Category: Exam Questions

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Exam Questions Harvard

Harvard. Carver’s Principles of Sociology Final Examination, 1923

The mid-year exam (February 1923) for Thomas Nixon Carver’s course “Principles of Sociology” was transcribed from the Vernon Orval Watts papers at the Hoover Institution and posted earlier in Economics in the Rear-View Mirror. Today we can add a transcription of the final examination from June 1923 that comes from the Harvard archives. The syllabus for the course as given in 1917-18 has also been transcribed. 

His autobiography, Recollections of an Unplanned Life (1949), is available on-line. Thank you hathitrust.org! Warning: Carver’s transitory importance for the Harvard economics department is all out of proportion to the utter dullness of his prose. I guess I have to read his early QJE articles that must have really tickled Taussig’s theoretical fancy. As far as the evolution of sociology goes, this creature crawling out of the swamp pool bears no visible similarity to what many of us have come to see as the sociology of the past generation.

 

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Enrollment

[Economics] 8. Professor Carver—Principles of Sociology.

Total 41: of which 12 Graduates, 10 Seniors, 10 Juniors, 2 Sophomores, 7 Others.

 

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College 1922-23, p. 92.

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Final Examination
Principles of Sociology
Professor Thomas Nixon Carver

 

1922-23
HARVARD UNIVERSITY

ECONOMICS 8

  1. Do you believe that there has been any progress in the last three hundred years? Give your reasons.
  2. Discuss the relation to eugenics of crime and punishment on the one hand, and of philanthropy on the other.
  3. What economic results would you expect to follow the adoption of a sound moral code?
  4. Discuss the topic: Religion as a factor in national prosperity.
  5. Is the individual becoming more free or less free from group control (a) in religious belief, (b) in education, (c) in expressions of opinion, (d) in business contracts?
  6. Discuss Ross’s statement that “The existence of an instinct is no reason for giving it free course.”
  7. What social importance do you attach to the prolongation of infancy in the human species?
  8. Would industry be more democratic or less democratic if workmen had a vote in the management of the establishments in which they are employed Explain.
  9. What are the principal contrasts between the militant and the industrial types of society?
  10. Compare the republican and the democratic theories of representation.

 

Final. 1923.

 

 

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University. Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Papers Printed for Final Examinations in History, History of Religions, … ,Economics, … , Social Ethics, Anthropology. June, 1923. (HUC 7000.28, 65 of 284).

Image Source: Thomas Nixon Carver in Harvard Class Album 1920 p. 18.

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Economic History Exam Questions Harvard

Harvard. Final Exam Questions for Usher’s European Economic History, 1922

 

Returning to the curatorial work of matching final exams to postings of course syllabi/reading lists for economics at Harvard, I have transcribed the final examination questions below that correspond to the course taught by A. P. Usher “European Industry and Commerce in the Nineteenth Century” during the first semester of 1921-22.

 

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Final Examination
European Industry and Commerce in the Nineteenth Century
Professor Abbott Payson Usher

1921-22
HARVARD UNIVERSITY

ECONOMICS 2a1

  1. What problems were created by the Industrial Revolution? To what extent have they been solved?
  2. Compare and give a critical estimate of the ways in which England and Denmark attempted to deal with the problems of the reform of land tenures, field systems, and rural organization?
  3. What were the contributions of Sir Robert Peel and Richard Cobden: (a) to the repeal of the Corn Laws? (b) to the general establishment of the Free Trade policy?
  4. What was meant about 1836 by the phrase “the railway is by nature a monopoly”?
    What was the general policy of the English government on the issue of monopoly of railway facilities? How did this policy affect the development of the railway network in England?
    Discuss the condition of the fundamental industries in England between 1870 and 1914. What are the prospects for the future!
  5. What was the role played by the German banks in industrial combinations?
  6. Comment or explain: chartism; the Newcastle coal vend; the Bradford Conditioning House; multiple tariff schedule; the basic process.

Final. 1922.

 

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University. Final Examinations, 1853-2001 (HUC 7000.28, Box 64 of 284). Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Papers Set for Final Examinations: History, Church History, … , Economics, … , Social Ethics, Education, June, 1922.

Image Source: Harvard Class Album, 1923.

 

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Cornell Exam Questions Statistics

Cornell. Final Examination for Economic Statistics. Willcox, 1921

 

 

While I was unable to retrieve very much at all at the Library of Congress relevant to Walter F. Willcox’s teaching at Cornell, I did come across the following final examination in economic statistics from 1921. As can be seen from the questions, “statistics” was limited to meaning the tables of economic data compiled and published, especially by government agencies. 

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Course Announcement

[Economics] 76b. Second term. Credit three hours. Prerequisite, course 51 [Elementary Economics]. Professor Willcox.

 

Source: Cornell University Official Publication, Vol. XII, No. 17 (1921), The Register 1920-21, p. 93.

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Economic Statistics 76b

Final Examination June 7, 1921.
(Answer any ten questions)

  1. Describe the nature and scope (a) of economic statistics, (b) of business statistics. Explain the differences between them.
  2. What are the main economic uses of water as a natural resource in the United States?
  3. Describe briefly the coal resources of the United States in comparison with those of other countries.
  4. What effects have been produced on the distribution and growth of population by the location of the world’s coal fields?
  5. Explain the discrepancy between the statistical results reached by the Department of Agriculture and the Bureau of the Census. Which set of figures is preferable? Why?
  6. How is the line drawn between (a) agricultural products and manufactured products? (b) mineral products and manufactured products? Why is it drawn in that place?
  7. Is the yield of agricultural products per acre in the United States increasing or decreasing? Give the evidence in support of your reply.
  8. How are manufactured products classified? Why is their classification a matter of importance?
  9. How are hand trades and their products distinguished from manufactured products? how are the former treated at a census? Why?
  10. What are the main sources of information regarding American wage statistics? How may the apparent discrepancy in their results for the period 1890-1900 be reconciled.
  11. How is the wealth of a country or state estimated? If you were asked to estimate the wealth of New York State what method would you follow? Why?
  12. Describe the general nature of German university statistics. Sketch the history of its development.

 

Source: Library of Congress, Manuscript Division. The Papers of Walter Willcox, Box 39, Folder “Introduction to Social Philosophy”.

Image Source: Cornell North Campus from a photomechanical print from 1903 in the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

 

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Exam Questions Harvard

Harvard. Carver’s Economics of Agriculture Final Examination, 1918

 

 

Enrollment data and the course outline with reading assignments for Thomas Nixon Carver’s one-semester course “Economics of Agriculture” have been previously posted. We can add to this now the course description that comes from the History, Government and Economic Division’s 1917 announcements and also the final examination for the course from 1917-18.

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Course Announcement and Description

Economics 9 1hf. Economics of Agriculture. Half-course (first half-year.)
Mon., We., and (at the pleasure of the instructor) Fri., at 10.
Professor Carver, assisted by Mr.—.

A study of the relation of agriculture to the whole industrial system, the conditions of rural life, the forms of land tenure, the comparative merits of large and small holdings, the status and wages of farm labor, the influence of farm machinery, farmers’ organizations, the marketing and distribution of farm products, agricultural credit, the policy of the government toward agriculture, and the probably future of American agriculture.

 

Source: Division of History, Government, and Economics 1917-18 published in Official Register of Harvard University, Vol. XIV, No. 25 (May 18, 1917), p. 62.

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Final Examination
Economics of Agriculture
Professor Thomas Nixon Carver

1917-18
HARVARD UNIVERSITY

ECONOMICS 91

 

  1. Describe some of the principal contrasts between rural and urban industry.
  2. What were the advantages of the three-field over the two-field system?
  3. What were the main features of the Homestead Act?
  4. Give a brief account of the rise of the Granger movement.
  5. Under what circumstances is it desirable to turn from extensive to intensive cultivation?
  6. What are the advantages of selling on grade rather than on inspection?
  7. What is meant by a standardized security as a basis for rural credit, what are its advantages, and how is it provided for under our Federal farm loan system?
  8. What are some of the social needs of the average rural community?
  9. What are the principal areas of production in the United States of the following crops: Spring wheat, winter wheat, potatoes, wool, beet sugar, cane sugar, peanuts?
  10. Is tenancy increasing or decreasing in the United States as a whole? Where is it increasing most rapidly and what are the principal reasons for its increase?

 

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University. Final Examinations, 1853-2001 (HUC 7000.28, Box 60 of 284). Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Papers Set for Final Examinations: History, History of Religions, … , Economics, … , Fine Arts, Music, June, 1918.

Image Source: Thomas Nixon Carver, Harvard Class Album 1920.

 

 

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Exam Questions Harvard

Harvard. Intro to Mathematical Economics Final Exam, Schumpeter 1935

 

The Harvard course “Introduction to the Mathematical Treatment of Economic Theory” (Economics 8a from 1934-35 to 1935-36 then renumbered as Economics 4a thereon through 1940-41) was taught by Wassily Leontief except for its very first year when Joseph Schumpeter was responsible for the course. The original handwritten draft of the final examination for February 4, 1935 can be found in Schumpeter’s papers (though filed along with papers for the other course he taught, Economics 11). The official typed draft of the exam (identical except for a line-break) is transcribed below along with information about the course enrollment and prerequisites.

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Course Announcement

Economics 8a 1hf. Introduction to the Mathematical Treatment of Economic Theory

Half-course (first half-year). Mon., 4 to 6, and a third hour (at the pleasure of the instructor). Professor Schumpeter.

Economics A and Mathematics A, or their equivalents, are prerequisites for this course.

 

Source: Announcement of the Courses of Instruction Offered by the Faculty of Arts and Sciences During 1934-35 (Second Edition) published in Official Register of Harvard University, Vol. XXXI, No. 38 (September 20, 1934), p. 126.

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Course Enrollment

[Economics] 8a 1hf. Professor Schumpeter and other members of the Department.—Introduction to the Mathematical Treatment of Economic Theory.

Total 23: 15 Graduates, 3 Seniors, 5 Instructors.

 

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College 1933-34, p. 85.

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Final Examination
Introduction to the Mathematical Treatment of Economic Theory
Joseph A. Schumpeter

1934-35
HARVARD UNIVERSITY

ECONOMICS 8a1

Answer at least THREE of the following questions:

  1. Define elasticity of demand, and deduce that demand function, which corresponds to a constant coefficient of elasticity.
  2. Let D be quantity demanded, p price, and D = a – bp the demand function. Assume there are no costs of production. Then the price p0 which will maximize monopoly-revenue is equal to one half of that price p1, at which D would vanish. Prove.
  3. A product P is being produced by two factors of production L and C. The production-function is P = bLkC1-k , b and k being constants. Calculate the marginal degrees of productivity of L and C, and show that remuneration of factors according to the marginal productivity principle will in this case just exhaust the product.
  4. In perfect competition equilibrium price is equal to marginal costs. Prove this proposition and work it out for the special case of the total cost function
    y = a + bx, y being total cost, x quantity produced, and a and b
  5. If y be the satisfaction which a person derives from an income x, and if we assume (following Bernoulli) that the increase of satisfaction which he derives from an addition of one per cent to his income, is the same whatever the amount of the income, we have dy/dx = constant/x. Find y.
    Should an income tax be proportional to income, or progressive or regressive, if Bernoulli’s hypothesis is assumed to be correct, and if the tax is to inflict equal sacrifice on everyone?

 

Final. 1935.

 

[Handwritten note at the bottom of this carbon-copy of the exam questions: “This leads me to believe that the course is advantageous only if the man has had previous mathematical training at least equal to Mat A”]

 

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University. Final Examinations, 1853-2001 (HUC 7000.28, Box 15 of 284). Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Papers Printed for Final Examinations: History, History of Religions, … , Economics, … , Military Science, Naval Science, January, 1948.

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 Schumpeter’s handwritten answer to question 2

[Note: Schumpeter’s draft of his questions for Economics 8a in 1934-35 were incorrectly filed in the Economics 11 course folder for the Fall semester of 1935. Perhaps he used the questions himself in the other course in the following semester.]

{{p}_{1}}=\frac{a}{b}
\frac{dp}{dD}=-\frac{1}{b}
\frac{d\,\,Dp}{dp}=D+p\frac{dD}{dp}=
=a-bp-bp=a-2bp
\therefore p=\frac{a}{2b}

 

Source: Harvard University Archives. Joseph Schumpeter Lecture Notes. Box 9, Folder “Ec 11 Fall 1935”.

Image Source: Joseph A. Schumpeter’s note at the end of his handwritten draft of the examination in Harvard University Archives. Joseph Schumpeter Lecture Notes. Box 9, Folder “Ec 11 Fall 1935”.

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Exam Questions Harvard

Harvard. Monroe’s Final Exams for Intermediate Economic Theory, 1948

 

I try not to be judgmental as curator of the artifacts that I post, but I do have to say, even allowing for the fact that Arthur Eli Monroe was about to retire from Harvard, the examination questions he wrote down for his intermediate economic theory course offer very little to think about and much to regurgitate. The course outline and reading assignments have already been transcribed for Economics in the Rear-View Mirror.  

Not all artifacts here have been created equal.

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Final Examination
Economic Theory and Policy
Arthur Eli Monroe

1947-48
HARVARD UNIVERSITY

ECONOMICS 1a

Discuss FOUR topics.

  1. Individual demand curves.
  2. The cost curve of the firm.
  3. The supply curve of an industry.
  4. Oligopoly
  5. Adjustment to changes in demand.
  6. Selling cost.
  7. Freedom of entry.
  8. Some topic covered by the Reading Period assignment.

Final. January, 1948.

 

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University. Final Examinations, 1853-2001 (HUC 7000.28, Box 15 of 284). Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Papers Printed for Final Examinations: History, History of Religions, … , Economics, … , Military Science, Naval Science, January, 1948.

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Final Examination
Economic Theory and Policy
Arthur Eli Monroe

1947-48
HARVARD UNIVERSITY

ECONOMICS 1a

Discuss FOUR topics.

  1. Versions of the marginal productivity theory.
  2. Keynes on the rate of interest.
  3. Böhm-Bawerk.
  4. Capital and the rate of wages.
  5. Rent.
  6. Monopoly and wages.
  7. The “going rate” of interest.
  8. Hicks on inventions.
  9. Profit.
  10. Gardiner C. Means.
  11. Sée on industrial capitalism.
  12. Investment and the level of employment.

Final. May, 1948.

 

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University. Final Examinations, 1853-2001 (HUC 7000.28, Box 15 of 284). Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Papers Printed for Final Examinations: History, History of Religions, … , Economics, … , Military Science, Naval Science, May, 1948.

Image Source: Arthur Eli Monroe in Harvard Album, 1942.

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Exam Questions Harvard

Harvard. Half-year exam for O.H. Taylor’s Economics and Political Ideas, 1949

 

I am now about half-way through the matching of recently copied exams in economics from the Harvard University archives to their corresponding courses. The syllabus and reading assignments for the first-term of the one year course “Economics and Political Ideas in Modern Times” taught by Dr. Overton Hume Taylor at Harvard in 1948-49 have been transcribed and posted earlier. Clearly the “modern times” part of the course was left for the second semester.

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Final Examination
Economics and Political Ideas in Modern Times
Dr. Overton Hume Taylor

1948-49
HARVARD UNIVERSITY

ECONOMICS 115

Write on five questions, including No. 8; and make one answer a one-hour essay, so marked in your blue-book.

  1. “There are two kinds of hostility to capitalism in our culture, having different historic sources and appealing to different motives, ideas, and arguments. Marx and his followers have appropriated and inflated one kind, resting merely on the desire to see capitalism itself surpassed by a system still better able to increase material wealth and diffuse it to all men. But the other, deeper and nobler as well as more ancient, anti-capitalist philosophy is not Marxian, but Platonic and Christian; and condemns capitalism not by economic criteria but on higher, spiritual and moral grounds.” Discuss.
  2. “Hobbes and the ‘mercantilist’ writers of his time spelled out and accepted the logical results of the pure spirit of capitalism—individual gain-seeking—which leads through competitive anarchy and strife to monopoly, oligarchy, despotism, and a forcibly state-controlled economy and society. In contrast, a modification of capitalism was already implicit in the basic assumption of Locke, and of Adam Smith and his followers, that each individual should practice a ‘natural’, moral self-restraint in deference to the rights of others and thus make liberty for all compatible with order and the common welfare.” Discuss.
  3. “The eighteenth century’s optimistic, metaphysical belief in an harmonious natural order inspired the founders of what later became ‘orthodox’ economic theory. Hence the latter became and remained an optimistic theory of the ‘natural’ working of the free-competition, market economy—identifying that system’s ‘equilibrium’ with a social-economic optimum. And this rosy theory has persisted, in some quarters to the present day, in defiance of growing, factual evidence.” Discuss.
  4. Without going into time-consuming details, give a comprehensive general account and discussion of (a) the main psychological, ethical, and political doctrines of Bentham and his followers; (b) the main economic doctrines of Ricardo and his followers; and (c) the main similarities or common elements, possible ‘debts’ to each other, and dissimilarities of the two ‘systems’ of thought.
  5. Describe and discuss either (a) the English and German ‘romantic’ or (b) August Comte’s ‘positivistic’ line of attack on the classical-liberal pattern of political-and-economic thought and its ‘eighteenth century intellectual foundations.’
  6. “J. S. Mill tried unsuccessfully to combine, and modify into mutual consistency, the groups of ideas he derived from Bentham and Ricardo, from the English Romanticists, from Comte, and from early socialism.” Discuss.
  7. “Intellectual Marxism is an incongruous mixture of two things which are poles apart — German metaphysics and English economics. The ‘inverted Hegelian’ philosophy of history, and the distorted Ricardian economic theory of labor-value, surplus value, and evolving capitalism, are separate, unrelated lines of thought on different levels. Yet the combination supports a very powerful, impressive explanation of the past and forecast of the future.” Discuss.
  8. On the basis of your ‘reading period’ reading in Schumpeter or Sweezy, give your own account and discussion of either (a) Schumpeter’s thesis about how capitalism is being destroyed by the social, cultural, and political results of its very merits; or (b) Sweezy’s thesis about the causes, nature, and significance of fascism.

 

Final. January, 1949.

 

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University. Final Examinations, 1853-2001 (HUC 7000.28, Box 16 of 284). Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Papers Printed for Final Examinations: History, History of Religions, … , Economics, … , Military Science, Naval Science, February, 1949.

Image Source: Overton Hume Taylor in Harvard Album, 1952.

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Exam Questions Harvard

Harvard. Final exam in Monetary Theory and Policy. Harris, 1934

 

The outlines and reading assignments for both the Fall and Spring terms of Seymour Harris’ undergraduate course “Money, Banking, and Cycles” have been transcribed for the academic year 1933-34. The final exam for the first term devoted to monetary theory and monetary policy has been posted separately..

 

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Final Examination
Money, Banking, and Cycles
Seymour Harris

1933-34
HARVARD UNIVERSITY

ECONOMICS 3

Answer 1, 2, and THREE other questions.

  1. (One hour.) Contrast Keynes’ recent views on the value of money with his earlier views.
  2. Answer one of the following questions:
    1. What, in Akerman’s views, are the possibilities of averting economic crises? What are the most effective methods of doing so?
    2. Discuss the important issues raised by the restrictions of payments in Great Britain during the Napoleonic Wars.
    3. Describe the attempts made in the last quarter of the nineteenth century to redress the Crime of 1873.
    4. What features of the early banking history of the United States contribute towards and explanation of the National Banking Act?
  3. Do movements in exchanges determine prices, or do prices determine the exchanges? Discuss and illustrate.
  4. What is the meaning of the purchasing power of money as used by three monetary theorists?
  5. “The severity of the World Depression may be attributed to the faulty working of the Gold Standard.” Discuss.
  6. Are monetary measures adequate to cope with a major business depression?

Final. 1934.

 

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University. Examination Papers, Finals (HUC 7000.28, 76 of 284), [June?] 1934.

Image Source: Seymour Harris from Harvard Class Album, 1935.

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Exam Questions Harvard

Harvard. Final Exam Questions for Second Term of Honors Theory, 1940

 

This is one of those cases where one sorely misses the final examination for the first-term of a two-term course. Next time I go to the Harvard archives, I’ll have to check whether I have systematically overlooked the mid-year exams, or the keepers of the Harvard record merely limited themselves to mostly just collecting the exams administered at the end of each academic year. Maybe some visitor to Economics in the Rear-View Mirror happens to check this and let us all know by posting a welcome comment.

Anyhow, this posting continues the current series of exams that correspond to syllabi and course reading lists already transcribed since I have set up shop (not quite two years ago). The 1939-40 undergraduate honors course in economic theory at Harvard was taught by the team of Edward Chamberlin, Wassily Leontief and Overton Taylor.

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Final Examination
Economic Theory (Honors degree candidates)
Professor Chamberlin, Dr. O. H. Taylor, and Associate Professor Leontief

1939-40
HARVARD UNIVERSITY

ECONOMICS 1

Answer SIX questions, including number 7 or 8.

  1. Explain the concept of the “period of production” in its connection with the theory of interest.
  2. Is the marginal productivity theory applicable to piece wages? Answer and discuss.
  3. Explain the relation between the wage rates and marginal physical productivity in the case in which the entrepreneur sells his product in a competitive market but at the same time holds the position of a monopolist on the labor market.
  4. Discuss the effect of increased interest rates upon the employment of labor as compared with the use of machines.
  5. How would the height of rent be determined if all land were of the same quality?
  6. “Pigou has tried in vain to build a useful ‘economics of welfare’ on the false assumptions, that society is a collection of (a) purely selfish and (b) perfectly rational individuals, who infallibly maximize their private gains and satisfactions; and that such a society can, nevertheless, develop a regime of institutions, laws, and policies under which there will be a complete agreement of all private interests with the public interest, and an economic process working automatically to maximize collective welfare.” Discuss the validity of that interpretation and condemnation of Pigou’s assumptions, and the problem, as you see it, of achieving ‘realism’ in the basic ideas of a theory of ‘welfare economics’.
  7. Explain, and discuss critically one of the following: (a) Knight’s thesis concerning the ‘limitations of scientific method in economics’; (b) Wolfe’s demand for a ‘functional welfare economics, using a generally accepted, psychologically grounded, norm of welfare’; or (c) Clark’s ‘experiments in non-Euclidean economics’.
  8. “Profits are a special type of differential income”. Discuss.

 

Final. 1940.

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University. Final Examinations, 1853-2001 (HUC 7000.28, Box 5). Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Papers Printed for Final Examinations: History, History of Religions, … , Economics, … , Military Science, Naval Science, June 1940.

Image Source: From left to right: Chamberlin, Leontief, Taylor from the Harvard Class Album, 1939.

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Exam Questions Harvard

Harvard. O.H. Taylor’s Final Exam for Intellectual Background of Economic Thought, 1941

 

 

For today’s posting I have transcribed the questions from the final examination along with the course description for the one-semester undergraduate course taught by Overland Hume Taylor at Harvard during the Spring term of 1940-41. The course syllabus and reading assignments  for “The Intellectual Background of Economic Thought” were posted in Economics in the Rear-View Mirror earlier.

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Course Description

Economics 1b 2hf. The Intellectual Background of Economic Thought. Half-course (second half-year). Mon., Wed., and (at the pleasure of the instructor) Fri., at 11. Dr. O. H. Taylor.

A critical study of the kinds of work in economics represented by the main tradition and by Marx, Veblen, and others—with attention to their methodologies, associated political faiths or ideologies, and underlying philosophies.

Source: Official Register of Harvard University, Vol. XXXVII, No. 51 (August 15, 1940). Division of History, Government, and Economics—Containing an Announcement for 1940-41, p. 54.

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Final Examination
The Intellectual Background of Economic Thought
Dr. Overton Hume Taylor

1940-41
HARVARD UNIVERSITY

ECONOMICS 1b2

Answer six questions, including any three of the first four, any two of the next three (5, 6, and 7) and No. 8. Devote approximately ½ hour to each question.

  1. “The original founders of economic liberalism could believe that economic liberty and economic ‘natural laws’ would tend to maximize the economic welfare of society, because they believed that enlightened, free men would create a society in which, substantially, all institutions, public policies, and private conduct would conform to principle of ethical ‘natural law’ or intrinsic justice.”
    Explain and discuss the outlook referred to in that statement—making use, in your discussion, of the results of your reading of O. H. Taylor, Sabine, and Becker, and your own conclusions.
  2. “The intellectual trend in the liberal world into positivism, or science-worship, has been enfeebling and confusing the ethical convictions at the basis of liberalism, and transforming the latter from its old self into a half-way house on the way either to socialism or to fascism—in any case, a program of authoritarian ‘social engineering’ which attempts to use the social sciences in a way that involves the sacrifice of liberal, ethical ideals.”
    Write out your own reactions to this thesis, advanced in the lectures. Your instructor will definitely value intelligent, adverse criticism quite as highly as comment showing full agreement.
  3. In the light of the lectures and your reading of Spann and other relevant assignments, discuss the nature of romanticism, and the question of its role in the development of German economic and political thought of the kind leading (?) to the outlook of the Nazis.
  4. “While the basis of Marxism includes a vigorous, ethical idealism, the influence of this component in the outlook of the Marxists is largely nullified by the contrary effects of their doctrines of historical, economic determinism; of the complete ‘relativity’ of all ethical ideas to the economic situations and interests of their adherents; and of the necessity and legitimacy of Machiavellian tactics in the struggle to achieve socialism.”
    Develop your own comments on this, with the aid of your reading of “The Meaning of Marx” by S. Hook and others, and of any other knowledge you may have about Marxism.
  5. Discuss and compare the chief hindrances to realization of liberal-democratic ideals which exist today under private capitalism, and those which you think would or might exist if we had “socialized” all important means of production and were trying to operate a fully socialist economy.
  6. Develop your comments on the chapter or essay which interested you the most, either in Brinton’s “English Political Thought in the Nineteenth Century,” or in “The Trend of Economics” by Tugwell and others.
  7. Write up your criticism of the Simons pamphlet “A Positive Program for Laissez Faire.”
  8. Write a critical review of Robbins’ “The Nature and Significance of Economic Science”—or of the essays by F. H. Knight which you read, if you read them instead of Robbins.

Final. 1941.

 

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University. Final Examinations, 1853-2001 (HUC 7000.28, Box 5). Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Papers Printed for Final Examinations: History, History of Religions, … , Economics, … , Military Science, Naval Science, June 1941.

Image Source: Overton Hume Taylor in Harvard Album, 1952.