Category: Exam Questions

Categories
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.

_____________________________

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.

_____________________________

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.

 

 

Categories
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.

_____________________________

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.

_____________________________

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.

_____________________________

 

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.

_____________________________

 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”.

Categories
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.

_____________________________

 

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.

_____________________________

 

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.

Categories
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.

_____________________________

 

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.

Categories
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..

 

_____________________________

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.

Categories
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.

_____________________________

 

 

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.

Categories
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.

_____________________________

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.

___________________________

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.

Categories
Exam Questions Harvard

Harvard. Final Exam Questions for Taxation Course. Taussig, 1898

 

 

Economics in the Rear-View Mirror already has a posting of the list of readings by topic for Frank W. Taussig’s course at Harvard on taxation from the first term of 1897-98. He had taken over the course from Professor Charles Dunbar in the previous academic year. The examination questions for the final examination in the course were transcribed from a printed  copy of the exam that was pasted in Taussig’s scrap book that includes, it would appear, the old examinations for all of his Harvard courses.

_____________________________

 

Final Examination
The Theory and Methods of Taxation, with Special Reference to Local Taxation in the United States
Professor Frank W. Taussig

1897-98
HARVARD UNIVERSITY

ECONOMICS 71

[Arrange your answers strictly in the order of the questions. Give and answer, however brief, to each question]

  1. Consider which of the following combinations, if any, bring about “double taxation”: (1) the impôt sur la propriété batie and the personelle-mobilière, in France; (2) local rates and schedule A of the income tax, in Great Britain; (3) the taxation of mortgaged property and of mortgages, as commonly provided for in American States.
  2. It has been said that the taxation of merchants’ stock in trade in Massachusetts, by assessors’ estimate, if effect proceeds in a somewhat similar fashion to that of the French impôt des patentes and of the Prussian business tax. Why? or why not?
  3. Are there good reasons for taxing funded incomes at a higher rate than unfunded?
  4. It has recently been proposed in Great Britain to impose a general tax on property, based on the income tax returns, and levied at the rate of (say) five per cent. on the income derived from the property; reducing at the same time the income tax to one-half its present rate. Point out what important changes in the British tax system would result; consider what examples in other countries may have suggested the proposal: and give an opinion as to its expediency.
  5. What do you conceive to be the “compensatory theory” in regard to progressive taxation?
  6. What reasoning pertinent in regard to the principle of progression in taxation is also pertinent in regard to taxes on successions? in regard to the single tax?
  7. As between owner and occupier of real estate who is responsible for local rates in England? for local taxes in the United States? Do you believe that the differences have important consequences in the incidence of these taxes?
  8. Consider points of resemblance, points of difference, in the modes in which the States of Massachusetts and Pennsylvania tax (1) domestic corporations (2) the securities issued by foreign corporations.
  9. What grounds are there in favor, what against, the imposition of income taxes by the several States?

 

Mid-Year. 1898.

 

Source: Harvard University Archives. Examination papers in economics 1882-1935, Prof. F. W. Taussig. Scrapbook. (HUC 7882), p. 61.

Image Source: Frank W. Taussig in Harvard Class Album 1900.

Categories
Economic History Exam Questions Harvard

Harvard. Recent Economic History, Final Exam. 1935

 

 

The course outline and readings for the two-semester graduate course on recent economic history taught at Harvard by Edwin Francis Gay were posted earlier. We can now add the questions from the final examination given at the end of the Spring term.

This is thus far the most recent examination I’ve seen that has matter-of-factly given a quotation in a foreign language.  Exams for Young’s course on modern economic theories taught at Harvard in the mid-1920s sometimes had quotations in French and German.

_____________________________

Final Examination
Recent Economic History
Professor Edwin Francis Gay

1934-35
HARVARD UNIVERSITY

ECONOMICS 23

Write an essay (not more than half your time) discussing one of the quotations or topics in this paper, and comment concisely on three others.

  1. “It is believed that, had it not been for the free-trade policy of Great Britain, the manufacturing system of America would at the present time have been much more extensive than it is.” (Ellison, 1858.)
    “There is some truth in the view of the cynical British exporter who thanked God for the American tariff, but for which American manufacturers would have driven him out of the world markets.” (London “Economist,” 1912.)
    “In my belief, both Free Trade of the laissez-faire type and Protection of the predatory type are policies of Empire, and both make for War.” (H. J. Mackinder, 1919.)
    Do you find any confirmation for these views in your reading of American tariff history? Illustrate from the cotton or iron industry.
  2. “On voit apparaître chaque jour davantage tout ce que l’Angleterre, depuis cent ans, devait à des circonstances que les contemporains avaient cru permanentes et qui n’étaient que passagères.
    L’hégémonie économique anglaise coïncide dans l’histoire avec le règne de la machine à vapeur; la période victorienne, apogée de prospérité et de puissance, évolue tout entière sous le signe du charbon….C’est ainsi qu’a pu s’édifier, sur la base étroite d’un territoire plus que médiocre, cette paradoxale superstructure manufacturière, e parallèlement s’épanouir cette population aujourd’hui trop dense, si dangereusement dépendante, pour sa subsistance, des produits importés….
    Dans ces conditions, le jeu parfaitement agencé de la doctrine libre-échangiste paraissait avoir été conçu tout exprès pour l’Angleterre, par les soins d’une Providence attentive et partiale.” (Siegfried, 1931.)
  3. The National Banking system is “not only a perfectly safe system of banking, but it is one that is eminently adapted to our political institutions.” (Hugh McCulloch, 1863.)
    “American banking has not yet distinguished between solvency after an interval, and readiness to meet demands at once and without question…. At present the characteristics of the American business man seem to fit him to do most things better than banking.” (Harley Withers, 1909.)
    “Everybody will agree to-day that it would be difficult to imagine a banking system more cruel and inefficient that that prevailing in the United States at the beginning of the twentieth century—a system which, instead of scientifically regulating the flow of credit and money so as to secure the greatest possible stability, was designed automatically to produce instability.” (Paul Warburg, 1930.)
  4. “The technological revolution of the last hundred years furnishes the ultimate explanation of agricultural progress and of agrarian discontent both in Europe and America.” (ca. 1925)
    “Though the mechanization of industrial processes is almost universal, the great majority of farmers throughout the world are content with the simple instruments used by their forefathers.” (“World Agriculture,” 1932.)
    “The significant fact is that the periods of prosperity and the great depressions in agriculture have coincided with periods of monetary expansion and monetary contraction. Though other factors must not be ignored, the agricultural history of the last hundred years shows that favorable monetary conditions are essential to recovery.” (“World Agriculture,” 1932.)
  5. “The Merchant Marine of the United States is not a burden upon the tax-payer’s back, but an economy of the first water, keeping millions in the country, giving employment to thousands of persons, aiding in the development of foreign markets and backing up the nation’s forces in any contingency that may arise.” (Senator Royal S. Copeland, 1934.)
    “Our own vessels carry only about 40 per cent of our foreign trade. We are dependent on our competitors to carry 60 per cent of our trade to market. Of course, the result is that they help themselves and hamper us. Parity in merchant ships is only less important than parity in warships. We ought to make the necessary sacrifices to secure it.” (Calvin Coolidge, 1930.)
  6. D. H. Robertson, writing in 1923, concerning the American Railroad Act of 1920 and the increased powers of the Interstate Commerce Commission, says:
    “The home of free enterprise has furnished us with experiments in positive State control on a scale which finds no parallel outside Communist Russia.”
    Louis D. Brandeis in 1912 wrote: “The success of the Interstate Commerce Commission has been invoked as an argument in favor of licensing and regulating monopoly.” This argument, he held, was not valid. Do you agree? Why or why not?
  7. In a period when traditional standards have broken down and when the legal system is supported by laissez-faire theory, the movement toward industrial combination is “a remorseless sort of profit-seeking.” (M. W. Watkins, 1928.)
    “The only argument that has been seriously advanced in favor of private monopoly is that competition involves waste, while the monopoly prevents waste and leads to efficiency. This argument is essentially unsound. The wastes of competition are negligible. The economies of monopoly are superficial and delusive. The efficiency of monopoly is at the best temporary.” (L. D. Brandeis, in Harper’s Weekly, 1913.)
    “Our evidence goes to show that most of the Trusts and Cartels have been, in their origin at any rate, defensive movements.” (D. H. MacGregor, 1912.)
    Industrial combinations must be recognized as “steps in the greater efficiency, the increased economy, and the better organization of industry.” (Minority Report of the Parliamentary Committee on Trusts, 1918.)
  8. Write on the topic which, in your reading for this course, has most interested you.

Final. [May or June] 1935.

 

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University. Examination Papers—Finals, 1935 (HUC 7000.28, 77 of 284).

Image Source: Edwin Francis Gay in Harvard Class Album 1934.

Categories
Exam Questions Harvard

Harvard. Undergraduate Public Finance Final Exam. H. H. Burbank, 1936

 

Sixty-five Harvard undergraduates were registered in the public finance course taught by department chair, Harold Hitchings Burbank, in the Spring semester of 1935-36. Again thanks to the Harvard archives of final examinations, I am able to pair the exam below to the course outline for public finance posted earlier. The 1907 Theodore Roosevelt quote in Q. 5 regarding the economic consequences of the taxation of large vs small fortunes (no expected impact on “thrift or industry” for the large fortunes) is interesting in light of current U.S. debate.

_____________________________

Final Examination
Public Finance
Professor Harold Hitchings Burbank

1935-36
HARVARD UNIVERSITY

ECONOMICS 52

  1. (One hour.) “Public Services require a provision both of goods and human services, and the mechanism by which these are transferred from private enterprise to the public service must in its essence be by a form of taxation…there are two methods by which this transfer of goods and services from private to public use can be obtained, the direct and indirect method, and it is curious that we have such a tendency to insist on the direct method, with its crudities, complications and inequities. It would be both simple and practical to abolish every tax in Great Britain, substituting therefor a simple sales tax on every description of article…such a policy would result in an economy of administration far in excess of anything conceivable within the limits of the existing financial system.” C. M. Grieve in Warning Democracy.
    Consider the merits and defects of the proposal as applied to either England or the United States or both. In what respects does it agree with, in what respects does it differ from your own conception of a sound tax system? Consider either central or local finances or both.
  2. (One-half hour.) Discuss the merits and defects of the general property tax. If defects exist, what remedies would you recommend?
  3. (One-half hour.) Consider the incidence of one or two of the following:
    1. the property tax as applied to rented houses,
    2. the property tax as applied to land,
    3. the tariff,
    4. a state tax on personal incomes,
    5. a retail sales tax such as that enacted in the City of New York,
    6. the corporate income tax.
  4. (One-half hour.) “The essential function of the public finance is to operate as a governor, a stabilizing agent, in the business cycle. This means specifically the application of an adequate program of public works during a period of acute industrial distress.”
    Do you agree? What criteria can you suggest for the management of those governmental expenditures which are in the nature of capital outlays?
  5. (One-half hour.) On one of the following:
    1. “A heavy progressive tax upon a very large fortune is in no way such a tax upon thrift or industry as a like tax would be on a small fortune…And as an incident to its function of revenue raising, such a tax would help to preserve a measurable equality of opportunity for the people of the generations growing to manhood.” Theodore Roosevelt in a Presidential Message in 1907.
      Consider this quotation in the light of your reading of the Colwyn Report.
    2. Discuss the effect of the World War upon the finances of our federal government.
    3. Write a critical review of an approved reading period assignment. (Other than Dewey’s Financial History, or the Colwyn Report.)

Final. [May or June] 1936.

 

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University. Examination Papers—Finals, 1936 (HUC 7000.28, 78 of 284).

Image Source: Harold Hitchings Burbank in Harvard Class Album 1934.