Category: Economists

Categories
Economists ERVM

Poland. Nicolaus Copernicus’ contribution to monetary economics. Ca. 1526

 

 

The Rare Book Reading Room of Economics in the Rear-view Mirror proudly announces the addition of a work that was written by Copernicus sometime before April 1526. It represents an early statement of the quantity theory of money.

Copernicus, Nicolaus.  Monetae Cudendae Ratio (On the Coinage of Money).

Latin and Polish translation (1854). Beginning p. 563 in Nicolai Copernici Torunensis De revolutionibus orbium coelestium libri sex : accedit G. Joachimi Rhetici Narratio prima, cum Copernici nonnullis scriptis minoribus nunc primum collectis, ejusque vita. Warsaw: Strąbski, 1854.

Latin and French translation (1864). Traictie de la première invention des monnoies de Nicole Oresme; textes français et latin d’après les manuscrits de la Bibliothèque impeériale, et Traité de la monnoie de Copernic; texte latin et traduction française. Publiés et annotés par M. L. Wolowski.  Paris, Guillaumin et cie., 1864. Download entire book at archive.org.

Latin and German translation (1978). Die Geldlehre des Nicolaus Copernicus. Texte, Übersetzungen Kommentare. Berlin (East): Akademie-Verlag, 1978.

Latin and English translation with images of an early copy of the original (Copernican Academic Portal, Nicolaus Copernicus Thorunensis of Nicolaus Copernicus University). There exists three known such copies according to Leszek Zygner’s introductory page.  Images; transcription; translation (by Edward Rosen).

Image Source: Copernican Academic Portal

Categories
Chicago Economists

Chicago. Simons urges the recruitment of Milton Friedman, 1945

Simons

 

 

The atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki was less than two weeks history and the declaration of the surrender of Imperial Japan only five days old. Nothing says “back to business as usual” at the university better than active lobbying on behalf of one’s preferred candidate for an upcoming vacancy, as we see in the following memo for the 33 year old Milton Friedman written by Henry C. Simons to the Chicago economics department chair, Simeon E. Leland. The copy of this memo comes from the President’s Office at the University of Chicago. Simons’ grand strategy was to seamlessly replace the triad Lange-Knight-Mints with his own dream team of Friedman-Stigler-Hart. He feared that outsiders to the department might be tempted to appoint some convex combination of New Dealer Rexford Tugwell and trust-bustin’ George W. Stocking Sr., economists of the institutional persuasion who were swimming on the edges of the mainstream of the time.

Economics in the Rear-view Mirror also has transcribed excerpts from an earlier 77 page (!) memorandum (10 April, 1945) to President Robert M. Hutchins from Simeon E. Leland entitled “Postwar Plans of the Department of Economics–A Wide Variety of Observations and Suggestions All Intended To Be Helpful in Improving the State of the University”.

____________________________

 

Henry C. Simons Urges his Department Chair to Recruit Milton Friedman

August 20, 1945

To: Simeon E. Leland           Economics

From: Henry C. Simons        Economics

 

If Lange is leaving, we should go after Milton Friedman immediately.

It is a hard choice between Friedman and Stigler. We should tell the administration that we want them both (they would work together excellently, each improving what the other did), Friedman to replace Lange, Stigler to replace Knight and to be with us well ahead of Knight’s retirement. We might also say that we want Hart to replace Mints at Mints’s retirement, and also to be with us in advance, but are happy to have him financed by C.E.D. [Committee for Economic Development] for the present.

Yntema evidently is thinking of getting Friedman shortly. We should exploit this possibility. Milton has now a great yen for a University post and would probably turn down an offer from C.E.D., even at much financial sacrifice, if a good academic post were the alternative (as it might be, at Minnesota or elsewhere). He is rather footloose—not anxious to go back either to the Treasury or to the National Bureau. We should grab him now, offering temporary joint appointment with C.E.D. and full-time, permanent appointment when he is through with C.E.D.

Friedman is young, flexible, and available potentially for a wide variety of assignments. He is a first-rate economic theorist, economic statistician, and mathematical economist, and is intensely interested over the whole range of economic policy. He has been outstanding in every organization where he has worked—here with Henry Schultz, at the National Bureau, at the Treasury, and now recently in the Army project at Columbia. Moreover, he is one of those rare cases of able young men who have enjoyed large experience and responsibility in Washington without being at all disqualified thereby for academic work.

The obvious long-term arrangement is a joint appointment with the Cowles Commission. Marschak would, I’m sure, like to have him; and Milton would like to settle into a major project of empirical research, e.g., on enterprise size and productional efficiency. Bartky may be expected strongly to support the appointment, for its strengthening of the University in statistics. The School of Business could well use Milton, to give its few advanced courses in statistics, if Yntema continues to price himself out of the University. Moreover, Milton probably would be delighted to work partly in the Law School, and be extremely useful there. In the Department, he would be available for statistics, mathematical economics, pure economic theory, taxation, and almost any field where we might need additional courses.

If University officers want outside testimony, they could get it from Randolph Paul or Roy Blough (as regards the Treasury), from Arthur F. Burns (National Bureau), from Abraham Wald, Allen Wallis, and Barky (as regards war research), and from Bunn at Wisconsin (as regards possible usefulness to the Law School)—not to mention George Stigler, Harold Groves, Wesley Mitchell, Simon Kuznets, Erwin Griswold, et al.

Perhaps the best thing about Milton, apart from his technical abilities, is his capacity for working as part of a team. He is the gregarious kind of intellectual, anxious to try out all his ideas on his colleagues and to have them reciprocate. He would doubtless be worth his whole salary, if he neither taught nor published, simply for his contribution to other people’s work and to the Department group as a whole. But he is also intensely interested in teaching, and far too industrious not to publish extensively. Our problem would be not that of finding ways to use him but that of keeping him from trying too many tasks and, especially, of leaving him enough time for his own research.

It would, I think, be good policy and good tactics to submit a major program of appointments, including [Frank W.] Fetter, Friedman, Stigler, Hart, and an economic historian (Innis or Hamilton), in the hope of getting them all within a few years, some on joint appointments with, notably, the Cowles Commission, the Law School, the School of Business (?) and, temporarily, the C.E.D. Research Staff. Such a program would serve to protect us against administration pressure for less good appointments (e.g.,  Stocking [George Ward Stocking, Sr., Ph.D. Columbia, 1925]), and from Hutchins’s alleged complaint that, while he wanted to consider major appointments in economics, the Department simply would not make recommendations. We should, in any case, err on the side of asking for more appointments than we can immediately get. Otherwise, available funds may go largely elsewhere—e.g., into Tugwell-like, lame-duck appointments, and into Industrial Relations, Agricultural Economics, and other ancillary enterprises, at the expense of the central field of economics.

There is, I trust, substantial agreement within the Department, on the men mentioned above. This fact, if fact it is, should be made unmistakably clear to the administration.

Incidentally, if we are going to explore possibilities of an appointment in American economic history (and I’m probably alone in opposing), we should do so only in co-operation with the History Department and with (from the outset) joint plans for joint appointments.

 

HCS-w

 

Source: University of Chicago Archives. Office of the President. Hutchins Administration. Records. Box 73, Folder “Economics Dept., 1943-45”.

Image Source: University of Chicago Photographic Archive, apf1-07613, Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library.

Categories
Berkeley Carnegie Institute of Technology Chicago Colorado Columbia Cornell Duke Economist Market Economists Harvard Illinois Indiana Iowa Johns Hopkins M.I.T. Michigan Michigan State Minnesota North Carolina Northwestern NYU Ohio State Pennsylvania Princeton Purdue Rochester Salaries Stanford Texas Vanderbilt Virginia Wisconsin Yale

Professors’ salaries in U.S. economics departments (1), 1964/5-1965/66

 

 

From my March 2017 expedition to the Johns Hopkins University archives’ collection of material from the Department of Political Economy, I came across one of those documents that help to provide an empirical baseline for the history of the market for economics professors. It is worth savouring the sets of tables one by one. In all, this so-called “cartel” summary with information collected from 29 departments in October 1965 consists of eight sets of tables.

On the last page of this summary for full-professor salaries can be found the name of the presumable compiler of the tables: Francis M. Boddy, Graduate School, University of Minnesota. It is dated December 21, 1965.

Two documents later in the same folder I found the list of 30 members of the Chairmen’s Group, dated December 13, 1965. With 29 responses to the salary questionnaire from which the “cartel” data have been assembled, it leaves only to guess which department did not report back to the “cartel”. I do believe that the ironic self-designation of cartel is not entirely contrary to functional fact here.

The salary distributions across the participating departments for associate professors, assistant professors, and for the starting salaries for newly minted Ph.D. hires have been posted in the meantime. Also there is a table of the anticipated (as of December 1965) range of salaries to hire freshly completed PhD’s for the coming academic year, 1966-67.

Using the BLS web CPI Inflation calculator, one can inflate nominal levels (say for December 1965, the date of the report) to April 2017 using a factor of 7.69.

___________________________________

About Francis M. Boddy

Boddy, Francis M, 1115 Bus. Admin., West Bank, Dept. of Econs., U. of Minn., Minneapolis, MN 55455. Phone: Office (612)373-3583;Home (612)926-1063. Fields: 020, 610. Birth Yr: 1906. Degrees: B.B.A., U. of Minn., 1930; M.A., U. of Minn., 1936; Ph.D., U. of Minn., 1939. Prin. Cur. Position: Prof. Emer. Of Econs., U. of Minn. At Twin Cities. 1975-. Concurrent/Past Positions: Acting Exec. Secy., Bd. Of Investment, State of Minn., 1978-79; Assoc. Dean of Grad. Sch. U. of Minn., 1961-73.

Source: “Biographical Listing of Members.” The American Economic Review 71, no. 6 (1981): p. 67.

___________________________________

Research Hint:
Boddy’s data go back to 1957/58

“I have, over the past six years, conducted an informal survey of some 30 of the leading departments of economics in the country, defined largely as being those departments which have been major producers of Ph.D.’s in economics.”

Source:  Boddy, Francis M. “The Demand for Economists.” The American Economic Review 52, no. 2 (1962): 503-08.

 

Also of interest from about the same time is the AER Supplement:

Tolles, N. Arnold, and Emanuel Melichar. “Studies of the Structure of Economists’ Salaries and Income” The American Economic Review 58, no. 5 (1968):

___________________________________

MEMBERS OF THE CHAIRMEN’S GROUP, 1965-66
December 13, 1965

  1. Professor Gerard Debreu
    University of California
    Berkeley, California 94720
  2. Dean R. M. Cyert
    Carnegie Institute of Technology
    Pittsburgh 13, Pennsylvania
  3. Professor Arnold C. Harberger
    University of Chicago
    1126 East 59th Street
    Chicago 37, Illinois
  4. Professor Carl McGuire
    University of Colorado
    Boulder, Colorado
  5. Professor William Vickrey
    Columbia University
    New York 27, New York
  6. Professor Douglas F. Dowd
    Acting Chairman
    Cornell University
    Ithaca, New York
    (Professor Frank H. Golay, the Chairman, is on leave in 1965-66.)
  7. Professor Robert S. Smith
    Duke University
    Durham, North Carolina
  8. Professor John Dunlop
    Harvard University
    Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138
  9. Professor John F. Due
    University of Illinois
    Urbana, Illinois 61803
  10. Professor George Wilson
    Indiana University
    Bloomington, Indiana 47405
  11. Professor Karl A. Fox
    Iowa State University
    Ames, Iowa 50010
  12. Professor Carl F. Christ
    Johns Hopkins University
    Baltimore, Maryland
  13. Professor Robert F. Lanzilotti
    Michigan State University
    East Lansing, Michigan
  14. Professor Warren L. Smith
    University of Michigan
    Ann Arbor, Michigan
  15. Professor E. Cary Brown
    Massachusetts Institute of Technology
    Cambridge 39, Massachusetts
  16. Professor Emanuel Stein
    New York University
    New York 3, New York
  17. Professor John Turnbull
    University of Minnesota
    Minneapolis, Minnesota
  18. Professor Ralph W. Pfouts
    university of North Carolina
    Chapel Hill, North Carolina
  19. Professor Robert Eisner
    Northwestern University
    Evanston, Illinois
  20. Professor Paul G. Craig
    Ohio State University
    Columbus, Ohio
  21. Professor Irving B. Kravis
    University of Pennsylvania
    Philadelphia 4, Pennsylvania
  22. Professor Richard A. Lester
    Princeton University
    Princeton, New Jersey
  23. Dean Emanuel T. Weiler
    Purdue University
    Lafayette, Indiana
  24. Professor Lionel McKenzie
    University of Rochester
    Rochester 20, New York
  25. Professor Edward S. Shaw
    Stanford University
    Stanford, California
  26. Professor Carey Thompson
    University of Texas
    Austin, Texas
  27. Professor James W. McKie
    Vanderbilt University
    Nashville, Tennessee
  28. Professor Alexandre Kafka
    Acting Chairman
    University of Virginia
    Charlottesville, Virginia
    (Professor Warren Nutter, the Chairman, is on leave in 1965-66.)
  29. Professor David B. Johnson
    University of Wisconsin
    Madison, Wisconsin
  30. Professor Raymond Powell
    Yale University
    New Haven, Connecticut

 

Source: Johns Hopkins University. The Ferdinand Hamburger, Jr. Archives. Department of Political Economy, Series 5, Box 6, Folder 2 “Statistical Information”.

 

___________________________________

 

CARTEL
SUMMARY of the October-1965 Questionnaire to Departments of Economics in the United States

SUMMARY of the salary (1965-66 and 1964-65 academic years, 9-10 month basis) and other data of 29 (out of 29) Departments of Economics. N = Number of Departments reporting.

 

TABLE 1c
PROFESSORS 1965-66, 1964-65

(1)
Median Salaries
All Professors

MID-POINT
OF RANGE

 1965-66

1964-65

Over 20,249

 2 1
20,000 4

0

19,500

 0 1
19,000 3

1

18,500

 2 3
18,000 2

1

17,500

 3 1
17,000 2

4

16,500

 2 4
16,000 1

4

15,500

 2 0
15,000 2

1

14,500

 0 2
14,000 3

1

13,500

 0 1
13,000 1

4

N=

 29 29
Median $17,500

$16,500

Mean

 $17,377

$16,319

 

 

TABLE 1c
PROFESSORS 1965-66, 1964-65

(2)

Average Salaries
“Superior Professors”
(Top 1/3)

MID-POINT
OF RANGE

 1965-66

1964-65

Over 23,749

 3 1
23,500 2

0

23,000

 0 0
22,500 3

0

22,000

 1 2
21,500 4

3

21,000

 1 2
20,500 4

2

20,000

 0 3
19,500 2

2

19,000

 2 4
18,500 1

0

18,000

 3 1
17,500 1

2

17,000

 0 0
16,500 2

1

16,000

 0 4
15,500 0

1

15,000

 0 0
14,500 0

1

14,000

 0 0
N= 29

29

Median

 $20,600 $19,500
Mean $20,677

$19,093

 

 

TABLE 1c
PROFESSORS 1965-66, 1964-65

(3)

Average Salaries
“Average Professors”
(Lower 2/3)

MID-POINT
OF RANGE

 1965-66

1964-65

Over 18,749

 4 2
18,500 0

1

18,000

 3 1
17,500 1

1

17,000

 3 1
16,500 3

2

16,000

 5 8
15,500 1

4

15,000

 2 1
14,500 1

1

14,000

 2 0
13,500

2

2

13,000

 1 4
12,500 1

0

12,000

 0 1
11,500 0

0

N=

 29 29
Median $16,100

$15,390

Mean

 $16,192

$15,119

 

Source: Johns Hopkins University. The Ferdinand Hamburger, Jr. Archives. Department of Political Economy, Series 5, Box 6, Folder 2 “Statistical Information”.

Image: From left to right: Monopolies, Uncle Sam, Trusts.

Taylor, Charles Jay, Artist. In the hands of his philanthropic friends / C.J. Taylor. , 1897. N.Y.: Published in Puck, March 10, 1897. . Retrieved from the Library of Congress, . (Accessed May 12, 2017). https://www.loc.gov/item/2012647652/

Categories
Economists

Keynes vs. Marx. Abba Lerner responds to Daniel Bell, 1944

 

 

 

Both the economist Abba Lerner and the sociologist Daniel Bell can be seen in this 1944 exchange of letters to have considered themselves still at that time, to differing degrees of orthodoxy, of the Marxian persuasion. What caught my eye, in light of current macroeconomics debates, was Bell’s identification of “the confidence fairy” in Keynesian economics. Lerner’s response is that human psychology is something that Keynes rightly identified has a place in macroeconomic models. Lerner’s key conclusion: “If the theory of how the individual parts behave does not fit in with the theory of how the totality behaves that is evidence that at least one of the theories is wrong.”

In August 1938 Abba Lerner drove from Colorado Springs to Mexico City to meet Leon Trotsky. Lerner’s description of that encounter was transcribed earlier in Economics in the Rear-View Mirror.

_____________________

Letter from Daniel Bell to Abba Lerner
[presumably July or August, 1944]

49 East Ninth Street
New York 3, N.Y.

Dear Abba:

I was reading through Joan Robinson’s Introduction to the Theory of Employment, recently to check some thoughts on Keynesian economics and one point has stuck in my mind nagging me on. So I pass it along to you in the hope of clarification.

In the emphasis that the whole Keynesian school places on the role of demand, savings and investment, it seems that the cornerstone of the structure is actually a psychological explanation of depression and unemployment. For the theory seems to hinge on the decisions of entrepreneurs to invest based on a calculation of profit. On the one hand people save, so there is a decline in demand for consumption goods on the other business concerns fear to expand because of declining demand for capital goods by consumption goods industries. The use of word[s] such as fears, calculation etc are quite irritating. A Marxian theory, largely abstract and dealing in terms of ratios of constant and variable capital and declining rate of profit, seems more satisfying because of the total and more meaningful picture of a complete situation it provides.

Anyway, I’m interested in clearing up this issue of a psychological underpinning to Keynesian economics. If so, why all we need is a good publicity firm to convince the people to cheer up and spend and our worries are solved.

Apart from the frivolity, I’d appreciate your reactions.

sincerely,

[signed]

Dan Bell

_____________________

210 W 16, NY 11, NY
August 6th 1944

Dear Dan,

You write that you are irritated by the emphasis on psychology in the Keynesian theory of employment. The use of words like fears, calculations etc annoy you and you find that in this regard the Keynesian approach is less satisfactory than the Marxian which [is]“largely abstract and dealing in terms of the ratios of constant and variable capital and declining rate of profit, seems to be more satisfying because of the total and more meaningful picture of a complete situation it provides.”

So you [are] interested in clearing up the issue of a psychological underpinning to Keynesian economics. “If so,” you write, “why all we need is a good publicity firm to convince the people to cheer up and spend and our worries are solved.”

I react quite the other way. I can see no objection to psychology nor does it seem to me to be an illegitimate underpinning to a theory to have psychological elements. On the contrary any theory that purports to explain what happens to human society without having to pay any attention to the way the people in it behave would seem to [me] prima-facie a swindle. It is of course very pretty and aesthetic to have a plan that describes the working of any economy as if it had nothing to do with the way human being[s] behave — which is psychology — but appears to deduce it from a simple manipulation of mathematical ratios. The Marxian theory does this and to that extent it is false and the detailed analysis of the falsity of the argument has been abundantly demonstrated even in cases where the conclusions happen to be true.

The same tendency to accept a simple mathematical law without going behind it to see how it fits in with the fact that what we are describing is the total behavior of millions of people is quite common in economic and probably in other studies too. One that is very similar to the Marxian preoccupation with ratios is to be found in the proposition called “the acceleration principle” out of which economists have built theories of the business cycle, more complex and aesthetically more satisfying than the Marxian theory, but which have been discarded as soon as it was pointed out the apparently simple mathematical proposition concerning the effects of changes in the ratios of current consumption to replacement were only true because of an implicit assumption about the expectations of business men about the continuation of the current level or trend of consumption. I refer to the theories of the Business cycle by Harrod.

Of course it will not do to dismiss the Keynesian theory by saying that all we need is to persuade people to spend by appropriate advertising. Functional Finance is only an application of other means, which are much more powerful than advertising, to bring about the proper level of spending. As long as we have an economy, capitalist or socialist, in which what is produced is somehow related to the public’s money demand for the output, we can regulate the level of activity by working on the demand.

There are very strict limits as to what can be done in this direction by advertising or propaganda or ballyhoo. Individual citizens might perhaps to some extent be persuaded to increase their spending at the expense of their saving, though even this is very doubtful. At the present time saving by individuals is due much more to the inability to buy what they want than to the appeals to buy bonds even though these are backed by the touching appeal that by so doing we can win the war, save the lives of our loved ones in the army, and make a good profit at the same time. As regards investment by business men the effects of ballyhoo are even more doubtful, for even if they should temporarily be effective, the results in unprofitable investments would very soon become apparent and no advertising can for long hope to overcome this influence.

The basic point that interests me in your letter is the willingness you show to accept a theory if it is so simple that there is no room for bringing in the fact of human behavior even when that is indeed the thing we are trying to explain. It shows a willingness to believe in the crudest of magic provided it is called scientific and objective and overrides all objections by a declaration that it is “abstract” and refuses to listen [to] its error in every detail by declaring that it aims to provide a picture of the complete situation. The principle is that it does not matter if every element in it is false as long as the total picture it gives has some attractiveness if only because it paints a picture we would like to believe to be true.

Of course if the Keynesian theory were based upon some special theory of psychology, which otherwise we have little use for, or if it invented a peculiar psychology ad hoc, you would have a legitimate basis for objection. But all the psychology used here consists of well known and undisputed propositions such as that when people earn more they will on the whole spend more and also save more, and that business men are more likely to invest when business is good than when business is bad.

Some very conscientious economists have made very careful attempts to prove these propositions by statistics, and with some success. I do not think I am too dogmatic in declaring that in the light of our everyday experience we could legitimately assume these propositions to be true even in the absence of these carful studies. And if the propositions about spending etc are not fitted into a theory like the Marxian theory (to a great extent I think they can be so fitted in) the latter is unsatisfactory. I get the feeling I remember having when I was an undergraduate in economics and a much more orthodox Marxist than I am now. I then had the ambition of showing how the behavior of the individuals fitted in the Marxian generalities of the laws of motion of the society as a whole. If the theory of how the individual parts behave does not fit in with the theory of how the totality behaves that is evidence that at least one of the theories is wrong.

This seems a little long-winded, but I hope my attitude will be apparent. If this is not clear perhaps we can meet sometime and talk it out.

Greetings to Nora

Yours sincerely,

Abba P. Lerner.

 

Source: Library of Congress. Abba P. Lerner Papers. Box 6, Folder 8 “’B’ miscellany”.

 

Image Source: Publicity photo of Abba Lerner from Beth Emet’s announcement of speakers in its 1958 Forum (that included besides Dr. Abba Lerner, the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. as well as the actor Theodore Bikel) in Library of Congress. Abba P. Lerner Papers. Box 6, Folder 8 “’B’ miscellany”.

Categories
Agricultural Economics Economists Harvard

Harvard. Memorial Minute for Agricultural Economist, J. D. Black, 1960

 

 

John Kenneth Galbraith was the chairman of a committee commissioned to write a faculty minute in honor of John D. Black (1883-1960) who taught courses in the economics of agriculture at Harvard from 1927 through 1959. Anyone familiar with Galbraithian prose can see that this minute was overwhelmingly, if not exclusively, the work of Galbraith. I do not think it an exaggeration to see in Galbraith’s praise of this or that aspect of Black’s career and scholarly style a projection of Galbraith’s own creed for academic life. Admiration, gratitude (Black pushed hard to get Galbraith promoted to a full professorship at Harvard), and affection all shine through this memorial minute, a genuine positive outlier in the art of the obituary.

Willard W. Cochrane wrote a profile “Remembering John D. Black” that was published in Choices (Magazine published by the Agricultural & Applied Economics Association in the 1st Quarter 1989 issue) pp. 31-32.

______________________

FACULTY OF ARTS AND SCIENCES

At a meeting of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences on October 18, 1960, the following minutes were placed upon the records.

JOHN DONALD BLACK

John D. Black, Henry Lee Professor of Economics, was the nation’s leading student of the economics of agriculture, and, to a greater extent than any other man, he gave the modern dimension and form to this branch of economics. His books, monographs, and papers were more widely and attentively read than those of any other scholar in the field; he was a premier source of ideas and a leader in research; his students have held and still hold a large proportion of the professorships in this subject; they have been equally influential in the United States Department of Agriculture and influential also in the colleges and departments of agriculture in foreign countries; and Black himself had a marked influence on the agricultural legislation passed in 1933 and thereafter. The price paid for milk in this community is set in accordance with a complex formula devised by Black. Not the least of his achievements was to make Harvard, an institution with no very intimate ties to farming, a major center during his lifetime of agricultural research and instruction.

Black’s first interest in life was as a teacher of advanced students — students who would find their career in one or another branches of his subject. His teaching had little style; preparation was at best an afterthought. But his students soon came to realize that they were, incomparably, the most important people in his life. They could count, literally, on his unlimited time and his impersonal but equally unlimited affection. And they discovered that beneath his formless lecturing were solid theoretical premises, a strong scientific attitude, and a profound contempt for anything suggestive of cant or pretense. He was immensely tolerant of students of average ability and was content if they became, in his hands, a little better than average. But he rejoiced in his good students and saw in all their achievements his own. Black’s students were his students for life. He knew them all by name; he expected to be consulted when they changed jobs; and he liked to be informed on their personal life. He was deeply concerned with the quality of instruction in agricultural economics not alone at Harvard but throughout the country. High level instruction he identified, not inaccurately, with this own students. So for many years he carried with him a small black book containing a list of former students and in his mind a list of college and university departments where he felt his influence could be enhanced. A vacancy in any of these institutions led promptly to a recommendation of a man who could be counted upon to extend what he did not hesitate to call “the Black point of view.”

Though subordinate in its claim on his time (during his nearly thirty years at Harvard his door was always open to students from nine until five) Black’s research and writing was of first importance and was prodigious in volume. His Production Economics, published in 1926, though unfinished in some respects, was a landmark in the development of the production function and in the theory of the competitive firm. It led Black to develop an entirely new approach to farm management research and instruction, one that reflected far more adequately the conceptual character of the farm firm and which in time largely supplanted the older methods based on comparative accounting data. Marketing, agricultural co-operation land tenure, land economics, price analysis, forestry, population theory, food and nutrition, farm labor, and national policy were among the subjects which engaged his attention at one period or another. A selection from his writings published last year by the Harvard University Press was from nearly three hundred books, papers, pamphlets, congressional submissions, reports, and manuscripts. Black had little patience with refinement in economic theory or method; he made no effort to conceal his opinion that much discussion of finer points was pretentious nonsense. He spoke often of the need to “open up a subject”—to initiate investigation and to offer the preliminary findings. This repeatedly he did. The results were never well formed or polished. But they were always supremely relevant, and they usually paved the way for the more detailed efforts of less original men.

Throughout his life Black was a trusted adviser on a wide range of matters concerning agricultural policy. He could not be readily typed either as a liberal or as a conservative. But he was sympathetic and pragmatic. He mistrusted the men who resolved matters on general theoretical grounds, and he was profoundly interested in results. Thus during the thirties, when many economists opposed the farm legislation of the period as an improper interference with the free market, Black was concerned only with how it might be made to work. Similarly on other matters. As a result, he was called on constantly by a succession of Secretaries of Agriculture, by agricultural officials, farm leaders, congressional committees and, especially in recent years, by foreign governments.

John Donald Black was born in 1883 in the log house on the original family homestead in Cambridge, Wisconsin. He was fourth in a family of talented children — one that include three teachers, a distinguished chemist, and a leading businessman. Black made his way through normal school, became a high school teacher of algebra, botany, and physical geography and the coach of the high school athletic teams. With earnings from teaching, he proceeded to the University of Wisconsin and to a degree in English. He taught English first at Western Reserve University and then for four years at the Michigan College of Mines (as it then was) on the upper Michigan peninsula. This latter college was in a raw and bitter community; in the neighboring copper mines bitterness and strife were endemic. He became impressed, especially after a long strike in 1915, with the urgency of the social problems. It seems likely, also, that he had become increasingly less impressed by the urgency or even the feasibility of teaching English grammar to these engineers for, in any case, he had begun to smuggle economics into his courses in the form of assignments in English composition. But on returning to study labor economics at a University of Wisconsin summer school, his attention was caught by the fledgling work in farm economics of Henry C. Taylor. He turned to this subject and took his Ph.D. degree with a thesis on land tenure in Wisconsin. On completion of his degree in 1918, he went to the University of Minnesota. His academic progress there may well serve as a model for the ambitious young scholar. He was assistant professor for six months, associate professor for two years, and the head of his department from the beginning.

In the ensuing ten years, the University of Minnesota became by far the most interesting center for research and discussion of the social problems of agriculture in the United States. A brilliant group of scholars gathered to work with Black. From them came a striking series of pamphlets and monographs — those on empirical methods and the nature of market supply responses were especially noteworthy. Before long, Black had a disproportionate share of both graduate students and budget — a development which he never found it in his heart to deplore.

By the late twenties his work was widely known and, at the behest of Thomas Nixon Carver, he was invited to visit Harvard for a term. This he did in 1927, and the visit was soon followed by an offer of a professorship. Now the students came to Cambridge instead of St. Paul. Few of them had funds to afford Harvard tuition, and by an incredible exercise of energy and resourcefulness Black found them money with which to study and do research. In 1929 and the years following the Social Science Research Council awarded one hundred twenty scholarships to improve the level of teaching and research in agricultural economics and rural sociology. Of the recipients, no fewer than forty-five came to Harvard to work with Black. In some subsequent years as many as a quarter of all the students in economics belonged to what came to be called “the Black Empire.”

In 1917 Black married Nina Van Steenberg, a woman of serene good humor and keen intelligence who, with their three children — Guy, Margaret, and Alan — survives him. The Black house in Belmont was for hundreds of graduate students nearly as much a part of Harvard as were his rooms in Widener or (later on) in Littauer. Black, to the wonder of all who knew him, worked prodigiously, imperturbably, and without evident strain. The serenity, charm, and quiet good humor of his household is surely a part of the explanation.

In his relations to colleagues and university, Black was the epitome of the inner-directed man. His view of what he needed and wanted was extremely clear. Since, in the end, it invariably prevailed, the Department eventually adopted the wise course of acceding to his wishes at the outset. Where he found university rules inconvenient, he unhesitantly ignored them. The rule that members of the faculty, though sound in body and mind, should retire at some specified age, struck him as especially absurd. He continued to teach until last December when he was seventy-six. He had a certain quiet pride in the devices by which he accomplished this defeat of authority, and it was his belief that no one in the modern history of the university had approached his record.

Black was an early President of the American Farm Economic Association and one of the life Fellows of that organization. He had a founding role in the organization of the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations, and in 1955 he was President of the American Economic Association.

Last January he was stricken by the first of a series of severe heart attack. He died on April 12.

Edward S. Mason
Arthur Smithies
John Kenneth Galbraith, Chairman.

 

Source: Harvard University Gazette, Vol. LVI, No. 7 (October 29, 1960), p. 36-8. Copy in the Papers of John Kenneth Galbraith (Box 527), John F. Kennedy Presidential Library.

Image Source: Harvard University. Class Album 1945.

Categories
Economists Harvard

Harvard. Appointment of Leontief as Economics Instructor in 1932

 

 

Wassily Leontief was appointed in April, 1932 at Harvard for a three year appointment as instructor, beginning September 1, 1932. In light of current Rube Goldberg procedures and a Noah’s ark of bureaucratic species required to sign off at each stage of the hiring process in universities today, one wonders at this ease of instructor appointment in 1932 as reflected in the following two letters. Of course, in all fairness I should try to fish out similar appointments that were made for lesser lights endowed with stronger personal relations to the departmental and university movers-and-shakers, but visitors to Economics in the Rear-View Mirror might excuse me for oversampling at the top of the scientific significance distribution. Certainly in this case, merit mattered.

___________________________________

To President Lowell from Dean Murdock, February 23, 1932

Harvard University
Cambridge

Faculty of Arts and Sciences
Office of the Dean
20 University Hall

February 23, 1932.

Dear Mr. Lowell:

The Department of Economics is very eager to have appointed as Instructor for three years, beginning September 1 next, Mr. Wassily Leontieff. They would like to have his salary for the first year $3600, for the second, $4000, and for the third, $4400. At present they are budgeted for a member of their staff with a salary of $5,000, who would be replaced by Leontieff, so that there would be a decrease rather than an increase in the salary budget. In talking to Mr. Burbank, I have been very hesitant about encouraging him in regard to the appointment of Leontieff, since it seems to me that ordinarily, and particularly in these times, a new and untried man should come on a one-year appointment. Leontieff, however, will not consider a one-year appointment. The more I hear about him, the more I think that he is, as the Department feels, a young man of unusual brilliance and promise, and that we should miss a real opportunity if we did not appoint him now. Professor Burbank has not only got testimony about him from various people who know him, and examined his publications, but he has also had him here in Cambridge and has interviewed him. Professor Schumpeter, who is probably coming next year and who did not know that we were considering Leontieff, wrote to Professor Taussig the other day, and in his letter included a passage about Leontieff which I send you with this letter.

I realize that this sort of case creates a possibly dangerous precedent; but, on the other hand, since it involves no increase in our expenses for the next few years, and since Leontieff seems to be a thoroughly unusual person I am inclined to think that we might well take whatever risk there is involved. If you approve, perhaps you will be willing to consider this letter as my formal recommendation. If you wish to discuss the matter with me, or, if you disapprove, I hope you will let me know, since I must give Mr. Burbank some report at once, as Leontieff is considering offers elsewhere.

The following information about Mr. Leontieff has been sent to me by Professor Burbank:

“Wassily Leontieff was born in St. Petersburg in 1906, the son of a professor of Political Economy in the University of St. Petersburg. He began his university training in 1921 in the Faculty of Social Sciences in the University of Leningrad, and in 1925 received the degree of Learned Economist. For one year he remained at the University as an Instructor in Economic Theory. He then went to Berlin to continue his studies, and received the degree of Ph.D. from that university in 1928. While at Berlin he worked particularly with Professor L. von Bortkiewicz and with Professor Werner Sombart. In the fall of 1928 he was appointed a member of the research staff at the University of Kiel. After spending two years at Kiel he went to China as an adviser in the economic planning of the prospective railway system of that country. Since 1931 he has been a research associate in the National Bureau of Economic Research in New York.”

Very truly yours,

(signed)

Kenneth B. Murdock
[Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences]

 

President A. Larence Lowell,
5 University Hall.

________________________

To Professor Taussig from Professor Schumpeter, February 6, 1932.

“Leontief has been to Harvard (i.e. on a visit here). He will, under present circumstances, hardly be reappointed at the National Bureau of Econ. Research; and I despair of getting anything for him in Germany. What about Harvard? The great argument in favor of appointing him to some teaching or research position, seems to me to be, that, whatever we think of his two papers on statistical demand and supply curves (and I not only accept some of the criticisms leveled against his method, but I also have a few of my own), yet they are so striking proofs of brilliant gifts and they have made so much impression, that his is one of those cases in which it is to the interest of a great University to have a given man on her staff and under her wings. If a man makes himself internationally known by one paper at 23 as L. did, he almost certainly will go a considerable way, and I should think it good policy for Harvard to use the present opportunity, quite apart from the fact, that I should be glad to have him near me. I am sure he would do good work, the results of which would then be associated with Harvard’s name.”

Source: Harvard Archive, President Lowell’s Papers Oct 1930—Sept. 1933. UAI.5.160. Box 301, Folder 676.

Image Source: Wassily Leontief in Harvard Class Album, 1934.

Categories
Economists

Abba Lerner’s Roadtrip to Meet Trotsky, 1938

 

 

In August 1938 at age 34 Abba Lerner took his legendary road-trip from Colorado Springs to Mexico City and then back to Chicago where he wrote a slightly more than three page travel letter that includes a description of his two “lengthy interviews” with Leon Trotsky.

The typescript I found in Lerner’s papers at the Library of Congress was formatted as presumably a round-robin letter with a temporary return address. I limit myself to the economic content–the impressions and adventures on the road must wait. 

It turns out that a woman graduate student from Chicago who was a co-driver on the road-trip was later to receive an acknowledgment in a footnote to a famous paper written by my dissertation adviser, Evsey Domar. (I score that three degrees of separation between Leon Trotsky and the curator of Economics in the Rear-View Mirror!)

A tip of the hat to Olav Bjerkholt for his helpful comment to this posting:  at the 4th Annual Research Conference on Economics and Statistics of the Cowles Commission at Colorado Springs, July 20, 1938 there is a wonderful group picture where Abba Lerner (wearing his legendary sandals) is to be seen less than two weeks before heading out on his road-trip to Mexico City.

In August 1944 the sociologist Daniel Bell and Abba Lerner exchanged two letters in which Lerner, while considering himself a marxist, defends the elements of human psychology introduced by Keynes into his macroeconomic model. Interestingly, Daniel Bell saw where the “confidence fairy” fits into the Keynesian model.

_______________________

Excerpts from Lerner’s letter

c/o Oskar Lange
Department of Economics
University of Chicago
Chicago, Illinois

August 31, 1938

I left Colorado Springs with Alice on August 2nd or 3rd for Mexico…

…We spent ten days in and around Mexico City. Had two lengthy interviews with Trotsky in which we discussed Dialectics, the Syllogism, the French Turn and the possible significance of work on the economics of socialism and the use of the price mechanism. Trotsky is very good-looking, appeared to be in very good health, and is a most charming and tolerant person in discussion. He uses the word Dialectical of any argument as I would use the word sensible, or adequate or legitimate. He is not guilty of any of the false or superstitious uses of the concept on which I tested him. He appears to be ignorant of modern symbolic logic and regard [sic] my interpretation of the syllogism as a sophistication which the Aristotelian concept could not bear. He was extremely witty. My insistence on the universal validity of the Syllogism reminded him of the first sentence of the Gospel of St. John, “In the beginning was Logos”, and my explanation that the law of contradiction was merely an agreement among sensible people not to use the same symbol for contradictory propositions reminded him of the fiction of the historical social contract. He immediately recognized my interest in price mechanisms in a socialist society as a symptom of my undialectical thinking, but was sufficiently impressed with some arguments I put forward on this and other subjects to grant that they were quite dialectical. Finally he declared that although skeptical he would read some of my articles on socialist policy since there might be something to them. He seemed to be particularly moved when I said that the chief value of a price system is to provide some principles in place of the elaboration of arbitrary precedents and thereby to lessen the importance of the bureaucracy and the danger of their development into a beaurocratic [sic] caste. I am not very hopeful of converting him on this subject but I shall continue to try – using Lange’s book. I enjoyed the discussions immensely. Alice [Lerner’s first wife, Alice Sendak (divorced May 1958)] says I was in good form and Mary [Mary Wise (Smelker), a research student from Northwestern University met by Abba Lerner at the Cowles Commission meetings at Colorado Springs to help with the driving since Alice did not know how to drive] considered my argument to be less witty than Trotsky’s but more cogent. However she agreed with me on the matters in the first place – except for the matter of the French Turn of which, as she says, she is a living example won from the S. P. in Chicago.

We also had a series of discussions with some minor Trotskyists, devotees, secretaries and guards of the Old Man, Joe Hanson, Sarah and some others. These were were [sic] much more dogmatic and difficult to argue with than the Old Man himself.

…Another interesting man we met was Fritz Bach, an economist and sort of new dealer adviser to the Government. We had been trying to get in touch with him for a long time and finally we woke him up early in the morning after a most adventurous search into the suburbs where the pavements were all pulled up and we had to go through great mud holes, some of the mud getting onto my shirt collar. Bach then had lunch with us and with Josue Saenz and economist (research student) who is studying in London. Lunch lasted from 1 till 5 with Bach speaking most of the time about Mexican Economics and occasionally about Mexican Politics. His most wonderful story is about Manuilsky who came up to Mexico a number of years ago to instruct the C. P. on how and when to make the revolution. When he had been in the country three weeks he saw a servant maid in Rivera’s house and asked how she came to look so dark. When told she was Indian he expressed surprise that there were still any Indians in Mexico.

…Here [Chicago] I settle down to write this letter, glad to stop travelling for a bit and itching to get some work done, interrupted every few minutes by Lange who brings some new member of the department to be introduced to me, impressing on me the conviction that I am going to have a grand time here.

Source:  Library of Congress, Papers of Abba P. Lerner, Box 25, Folder 3 (1937-39).

_______________________

WHO’S WHO

Mary Wise Smelker born 18 March 1914 in Chicago, died 23 February 2000 in Colorado.

In his famous paper Evsey Domar “Capital Expansion, Rate of Growth, and Employment” Econometrica, Vol. 14, No. 2 (April, 1946) mentions her. In the first footnote to the paper he thanks the fellow members of the “Little Seminar” that included among others Paul Baran, James S. Duesenberry, Lloyd A. Metzler, Richard A. Musgrave, Melvin W. Reder and Tiber de Scitovszky as well as Mary Wise Smelker.

Smelker, Mary Wise, government; b. Chicago, 1914; B.S., Northwestern, 1937, M.S., 1939; stud., Chicago, 1939-40. FIELDS 2d, 4b. PUB. The Impact of Federal Direct Taxes on the Distribution of After Tax Increase, National Tax Jour., Editor, Bur. of National Affairs, 1955-59; analyst, Bur. of the Budget, 1962-63; sr. economist, Bur. of Labor Stats., 1963-67, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System since 1967. ADDRESS Bus. Conditions Section, Research Div., Bd. of Govrs. of the Federal Reserve System, Watergate Bldg., Rm. 1010, 20th and Constitution Ave., Washington, DC 20551.

Source: Handbook of the American Economic Association, Biographical Listings of Members, American Economic Review, Vol. 59, No. 6. (Jan., 1970)p. 407.

 

Fritz Bach
For Spanish readers, the book by Maneul López de la Parra, El pensamiento económico de Fritz Bach, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Facultad de Economía, 2005.

 

Josué Sáenz
According to Sarah L. Babb in her Managing Mexico: Economists from Nationalism to Neoliberalism (Princeton University Press, 2001, p. 83), Josué Sáenz received his B.A. from Swarthmore College in the 1930s and became the director of the Department of Credit of the Finance Ministry in 1946.

 

Dimitri Manuilsky (1883-1959
Head of Comintern from 1929 to 1934. He was later the head of the Ukrainian delegation to the United Nations Conference on International Organization in San Francisco (1945) and served as the foreign minister of Ukraine (1944-1952).

_______________________

Image Source: Group photograph, dated 1938, from the Library of the London School of Economics with Abba Lerner seated right.

Categories
Cornell Economists Statistics

Cornell. Life of Walter F. Willcox, economic statistician

 

Following up the previous posting about the department of political science at Cornell University in 1900, now I add two items of interest relating to the professor of economic statistics at that time, Walter F. Willcox, who lived to the ripe old age of 103(!). At the tender age of 93 Willcox was asked to read a short statement about his personal creed for a radio show hosted by the legendary Edward R. Murrow. That statement is included below, followed by the Cornell’s Faculty Memorial Statement issued after his death in 1964.

Available on line is an excerpt from the article “Walter F. Willcox: Statist” from The American Statistician (February, 1961).

 

Research Hint: From Anderson through Zellner, over 70 short biographies at the American Statistical Association website’s “Statisticians in History” webpage.

_____________________________

 

This I Believe
Walter F. Willcox

In his 93rd year, i.e. most likely in 1956, Walter F. Willcox read the following statement in the “This I Believe” radio program hosted by Edward R. Murrow.

I have been asked to state what I believe, or in other words, my creed. It consists mainly of selections from the writings of others woven into a loose fabric on which I have come to stand. Seventy years ago, a college teacher told us “a man’s creed is a monument set up to show where he stopped thinking.” He might have gone on to add: you are supposed to be scholars and a scholar never stops thinking, so you can set up no such a monument as a destination, but only as a temporary camp carrying, perhaps, a date to show when you tarried a while at that point.

I believe that each person is born into what seems to him a chaos and given his share in mankind’s task of transforming that chaos into a cosmos. I believe that modern science is beginning to reveal the skeleton of the cosmos but that emotion and action are needed to give it flesh and life. I believe that the aim of all life is “life more abundant,” that life on this planet has steadily become richer, and that in this tiny corner of the cosmos and this bit of unending time there has been irregular progress towards a more abundant life.

I believe with John Dewey, that “Humanity cherishes ideals which are neither rootless nor completely embodied in existence,” and that these cherished ideals form the basis for man’s conception of a God. I believe with Goldwin Smith, that “Above all nations is humanity.” I believe that man receives, through heredity and environment, influences which his own efforts modify, and passes them on to uncounted future generations. Or, as Browning words it, “All that is at all/ lasts ever past recall/ Earth changes/ but thy soul and God stand sure/ What entered into thee/ that was, is, and shall be/ time’s wheel runs back or stops/ Potter and clay endure.”

I believe that human freedom to experiment and to initiate is the most potent of all the forces working for the progress of mankind. I believe that the spread of human freedom and the resultant decrease of fear, at least until 1914, form the best evidence of man’s advance in civilization. I believe with Becker, that “All values are inseparable from the love of truth and the search for it,” and that truth can be discovered only if the mind is free; and with Justice Holmes, that “Truth is best discovered and defended in the marketplace of ideas.”

I believe with Johnson, that “A man should keep his friendships in constant repair.” I believe with Becker, that “Knowledge and the power it gives should be used for the relief of man’s estate,” and that the best form of government yet devised is one which seeks to be “a government of the people, by the people, for the people.” I believe with Sherrington, that “We have, because human, an inalienable prerogative of responsibility which we cannot devolve, as once was thought even upon the stars. We can share it only with each other.”

Source: The actual recording of Walter F. Willcox reading his statement can also be found at the website: “This I Believe: A public dialogue about belief—one essay at a time.”.

_____________________________

 

Cornell University Faculty Memorial Statement
Walter Francis Willcox
March 22, 1861 — October 30, 1964

Walter Francis Willcox died at his home, after a brief illness, October 30, 1964. On March 22 he had celebrated his one hundred and third birthday. At the time of his death he was the oldest living alumnus of Phillips Andover Academy, of Amherst College, from which he received degrees of A.B., A.M. and LL.D., and (it was believed) of Columbia University, from which he received the LL.B. and Ph.D. He was also the oldest Professor Emeritus of Cornell and the only one known to have a son also a Professor Emeritus of the same institution.

Born in Reading, Massachusetts, in 1861, he was the son of a Congregational clergyman. Both his mother and father hoped that he, too, would enter the ministry but, after a passing interest in Greek, he turned instead to philosophy. Even before completing his graduate work, however, he found his attention drawn to those human and social problems that were to be his principal concern for the rest of his life. Although he came to Cornell in 1891 on a temporary appointment as an instructor of philosophy, the following year he accepted a position in the Department of Economics, rapidly making statistics his special field and himself a recognized authority and important innovator in that subject.

In 1899 he was asked to serve as chief statistician of the Twelfth Census of the United States, a post that took him to Washington until 1901. Part of his assignment consisted in preparing the new apportionment tables for the Congress; this brought to his attention the alarming rate at which the House had been growing as new seats were added to provide representation for the country’s expanding population, and the unsound method by which seats were apportioned. The House, he felt, could never realize its potentialities as a constructive political institution unless it were reduced to a manageable size—he considered three hundred the optimum number; but he also recognized the virtually insuperable obstacles in the way of any revision that would require incumbent representatives to vote some of their own seats out of existence. He did think, however, that it should be feasible to stem the previously unchecked growth of the body by a law fixing its existing size and providing for automatic reapportionment following each census. He even hoped that this technique might be used to reduce the size of the House by ten seats with each successive census. That proved too Utopian but in 1931, after a very long campaign, Congress finally did fix the size of the House at its existing 435 seats and also provided for regular reapportionment according to a plan Dr. Willcox himself had derived from the principle of “major fractions” originally formulated by Daniel Webster. Walter Willcox’ contribution to this achievement received unprecedented tribute from Senator Arthur Vandenberg, the sponsor of the bill, in a letter to Cornell President Jacob Gould Schurman. Some of Dr. Willcox’ personal satisfaction in this accomplishment was diminished, however, when a group of Harvard mathematicians persuaded Congress to adopt a rival statistical formula for reapportionment. Never convinced of the validity of the “Harvard method,” he continued throughout the remainder of his life to perfect and advocate his own system, and to urge to apparently hopeless cause of reducing the size of the House. His last appearance before a Senate judiciary subcommittee hearing on this subject was in 1959 when he was ninety-eight.

The role Walter Willcox played in national and international organizations can only suggest the nature and extent of his influence in the developing field of statistics. In 1892 he joined the American Statistical Association, becoming its president in 1912 and a fellow in 1917. In addition, he was instrumental in bringing the United States into effective membership in the International Statistical Institute, which he himself had joined in 1899. He served as the United States delegate to its session in Berlin in 1903, and to most of its subsequent biennial meetings in various capitals throughout the world until his final appearance at Paris in 1961. Having been a vice president of the Institute since 1923, he took the lead in reviving it after World War II, and served as its president at the first post war meeting, held in Washington, D.C., in 1947. From that time until his death he held the title of honorary president. In addition, he was a fellow of the Royal Statistical Society and an honorary member of the Statistical Society of Hungary, the Czechoslovakian Statistical Society, and the Mexican Society for Geography and Statistics. He served as a member or adviser of innumerable statistical commissions and boards, the Census Advisory Commission, the New York State Board of Health, the International Congress of Hygiene and Demography (1912), and the World Statistical Congress.

Although each of his four books—The Divorce Problem, A Study in Statistics, 1897, Supplementary Analysis and Derivative Tables, Twelfth Census, 1906; Introduction to the Vital Statistics of the United States 1900-1930, 1933; and Studies in American Demography, 1940—made a significant contribution, it was through his innumerable articles, letters to the editor, and personal written and oral communications that he exerted his surprising influence, not only in the fields of statistics and economics but in the general affairs of the nation. If his attention was habitually attracted by the “facts,” he had an extraordinary instinct for the right facts and great persistence in calling them and the problems and injustices they represented to the attention of his fellow citizens. Characteristically he was one of the very first to study the economic and social conditions of our Negro citizens; and it has been widely recognized that the recent Supreme Court decision establishing the principle of equal representation in state as well as national government reflects his efforts and influence. Both the problems of world government and the United Nations and the affairs of Ithaca and New York State were for him serious preoccupations. When on the occasion of his one hundredth birthday he was asked to comment on his life, he astonished his audience by saying, “If I were to start all over again I think I would go into politics. I don’t think I would have been so successful at that profession, but I would have enjoyed it more.”

In spite of his extensive professional interests and accomplishments and wide travels, the focus of his life, at least next to his family, was surely the University. Having come early enough to know most of the great personalities in Cornell’s early history and notably, all of its presidents from Andrew D. White to James A. Perkins, he had an insatiable interest in anything that pertained to the history, growth, or welfare of Cornell. From 1902-1907 he was Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, from 1916 to 1920 faculty representative on the Board of Trustees, and from 1931 Professor Emeritus.

An inveterate attender of faculty meetings, he also sought and made informal occasions for faculty discussion. He took a major part in reviving the Faculty Club after World War II, serving as its first president and making a substantial donation to its library. It was in one of the club’s small dining rooms, most fittingly named the Willcox Room, that he met regularly twice a week with luncheon groups. He himself had founded one of these groups nearly forty years ago, and modeled it after a “round table” which he had been invited to attend at the Library of Congress during his stay in Washington at the turn of the century. Although he always referred to it as the Becker luncheon group because, as he explained, he had begun it to serve as an occasion for Carl Becker’s conversation, it has long since been known to others as the Willcox group. Its members have included many of Cornell’s most distinguished citizens from Carl Becker to Liberty Hyde Bailey, Dexter Kimball, and Miss Francis Perkins, to mention a very few. We all, guests and new members, came to appreciate the unobtrusive skill with which the quiet figure of Walter Willcox drew out and directed the conversation.

Walter Willcox was throughout his long life not merely a distinguished economist and citizen; he was a model of a nineteenth-century gentleman and scholar concerned with the fate of his fellow man. He managed the rare feat of keeping his interest up to date without relinquishing his hold on his original values. As nearly as any one man could, he seemed to embody the ideal around which Ezra Cornell and Andrew White had established the University.

Mario Einaudi, Felix Reichmann, Edward W. Fox

 

Source: Cornell University eCommons. Cornell University Faculty Memorial Statement.

Image Source: Cornellian 1919, p. 128.

Categories
Economists Exam Questions Suggested Reading Syllabus Williams

Williams College. Joan Robinson’s (last) course reading list, 1982

After a glorious three week archive/library tour that has taken me from the Library of Congress in Washington to the Harvard Archives to the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library to the Johns Hopkins Archives and back to the Library of Congress, I have time before my flight back to Berlin for a post.

Less than a year before her death, Joan Robinson taught at Williams College in the Autumn/Winter of 1982. Her lectures at Williams were attended by a former colleague of mine from the University of Houston, Dr. D. Andrew Austin, now at the Library of Congress. Andrew shared with me the reading list for her lectures “Problems in Economic Analysis” along with a list of questions for a paper/take-home (exam).

Robinson’s chosen readings are taken from her books:

  • Economic Heresies: Some Old-fashioned Questions in Economic Theory. London: Macmillan, 1971.
  • Contributions to Modern Economics. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1978.
  • Aspects of Development and Underdevelopment. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1979.
  • Collected Economic Papers (5 vols.). Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1951-79; reprinted by MIT Press in 1980.
  • What are the Questions? An Other Essays: Further Contributions to Modern Economics. Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1981.

_________________________

 

Professor Joan Robinson

PROBLEMS IN ECONOMIC ANALYSIS
[Williams College, 1982]

OUTLINE OF TOPICS AND REFERENCES

  1. Economics: Ideas and Ideology
    “Marx, Marshall, and Keynes” (Contributions to Modern Economics, Ch. 7)
    “Economics Today” (Collected Economic Papers, Vol. 4, p. 122-127)
    “The Second Crisis of Economic Theory” (Collected Papers, 4, Ch. 10)
  2. What are the Questions?
    “What are the Questions?” (Further Contributions, Ch. 1)
    “The Age of Growth” (Further Contributions, Ch. 2)
    “Stagflation” (Further Contributions, Ch. 3)
  3. and 4. Effective Demand and Employment
    “Prices and Money” (Economic Heresies, Ch. 6)
    “Obstacles to Full Employment” (Contributions, Ch. 3)
    “The Rate of Interest” (Contributions, Ch. 5)
  4. Prices
    “The Philosophy of Prices” (Contributions, Ch. 14)
    “Imperfect Competition Revisited” (Contributions, Ch. 15)
    “The Theory of Value Reconsidered” (Contributions, Ch. 16)
    “The Theory of the Firm” (Economic Heresies, Ch. 7)
  5. Capital, Distribution, and Growth
    “The Meaning of Capital” (Contributions, Ch. 11)
    “Marginal Productivity” (Collected Papers, Vol. 4, Ch. 14)
    “Interest and Profit” (Economic Heresies, Ch. 3)
    “Surplus and Accumulation” (Aspects of Development & Underdevelopment, Ch. 2)
  6. International Trade
    “Beggar-My-Neighbour Remedies for Unemployment” (Contributions, Ch. 17)
    “The New Mercantilism” (Contributions, Ch. 18)
    “Trade in Primary Commodities” (Aspects of Development, Ch. 4)
  7. Economic Development
    “The Poverty of Nations” (Collected Papers, Vol. 4, Ch. 11)
    Aspects of Development and Underdevelopment
  8. Capitalism and Socialism
    “Latter-Day Capitalism” (Contributions, Ch. 21)
    “Has Capitalism Changed” (Contributions, Ch. 20)
    “Socialist Affluence” (Contributions, Ch. 22)

 

Econ. 353 Paper/Take Home
Professor Joan Robinson

Do the following three questions:

  1. Experience in the 1980s seems to be fulfilling Kalecki’s prediction of a political trade cycle. Comment.
  2. a) Explain Keynes’ theory of employment.
    b) Keynes failed to make clear whether this theory was intended to apply to a closed or open economy. Does it matter? Why or why not?
  3. What is the meaning of capital as a factor of production?

 

Choose one of the following two questions:

  1. The orthodox doctrines of economics which were dominant in the last quarter of the nineteenth century had a clear message. They supported laisser faire, free trade, the gold standard, and the universally advantageous effects of the pursuit of profit by competitive private enterprise. This was acceptable to the authorities in an expanding and flourishing capitalist world, especially to the authorities in England, which was still felt to be the dominant center and chief beneficiary of the system. Comment.
  2. The so-called Quantity Theory of Money consists in mistaking a symptom for a cause. Comment.

 

 

Source: Copy provided to Economics in the Rear-view Mirror by D. Andrew Austin of the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

Image Source: Joan Robinson at Williams College, Fall 1982 in Joan Robinson and the Americans by Marjorie Shephard Turner, p. 112 (ebook price: $9.99). Published by M. E. Sharpe , 1989.

 

 

Categories
Economists Fields Harvard

Harvard. Thirteen Economics Ph.D. Examinees, 1908-09.

 

 

This posting lists the five graduate students in economics who took their subject examinations for the Ph.D. at Harvard from March 12 through May 21, 1908. The examination committee members, academic history, general and specific subjects are provided along with the doctoral thesis subject, when declared. Lists for 1903-04, 1904-05, 1905-06, 1907-08, 1915-16, and 1926-27 were posted previously. In the same archival box one finds lists for the academic years 1902-03 through 1904-05, 1906-07 through 1913-14, 1915-16, 1917-18 through 1918-19, and finally 1926-27. I only include graduate students of economics (i.e. not included are the Ph.D. candidates in history and government).

Titles and dates of Harvard economic dissertations for the period 1875-1926 can be found here.

________________________________________

DIVISION OF HISTORY AND POLITICAL SCIENCE
EXAMINATIONS FOR THE DEGREE OF PH.D.

1908-09

Edmund Thornton Miller.

General Examination in Economics, January 7, 1909.
Committee: Professors Bullock (chairman), Taussig, Gay, Sprague, and Mitchell.
Academic History: University of Texas, 1897-1901; Harvard Graduate School, 1902-03, 1907-09; A.B. (University of Texas) 1900; A.M. (ibid) 1901; A.M. (Harvard) 1903. Instructor in Political Science, University of Texas, 1904-; Austin Teaching Fellow (Harvard), 1908-09.
General Subjects: 1. Economic Theory and its History. 2. Economic History to 1750. 3. Economic History since 1750. 4. Money, Banking and Transportation. 5. Public Finance and Financial History. 6. History of American Institutions.
Special Subject: Public Finance and the Financial History of the United States since 1789.
Thesis Subject: “The Financial History of Texas.” (With Professor Bullock.)

 

Charles Edward Persons.

General Examination in Economics, February 25, 1909.
Committee: Professors Taussig (chairman), Carver, Gay, MacDonald, and Ripley.
Academic History: Cornell College (Iowa), 1898-1903; Harvard Graduate School, 1904-05, 1906-09; A.B. (Cornell College) 1903; A.M. (Harvard) 1905. Instructor in Economics at Wellesley College, 1908-.
General Subjects: 1. Economic Theory and its History. 2. Economic History to 1750. 3. Economic History from 1750. 4. Sociology and Social Reform. 5. Transportation and Foreign Commerce. 6. History of American Institutions.
Special Subject: Industrial History of the United States.
Thesis Subject: “The History of the Ten-Hour Law in Massachusetts.” (With Professor Taussig.)

 

Frank Richardson Mason.

Special Examination in Economics, May 3, 1909.
General Examination passed May 8, 1907.
Committee: Professors Taussig (chairman), Bullock, Ripley, Mitchell, and Sprague.
Academic History: Harvard College, 1901-05; Harvard Graduate School, 1905-08; A.B. (Harvard) 1905; A.M. (ibid) 1906. Austin Teaching Fellow (Harvard), 1906-08.
Special Subject: Economic History of the United States.
Thesis Subject: “The Silk Industry in America.” (With Professor Taussig.)
Committee on Thesis: Professors Taussig, Bullock, and Sprague.

 

Robert Franz Foerster.

Special Examination in Economics, May 12, 1909.
General Examination passed May 21, 1908.
Committee: Professors Taussig (chairman), Peabody, Carver, Ripley, and Bullock.
Academic History: Harvard College, 1902-05; University of Berlin, 1905-06 (Winter Semester); Harvard Graduate School, 1906-09; A.B. (Harvard) 1906. Assistant in Social Ethics (Harvard), 1908-09.
Special Subject: Labor Problems.
Thesis Subject: “Emigration from Italy, with special reference to the United States.” (With Professor Taussig.)
Committee on Thesis: Professors Taussig, Ripley, and Gay.

 

David Frank Edwards.

General Examination in Economics, May 13, 1909.
Committee: Professors Taussig (chairman), Carver, Ripley, MacDonald, Mitchell, and Sprague.
Academic History: Ohio Wesleyan University, 1899-1903; Harvard Graduate School, 1905-06; A. B. (Ohio Wesleyan) 1903; A.M. (Harvard) 1906. Teacher, High School of Commerce (Boston), 1907-.
General Subjects: 1. Economic Theory and its History. 2. Labor Problems and Industrial Organization (and Social Reform). 3. Money, Banking, and Commercial Crises. 4. Commercial Geography and Foreign Commerce. 5. Transportation and Foreign Commerce. 6. History of American Institutions.
Special Subject: International Trade and Tariff Problems.
Thesis Subject: “The Glass Industry in the United States.” (With Professor Taussig.)

 

Harley Leist Lutz.

General Examination in Economics, May 14, 1909.
Committee: Professors Bullock (chairman), Carver, Gay, MacDonald, and Sprague.
Academic History: Oberlin College, 1904-07; Harvard Graduate School, 1907-09; A. B. (Oberlin) 1907; A.M. (Harvard) 1908. Assistant (Oberlin), 1906-07; Austin Teaching Fellow (Harvard), 1908-09.
General Subjects: 1. Economic Theory and its History. 2. Economic History to 1750, with especial reference to England. 3. Sociology and Social Reform. 4. Money, Banking, and Commercial Crises. 5. Public Finance and Financial History. 6. History of American Institutions.
Special Subject: Public Finance and Financial History of the United States.
Thesis Subject: “State Control over the Assessment of Property for Local Taxation.” (With Professor Bullock.)

 

Joseph Stancliffe Davis.

General Examination in Economics, May 17, 1909.
Committee: Professors Taussig (chairman), Carver, Bullock, Ripley, Mitchell, and Dr. Tozzer.
Academic History: Harvard College, 1904-08; Harvard Graduate School, 1908-09; A. B. (Harvard) 1908; Assistant in Economics (Harvard) 1908-09.
General Subjects: 1. Economic Theory and its History. 2. Economic History since 1750. 3. Sociology and Social Progress. 4. Money, Banking, and Industrial Organization. 5. History of American Institutions, especially since 1783. 6. Anthropology, especially Ethnology.
Special Subject: Corporations (Industrial Organization).
Thesis Subject: “The Policy of New Jersey toward Business Corporations.” (With Professor Bullock.)

 

James Ford.

Special Examination in Economics, May 19, 1909.
General Examination passed May 16, 1906.
Committee: Professors Carver (chairman), Peabody, Ripley, Taussig, and Bullock.
Academic History: Harvard College, 1901-04; Harvard Graduate School, 1904-06, 1907-09; A.B. (Harvard) 1905; A.M. (ibid) 1906. Robert Treat Paine Travelling Fellow, 1906-07; Assistant, Social Ethics (Harvard), 1907-09.
Special Subject: Social Reform (Socialism, Communism, Anarchism).
Thesis Subject: “Distributive and Productive Coöperative Societies in New England.” (With Professor Carver.)
Committee on Thesis: Professors Carver, Peabody, and Taussig.

 

Edmund Ezra Day.

Special Examination in Economics, May 20, 1909.
General Examination passed May 23, 1907.
Committee: Professors Bullock (chairman), Taussig, Ripley, Munro, and Mr. Parker.
Academic History: Dartmouth College, 1901-06; Harvard Graduate School, 1906-07, 1908-09; S.B. (Dartmouth) 1905; A.M. (ibid) 1906. Instructor in Economics, Dartmouth College, 1907-.
Special Subject: Public Finance and Financial History of the United States since 1789.
Thesis Subject: “The History of the General Property Tax in Massachusetts.” (With Professor Bullock.)
Committee on Thesis: Professors Bullock, Taussig, and Ripley.

 

Clyde Orval Ruggles.

General Examination in Economics, May 20, 1909.
Committee: Professors Ripley (chairman), Carver, Taussig, Gay, and MacDonald.
Academic History: Hedrick Normal School, 1895-96; Iowa State Normal School and Teachers’ College of Iowa, 1901-06; State University of Iowa, 1906-07; Harvard Graduate School, 1907-09; A. B. (Teachers’ College) 1906; A.M. (State Univ.) 1907.
General Subjects: 1. Economic Theory and its History. 2. Sociology and Social Reform. 3. Statistics. 4. Economic History to 1750, with especial reference to England. 5. Money, Banking, and Commercial Crises. 6. History of American Institutions.
Special Subject: Money and Banking.
Thesis Subject: “The Greenback Movement with especial Reference to Wisconsin and Iowa.” (With Professors Andrew and Mitchell.)

 

Edmund Thornton Miller.

Special Examination in Economics, May 21, 1909.
General Examination passed January 7, 1909.
Committee: Professors Bullock (chairman), Taussig, Mitchell, and Sprague.
Committee on Thesis: Professors Bullock, Taussig, and Mitchell.
(See first item for Academic History etc.)

 

Emil Sauer.

General Examination in Economics, May 21, 1909.
Committee: Professors Taussig (chairman), Carver, Gay, Mitchell, Munro, and Ripley.
Academic History: University of Texas, 1900-03, 1904-05; Harvard Graduate School, 1907-09; Litt.B. (University of Texas) 1903; A.M. (Harvard) 1908.
General Subjects: 1. Economic Theory and its History. 2. Economic History since 1750. 3. Statistics. 4. Money, Banking, and Commercial Crises. 5. Transportation and Industrial Organization. 6. History of American Institutions.
Special Subject: Economic History of the United States.
Thesis Subject: “The Reciprocity Treaty of 1875 and the Relations between the United States and Hawaii, 1875-1900.” (With Professor Taussig.)

 

Charles Edward Persons.

Special Examination in Economics, May 24, 1909.
General Examination passed February 25, 1909.
Committee: Professors Taussig (chairman), Peabody, Bullock, Ripley, and Sprague.
Committee on Thesis: Professors Taussig, Bullock, and Ripley.
(See second item for Academic History etc.)

 

Carl William Thompson.

General Examination in Economics, June 2, 1909.
Committee: Professors Carver (chairman), Taussig, Sprague, Ripley, Cole, and MacDonald.
Academic History: Valparaiso College, 1899-1901; University of South Dakota, 1902-03; Harvard Graduate School, 1903-04; A.B. (Valparaiso) 1901; B.O. (ibid) 1901; A.B. (South Dakota) 1903; A.M. (ibid.) 1903; A.M. (Harvard) 1904. Professor of Economics and Sociology, University of South Dakota.
General Subjects: 1. Economic Theory and its History. 2. Sociology and Social Reform. 3. Money, Banking, and Commercial Crises. 4. Transportation and Foreign Commerce. 5. Labor Problems and Industrial Organization.. 6. History of American Institutions.
Special Subject: (undecided).
Thesis Subject: (undecided.)

 

Arthur Norman Holcombe.

Special Examination in Economics, June 7, 1909.
General Examination passed April 8, 1907.
Committee: Professors Taussig (chairman), Ripley, Bullock, Cole, and Munro.
Academic History: Harvard College, 1902-06; Harvard Graduate School, 1906-09; A.B. (Harvard) 1906; Assistant in Economics (Harvard), 1906-07; Rogers Travelling Fellow, 1907-09
Special Subject: Public Service Industries.
Thesis Subject: ”The Telephone Situation.” (with Professor Taussig.)
Committee on Thesis: Professors Taussig, Ripley, and Munro.

 

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University, Examinations for the Ph.D. (HUC 7000.70), Folder “Examinations for the Ph.D. 1908-09”.

Image Source:  Harvard Gate, ca. 1899. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540.