, 40 Dedham St., Sharon.

Source: Dignity Memorial webpage obituary.

_______________________

Brown University Athletics Hall of Fame
Arnold M. Soloway ‘42, Football
Hometown: Brookline, MA
Sport: Football
Year Inducted: 1993

Arnie Soloway was a very effective two-way tackle for three years – ’39, ’40 & ’41 – three very good Brown football teams. As a junior and again as a senior he was selected to the All-New England Team; the only Brown lineman to be awarded that honor in those years. As a senior Arnie was also awarded the Class of 1910 Football Trophy at the team banquet. The NFL Brooklyn Dodgers gave Arnie a contract to play following graduation, but with the onset of World War II Arnie volunteered to enter the service. In 1946 Arnie was hired by Rip Engle to join the Brown coaching staff with Ernie Savignano; and from 1946-48 they groomed Brown athletes to go on to varsity competition. While coaching afternoons Arnie earned his Masters Degree in economics in 1948. During 1949 and 1950 he continued to scout for Brown while studying and teaching at Harvard, completing his Ph.D. in economics in 1952, where he remained on the faculty until 1960. In 1967 Arnie was once again recognized for his football accomplishments at Brown when he was selected to the Sports Illustrated 25th Anniversary All-American Team. Arnie has had a varied and effective career in the public and private sectors: Chairman, Harvard Graduate Society Council, 1982-83; Massachusetts Board of Higher Education, 1980-81; Chairman, Special Commission on Boston Public Housing, 1978-79; Director, National Committee on American Foreign Policy; National Bureau of Economic Research, 1974-79; Visiting Professor, Graduate School, Boston College. Arnie and his wife, Joan Field Soloway (Pembroke, ’49) reside in Brookline and have three children: Nathaniel A. Brown ’74; Stan Z., Dennison ’75; and Belle F., Brown ’78; and, as Arnie will tell you, seven fantastic grandchildren from 7 months to 11 years old.

Source: Brown University Athletics Hall of Fame.

_______________________

Resigns chairmanship of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Alumni Association

Arnold M. Soloway, chairman of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Alumni Association quit his post in June to protest the appointment of a Palestinian scholar to a research position at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies. Soloway charged that Whalid Khalidi’s appointment in the spring of 1982 was dictated by a Saudi businessman’s $1 million gift. Harvard officials declined comment.

Source: The Harvard Crimson, September 12, 1983.

Image Source: Dignity Memorial webpage obituary.

 

 

Categories
Business School Economists Harvard

Harvard. Economics Ph.D. alumnus. John Keith Butters, 1941

 

The previous post provided the syllabi for the Harvard economics department public finance course (actually consolidated into a single document for the undergraduate and graduate versions of the course) taught by J. Keith Butters and Arnold M. Soloway in 1954-55.

Since both instructors received their doctorates in economics from Harvard, I have included this post that provides some biographical information about J. Keith Butters. The next post will do the same for Arnold M. Soloway.

I begin with the vital dates: John Keith Butters was born August 28, 1915 in Chicago and he died December 11, 2005 in Lexington, Massachusetts.

_______________________

Harvard Economics Ph.D. (1941)

John Keith Butters, A.B. (Univ. of Chicago) 1937, A.M. (Harvard Univ.) 1939. Subject, Economics. Special Field, Public Finance. Thesis, “Federal Taxation of Corporate Profits.” Instructor in Economics and Tutor in the Department of Economics.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College 1940-1941, p. 174.

_______________________

Effect of Federal Taxes on Growing Enterprises
by J. Keith Butters and John Lintner
(1945)

Principal Conclusions

In highly condensed form the principal findings of the study may be summarized as follows:

  1. In the development-of-the-idea stage of a new enterprise taxes are seldom of dominant importance.
  2. As a business develops beyond the “idea” stage to the point at which production appears feasible, tax considerations become progressively more important.
  3. At this stage, and beyond, high corporate taxes are typically much more repressive in their effects than are high personal taxes at least so long as capital gains continue to receive very favorable treatment.
  4. High corporate taxes restrict the growth of small companies:
    1. By greatly reducing the attractiveness of risky expansions to the managements of small companies;
    2. By curtailing the amount of capital available from retained earnings to finance such expansions; and
    3. By making the acquisition of outside capital on satisfactory terms much more difficult.
  5. In each of these respects the restrictive effect of high personal taxes appears to be much less severe:
    1. The effect of personal taxes on management incentives is much less direct;
    2. Except for unincorporated enterprises personal taxes do not reduce retained earnings; and
    3. On balance, high personal taxes may not even divert outside capital away from highly venturesome enterprises.
  6. Retained earnings are an especially critical source of funds for the expansion of small enterprises:
    1. The owners of small companies frequently place great importance on the maintenance of a strong control position and of their personal freedom of action. To the extent that they do so, they will be reluctant to undertake expansions which must be financed by outside capital.
    2. Many small companies even companies with promising growth prospects find it extremely difficult or impossible to raise outside capital on reasonably favorable terms.
    3. Hence, for both of these reasons, many expansions by small companies will, in fact, be undertaken only if funds are available from retained earnings to finance them.
  7. In almost every respect high taxes are less repressive on large, established corporations than on small, growing firms.
    1. High taxes reduce the profit expectancy of new expansions by large companies much less severely than they restrict similar expansions undertaken by small, independent companies.
    2. Large, established companies have substantial amounts of funds coming available from their noncash expenses in addition to whatever earnings they may be able to retain after taxes. These funds may be used to finance the introduction of new products and technical innovations.
    3. Finally, large, established companies generally can acquire new capital on much more favorable terms than can small companies. In addition to their ability to float common stock with relative ease, they can usually issue preferred stocks or bonds alternatives available to small companies only on a limited scale, on more expensive terms, and usually at great risk to the common stockholders.
  8. Thus, unless special adjustments are made to relieve the burden of a flat-rate corporate tax on small companies, such a tax would tend to promote an increased degree of industrial concentration in addition to restricting the growth of small, independent companies.
  9. It would be possible substantially to relieve the tax burden on most small, growing companies without greatly diminishing Federal revenues. This study clearly emphasizes the need for such relief. But it makes no attempt to examine the many problems which would arise in formulating the precise character of this relief.
  10. The financial problems confronting small firms are particularly acute in times of depression and market pessimism at such times it is practically impossible for most small companies to acquire new equity capital on acceptable terms. Indeed, perhaps the surest way to improve the position of small firms would be to follow an economic policy that would promote a high level of economic activity. The indirect effects of general prosperity would be far more powerful than any specific measures which could be taken to break down the barriers between small companies and the capital market.
  11. As a final point, existing imperfections in the capital market and the general unwillingness of individual savers to assume the risks of ownership emphasize the possibility that venture capital may be scarce at a time when there is general oversavings in the economy. Failure to recognize that oversavings and shortages of venture capital are not mutually incompatible has led to many statements of doubtful validity by both proponents and opponents of the oversavings thesis.

Source: Study Effect of Federal Taxes on Growing Enterprises. Study published by the Division of Research at the Graduate School of Business Administration, Harvard University in 1945, pp. 2-4.

_______________________

In Memoriam

HBS professor J. Keith Butters, an authority on finance and taxation, died in Lexington, Massachusetts, in December [2005]. He was 90.

The Thomas D. Casserly Jr. Professor of Business Administration, Emeritus, Butters retired from the HBS faculty in 1986 after 43 years of service, during which he chaired the Finance Unit (from 1969 to 1973) and taught in both the MBA and the Executive Education programs. He also played an influential role as the Business School’s representative to a number of University committees that affected faculty across all of Harvard.

Source:   Harvard Business School/Alumni/Stories, March 1, 2006.

_______________________

Boston Globe Obituary

J. Keith Butters

Of Lexington, died Dec. 12, 2005, at age 90. Husband of the late Helena Renaud Butters. He is survived by his brother William of Arlington Heights, IL; 3 children, Liz Butters of Denver, CO, Gerard R. Butters and his wife Ettie of Bethesda, MD, Nancy Butters and her husband Ron Pies of Lexington, MA; two grandchildren and two great grandchildren. A tenured Professor at The Harvard Business School, he received Harvard’s “Distinguished Service Award” in 1989 in recognition of his extraordinary service to the University’s educational mission.

Source: Legacy.com obituary from the Boston Globe.

Image Source:  Harvard Business School, The Annual Report 1954.

 

Categories
Duke Economics Programs Economists

Duke. Career information about the first quarter century of economics Ph.D.’s, 1957

 

Early lists of economics Ph.D. degrees awarded by Harvard (1875-1926) and the University of Chicago (1894-1926) have been posted earlier. Duke University awarded its first Ph.D. in economics in 1932. The department published a survey of its 45 Ph.D. alumni in its October 1957 departmental newsletter that is transcribed below. Year the Ph.D. was awarded, employment in 1957, some employment history,  and sample publications are included.

_________________

Duke Economics Graduates Newsletter
Number 3. October 1957

Duke University
Durham
North Carolina

Department of Economics
and Business Administration

COMMENCEMENT in 1957 marked the end of a quarter century since the University awarded its first Ph.D. in economics. The degrees conferred last June brought the total to 45, distributed as follows.

1932

 2 1947 1
1934 2 1948

3

1935

 1 1949 1
1937 3 1950

4

1938

 1 1951 2
1939 1 1952

1

1940

 1 1953 3
1941 5 1954

2

1942

 1 1955

2

1943

 2 1956 1
1944 2 1957

4

The first few pages of this NEWSLETTER are devoted to the activities of these 45 Doctors of Philosophy in economics. The response to the questionnaire distributed last summer was so abundant that it has proved impossible to report all the data submitted. In particular, the editor has had to pare publications lists in order to keep the NEWSLETTER   within reasonable bounds. It is his hope that its contents nevertheless fairly represent the varied research interests and the wide experiences of our graduates in university, business, and government employment. By the way of preface to the Ph.D. and M.A. rolls [Note: M.A. rolls not included in this post] Professor Hoover has the following greeting for former graduate students in economics:

To all who have been graduate students in Economics at Duke:

            This occasion of the twenty-fifth anniversary of Duke University’s granting of the first Ph.D. in Economics coincides with the beginning of my thirty-third year at Duke University and with the relinquishment of the Chairmanship of the Department after twenty years’ service. My association with our graduate students has been the closer since for ten years I also served as Dean of the Graduate School. This was in like manner true of my predecessor, Dean W. H. Glasson, who laid the foundations of graduate work in our Department and in the University. We are fortunate in having as the new Chairman of the Department, Dr. Frank de Vyver who has for so long helped so efficiently in carrying on the administrative duties of the Department. Dr. R. S. Smith is currently acting as Director of Graduate Studies in place of Dr. Joseph Spengler, who continues to contribute so much to our program of graduate training and research. Dr. Spengler has a Ford Fellowship for the present academic year.

            We are gratified with the recognition which the research work and graduate teaching of our faculty has received during the past years. It is upon your accomplishments and attainments since leaving Duke, however, that we depend in large degree for our standing in the academic world. We are grateful to you and our best wishes are always with you.

Sincerely
Calvin B. Hoover

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

Doctors of Philosophy

DR. CLARK LEE ALLEN ‘42
Head, Department of Economics, North Carolina State College

Regional Economist, OPA, 1942-43; Army Finance Dept., 1943-45; Duke, 1945-46, 1947-49; Northwestern, 1946-47; Head of Department, Florida State, 1949-54; Head of Department, Texas A.&M., 1954-56.

American Economic Association, Graduate Record Examination Comm., 1951, 1953, and Economic Education Comm., 1957-60; Editor, Southern Economic Journal, 1956-.

“Rayon Staple Fiber: Its Past and Its Prospects,” Southern Economic Journal, Oct. 1946.
“Modern Welfare Economics and Public Policy,” Southern Economic Journal, July 1952.
(Co-author) Prices, Income, and Public Policy. 1954.

*  *  *  *  *  *

DR. WILLIAM R. ALLEN ‘53
Assistant professor, University of California, Los Angeles

Washington University, 1951-52; Northwestern, 1952.

Social Science Research Council Fellow, 1950-51; Conferee, Ford Foundation Seminar on Sociology of Knowledge, 1953; Conferee, Merrill Center for Economics, 1955; Conferee, SSRC Seminar on Diplomatic History, 1956.

“The Effects on Trade of Shifting Reciprocal Demand Schedule,” American Economic Review, Mar. 1952.
“The International Trade Philosophy of Cordell Hull, 1907-1933,” American Economic Review, Mar. 1953.
“Stable and Unstable Equilibria in the Foreign Exchanges,” Kyklos, VII, Fasc. 4, 1954.

*  *  *  *  *  *

DR. KARL E. ASHBURN ‘34
Director, Division of Business Administration, Alabama College

Southern Methodist; Texas Christian; University of Florida, Texas Technological; Chief of Placement, Tenth U.S. Civil Service Region; Dean, Division of Commerce, McNeese State College, 1952-57.

Editor, Southwest Social Quarterly, 1937-38; Labor Consultant, Executive Dept., State of Texas, 1938; Migratory Labor Comm., State of Louisiana, 1940-41; Louisiana Survey on Higher Education, 1954-56; State of Louisiana Comm. on Industrial Development, 1957; Advisory Board, Port of Lake Charles, 1957.

“Slavery and Cotton Production in Texas”, Southwestern Social Science Quarterly, Dec. 1933.
“The Texas Cotton Control Acreage Law,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly, July 1957.

*  *  *  *  *  *

DR. ELBERT V. BOWDEN ‘57
Associate professor, College of William and Mary in Norfolk

Duke University, 1952-54 and 1955-56; Bureau of Business Research, U. of Kentucky, 1954-55.

*  *  *  *  *  *

DR. R. BUFORD BRANDIS ‘43
Chief Economist and Director, Economic Research Division, American Cotton Manufacturers Institute

Littauer Fellow, Harvard, 1940-41; Research Dept., Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, 1941-45; Supply Officer, U.S. Naval Reserve, 1945-46; Emory University, 1946-52; Research Economist, U.S. Chamber of Commerce, 1952-54.

“British Overseas Trade and Foreign Exchange,” Political Science Quarterly, June, 1943.
“British Prices and Wage Rates, 1939-41,” Quarterly Journal of Economics, August 1943.
(Co-author) The American Competitive Enterprise Economy, 1953.

*  *  *  *  *  *

DR. ROYALL BRANDIS ‘52
Associate professor, University of Illinois

War Regulations Analyst, E.I. du Pont, 1941-43; Foreign Trade Economist, National Cotton Council, 1947-49; Duke, 1949-52.

“Cotton Competition: U.S. and Brazil, 1929-1948,” Journal of Farm Economics, Feb. 1952.
“Cotton and the World Economy,” Southern Economic Journal, July, 1956.
“Notes on the Theory of Games and the Social Sciences,” Erhversokonomisk Tidsskrift, 20, Sept. 1956.

*  *  *  *  *  *

DR. EVERETT J. BURTT, JR. ‘50
Chairman, Department of Economics, Boston University

University of Maine, 1939-41; Denver University, 1941-42; War Manpower Commission, 1942-43; U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1946-47.

“Labor Utilization during National Emergencies,” Monthly Labor Review, Oct. 1951.
“Full Employment in the Postwar Period,” Social Science, Jan. 1943.
“After the Shutdown in Howland, Maine,” Southern Economic Journal, July 1941.

*  *  *  *  *  *

DR. JAMES J. CARNEY, JR. ‘38
Chairman, Department of Finance, University of Miami

Duke, 1934-37; University of Illinois, 1937-40; Regional Labor Economist, War Manpower Commission, 1942-43; Regional Labor Economist, Fourth Service Command, 1944.

“Some Aspects of Spanish Colonial Policy,” Hispanic American Historical Review, May 1939.
Institutional Change and the Level of Employment: A Study of British Unemployment,1918-1929. 1956.

*  *  *  *  *  *

DR. WALTER H. DELAPLANE ‘34
Dean of Arts and Sciences, Texas A.&M. College

Duke, 1934-43; Economist and Chief, Iberian Section, Blockade Division, 1943-45; National Univ. of Paraguay, 1945-46; Colegio Libre, Buenos Aires, 1946; Head of Dept., St. Lawrence Univ., 1946-48.

*  *  *  *  *  *

DR. WILLIAM P. DILLINGHAM ‘50
Professor, Florida State University.

Univ. of Georgia, 1947-49; Senior Consultant, President’s Comm. on Veterans Pensions, 1955-56; Research Staff, Florida Citizens Tax Council.

Federal Aid to Veterans, 1917-1941, 1952.
The Historical Development of Veterans’ Benefits in the United States. 1956
Taxation of Intangible Personal Property in Florida. 1956

*  *  *  *  *  *

DR. EDWIN WOODROW ECKARD ‘37
Project Evaluator, Glenn L. Martin Company

University of Arkansas, 1946-52; Division Economist, Office of Price Stabilization, 1952-53.

Economics of W. S. Jevons. 1940

*  *  *  *  *  *

DR. RALPH T. GREEN
Director, Texas Commission on Higher Education

Financial Economist, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, 1949-55; Chairman, Department of Economics, Baylor University, 1955-56.

Southern Regional Education Board, 1957-; Official Texas Delegate, Southern Regional Conference on Education Beyond the High School, 1957; Delegate, Fourth Meeting of Technicians of Central Banks of the American Continents, 1954.

“Evaluating Adequacy of Bank Capital: An Analysis of the Problem,” Journal of Finance, Sept. 1954.
“The Challenge of Inflation,” Texas Industry, Feb. 1951.
“Meeting the Challenge of Public Higher Education in Texas,” Texas School Board Journal, June 1956.

*  *  *  *  *  *

DR. PERCY L. GUYTON ‘52
Head of Economics Section, Department of Social Sciences, Memphis State University.

Mississippi State, 1928-36; Research Fellow, Brookings Institution, 1938-39; Simpson College, 1939-43; Associate Price Executive, OPA, 1945; Northwestern, 1945-46; Head, Department of Economics and Business, King College, 1946-54.

*  *  *  *  *  *

DR. RECTOR R. HARDIN ‘35
Professor of Business Administration and Acting Chairman, Dept. of Management, College of William and Mary in Norfolk

Head, Dept. of Economics, Berea College, 1935-46; University of Arkansas, 1946-47; Head, Dept. of Economics, Howard College, 1947-57.

American Institute of Management Fellow, 1954-57; President, Kentucky Academy of Social Sciences, 1940-41; Alpha Kappa Psi Deputy Councillor, 1949-57.

“Conservation of Manpower in Alabama,” Alabama Academy of Science Journal.

*  *  *  *  *  *

DR. H. WALTER HARGREAVES ‘42
Professor, College of Commerce, University of Kentucky

Texas College of Mines and Metallurgy, 1940-42; Economic Analyst, New York Life Insurance Co., 1946-48.

“The Guaranteed Security in Federal Finance,” Journal of Political Economy, 1942.

*  *  *  *  *  *

DR. DAVID M. HARRISON ‘41
Associate Professor, Ohio State University

*  *  *  *  *  *

DR. DOUGLAS G. HARTLE ‘57
Lecturer, Department of Political Economy, University of Toronto

Chief, Employment Labor Market Section, Economics and Research Branch, Dept. of Labor, Ottawa, 1955-57. Governor, Carleton University, 1957-60.

*  *  *  *  *  *

Dr. R. MURRAY HAVENS ‘41
Head, Department of Economics, University of Alabama

Baldwin Wallace College, 1941-43; Regional Analyst, OPA, 1943; Economist, Economic Cooperation Administration in Paris, 1948-1949; Economist, Mutual Security Administration, 1951-52

“Laissez-Faire Theory in the Presidential Messages,” Journal of Economic History, Jan. 1942 (Supplement).
“Federal Government Reactions to the Depression of 1837-1843,” Southern Economic Journal, Oct. 1941
“The Significance for American Policy of British Reserve Losses, 1951-1952,” Southern Economic Journal, July 1951

*  *  *  *  *  *

DR. HERMAN BROOKS JAMES ‘49
Head, Department of Agricultural Economics, North Carolina State College

Teacher of Vocational Agriculture and Country Agent, 1933-40; Farm Management Specialist, N.C. Agricultural Extension Service, 1940-42, Agricultural Economist, Bureau of Agricultural Economics, 1943-44.

Chairman, Committee on Agricultural Economics, Social Science Research Council, 1953-56; Vice-chairman, National Committee on Agricultural Policy, Farm Foundation, 1956-; President, American Farm Economics Association, 1956-57.

“Limitations of Static Economic Theory in Farm management Analysis,” Journal of Farm Economics, Nov. 1950.
(Co-author) Farm Mechanization, (N. C. Experiment Station Bulletin 348).
(Co-author) Cotton Mechanization in North Carolina. (N. C. State College Technical Bulletin 104)

*  *  *  *  *  *

DR. KEITH W. JOHNSON ‘44
Economist, Pacific Gas & Electric Company

Deane College, 1938-40; Franklin & Marshall College, 1940-42; Economist, War Production Board, 1942-45; Economist, U.S. Dept. of Commerce, 1945-47; University of New Mexico, 1947-48; Economist, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, 1948-52; Statistician, Regional Office, General Services Administration, 1952-54

“Residential Vacancies in Wartime U.S.,” Survey of Current Business, Dec. 1942
“Construction and Housing,” Historical Statistics of the U.S., 1789-1945. (Chapter H).
“The Interstate and Foreign Commerce of Texas,” Monthly Business Review(Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas), Oct. 1948

*  *  *  *  *  *

DR. JAMES MAYNARD KEECH ‘37
Chairman, Department of Management, University of Miami

Recruiting Specialist, U.S. Civil Service Commission, 1942-44; Auxiliary Departments Analyst, 1948-49.

Workmen’s Compensation in North Carolina, 1929-40, 1942

*  *  *  *  *  *

DR. CLIFTON H. KREPS, JR., ‘48
Wachovia Associate Professor of Banking, School of Business Administration, University of North Carolina

Mt. Union College, 1945-46; Pomona College, 1946-47; Denison University, 1947-49; Economist; Chief, Public Information Division; Chief, Financial Statistics Division, Federal Reserve Bank of New York, 1949-55

“Federal Reserve Policy Formation,” American Economic Review, Sept. 1950
(Editor) Federal Taxes, 1952
“The Commercial Paper Market” and “Bankers Acceptances,” in Money Market Essays. 1951

*  *  *  *  *  *

DR. JUANITA MORRIS KREPS ‘48
Assistant Professor, Duke University

Denison University, 1945-49; Hofstra College, 1952-54; Queens College (N.Y.), 1955.

(Co-editor) Aid, Trade and Tariffs, 1953
Our National Resources, 1955

*  *  *  *  *  *

DR. EDWARD T. MC CORMICK ‘41
President, American Stock Exchange

Security Analyst; Commissioner, Securities and Exchange Commission, 1934-51; OPA and WPB (on loan from SEC)

Understanding the Securities Act and the S.E.C. 1948

*  *  *  *  *  *

DR. PHILLIP D. MC COURY ‘57
Professor, Division of Social Science, Humboldt State College

Central College (Missouri), 1950-52; University of Tennessee, 1955-57

*  *  *  *  *  *

DR. EDWIN MANSFIELD ‘55
Assistant Professor, Graduate School of Industrial Administration, Carnegie Institute of Technology

Fulbright Scholar to the United Kingdom, 1954-55; Diploma, Royal Statistical Society, 1955; University of Maryland Overseas, 1954; Research Associate, Duke, 1953-54

“The Measurement of Wage Differentials,” Journal of Political Economy, Aug. 1954.
“Community Size, Region, Labor Force and Income,1950,” Review of Economics and Statistics, Nov. 1955.
“City Size and Income, 1949,” Studies in Income and Wealth, vol. 21, 1957.

*  *  *  *  *  *

DR. WILLIAM L. MILLER ’50
Professor, Alabama Polytechnic Institute

DePaul University, 1946; Duke, 1946-47; Bowling Green State University, 1947-49

“Some Short-Run Relationships between Changes in the Quantity of Money, the National Income, and Income Velocity,” Southern Economic Journal, 1950
“The Multiplier Time Period and the Income Velocity of Active Money,” Southern Economic Journal, 1956.

*  *  *  *  *  *

DR. JAMES J. O’LEARY ’41
Director of Investment Research and Economist, Life Insurance Association of America

Wesleyan University, 1939-45; Duke University

“Should Federal Deposit Insurance be Extended?”, Southern Economic Journal, July 1943

The Future of Long-Term Interest Rates. 1945

*  *  *  *  *  *

DR. HENRY M. OLIVER, JR. ’39
Professor, Indiana University

Univ. of Mississippi, 1937; Duke, 1937-39; Yale, 1939-41; Associate Economist, National Resources Planning Board, 1941; Economic Analyst, U. S. Treasury Department, 1941-45; Univ. of North Carolina, 1946-47; Northwestern, 1947-49.

Vice-president, Indiana Academy of Social Sciences, 1951; Fulbright Lecturer, University of Ceylon, 1955-56.

A Critique of Socioeconomic Goals. 1954
“Wage Reductions and Employment,” Southern Economic Journal, January 1939
“Average Cost and Long-Run Elasticity of Demand,” Journal of Political Economy, June 1947.
Economic Opinion and Policy in Ceylon. 1957

*  *  *  *  *  *

DR. OLIN S. PUGH ’57
Assistant Professor, University of South Carolina

General Education Board Fellow, 1951-52; Southern Fellowship Fund Fellow, 1955-56.

The Export-Import Bank of Washington; Bureau of Business and Economic Research, University of South Carolina, 1957.

*  *  *  *  *  *

DR. CHARLES BRYCE RATCHFORD ‘51
Assistant Director, N. C. Agricultural Extension Service

In charge, Extension Farm Management and Marketing, N. C. Agricultural Extension Service, 1950-54; Assistant Farm Management Specialist, 1942, Farm Management Specialist, 1946-47; In charge, Extension Farm Management, 1947-50; Advisory Committee, Bureau of the Census; National Extension Marketing, Committee; Cotton and Cottonseed Research and Marketing Advisory Committee; Educational Advisory Committee, National Cotton Council; Agricultural Advisor, N. C. Bankers Association.

A Mountain Community Moves Forward: Circular 300, N. C. Agricultural Extension Service, 1947
“Economic Implications of Farm and Home Planning Work,” Journal of Farm Economics, No. 5, 1955.
A Price Support Program for Farm Commodities in the U. S. Department of Agricultural Economics, N. C. State College.

*  *  *  *  *  *

DR. B. U. RATCHFORD ‘32
Professor, Duke University

District Price Officer, OPA, 1942-43; Economic Advisor, Military Government in Berlin, 1945-46; Deputy Chief, Office of Program Review, E. C. A. (Paris), 1948; Deputy Chief of Mission and Chief Economist, I. B. R. D. Mission to Turkey, 1950; Director of Research, N. P. A. Committee of the South, 1952-55.

Vice-President, American Finance Association, 1946-47; President, Southern Economic Association, 1952-53; Editor, Southern Economic Journal, 1941-45; Editor, American Economic Review, 1946-49; Medal of Freedom, War Department, 1946; Litt. D., Davidson College, 1957.

American State Debts. 1941;
(Co-author) Berlin Reparations Assignment. 1947
(Co-author) Economic Resources and Policies of the South, 1951.

*  *  *  *  *  *

DR. CHARLES EDWARD RATLIFF, JR. ’55
Chairman, Department of Economics, Davidson College

Aviation Supply Officer, U. S. N., 1945-46

“The Centralization of Government Expenditures for Education and Highways in N. C.,” National Tax Journal, Sept. 1956
“Comment on School Efficiency,” American School Board Journal, July 1956.

*  *  *  *  *  *

DR. WILLIAM D. ROSS ’51
Dean of the College of Commerce, Louisiana State University

Economist, Military Government in Berlin, 1945-46; Duke, 1946-49

(Co-author) Berlin Reparations Assignment, 1947
Louisiana’s Industrial Tax Exemption Program, 1953
“Highway Development and Financing,” Papers and Proceedings, American Economic Association, May 1956.

*  *  *  *  *  *

DR. HOWARD G. SCHALLER ’53
Chairman, Department of Economics, Tulane University

Alabama Polytechnic Institute, 1948-49; University of Tennessee, 1952-53.

“Veterans Transfer Payments and State Per Capita Incomes, 1929, 1939, and 1949,” Review of Economics and Statistics, Nov. 1953
“Social Security Transfer Payments and Differences in State Per Capita Incomes, 1929, 1939, and 1949,” Review of Economics and Statistics, Feb. 1955
“Federal Grants-in-Aid and Differences in State Per Capita Incomes,” National Tax Journal, Sept. 1955

*  *  *  *  *  *

DR. LEONARD S. SILK ’47
Economics Editor, Business Week Magazine

University of Maine, 1947-48; Simmons College, 1948-51; Economist, Housing and Home Finance Agency, Washington, 1951-52; Assistant Economic Commissioner, U. S. Mission to NATO and OEEC (Paris), 1952-54

F. Lincoln Cromwell Fellow, American-Scandinavian Foundation, 1946; Fulbright Scholar to Norway, 1952.

Sweden Plans for Better Housing. 1948
Forecasting Business Trends. 1956
“The Housing Circumstances of the Aged in the U.S.,”Journal of Gerontology, Jan. 1952

*  *  *  *  *  *

DR. WILLIAM J. J. SMITH ’48
Department of Economics, University of California, Los Angeles, 1945-53; LL. D., UCLA, 1957.

*  *  *  *  *  *

DR. ROBERT S. SMITH ’32
Professor, Duke University

Visiting professor: N. C. College, 1940; University of Costa Rica, 1945; Northwestern, 1947; University of San Carlos, 1949; University of North Carolina, 1955-56; University of Buenos Aries, 1956.

Guggenheim Memorial Fellow, 1942; Honorary Professor, University of Costa Rica and University of San Carlos; U.S. Specialist, State Department, 1955, 1956, 1957; Honorary Console, Republic of Guatemala, 1955-

The Spanish Guild Merchant. 1940
“Mill on the Dan: Riverside Cotton Mills, 1882-1901,” Journal of Southern History, February 1955
“The Wealth of Nations in Spain and Hispanic America,” Journal of Political Economy, April 1957.

*  *  *  *  *  *

DR. THOMAS M. STANBACK, JR. ‘54
Assistant Professor, School of Commerce, New York University

University of North Carolina, 1947-55; Research Associate, National Bureau of Economic Research, 1955-56

“Comments,” Papers and Proceedings, American Economic Association, 1957

*  *  *  *  *  *

DR. CHARLES T. TAYLOR ’40
Assistant Vice-president, Research Department, Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta

Georgia State College for Women, 1938-42

“Population Increase, Municipal Outlays, and Debts,”Southern Economic Journal, April 1943
“Financing of Fishing Vessels by Commercial Banks,” Proceedings, Gulf and Caribbean Fisheries Institute, 1953
“Recession and Economic Growth,” Monthly Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, January 1955

*  *  *  *  *  *

DR. ROBERT H. VAN VOORHIS ‘44
Head, Department of Accounting, College of Commerce, Louisiana State University

Duke University, 1941-44; Senior Accountant, Ashlin & Hutchings, 1944-45; Timberlands Accountant, West Virginia Pulp & Paper Co., 1945-49; University of Alabama, 1949-57.

Chairman, American Accounting Association Committee on Internal Auditing Education, 1953-54; National Research Committee of the Institute of Internal Auditors, 1953-54; Chairman, American Accounting Association Committee on Standards of Accounting Instruction, 1955-56

(Co-author) “Cost Control in the U S Air Force,” N.A.C.A. Bulletin, November 1951
“Internal Auditing Courses in American Colleges,” Accounting Review, October 1952 “Operating Reports and Controls,” Accountants’ Handbook(section 4), 1956
How the Smaller Business Utilizes Internal Auditing Functions. 1957

*  *  *  *  *  *

DR. E. S. WALLACE ’37
Professor, Millsaps College

Hendrix College, 1937-39; District Price Executive, Regional Price Economist, and Associate Regional Price Executive, OPA, 1942-46.

Fellow, Case Institute of Economics-in-Action Program, 1950; Fellow, Yale School of Alcohol Studies, 1952; President, Mississippi Association of Collegiate Registrars, 1948-49; President, Mississippi State Council, AAUP, 1957-58

*  *  *  *  *  *

DR. WILLIAM H. WESSON, JR. ’50
Associate Professor, College of Commerce, Louisiana State University

Assistant Supervisor, Merit Examination, State Of North Carolina, 1941-42, 1946; Duke, 1946-48; Head, Department of Economics, University of Chattanooga, 1948-56.

Fellow, Case Institute of Economics-in-Action Program, 1956; President, Adult Education Council of Chattanooga, 1955-56

Negro Employment in the Chattanooga Area, 1954

*  *  *  *  *  *

DR. W. TATE WHITMAN ’43
Professor, Emory University

Accountant (Durham), 1934-36; The Citadel, 1936-47; Duke, 1939-40

(Co. author) Investment Timing: The Formula Plan Approach, 1953
(Co-author) “Formula Plan and the Institutional Investor,” Harvard Business Review, July 1950
“Liquidation of Partnerships by Installments,” Accounting Review, October 1953

*  *  *  *  *  *

DR. E. R. WICKER ’56
Assistant Professor, Indiana University

“The Colonial Development Corporation,” The Review of Economic Studies, June 1956
“A Note on Jethro Tull: Innovator or Crank,” Agricultural History, January 1957.

 

Source: Duke University. David M. Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library. Economists’ Papers Archive. Papers of Lionel W. McKenzie, Box 32, Folder “Personal Correspondence, 1952-1998”

Image Source:  Duke University, 1938. Photographed by Frances Benjamin Johnston. From the Carnegie Survey of the Architecture of the South, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.

 

Categories
Economists Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania. A protectionist professor forced to leave the Wharton School, Robert Ellis Thompson, ca 1894

 

 

More and more universities are putting digitized, searchable copies of the student newspaper online. Up to now I have made ample use of the archives of the Harvard Crimson, the Columbia Spectator, and the U of M Daily. While sampling the Yale Daily News archive, I came across the name of a guest lecturer from the University of Pennsylvania, Robert Ellis Thompson in the January 28, 1885 issue.

It was reported that Thompson had been instructor, then assistant professor of mathematics before receiving “a chair of Social Science”. Thompson was also reported to have just delivered a course of lectures on the subject of “Protection” at Harvard. Wondering why I had not come across (or noticed) his name before, I reached for volume three of Joseph Dorfman’s Economic Mind in American Civilization, and came up with relatively little:

…there was general agreement in the academic world on most major [economic] issues. The one exception was the question of the tariff, but even here, by the end of the period, only one leading Eastern institution and a few Midwestern state universities could be said to be clearly protectionist. The one was the University of Pennsylvania, where the Reverend Robert Ellis Thompson (1844-1924), professor of social science, held to Carey’s views throughout, even on money.*

*Robert Ellis Thompson’s Social Science and National Economy (Philadelphia: Porter-Coates, 1875), was promoted far and wide by the powerful protectionist Industrial League of Pennsylvania. For biographical detail, see “Memorial Meeting in Honor of Robert Ellis Thompson,” The Barnwell Bulletin, February 1925, pp. 3-23; James H. S. Bossard, “Robert Ellis Thompson, Pioneer Professor in Social Science,” The American Journal of Sociology, September 1929, pp. 239-49.

Source:  Joseph Dorfman. The Economic Mind in American Civilization. Vol 3, 1865-1918 (New York: Viking Press, 1949), p. 80, bibliographic notes p. xvi.

___________________________

Sketch of Life and Career of Robert Ellis Thompson

The University of Pennsylvania archives provides the following sketch of Robert Ellis Thompson’s life and career. One’s curiosity is naturally aroused by the indication that Thompson had been eased/forced out of his professorship by the Provost. Was there a political/philosophical issue involved? Plot-spoiler: Thompson appears to have been at cross-purposes with the direction of the Wharton School of Finance and Economy and his way or the highway led to an off-ramp into a very successful, 27-year second career as president of Central High School in Philadelphia for him.
On the founding of the Wharton School, see Chapter 8  of Edgar Potts Cheyney’s History of the University of Pennsylvania 1740-1940 , esp. pp. 288-293. This reference and more detail about the Penn economics department are found at Gonçalo L. Fonseca’s History of Economic Thought Website. 

Robert Ellis Thompson
1844 – 1924

  • A.B. 1865, A.M. 1868, D.D. (hon.) 1887
  • Member of Zelosophic Society and University Chess Club
  • Phi Beta Kappa, class salutatorian, and Junior English Prize recipient
  • Professor of mathematics, social science, history, and English literature

Born in Lurgan, County Down, Ireland, on April 15, 1844, Robert Ellis Thompson was the son of Samuel and Catherine Ellis Thompson. The family came to Philadelphia when Robert was thirteen years old.

Thompson entered the University as a freshman in the Class of 1865 and served as class historian in his sophomore year. During his college years he was a member of the Zelosophic Society and the University Chess Club. He was also a Phi Beta Kappa honoree, recipient of the Junior English Prize, and the class salutatorian.

Thompson’s degrees from the University of Pennsylvania included an honorary Doctor of Divinity degree in 1887. Additionally, he earned a Ph.D. from Hamilton College in 1879 and received a LL.D. from Muhlenberg College in 1909.

A Presbyterian clergyman and educator, Thompson began teaching at the University of Pennsylvania in 1868 as an instructor in mathematics; in 1871 he was promoted to an assistant professor of mathematics. From 1874 until 1883 he taught at Penn as professor of social science, and then from 1883 to 1893, he was John Welsh Centennial Professor of History and English Literature. During these years, Thompson lectured at Harvard and Yale from 1884 to 1887 and also at the Princeton Theological Seminary. Thompson was editor of Penn Monthly from 1870 to 1880, and of The American from 1881 to 1892. He published Social Science and National Economy in 1875, and also served as editor for the first two volumes of the Encyclopedia Americana, a supplement to the ninth edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica from 1883 to 1885.

In 1892 Provost William Pepper (nephew of Class of 1865 classmate John Sergeant Gerhard) requested Thompson’s resignation from the John Welsh Chair of History and English Literature. Thompson refused to resign and also declined a proposed transfer to a chair of biblical literature, American church history, and industrial history. Eventually however, he was unsuccessful in the attempt to keep his job and, in 1894, took over the presidency of Central High School in Philadelphia. He remained there for twenty-seven years until he was forced out of this post under a state law which fixed the retirement age for teachers at seventy years. He was an outspoken defender of labor unions (1911) and proponent of female suffrage, predicting in 1911 that a woman would be elected mayor of Philadelphia by 1961. He married Mary Neely in 1874. She died in 1894, while Robert Ellis Thompson died on October 19, 1924 in Philadelphia.

Source: Robert Ellis Thompson (1844-1924). University of Pennsylvania. University Archives & Record Center. Web series “Penn People”.

___________________________

Selection of publications by Robert Ellis Thompson
[results of a relatively casual bibliographic search]

Books

Social Science and National Economy (Philadelphia: Porter & Coates, 1875).

Thompson’s Social Science and National Economy, reviewed. Penn Monthly, Vol. 6 (September 1875), pp. 692-698.

Third, revised edition published as Elements of Political Economy with Especial Reference to the Industrial History of Nations (Philadelphia: Porter & Coates, 1882).

Relief of Local and State Taxation through Distribution of the National Surplus. [Series of revised articles in The American.] Philadelphia: Edward Stern & Co., 1883.

Protection to Home Industry. Four lectures delivered to Harvard University, January, 1885. (New York: D. Appleton & Company, 1886)

De Civitate Dei—the Divine Order of Human Society. Princeton Stone Lectures (Philadelphia: John D. Wattles, 1891).

Syllabus of a Course of Six Lectures on Money and Banking. University Extension Lectures, Series D, No. 3. American Society for the Extension of University Teaching, 1894. [Transcription at Economics in the Rear-view Mirror]

Political Economy for High Schools and Academies. Boston: Ginn & Company, 1895.

A History of the Presbyterian Churches of the United States. New York: The Christian Literature Co., 1895.

The History of the Dwelling-House and its Future. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1914.

 

Articles published in Penn Monthly

The Old Education. Vol. 1 (February 1870), pp. 52-60.

A Current Revolution.  Vol. 1 (April 1870), pp. 121-130.

Ulster in America. Vol. 1 (June 1870), pp. 202-209.

Harbaugh’s Harfe. [Review of Gedichte in Pennsylvanisch-Deutscher Mundart von H. Harbaugh] Vol. 1 (August 1870), pp. 202-286.

The Three Arches. Vol. 1 (September 1870), pp. 202-329.

The Protective Question Abroad. Vol. 1 (Nov. 1870), pp. 436-440.

The Revision of the Old Testament. Vol. 2 (January 1871), pp. 44-52.

Zeisberger’s Mission to the Indians. [Review of Edmund de Schweinitz’s The Life and Times of David Zeisberger, the Western Pioneer and Apostle to the Indians] Vol. 2 (February 1871), pp. 97-106.

The Race and the Individual in their Parallel Development. Vol. 2 (May 1871), pp. 250-263.

The German Mystics as American Colonists.—I. Vol. 2 (August 1871), pp. 391-403.

The German Mystics as American Colonists.—II. Vol. 2 (September 1871), pp. 443-451.

The German Mystics as American Colonists.—III. Vol. 2 (October 1871), pp. 487-497.

Darwin on his Travels. [Review of second American edition of  the Journal of Researches into the Natural History and Geology of the Countries Visited during the Voyage of H.M.S. Beagle Round the World] Vol. 2 (November 1871), pp. 562-572.

The Origin of Free Masonry. [Review of G.. W. Steinbrenner’s The Origin and Early History of Masonry] Vol. 2 (December 1871), pp. 617-626.

Some German Critics of Adam Smith. [unsigned, perhaps Thompson] Vol. 3 (Nov. 1872), pp. 586-96.

Review of E. Dühring’s Kritische Geschichte der Nationalökonomie und des Socialismus. Vol. 3 (Nov. 1872), pp. 631-33.

The Communisms of the Old World. Vol. 5 (January 1874), pp. 12-28

The Teutonic Mark. [This article is in great measure supplementary of the series on “The Communisms of the Old World.”] Vol. 5 (August 1874), pp. 557-578.

Prof. Cairnes on Political Economy. Vol. 5 (September 1874), pp. 637-750

The Economic Wrongs of Ireland. Vol. 5 (October 1874), pp. 713-750

Communism and Serfdom in Russia. Vol. 5 (November 1874), pp. 791-808

National Education.—IV. Vol. 6 (May 1875), pp. 327-341

Carey and Ricardo in Europe. Vol. 8 (July 1877), pp. 548-557.

Recent Economic Literature. Vol. 8 (December 1877), pp. 956-968.

Is Christianity on the Wane among Us?. Vol. 9 (January 1878), pp. 45-65.

Use and Abuse of Examinations. [L. Wiese, German Letters on English Education, 1854 and 1876] Vol. 9 (May 1878), pp. 379-400.

De Laveleye’s Primitive Property. Vol. 9 (August 1878), pp. 620-633.

How It Strikes a Stranger. [Review of Hermann Grothe, Die Industrie Amerikas] Vol. 9 (October 1878), pp. 782-793.

The Commercial Future. Vol. 9 (November 1878), pp. 869-889.

My Neighborhood as a Starting-Point in Education. [Substance of an Address delivered before the National Educational Association, July 31, 1879] Vol. 10 (September 1879), pp. 664-676.

The Proposed Franco-American Treaty. Vol. 10 (October 1879), pp. 772-778.

Henry Charles Carey. [Memorial] Vol. 10 (November 1879), pp. 816-834. Frontpiece.

The Silver Question in England. Vol. 11 (January 1880), pp. 64-74.

Spiritualism in Germany. Vol. 11 (February 1880), pp. 97-117.

The Issues of the Campaign. Vol. 11 (August 1880), pp. 630-649.

Lessons of Social Science in the Streets of Philadelphia. Vol. 11 (December 1880), pp. 919-941.

The Future of our Public School System. Vol. 12 (April 1881), pp. 282-292.

 

Image Source: Robert Ellis Thompson, ca. 1880. University of Pennsylvania. University Archives & Record Center. Web series “Penn People”.

 

Categories
Chicago Columbia Economists Gender Northwestern Social Work

Chicago. Economics Ph.D. Alumna, Helen Fisher Hohman, 1928

 

We have just met Helen Fisher Hohman’s husband Elmo Paul Hohman by way of his Northwestern reading list on labor problems that somehow found its way into the Harvard course syllabi archives. Helen herself went on to get a Ph.D. at the University of Chicago in 1928 (Elmo was teaching at Northwestern) and her dissertation won the distinguished Hart, Schaffner and Marx competition over Simon Kuznets’ dissertation that was given honorable mention. 

One wonders what Helen Fisher Hohman’s career path might have looked like had she been born to a later cohort. It would be nice if we could find a picture of her, maybe some descendent will stumble upon this page and share with Economics in the Rear-View Mirror.

_____________________

Helen Fisher Hohman

1916. B.A. University of Illinois.

1919. A.M. Columbia University.

1919. New York School of Social Work (completed two year program).

1920. Assistant in the economics department, Vassar College.

1921-22. Instructor of economics at Simmons College.

1928. Ph.D. University of Chicago. Thesis: The Trade Board Acts and the Social Insurance Acts in Relation to a Minimum Standard of Living in Great Britain: A Study in Attitudes toward Poverty and Methods of Dealing with It, 1880-1926.

Received first prize in the Hart, Schaffner and Marx competition in 1928 (honorable mention went to Simon S. Kuznets for his “Secular Movements in Production and Prices”)

1931. Edited Essays on Population and other papers by James Alfred Field. (Chicago: University of Chicago).

1933. The Development of Social Insurance and Minimum Wage Legislation in Great Britain: A Study of British Social Legislation in Relation to a Minimum Standard of Living. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

1940.  Old Age in Sweden: A Program of Social Security. U.S. Social Security Board.

Source:  Kirsten Madden. Women economists of promise? Six Hart, Schaffner and Marx Prize winners in the early twentieth century. Chapter 13 in Kirsten Madden, Robert W. Dimand (eds). Routledge Handbook of the History of Women’s Economic Thought. London: Routledge, 2018.
Also: Simmons College yearbook Microcosm 1922, p. 38.

_____________________

1940. Helen Fisher Hohman was listed as Consultant, Bureau of Research and Statistics [Social Security Board]; and Lecturer in the Division of Social Work, Northwestern University.

Source:  Helen Fisher Hohman. Social Democracy in Sweden. Social Security Bulletin, Vol.3, No. 2. February 1940, pp. 3-10

_____________________

Obituary of Helen Hohman (nee Fisher)
August 2, 1894 – December 18, 1972

Mrs. Helen Fisher Hohman, 78, of 606 Trinity Ct., Evanston, former professor of economics at Northwestern University and an authoress, died yesterday in the infirmary of Presbyterian Home, Evanston.

Mrs. Hohman, who taught at N. U. during World War II, wrote the book “British Insurance and Minimum Wage Legislation in Great Britain,” which won a Hart, Schaffner and Marx prize in 1928. Survivors include her husband, Elmo; a daughter, Mrs. Rene Wadlow; and two grandchildren. Private services will be held.

Transcribed from Chicago Tribune, December 19, 1972 by Marsha L. Ensminger

Source:  Genealogy Trails History Group for Washington County, Illinois.

 

 

 

Categories
Economists Harvard Northwestern

Harvard. Economics PhD alumnus, Elmo Paul Hohman, 1925

 

In the previous post Economics in the Rear-View Mirror salvaged part of a reading list for a course on labor problems from a new assistant professor of economics at Northwestern University who would go on to complete his economic history dissertation at Harvard on the American whaling industry (1785-1885). 

Below we add to our record some biographical and career information on this economics Ph.D. alumnus of Harvard.

Elmo Hohman’s wife, Helen Fisher Hohman,  was herself an economics Ph.D. alumna of the University of Chicago. Her post in our series “Get to know an economics Ph.D.” immediately follows.

____________________

Pre-Harvard history theses at the University of Illinois

Hohman wrote his B.A. thesis in history at the University of Illinois:  “The Ku Klux Klan: Its Origin, Growth, and Disbandment” (1916).  His M.A. thesis in history at the University of Illinois is also available: “The Attitude of the Presbyterian Church in the United States Towards American Slavery” (1917).

____________________

Traces from Harvard graduate school

“The Ricardo Prize Scholarship in Economics has been awarded to Elmo P. Hohman 1G. of Nashville, Ill” (Harvard Crimson, 4 June 1920).

“Among the men appointed tutors in History, Government, and Economics for next year is James W. Angell ’18, son of president-elect Angell of Yale. The other newly-appointed tutors are James Hart, William A. Berridge ’14, Karl W. Bigelow, Elmo P. Hohman, and Norman J. Silberling ’14.” (Harvard Crimson, 17 June 1921).

____________________

Harvard Ph.D. awarded 1925

ELMO PAUL HOHMAN, A.B. (Univ. of Illinois) 1916, A.M. (ibid.) 1917, A.M. (Harvard Univ.) 1920.

Subject, Economics. Special Field, Labor Problems. Thesis, “The American Whaleman: A Study of the Conditions of Labor in the Whaling Industry, 1785-1885.” Assistant Professor of Economics, Northwestern University.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College, 1924-25. Page 100.

____________________

Career of Elmo Paul Hohman

Assistant and tutor, department economics, Harvard, 1920-1923. Instructor economics, Northwestern University, 1923-1925, assistant professor, 1925-1931, associate professor, 1931-1938, professor since 1938. Special referee, division of unemployment compensation, Illinois Department of Labor, 1939-1942.

Regional price executive, OPA, Chicago, 1942, district price executive Chicago Metropolitan office, 1942-1944. Vice chairman, shipbuilding commission National War Labor Board, 1944, war shipping panel, 1945. Chairman advising committee, Yale Fund for Seamen’s Studies since 1946.

Observer, visiting scholar, International Labor Office, 1928-1929, 1936-1937, 1946, 1958-1959. National panel arbitrators Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service. Member maritime division International Labor Organization, Geneva.

Student, 3d R.O.T.C., Camp Grant, Illinois, 1918. Commander Second lieutenant infantry, 1918. Associate field director, American Red Cross transport service, 1919.

Source:  Prabook entry for Elmo Paul Hohman.

____________________

Obituary of Elmo Paul Hohman
August 2, 1894 [in Salem,Washington County, Illinois]– January 1, 1977 [Evanston, Illinois]

Services for Elmo Paul Hohman, 82, professor emeritus of economics at Northwestern University, were pending. Mr. Hohman, of 606 Trinity Ct., Evanston, died last Saturday in Evanston Hospital. He joined the faculty of Northwestern in 1923 as an instructor of economics and retired as a professor in 1962. He wrote several books on the American Merchant Marine, among them, “The American Whale Man,” Seamen Ashore,” and “The History of American Merchant Seamen.” He is survived by a daughter, Mrs. Eleanore Wadlow, and two grandchildren. His late wife, Mrs. Helen Fisher Hohman, was also a professor of economics at Northwestern.

Transcribed from Chicago Tribune January 5, 1977 by Marsha L. Ensminger

Memorial service for Elmo Paul Hohman

A memorial service for Elmo Paul Hohman, professor emeritus of economics at Northwestern University, will be at 1:30 p.m. Sunday in the Presbyterian Home Chapel, 3131 Simpson St., Evanston. Mr. Hohman died Jan. 1. He retired as a professor at Northwestern in 1962 after 39 years on the faculty. His late wife, Helen Fisher Hohman, who died in 1972, also was a professor of economics at Northwestern. He is survived by a daughter, Mrs. Eleanore Wadlow, and two grandchildren.

Transcribed from Chicago Tribune February 26, 1977 by Marsha L. Ensminger

Source:  Genealogy Trails History Group for Washington County, Illinois

Image Source: Photo of Elmo Paul Hohman from his passport application dated 30 January 1919. Hohman applied for a passport to join the Transport Service of the American Red Cross in France and England.