Some historian of economics had to do it. Economics in the Rear-View Mirror is proud to announce the creation of a new portrait collection: Economists Wearing Bowties. Bookmark that page to follow as I add to the collection. We begin with the poster wunderkind of bowtied economists, Paul A. Samuelson.
A skit in economics typically involves a humor transplant of some sort. The following script from the faculty contribution to an annual M.I.T. economics skit party (ca. 1979-80 which is when Luis Tiant pitched for the Yankees) took its inspiration from two greats in American comedy, Carl Reiner & Mel Brooks, who sometimes performed as interviewer and 2,000 year-old man, respectively.
While it is fairly clear that Robert Solow performed and probably wrote the entire skit, the identity of the interviewer still needs to be established. Hint: there is a comment box at the bottom of this post.
The script comes from a file of such Solovian skits that Roger Backhouse has copied during his archival research and has shared with Economics in the Rear-View Mirror.
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Q: You have probably all heard the interviews with the recently discovered 2000-year-old man. We are fortunate to have with us tonight another great find, the 2000-year-old economist, Robert M. Solow. By the way, Dr. Solow, just what does the M stand for?
A: Methuselah, dummy.
Q: Dr. Solow has seen so many skit parties in his life, that he was not very happy about appearing at this one. Do you remember the first skit party you ever went to?
A: No. Skit parties are like hangovers – best thing to do is forget ’em and swear never to do it again. I do have a hazy recollection of an early skit party, I think it was what the one where I first heard the joke about bordered determinants…
Q: What is the joke about border determinants?
A: I don’t know, but they sure laugh[ed] their fool heads off.
Q: Any other recollections about that skit party?
A: Well, you could hear them building pyramids in the background, I remember, and there was this Sphinx-like object, looked a lot like Dick Eckaus… You don’t suppose that, even then???? Nah, forget it.
Q: Turning to more serious issues, what is the biggest change in economics since the old days?
A: Mechanization, by cracky. First the electric typewriter, then the computer, then the Xerox machine [handwritten insert: but not fast enough for (3 or 4 illegible words)]. Nowadays people write papers at the rate they used to wipe their… glasses. I believe Feldstein has solved the problem of hooking the typewriter directly to the Xerox machine, and the whole paper is reproduced without being touched by human hands. There is even a rumor that he has a secret way of getting the paper written without human intervention…
Q: Come come, Dr. Solow, you don’t believe that.
A: Well, have you looked at any of Feldstein’s recent papers? Now in the good old days, stand-up roll-top desks, quill pens, the main-frame abacus, a man thought twice before he wrote a paper. At least he thought once. If only old Tom were here.
Q: Tom who?
A: Tom Gresham. You know: bad working papers drive out good. Not to mention Dave Hume, the inventor of the quantity theory of working papers. As Milton used to say: any way you slice it, it’s still baloney.
Q: Is that Milton Friedman?
A: No, Milton Horowitz, the inventor of the pastrami sandwich. I believe he appears in a footnote in Joskow’s classic mustard-stained work on the subject.
Q: Let’s come to your recent impressions. What do you see as the most important recent development in economics?
A: That’s easy – the increase in the mandatory retirement age to 70. Of course it’s got a long way to go before it does me any good, but I underestimate the DRI Mandatory Retirement Age Monitor estimates the retirement age to be rising at 1.73 years per year, so time is on my side.
Q: Apart from its effects on you personally, why do you think this is an important development?
A: It saves a lot of time at department meetings never to have to make a tenure appointment again. And you know what department meetings are like – even worse than skit parties.
Q: How do you think the change will affect students?
A: They’ll love it. Courses will be the same year after year. Reading lists will never change. Textbooks will go on and on and on. Can you imagine the 200th edition of Dornbusch and Fischer? I hope it’s printed on better paper than the low-grade papyrus of the first edition… I do wonder about Eckaus and that Sphinx…… Exams will be the same year after year. Students hate change. Look at what happened when you fellows tried to change 14.121 this year.
Q: Turning to economic theory, what has been the most important development you have witnessed in the last 2000 years?
A: The two-dimensional diagram.
Q: Be serious.
A: I am serious. Can you imagine Bhagwati, the Picasso of the Production Possibility Locus, trying to fit all those curves in a one-dimensional diagram, which was all we had in the old days? There wasn’t hardly room for anything besides the axis.
Q: Come, come. Bhagwati would find a solution for that little difficulty. Who needs an axis?
A: Maybe so, but can you imagine four-color one-dimensional diagrams? How could we have expensive textbooks without four-color diagrams? How could we have expensive professors without expensive textbooks? How could……
Q: OK, OK. What is the second most important development in economic theory in your lifetime?
A: The subscript.
Q: Don’t you know the difference between trivia and serious economic theory?
A: Sure. Trivia are worth remembering, but serious economics is OK to forget.
Q: Maybe we better stick to trivia…
A: I was just kidding. I really know the answer. There is no difference between trivia and serious economic theory.
Q: Tell us about the most interesting experience you ever heard of an economist having?
A: Easy. Happened to an agricultural economist I knew, feller named Samuelson, farm boy from Gary, Indiana. He was digging on the farm one day, checking out the law of diminishing returns, and he found a potato growing with a nickel in it. Marvelous thing. Folks came from miles away to see a potato with a nickel in it. Old Samuelson frittered away the rest of his life looking for another potato with the nickel in it. Never could find one. He did find a couple with three cents in them, but somehow it wasn’t the same. Never accomplished another thing, old Samuelson. Wonder whatever became of him? He’d be 2009, I reckon. By the way, whatever became of that other farmer, Weitzman?
Q: You mean Chaim Weitzman, the founding father of Israel? His last words were: you don’t have to convince me, Professor [Frank] Fisher, I’m Jewish too.
A: No, I mean Marty Weitzman, old quick and dirty, the lion of Levittown.
Q: Why do you ask?
A: Reminds me of the fellow I used to know, a Secretary of the Treasury named Hamilton……
Q: Reminds you of who? Oh, I get it, they both got killed in the dual.
A: Watch out, Buster – the agreement was that I tell the jokes and you prove the theorems.
Q: All right. Let’s get away from personalities. What do you think of recent macro theories?
A: Not much.
Q: What about rational expectations?
A: If there were any truth in that, it would have been thought up long ago.
Q: Not necessarily. The old-timers could have thought that someone would think of it, without thinking of it themselves.
A: That’s true, but the old-timers were too sensible to think that anyone would think a thought like that.
Q: How about the quantity theory?
A: Ingenious.
Q: Really?
A: Imagine saying that velocity is so stable that only money matters, and so unstable that no use can be made of the theory, and imagine getting away with both statements.
Q: But what is macroeconomics left with then?
A: Well, the old Ioto-Sigma Lamba-Mu [Greek for “IS-LM”] curves were good enough for Aristotle, it’s good enough for me.
Q: Would you care to comment on the theory of built-in stabilizers?
A: If you’re not going to be serious, we might as well go watch a ballgame. I understand Louis Tiant, the 2000-year-old pitcher is going for the Yankees.
Q: Use your 2000-year-old imagination. I’ll give you an example of built-in stabilization – Social Security.
A: How so?
Q: The less likely it is that anyone will ever be able to collect benefits, the likelier it becomes that they make even more money consulting on Social Security. Take [Peter] Diamond, for example.
A: You take Diamond.
Q: No thanks. Imagine a man leaving a perfectly good career in public finance to go into law and economics and make a hash out of both fields.
A: Stick to the straight-man lines, please.
[Handwritten insert begins here]
Q: What do you think of the proliferation of journals?
A: I think it is terrific. Of course it has been going on for a long time – ever since BJEA, the Babylonian Journal of Economic Analysis was challenged by the SEJ, the Sumerian Economic Journal.
What I particularly like is the increased specialization. Like JHR, the Journal of Human Regressions and JME, the Journal of Mathematical Existence.
Q: The Journal of Mathematical Existence – isn’t that the one that started with the famous 2-line proof: I count, therefore I am?
A: Yes and was followed by a 47 page proof that without continuity existence was still generic.
I also like this trend toward paired journals.
Q: Paired journals?
A: Yes, like the two Harvard journals – one publishes theory without measurement and the other measurement without theory.
And then there’s the 2 JPE’s – the Journal of Public Economics and the Journal of Private Enterprise.
[handwritten insert ends]
Q: What do you see as the greatest danger facing the economics profession?
A: The threatened extension of truth-in-lending legislation to truth-in-teaching. We could have the biggest rash of malpractice suits since Nicky Kaldor retired.
Q: I think you’re onto something there. How foresighted of this department to have hired an expert on malpractice like Marilyn Simon [joined faculty 1977-78 academic year], the world-famous author of Unnecessary Surgery – The View from the Inside.
A: Simon only writes about malpractice – [Jeffrey E.] Harris actually does it, I understand.
Q: You seem to have discovered a lot since you turned up around here. Anything else new on the malpractice front?
A: There’s a rumor that the University of Chicago has had to recall all the degrees issued during the last five model years.
Q: You mean…
A: Right. Defective transmission mechanisms.
Q: Gad. Are there any good defenses against malpractice suits in your long and varied experience?
A: You can hire a mathematician for the faculty.
Q: What good does that do?
A: How the hell would I know? All I can say is that every department seems to be hiring mathematicians these days. It’s got to be for something.
Q: I’m looking for some more tried and true defense.
A: There’s always the Long-and-Variable Lags defense. See the Supreme Court decision in Tobin versus Friedman, in which Friedman successfully argued that first it’s true, second he never said it, and third wait till next year.
Q-: How about the Roy Lopez Defense?
A: You mean P–K4, P-K4; N-KB3, N-QB3; B-QN5, P-QR3?
Q: No, I mean Roy Lopez, the middle line-backer for the Princeton Economics Department – anyone sues for malpractice, he breaks their legs.
A: Sounds good. There’s also the classic defense due to Stanley Fischer, that truth should be indexed. Today’s malpractice is tomorrow’s conventional wisdom.
Q: Speaking of conventional wisdom, have you spoken with Professor Galbraith since your return?
A: No, but I have been reading his latest book: Why Are People Poor?
Q: I’ll bite; why are people poor?
A: Not enough income, according to Galbraith.
Q: Does he have a remedy?
A: Move to Switzerland.
Q: I see.
A: I can’t wait until the news reaches Calcutta.
Q: One last question, to return to the subject with which we started. Do you see any trends in student skits?
A: Longer.
Q: Longer and funnier?
A: Longer.
Q: Any final comment?
A: Let me ask you a question. What do you consider the most remarkable thing in this interview?
Q: That’s easy. We never mentioned IBM.
Source: Duke University. David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library. Economists’ Papers Archives. Papers of Robert M. Solow. Box 83.
Image Source: Carl Reiner and Mel Brooks performing the 2000 year old man from NPR KNAU, Arizona public radio article “Could You Talk To a Caveman?” (May 9, 2013) .
Dating an undated skit script or assigning skit characters to actual faculty members requires textual analysis skills not taught in economics graduate school. But puzzle solving is, so let’s see what we can do with the following skit written by Robert Solow.
Current events and transitory cohorts of graduate students are our main clues to work with.
Solow’s authorship is firmly established in the prologue to the 1986 faculty skit, where it is written:
“…we were tempted to re-run some of the great Solow skits of the past. There was the 1974 Watergate Skit, in which Paul Colson Joskow testifies to Senator Sam Peltzman that he would run over his grandmother to get a t-statistic above two. There was the 1978 Star Wars skit [a coming attraction here at Economics in the Rear-View Mirror], in which Milton Vader and his minions capture the wookie Jerrybaca and hold him captive in the Chicago Money Workshop. And in the incredible 1973 [sic] MASH skit [below], Hawkeye Hall and Trapper Jerry Hausman find Radar Diamond and Hot Lips Friedlaender cavorting in the Chairman’s office…”
We can see how memory plays tricks even on professors, since there is really no way except in a perfect foresight world that in 1973 Robert Solow would have alluded to members of the cohort of 1974-75.
The Synopsis below was printed on an unattached page and while it clearly leads into the M*A*S*H skit, I somewhat doubt that it was actually recited in performance. The idea of a faculty skit of graduate students trying to write a skit seems undeveloped. Still this synopsis’ characterization of our cohort’s skits as “a series of separate episodes in which they make fun of the idiosyncrasies of the faculty” fits the data well. Thus if forced to choose a single date for the following skit, I would probably go with 1977.
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It is Friday afternoon and the tenth year class still hasn’t thought of a good idea for a skit. A group including Able Andrew [Andrew Abel], Jacob Frankel [Jeffrey Frankel], “Skinny” Lilien [David Lilien], Dick Stops [Dick Startz]…, are meeting in desperation. Finally they decide that the best they can do is to have a series of separate episodes in which they make fun of the idiosyncrasies of the faculty.
And so on. At the end, someone says this isn’t a very good idea after all and a second skit, based on “mash” is tried.
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Announcer: We are about to tell you a heartwarming story that almost nobody knows. It is the story of a devoted, selfless, kind, hardworking people who are yet charming, humorous, sexy, brilliant and lighthearted even while they tend the youthful victims of a heartless bloody War, the famous WOE or War on Error, perhaps more accurately called the War on Other People’s Error or WOOPE. The warm, sympathetic, lovable heroes of this story are the Doctors of the Massachusetts Economics Students Hospital or M.E.S.H.
As the scene opens, we observe the crusty but kindly commanding officer of MESH, Col. Brown [E. Cary Brown], looking at latest casualty lists.
BROWN: (broad smile, laughing, etc.) Able Andrew [Andrew Abel], flunked; Dick Stops [Dick Startz], flunked; Ray Hartman [Raymond S. Hartman], Ray Hartman, flunked, flunked. This is awful, hohoho. Here’s one who lost his Fellowship. Here’s one who lost both his Fellowships. War is hell.
(PAD [Peter Diamond?] comes in and puts sheet of paper on desk)
BROWN: (shouts) Radar.
PAD: Yessir.
BROWN: Where is that new duty roster for next month?
PAD: Just gave it to you, sir.
BROWN: Hmmm, I see Major Samuelson is doing the history of surgical thought. How far does he go?
PAD: Up to Marx’s transplantation problem.
BROWN: I suppose someone’s assigned to each ward: yes, someone for G-1, and for G-2, G-3, M-2, M-3—say how come nobody’s assigned to M-1?
PAD: Demand for M-1 has dropped off a lot lately.
BROWN: Oh, yes, another outbreak of Goldfeld’s Syndrome. How well I remember the first case I ever saw, back at old Fort Sam Brookings in the old days. Why, boy, they had real cash balances in the Regular Army.
(Enter Hawkeye Hall [Robert Hall] and Trapper Jerry [Jerry Hausman].)
PAD: Hi Hawk, Hi Trapper. What’s up?
HH: Up, down, what difference does it make. It’s all a random walk anyway. I’ve got kids out there dying of underconsumption and all I can tell them is that their consumption is way below trend, but there’s no reason to expect it ever to get back to trend. Properly discounted, they’re already dead.
BROWN: Couldn’t you just amputate a bit of the life cycle—maybe they’re just suffering from Modigliani’s Disease—you know the symptoms, compulsive talking, recurrent forecasting errors, complete absence of bequests—why I remember back at old Fort Sam Brookings…
HH: Modigliani’s Disease? There’s no such thing. That stuff all went out with, with, with econometrics. Nowadays it’s all up down up down. Well, maybe a totally unexpected amputation might work. But only once. No, it’s hard telling those innocent soldiers that everything they were taught up until yesterday, even by me, is all wrong.
TJ: I think the smart ones realize that tomorrow it will appear that what we’re telling them today is wrong too. That’s rational expectations for you. Once you get on it’s hard to get off. I hear that over at the Illinois Economics Graduates Hospital or IEGH the surgeons have stopped doing econometric operations altogether. They’d rather let everybody die at the natural rate. One of our enlisted men, Olivier Lawrence [Olivier Blanchard?], is supposed to have suggested that at least time was an exogenous variable, so maybe you could do a few econometric operations. But Major Lucas [Robert Lucas], the executive surgeon at IECH, told him that only the deviations of time from trend can possibly matter and that’s…
PAD: Up down up down….
TJ: Thanks, Radar. According to Lucas’s method of surgery, all coefficients are either zero or one—dealer’s choice.
(Enter HotLips [Anne Friedlander] and Major Frank [Frank Fisher])
HL: Colonel, I’d like to have this crumb courtmartialed. He almost killed one of our students by disconnecting the MPS transfusion from the main computer. He said that if anyone ever put the peripheral equipment and the main-frame in the same market, he’d never be able to go near Yorktown Heights again. Hark! Do I hear a chopper?
PAD: No, Major HotLips it’s just one of the students with Modigliani’s disease.
HL: Radar, just stay in the supply room and out of the women’s shower.
HH and TJ: Up down up down.
HL: Colonel you’ve got to do something about these clods. And as for Frank here, when I think…what did I ever see in him?
F: Well, I’m a little hard not to see. But I’ll get even with you all. I got out of econometric surgery while there were still exogenous variables. Anti-anti-trust is where the money is now. You’ll regret your temper, HotLips. When these creeps are starving and broke, unemployed econometric surgeons, doing illegal surprise amputations for peanuts, I will be dancing in Yorktown Heights, testifying in the fifty-third year of the IBM case, on one side or the other. Colonel, if you can’t have some discipline in this MESH, I’m going to file a complaint with Judge Edelstein.
BROWN: I think I’ll apply for reassignment to old Fort Sam Brookings.
(Enter Corporal Klingenbusch, dressed in his usual.)
TJ: Gorgeous outfit you’ve got there Klingenbusch [Rudiger Dornbusch?].
K: Victory at last. I’ll be in old Fort Sam Brookings before you. It worked. At last I get to leave this nut house. I’ve been discharged. I’m going home to Japan.
HH: How did you work it Klingenbusch?
K: Easy. I didn’t satisfy the transvestality condition.
ANNOUNCER: And so we leave the dedicated Doctors of MESH. Perhaps you are wondering why none of the beloved students, for whom MESH lives and breathes, actually appeared in this story. The reason is simple and typical, not to say rationally expected. There was no space.
[Handwritten note at the end of the typed text:]
J. Harris (appears): My name is Jeff Harris. I am a chest-cutter by profession. This is the most ridiculous hospital I have ever seen. It makes the University of Pennsylvania look like heaven. I wouldn’t trust these people to do veterinary surgery although, in fact, I think some of them may be veterinarians, at best.
Source: Duke University. David M. Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Economists’ Papers Archive. Papers of Robert M. Solow, Box 83.
Image Source: Robert Solow in his office, MIT Museum Website.
The following faculty skit comes from the M.I.T. department of economics when memories of the Senate Watergate Hearings (summer of 1973) were still very fresh in everyone’s memories. This skit was likely presented at the 1973-74 annual skit party. Frederick Mishkin received his B.S. in 1973 from M.I.T. and his first year as a graduate student at M.I.T. was in 1973-74. Other graduate students named were either second year or thesis-writers.
I presume “E. Hausman Hunt” was a blend of the names of the MIT econometrician Jerry Hausman and the Watergate conspirator E. Howard Hunt.
“Bob Dean” was likely a blend of the names of Robert Hall (who taught the course 14.123) and Nixon’s special counsel John Dean (wife’s name Maureen).
“Paul Colson” might have been a blend of the names of Paul Joskow and Charles Colson, Nixon’s man for “dirty tricks” and who claimed he would have walked over his own grandmother to get Nixon reelected.
“F.” would appear with the remark about not understanding “goyim” to have been Frank Fisher.
Roger Backhouse graciously made his copy of this skit available for transcription. I have corrected many typos in the original text. If I ever identify the author, I shall update this post.
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F. This here meeting will now come to order. Let the minutes show that this is the 732nd meeting of the Special Subcommittee of the Econometrics [sic] Society investigating the notorious Westgate affair.
M1: Mr. Chairman, a point of personal privilege—
F. Yes, Mr. Solow.
M2: I’ve been out of town testifying for IBM in Tulsa for the last 7 months. Could you fill me in on what’s been happening?
F. On the night of June 20, 1972 several graduate students were apprehended breaking into Gary Becker’s office. It appeared that these students were after Prof. Becker’s manuscript on a theory of marriage. Several pieces of evidence point [to] the fact that these students were after Prof. Becker’s manuscript on a theory of marriage. Several pieces of evidence point [to] the fact that a well known Eastern economist (with initials PAS) may have funded this break-in for as yet unknown reasons. This committee has been called to investigate this matter.
M1Thank you Mr. Chairman.
F. Will the first witness step forward to testify?
Please state your name.
EHH E. Hausman Hunt.
F. What have you been doing for [the] last 3 months?
EHH. I’ve spent the last 3 months in Charles St. Jail polishing up my lecturing technique. If I could only speak a little faster during my lecture, just think how much more material I could cover.
F. Is it true that you were in charge of organizing the burglary of Becker’s office?
EHH. Yes; I used several graduate students from MIT: my first choices were Rick Kasten and Roger Gordon but we had to reject them since we were afraid they were too talkative. However I finally settled on Rick Mishkin and Glenn Loury; Mishkin because he was so calm and organized; and Louryto comply with equal opportunities satisfy HEW.
F. Is it true that you write econometrics papers under a pseudonym?
EHH. Yes, I’ve just produced my 43rdpaper on the identification problem using the pseudonym “Franklin M. Fisher”
F. Well, I may be an old country bullfrog, but…
Next witness, please
(BH steps forward; Maureen sits in his lap; F. gives the eyebrows to the audience)
F. State your name, rank.
BD. I’m Bob Dean, special assistant professor.
F. And whom do you assist?
BD. Prof. Paul Anthony Samuelson, BA, PhD, L.H.D, L.L.D, Litt.D. (hon), LSD.
F. Can you describe briefly your part in the Westgate affair?
BD. Prof Samuelson was working on a theory of marriage at the same time as Prof. Becker. He had just succeeded in developing the formal first order conditions for the optimal marriage (using the LeChatelier principle) when he discovered Prof Becker’s work. He asked me to arrange for him to get a look at Prof. Becker’s manuscript.
F. Isn’t it true that you got married on or about this same period?
BD. Yes, that was also part of Prof Samuelson’s theory of marriage. He had also arranged for an empirical part of this work; after deriving the first order conditions, he hired a computer programmer to search for the optimal marriage in the department. Maureen and I were chosen. Pressured by Samuelson we agreed to get married.
F. How did you afford your honeymoon on an assistant prof’s salary?
BD. I borrowed some money from a departmental slush fund.
F. What is the source of this slush fund?
BD. It was accumulated for the sale of lecture notes from 14.123; why else do you think we sell those notes?
F. (eyebrows) I see. When did you again meet with Prof Samuelson?
BD. March 21, 1973;
F. What happened at that meeting?
BD. We received instructions from Prof. Samuelson on how to behave on our honeymoon. We asked Prof. Samuelson if it would be OK if our marginal utilities were not equalized; he said that “it would be wrong.”
F. Why was Prof Samuelson taking such an interest in your honeymoon?
BD. He wanted to be sure that his theory involved only “empirically refutable propositions”. He was also worried that we might behave too formally.
F. I don’t think I’ll ever understand you goyim.
F. Next witness. Please state your name.
PC. Paul Colson.
F. For what purpose were you hired by Prof Samuelson?
PC. I was supposed to ghost write the empirical part of the paper.
F. It says here (looking at notes) that you are one of the most dedicated of the applied econometricians?
PC. Yes, I’d run over my own grandmother to get a t-statistic greater than 2.
F. What were Prof. Samuelson’s instructions?
PC. As you know, Prof Samuelson was worried that Bob and Maureen Dean might be too formal on their honeymoon; I was sent along to collect data on their performance.
F. What happened? (eyebrows)
PC. As I peered into their motel room, I saw Bob come out of the bathroom dressed in pajamas and say to Maureen: I offer my honor. Maureen came out in her nightgown and replied I honor your offer.
F. (eyebrows) What happened next?
PC. From then on it was just honor and offer all night.
F. What went wrong?
PC. We forgot to check the second-order conditions and it was only a saddle point.
Source: Duke University. David M. Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library. Economists’ Papers Archive. Papers of Robert M. Solow. Box 83.
Image Source: Photo from U.S. Senate Watergate hearings. From left to right: minority counsel Fred Thompson, ranking member Howard Baker, and chair Sam Ervin of the Senate Watergate Committee.
Spoiler alert: you are about to encounter one of the least funny economics skits in the history of the genre, so this artifact is regrettably low on entertainment value. Still the six acts have a certain seven-acts-of-man structure: Act I (the department recruits), Act II ( advising the first-year student), Act III (graduate student complaints), Act IV (choosing guest speakers), Act V (general examinations), Act VI (job market).
After reading the skit, you might need a palate cleansing or better: for that purpose here are a few links to the key word “Funny Business” at Economics in the Rear-view Mirror that take you to some of the greatest hits of economics skits.
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(The curtain rises on a scene of [Edgar Cary] Brown, [Franklin Marvin] Fisher, [Charles Poor] Kindleberger and [Abraham J.] Siegel seated around a table reading applications.
SIEGEL: Here’s a guy who may be OK…No…the place is no good. A cow college. They average only 50 points a game.
BROWN: Here’s a good one.
FISHER: What’s his record?
BROWN: Pretty darn good. Worth at least tuition plus $500. Maybe $750.
FISHER: What’s his record?
BROWN: Pretty darn good. He’s from Podunk. And they’re pretty good. He was the best they had.
FISHER: How did he score, for crying out loud?
BROWN: He’s six-feet-five, weighs 195 pounds, and fast; he averaged 23.7 points a game. He has a great set shot, never misses from the foul line, and superb off the backboard. He’s just what we need in Graduate Economics at M.I.T.
(An office: Siegel is advising a student.)
SIEGEL: For the first year I would take pretty standard fare: theory, history, statistics, finance, and international, plus of course the workshop. There’s no use trying to take too much. Pace yourself.
STUDENT (perhaps [Stephen Herbert] Hymer?): I don’t have much math. Why do I need to take statistics?
SIEGEL: Ando is very good. He doesn’t always make things completely clear, but you have to take statistics if you want to be able to handle averages, to work out the point per game and point per shot records; and you need probability to help compute odds on all the league games. Statistics is a must.
STUDENT: Why the history, finance and international?
SIEGEL: International is important. You ought to know how to schedule the Harlem Globetrotters, and who has the best chance in the Olympics. One of our best graduates played on the Oxford team against Poland and Czechoslovakia. That was Chuck Cooper, and it got him a job as Walter Heller’s assistant at the Council. Finance is important. When the gamblers start bribing players you need to know how to invest the funds. And history is vital. On the general exams they always ask who was James Naismith, the man who invented basketball. That’s for every student. The good students they ask when it was invented…of course 1891. And the very best students they ask where…past, Springfield, Mass. Remember, it’s not Springfield, Illinois. That’s Abe Lincoln.
STUDENT: OK. But tell me about the last one.
SIEGEL: Theory isn’t much. [Paul Anthony] Samuelson teaches about how to make inputs for two points, and when to dribble.
STUDENT: Samuelson teaches drivel?
(A group of students, griping.)
STUDENT 1 (Francis Michel Bator?): This place is no good. It’s theory, theory, theory all the way. Anyone knows that the way to win at basketball is to practice. Practice makes perfect. Theory makes perfect fools. All you do is study and take exams. “Who was James Naismith? Who was Adam Yea-Smith? When do you chop down the tree?” Bah! I say we ought to study policy. With a two-point lead and three minutes to go, should you freeze the ball or plop in an input for an output of two points?
STUDENT 2 ([Paul Narcyz] Rosenstein-Rodan?): They tell me [Robert Merton] Solow has been converted from theory to policy. He is no longer interested in questions like whether the best set shot is an inverted rectangular parabola, but real issues, like the queuing problem: how many substitutes does a team need to field five men for an hour, with one personal foul every six minutes and four personal fouls per man disqualifying. If you have too many players on the bench you get unemployment. The team needs growth. Maybe you ought to add a man and play six.
STUDENT 3 ([Robert] Evans?): What’s bad is to have to play far away from the Sloan building. Those workshops on top on Walker and over in the Armory are OK, but they are too far away. We need the Ford Foundation to give us a workshop right here.
STUDENT 1: Haven’t you heard? The talk is that the new building to go up in the back lot is a library. But as I see its dimensions unfold- 90 feet by 50 – and transparent backboards and netting and grandstands, I can’t believe it’s a library. It must be a basketball court.
(A meeting of the G.E.A.)
RALPH BULL (played by [Robert Lyle] Bishop?): Do any of you fellows have suggestions for speakers besides Cousy, Russell, Jungle Jim Lusketoff, and that 6.8 outstanding economist, [John Kenneth] Galbraith, who can stand with his head coming up through the basket?
STUDENT B: What about Milton Friedman? He is under the five feet which some say is the minimum allowable in a monetary theorist, but he sure is good at the far-fetched shot.
STUDENT B: Why not get Clifford Odets?
RALPH BULL: Clifford Odets? Why him?
STUDENT B: Don’t you remember the famous line in “Awake and Sing”? “My brother Sam joined the Navy. He don’t know from nothin’, that dumb basketball player.” I want to know whether the emphasis is “that dumb basketball player” or “the [sic] dumb basketball player”. Are there any smart basketball players?
KINDLEBERGER: As chairman of this exam, let me tell you that you have the right to pick the order of your exam. Do you want to start with Theory, or Statistics?
STUDENT (Samuelson?): I think I’ll start by jumping against Fisher, your professorship, sir. Ando’s the smaller, so I’ll take him last when I’m tired.
KINDLEBERGER: All right. (Student and Fisher face each other. Kindleberger blows whistle and throws imaginary ball. Cheers of amazement from faculty.)
FISHER: Very well. I have decided to let you combine Theory and Economic History.
STUDENT: Hey, Ref, your Ph.D.ship, sir, I’m not responsible for History. Isn’t that a foul?
KINDLEBERGER: I didn’t see nuthin’.
FISHER: Consider the population explosion of the last 150 years. Discuss the relative roles of (a) men and (b) women in this affair.
ANDO [Albert Keinosuke] : Good shot. That’s two points for our side.
STUDENT: I don’t know that, your cap-and-gownship, sir, but I know the roles are neither reflexive, symmetric, or transitive.
KINDLEBERGER: (blows whistle) Foul. You used big words in a generals. That’s only permitted the faculty.
FISHER: I’ll give Albert my free throw.
ANDO: (taking the foul shot) Please discuss the role of the nearly decomposable take-off in the application of a priori oligopoly theory to the A&P case.
STUDENT: Hey! You guys are ganging up on me.
ANDO: Well, you outnumber us in class.
STUDENT: (driving hard for basket) It can be set up as a nine-dimensional matrix problem and the latent roots dispensed with. I think the take-off is fine if done along the turnpike, watching out for model changes in passing cars.
ANDO: Fantastic! (Faculty huddle.)
KINDLEBERGER: That was a good answer. We’ve decided to give you an Excellent minus for being a good scorer, but to ask you to leave the Institute for fouling out on personals.
KINDLEBERGER, ANDO, FISHER: Rah, team!
DOMAR [Evsey David]: Well, you have the degree wrapped up, and now want a job. Not bad. You got a good grade on the orals, and would have gotten a top grade if you hadn’t thought that Stilt Chamberlain played for the Celtics and failed to distinguish Slippery Sam Jones from Casey Jones. Your thesis was entirely satisfactory, on a good topic: How to Get to the Boston Garden from Madison Square Garden: An Application of the Turnpike Theorem. And you even did languages: basketball communication in the Ivy League, or basketball with a broad A. Now the job. What do you think? Big Ten? Ivy League? Small liberal arts? Girls’ rules like Wellesley or Vassar? Or maybe the real big time: Kentucky, Long Island University, St. Joseph’s in Brooklyn, Notre Dame. L.I.U. is to economics like M.I.T. was to economics.
STUDENT (perhaps [Max Franklin] Millikan?): I don’t now if I’m ready for the Big Time.
DOMAR: What about applying some of your basketballmetrics for the government? They need our graduates. Or for an oil company. Maybe you would like to take a ball and a whistle and go abroad, demonstrating technical assistance to underdeveloped countries. There are jobs like that.
STUDENT: No. I guess I’m fussy. What I’d like is just what all the gang would like, to stay here at Cambridge with Harvard and the Celtics, and to referee like you and [Robert Lyle] Bishop and Samuelson, always blowing off your whistle and shouting foul, going first class to conferences, and shouting foul, foul, foul at the students.
Source: M.I.T. Archives. MIT Department of Economics records, Box 2, Folder “GEA 1961-67”.
Image Source: Boston Celtics players Tom Heinsohn, Bill Russell, Bob Cousy, Bill Sharman and Frank Ramsey in 1960. “Twelve of the greatest Celtics players of all time” from Boston.com website (March 18, 2018)
Today’s addition to the skits written and performed by my cohort of M.I.T. economics graduate students (we joined the program in 1974-75) was performed in early 1976. It is a parody of the classic Judy Garland movie The Wizard of Oz. As coincidence would have it, the faculty’s own contribution to the skit party was a Wizard of Oz parody too. There are so many obscure references in the script that I’ll perhaps prepare an annotated version later. Not to brag, but Paul Samuelson was reported to have said after seeing my performance as the cowardly lion words to the effect “I think that guy might be in the wrong business.”
A parody of Alice in Wonderland set in the Wonderland Institute of Technology in 1975 was written and performed in 1975. In addition to the script I posted a list of my classmates with links to some biographical information where I was able to find something.
In 1978 many of same people were involved in Casablank, a parody of the movie Casablanca. That script has likewise been transcribed and posted here at Economics in the Rear-view Mirror.
_________________
Wizard of Mit [Paul Samuelson] played by Paul Krugman
Dorothy [Representative graduate student] played by Margaret Feiger (neé Agnew)
Mailman
Del [Del Tapley, Department Administrator]
Munchkin Labor Force Kid [Robert Hall]
Munchkin Mayor [Evsey Domar] played by William Krasker
Munchkin Adelman [Morris Adelman]
Wicked Witch of the East
Scarecrow [Robert Solow] played by Jay Helms
Tin Man [Franco Modigliani] played by Dick Startz
Oil Can [Stanley Fischer] played by Jeffrey Frankel
Lion [Jerry Hausman] played by Bud Collier
Narrator
Housewife
_________________
Wizard (offstage) Good Evening, Ladies and Gentlemen. I am the Great and Powerful Wizard of Mit. Tonight the Second year class presents a tale of the supernatural—The Wizard of E52-383C. Any resemblance between faculty members and characters in this skit is purely coincidental. Pay no attention to the identifying initials worn by the actors! Our action begins in Kansas where Dorothy, a college senior, has received a series of troubling letters.
Dorothy: (picking up and reading letters): I don’t understand it. I’ve been rejected by every grad school I applied to. Chicago…Stanford…Slippery Rock State Teacher’s College…University of Southern North Dakota…Southwestern Virginia College for Small Women…What did I do wrong? I wonder if I should have mentioned on my applications that I have an NSF fellowship?
(FANFARE)
enter Mailman (running): Special delivery! I have a piece of registered mail for Occupant.
Dorothy: That’s me! (opens letter) Why, it’s a letter from MIT. (begins reading)
Mailman (to audience): Dorothy’s letter says: “Dear Sir, Madam, or otherwise: We hear you have received an NSF and are delighted to admit you to our graduate economics program. This acceptance is, of course, based solely on our evaluation of your academic promise and be sure to fill out and return the enclosed financial form immediately.”
Dorothy: Hey, how do you know what it says? Did you get the same letter?
Mailman: Why not? Nobody said that it had to be a one-to-one correspondence.
Dorothy: Well, I guess I’d better go to MIT. But I don’t know how to get there. Excuse me, sir, (turning to Mailman), but can you tell me how I can get to MIT?
Mailman: (solemnly) Study!
Dorothy: Somehow, I have a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.
Del: Hi! What witch are you?
Dorothy: Which what? Who? Huh? Oh! Why, I’m not a witch at all. As a matter of fact, I’ve never even seen a witch, I went to a state university.
Munchkins: Hee hee.
Dorothy: What’s that?
Del: They’re laughing because I am a witch. I’m Del, the good witch of the North.
Dorothy: Oh, I beg your pardon. But who are they?
Del: Those are Munchkins, the little people who live in this land. And you are their national heroine, for you have killed the Wicked Witch of the East Campus. Come out, every one, it’s safe now!
Dorothy: Hello!
Del: Munchkin Hall, from the second floor, would like to give you a present.
Hall (singing and dancing on one foot):
I represent the Labor Force Kids
The Labor Force Kids, The Labor Force Kids,
And on behalf of the Labor Force Kids
I wish to welcome you to Munchkin Land
The Labor Force Kids are honored to present you with a copy of my latest Brookings paper on the Phillips curve (holding paper upside down)
Dorothy: Aren’t you holding that journal upside down?
Hall: Well, most people think it slopes the opposite way, but they’re wrong, as you can tell by looking at the 454 model, which is empirically fitted on one observation.
Dorothy: But are you sure your paper is right?
Hall: Well, there are actually a few—actually, I—uh –as a matter of fact, I’d better warn you that some of the things I told you last term aren’t quite true. But here (taking another BPEA) is my latest Brookings paper on inflation, and I promise that this is my absolute last word on the subject…until next Fall.
enter Domar: On behalf of all the Munchkins, I, the Mayor of the Munchkins, welcome you to our land.
Dorothy: I’m pleased to meet you. But, please, sir, what exactly is a Munchkin?
Domar: Oh, a Munchkin is a sort of peasant. Actually, some Munchkins are workers, but most are peasants. I am the Mayor because I love to talk about peasants.
Dorothy: Why do the Munchkins need a Mayor? Is it hard to keep law and order?
Domar: Oh no, it’s no trouble at all. Munchkins are a friendly, peaceful folk who live in harmony and concord, except for a few who live in Lincoln. The only reason they need a mayor is because Munchkinland is a Mayoritocracy. Why, all the Munchkin laws are in this little book (hands Dorothy a book)
Dorothy: It’s awfully heavy for such a little book.
Hall: That’s because they’re all iron laws.
A Munchkin: Now let us all rejoice and tell happy stories!
Hall: 14.454!
(laughter)
Adelman: 14.124!
(laughter)
Dorothy: I don’t get it.
Domar: Oh, around here all you have to do is mention some course numbers and everyone thinks it’s funny.
Dorothy: Can I try it?
Domar: Be my guest.
Dorothy: 14.383
(everyone starts crying)
Domar: Why did you tell such a sad story? You’ve upset everyone!
(shrieks, rumbles)
Wicked Witch: Who killed my sister?
Dorothy: I thought you said she was dead!
Del: This is her sister, the Wicked Witch of the West.
Dorothy: You have two wicked witches?
Hall: O yes, you wouldn’t believe the trouble we’ve had around here because of doubles witching!
Wicked Witch: Who killed my sister? Was it you?
Dorothy: But I didn’t mean to.
Wicked Witch: I’ll get you, my pretty, and your little dog too!
Dorothy: What little dog?
Wicked Witch: You’re supposed to have a little dog!
Dorothy: Well you can’t expect us to reproduce the movie in Toto!
Del: You are in great danger, my dear, and you had better go and seek out help.
Dorothy: Who can help me?
Del: Perhaps the great Wizard of Mit can.
Dorothy: Can he pull a rabbit out of a hat?
Del: Well, he’s no Hal Varian, he can only do half a rabbit at a time.
Dorothy: Sounds like hare-splitting to me. But how do I find him?
Hall: It’s easy: just follow the gray cement.
Dorothy: (looking at ground) Follow the gray cement…follow the gray cement…(bumps into wall) Hey! Your were wrong, this path doesn’t lead anywhere.
Hall: Yes, I realized it wasn’t true as soon as I said it, but I decided not to tell you.
Adelman: Before you go, I, as the chief Munchkin expert on the oil industry, will make a prophecy: you will go safely to Mit and he will return you to Kansas.
Dorothy: Why does being an oil expert mean that you can see the future?
Adelman: Everyone knows there’s lots of prophets in the oil industry.
Dorothy: I sure hope this turns out better than some of your other predictions.
Del: Now my dear, you’d better start on your way to Mit.
Dorothy: How do I get there? And no funny business this time!
Del: Let’s see. I know I have it written down here somewhere (rummaging on table; picks up envelope, looks on back) Oh yes, here it is. All you must do is follow the yellow brick road…to Government center, change for the Green Line to Park Street, then take the Red Line to Kendall.
Dorothy: Follow the yellow brick road…follow the yellow brick road…
All: (singing)
Follow the yellow brick road
Follow the yellow brick road
Follow the, follow the, follow the, follow the,
Follow the yellow brick road
You’re off to see the Wizard,
The Wonderful Wizard of Mit
We hear he is a wonderful WizThough most of his stuff is—ahem!
If ever oh ever a Wiz there was
The Wizard of Mit is one because,
Because, because, because, because….
(everyone looks around in confusion, shrugs shoulders, and walks off stage).
(Scarecrow is standing as if held up by a pole, his arms stretched out. Enter Dorothy)
Dorothy: Follow the yellow brick road…follow the yellow brick road…? But there’s a fork in the road! Where do I go now?
Scarecrow: You could go down the golden rule path. (He points left.)
Dorothy: (startled) What was that? There’s no one here but a scarecrow!
Scarecrow: Or, you could go down the turnpike. (He points right.)
Dorothy: (to the audience) Wasn’t he pointing the other way?
Scarecrow: Of course, some people just can’t differentiate between the two. (He points both ways.)
Dorothy: You did say something, didn’t you? (Scarecrow looks silly pointing both ways:) Are you doing that on purpose or can’t you make up your mind?
Scarecrow: That’s just the trouble—I can’t make up my mind—I haven’t got a brain…only straw. (He says sadly.)
Dorothy: How can you talk if you haven’t got a brain?
Scarecrow: I don’t know (thoughtful pause). But you’ll find there’re lots of people around here without brains who do an awful lot of talking.
Dorothy: What do you mean by that?
Scarecrow: I may not have a brain, but I have enough sense not to answer that question. Besides, it’d be tasteless, and we’re leaving that sort of stuff to Perloff and the fourth year class.
Dorothy: But won’t they get into big trouble for that?
Scarecrow: Maybe so, but at least they can run away—I’m stuck here on this pole.
Dorothy: Oh, that must be very uncomfortable—what do you do up there all day?
Scarecrow: Well, everything I see reminds me of sex, but I’m trying to keep it out of this skit.
Dorothy: Here. (She walks over to him.) Maybe I can help you (Scarecrow acquires a lecherous grin.)…get down, that is.
Scarecrow: If you could bend the nail down I might fall off. (She does so, and the scarecrow falls down and flops around a bit.) Oh, thank you! Thank you! You really know how to knock down a straw man—you’ll do fine here. But I’m still a failure because I haven’t got a brain.
Dorothy: What would you do with a brain if you had one?
Scarecrow: (aside) I think that’s a cue for a song.
Dorothy: But you can’t sing—I heard you in rehearsal.
Scarecrow: You’re not kidding! But neither can anyone else in this skit, so people had better just get used to it. Besides, the audience seems pretty juiced up anyway.
I could wile away the hours
Reading Robert Clower
Or even J. M. Keynes
It would be no enigma
When things grew at rate sigma
If I only had a brain.
I could put down Milton neatly
And Franco quite discreetly
They’d suffer boundless pain
I could do a lot of thinkin’
I could be like Don Patinkin
If I only had a brain.
Oh I
Could tell you why
Growth theory’s such a bore
And what god made grad students for (?)
And then I’d sit
And think some more.
I could solve for optimality
With primal and duality
And never feel the strain
I could normalize the vector
That describes the public sector
If I only had a brain.
Dorothy: (running off) …oh my god…
Scarecrow: Wait! (shouting, running after her) You didn’t even introduce yourself!
Dorothy: Oh, yes …I’m Alice…I mean Dorothy.
Scarecrow: What are you doing here?
Dorothy: I’m going to see the Wonderful Wizard of Mit to ask him to help me get home.
Scarecrow: Where’s your home?
Dorothy: It’s one of those places where ivy doesn’t grow—you’ve probably never heard of it.
Scarecrow: (slowly, with tone of contempt) Oh, yes… but how did you ever get here from there ?…Well, no matter…Hey, do you think this Wizard of yours could help me get a brain?
Dorothy: Probably not. No one around here seems to have nearly enough brains for himself—much less enough to give away.
Scarecrow: But isn’t it worth a try? Hey, look—maybe he has one but he’s just not using it very much—then he’d never miss it if he gave it to me.
Dorothy: You’re right! (excitement builds!) Come along then!
Scarecrow: Hooray! We’re off to see the Wizard!
(Dorothy and Scarecrow exit, skipping and singing, “We’re off to see the Wizard….)
(Tin man on stage, Dorothy & Scare crow walk in
Tin Man: (with mouth closed) Oil can.
Dorothy: What was that?
Tin Man: (more clearly) Oil can.
Scarecrow: I think he said “oil can”.
Dorothy: Where would we find an oil can in the middle of the forest?
(Oil can hops in: harmonica fanfare)
Dorothy: What a coincidence!
Oil Can: Not really, I was out in Chicago waiting for this to happen. You see, we left the Tin Man in a seminar room all by himself…
Dorothy: …and he was so lonely he cried and rusted shut?
Oil Can: He kept right on talking and was bored stiff.
(Oil Can and Dorothy loosen up the Tin Man)
Tin Man: …yes by the way it works in my model…
Dorothy: (interrupts) I have a question.
Tin Man: Yes?
Dorothy: You look very peculiar for a Tin Man. Everyone else in the room uses at least two axes and you don’t even have one.
Tin Man: Well the reason I can do that is I find an axe isn’t so good. No, a two man saw is much more efficient.
Oil Can: The truth is he can’t cut down a tree without a co-author.
Dorothy: (to Oil Can) You have a very interesting accent. You sound just like someone I know but I can’t quite place it. Hmmm…I know who it is! You sound just like Jeremy Bulow.
Tin Man: I promise from now on I’m going to be witty and entertaining and I will try to maintain a high rate of interest.
Scarecrow: That doesn’t tell us much. You promising to set a high rate of interest is like the young man who swears to lead a virtuous life. You still don’t know what he’s going to do with his hands.
Tin Man: I’d like to tell you a few more characteristics of my life’s story, but I see it’s five o’clock and we’re out of time.
Oil Can: That’s ok, this skit goes until 5:30.
Dorothy: You do that one more time and we’re sending you back to Chicago.
Tin Man: The reason I keep talking about my model is because I haven’t got a heart.
Dorothy: Do you mean that when the tinsmith made you he left out a heart? How sad.
Tin Man: Oh no, I had one originally. But you see I thought Milton needed one a lot more than I did, so I gave it to him. Then he sold it to the University of Chicago Art Gallery.
Dorothy: Huh?
Oil Can: Both the gallery and Uncle Milton have always wanted to hang a Modigliani.
Dorothy: Why do you keep on talking about your model when you should show a little restraint?
(into song sung by Tin Man except where indicated)
There’s a money demand equation
a free reserve relation
difficult it ain’t.
Class attention I’d be keepin’
And there’d be nobody sleepin’
If I only showed restraint.
I do model simulation
of disintermediation
the notion’s really quaint.
I could talk to Kenneth Arrow
or even Robert Barro
If I only showed restraint.
Riddle me
economy
above a voice cries low
(Dorothy) Wherefore art thou, Franco?
I estimate!
(thump, thump)
(Scarecrow) I integrate!
I’d forget about consumption
study peasants like the Munchkin
be quiet as a saint.
(Oil Can) I’d have time to teach you theory
Students wouldn’t get so weary
If I only showed restraint.
Dorothy: Are you always around to take care of the Tin Man?
Oil Can: What do you take me for, a one night Stan?
Dorothy: Which way to Mit?
Tin Man: (In Italian) I think it’s that way. (point)
Scarecrow: Sheer madness.
Dorothy: Yes, that way would be better.
Scarecrow: Sheer madness and a Talmudic argument.
Dorothy: Well then, how about that way?
Scarecrow: Sheer madness, a Talmudic argument, and if God had intended us to go that way. She would have put up a sign post.
Oil Can: Never mind, Mit lies that way.
Dorothy: How can you be so sure that road will converge to Mit?
Oil Can: Elementary, it’s the perfect foresight path.
Dorothy: Oh my, the path leads us into this forest. Do you think that there are any wild animals there?
Scarecrow: Maybe a lion or two, nothin’ to get worried about.
Dorothy: Lions! Do you think we’ll meet any?
Tin Man: Don’t worry Dorothy, we’ll protect you.
Scarecrow: (to Tin Man) But who will protect us?
Tin Man: Shhh. Besides, the only lion that lives around here is the economist’s best friend—the regression lion.
Dorothy: A regression lion? I’ve never heard of one of those before. Are you sure they won’t attack us?
Scarecrow: I don’t know for sure but there’s a pretty harmless one called OLS, it’s BLUE.
Tin Man: That’s a lion of a different color.
Scarecrow: Of course, there is always the GLS…, it’s ferocious.
Dorothy: What color is GLS?
Scarecrow: Blue.
Dorothy: So how will we be able to tell them apart?
Scarecrow: Sometimes they’re the same thing.
Tin Man: But the meanest and baddest lions in the forest are (pause, then whisper) FIML.
Dorothy: OLS?
Scarecrow: (nodding his head) GLS.
Tin Man: FIML.
Dorothy: Oh my!
All: OLS, GLS, FIML…
Dorothy: Oh my!
All: OLS, GLS, FIML…
Dorothy: Oh my!
(Repeat the above chant with Dorothy’s ‘Oh my!’ several times, faster and faster. Go around in circles so that the three are facing the entrance/exit and they are heading towards the entrance when out pops the lion roaring, Dorothy screams.)
Lion: RRRRRROOOAR!!! (to Tin Man) Hah, so you’re trying to hold the money workshop in the forest without inviting me.
Tin Man: But, but….
Lion: Just don’t let it happen again, hey Tin Man who’s the chick with the clown?
Dorothy: (scared) I’m not a chick, and he’s not a clown, he’s a scarecrow. And he’s smart too, so you’d better be careful.
Lion: So ya think you’re smart do ya’? (Scarecrow shakes his head “no”.) Oh yeah, well put ‘em up, wanna see who can prove that three stage least squares is asymptotically efficient? (Scarecrow is shaking and on his knees, begging, and shaking his head) See, he’s scared. Hah! Com on ya dummy, I’ll let you prove it in thirty lines, I’ll do it in less than ten. Ah, come on scarecrow, I’ll let ya use my colored chalk, I’ll use white chalk, I’ll even erase the board for myself. (Scarecrow is on the ground paralyzed with fear. To Dorothy…) See, he ain’t so smart.
Tin Man: You really shouldn’t act this way…
Lion: Don’t criticize my acting. Will you shut up or do I have to turn you into a sculpture for the East Campus? I wonder what you would look like with your head put on backwards?
Dorothy: (running behind and pulling his tail) Don’t hurt Tin Man, he just can’t restrain himself, it’s not his fault. You shouldn’t make fun of Scarecrow’s scarcity of wit either. Do you think you’re perfect?
Lion: (starts crying) Ah why’d you have to go and pull my tail, I wasn’t trying to hurt nobody. I was just having my own sick, perverted, disgusting fun (bawls some more).
Dorothy: My goodness, what a fuss you’re making. You’re nothing but a big coward.
Lion: You’re right, I am a coward. Just look at the circles under my eyes, I haven’t slept in weeks.
Tin Man: Why don’t you try reading Patinkin?
Lion: I can’t, I’m afraid the suspense would kill me.
Scarecrow: Maybe the Wizard could help you. He’s going to give me a brain and him restraint and he’ll help get Dorothy out of here.
Lion: (To Dorothy) You think he could do it?
Dorothy: He’s a Wizard isn’t he? Oh, do come with us, it’s worth a try, come on.
Lion. OK, it would really be terrific if the Wizard could give me courage (he lapses into song….)
“IF I ONLY HAD MORE NERVE”
When I’d speak I wouldn’t mumble,
I would seem so meek and humble.
All that you would observe.
And I’d answer all your queries
When I’d lecture on time series,
If I only had more nerve.
I’m afraid there’s no denyin’
that this regression lion
Can’t even draw a curve.
But I know that this kitty
Could give lectures truly witty,
If he only had more nerve.
Oh I…..’d be King of Mit,
My realm the whole third floor,
Editor of Econometrica,
And then I would teach
Three-eighty-four!
I would humbly beg your pardon
If I’d seem to come too hard on,
Decorum I’d observe.
And I’d be just like your brother,
No longer a mean mother-…
If I only had more nerve.
Dorothy: I wouldn’t worry if I were you, it took a lot of nerve to sing that song.
Scarecrow: Shall we go to see the Wizard?
Tin Man: Let’s go!
All: (Arm in arm, they go off singing) We’re off to see the Wizard….
Narrator: We will return to the Wizard of Mit after station identification.
Housewife: Mothers! You may have compared guns to butter, but are you uncertain what brand of butter to choose? Try new Scotch brand mean-preserving spread. Scotch brand sticks to your bread. Just a wee bit removes the uncertainty as to which side your bread is buttered on. In 9 out of 10 families, it produces a higher level of margarine utility. And, as part of a budget-constrained diet, Scotch brand mean-preserving spread can help preserve your means.
Narrator: Preserve my means of what?
Housewife: Your means of payment.
Narrator:(Snorts) I don’t know what means of payment! I don’t have any bread.
Housewife: So remember mothers, all brands of butter are not indifferent. Next time you are at the supermarket, try Scotch brand mean-preserving spread. You can differentiate it by the little Scotch on the rooks. (Pointing to package.)
Narrator: And speaking of Scots, don’t forget to get your tickets for the Adam Smith Roast, April 12, commemorating the 200thanniversary of the publication of the Wealth of Nations. Join us for an Eve with Adam.
We now return to the Wizard of Mit, already in progress.
Man at door: (Wizard with a Groucho Marx disguise of glasses, nose, and moustache) I’m sorry, but the Wizard is busy, you’ll have to wait here.
Lion: If I had more nerve, I’d tell him a thing or two. He wouldn’t dare talk to the King of Mit like that.
Dorothy: Your majesty, if you were king, you wouldn’t be afraid of anybody?
Lion: Not nobody, not nohow, nuthin’.
Scarecrow: What of non-linear estimation?
Lion: I’d do it on my vacation.
Tin Man: How ‘bout a grad student with a question?
Lion: Wouldn’t even affect my digestion.
Dorothy: Not even errors in variables?
Lion: That wouldn’t be so terriable.
Scarecrow: But what of a fixed-point theorem?
Lion: I wouldn’t even fear ‘em.
(Dorothy, Scarecrow, and Tinman look at each other confused and together say)
All (but Lion): How?
Lion: How?…..Courage.
What makes Jim Tobin cool in inflation?
Courage.
What makes Ken Galbraith so ready to ration?
Courage.
What makes Frank Fisher insulting
Though he’s never here and always consulting?
Courage.
What makes Scarf so easily able
To prove his equilibr’um stable?
What makes Diamond’s neoclassical fable?
Courage.
What makes Domar so concerned with the serf?
Courage.
What lets Lance Taylor know wheat from the turf?
Courage.
What gives Eckaus the decision on money?
What gives Bob Bishop the right to be funny?
Courage.
What makes Hatanka hot?
What puts the “P” in Hall’s P-dot?
What do they got that I ain’t got?
Others: (loud) Tenure!
Lion: You can say that again.
(Out pops Wizard’s head in disguise again)
Man in disguise: You may come in, but please don’t make so much noise.
(Dorothy, Scarecrow, Lion, Tin Man, and Oil Can meet the Wizard
Scarecrow: There’s the wizard!
Dorothy: Oh Wizard can you help us? Can you send me home?
Scarecrow: Can you give me brains?
Lion: Can you give me courage?
Tin Man: Can you give me restraint?
Wizard: (In deep voice) I am the great Wizard of Mit. Of course I can grant your requests for I am faster than hyperinflation, more powerful than an explosive cycle and able to leap tall nonnegativity constraints in a single Cramer-Rao bound.
But first you, Dorothy, must capture a set of the bluest coefficients from the Wicked Witch of the West—and you, Scarecrow, Lion, and Tin Man, must help her.
(Dorothy, Scarecrow, Lion, Tin Man, Oil Can exit, talking with one another about what they are to do)
(Dorothy, Tinman, Scarecrow, Lion, Oil Can on stage)
Tin Man: This is Harvard, so the Wicked Witch’s castle must be around here somewhere.
Scarecrow: But we haven’t seen any building named Bronwyn Hall.
Dorothy: Oh, this is terrible. We’ll never be able to get those coefficients, and I’ll never be able to go home. (sobs)
Lion: Wait a minute! There’s a computer. I’m sure it will be more than happy to solve our problem for us.
Dorothy: Yes, but how can we use it without an account? Oh, if only someone would give me some computer money! (pause) I said: Oh, if only someone would give me some computer money!
enter Del: Hi! Did I hear you calling for something?
Dorothy: Please, can I have some computer money?
Del: How much do you want?
Dorothy: Twenty-five should be enough.
Del: Oh, that’s alright then. If you want more you’ll have to go see Professor Eckaus. Here you are (opens change purse and gives Dorothy a quarter) (leaves)
Tin Man: Well, now you can run the equation, although I must admit I am rather skeptical about your getting any results. In the last 17 papers I have co-authored on this subject I have failed to find any significant influence of…
Dorothy: (interrupting) Don’t you think we’d better get this over with?
Lion: Now Dorothy, it’s not nice to interrupt someone like that.
Oil Can: You know, Dorothy, if the Regression Lion has to give you lessons in tact, you’re in real trouble.
Dorothy: Well, anyway, let me see what comes out. (Puts quarter in machine, rips off sheet of paper.) Hey this is gibberish! That’s very peculiar.
Lion: Oh, I don’t think it’s peculiar. It fact, it’s quite normal.
Scarecrow: Why is it normal?
Lion: Because I’ve seen it happen lots of times, and anything becomes approximately normal after about 25 observations.
Dorothy: All that it says on this printout is “Error 1039”. Does anyone know what that means?
Lion: No, but we can look it up in the version 2.7 manual.
Dorothy: Well, you do that. I’ll go see if I can find Bill Dellafar (starts to walk offstage, shrieks, is yanked off)
Scarecrow: Error 1039, error 1039, let’s see: it says, “I’ll get you, my pretty, and your little dog too.”
(all look around)
Tin Man: The Wicked Witch must have taken Dorothy!
Scarecrow: But where?
Wicked Witch: Ha ha ha! You know I’m here somewhere, but you’ll never find enough restrictions to identify me!
Lion: Now what are we going to do?
Tin Man: If I knew you were going to ask that question, I would have put it in my model, which I have to believe in, because if I don’t, who will?
Scarecrow: Now look, I don’t have any brains, so I don’t know any econometrics, and I wouldn’t believe it if I did. But I have an idea. What we have here is an identification problem. Now what does that make you think of?
Oil Can: Money!
Scarecrow: Everything you hear makes you think of money. Everything I hear makes me think of sex, but I’m still trying to keep it out of the skit.
Dorothy: (offstage) you’re not trying had enough!
Scarecrow: I mean Frank Fisher.
Lion: But we can’t afford him. He charges 100,000 bucks to testify against witches.
Scarecrow: Yes, but the second year students have never had Fisher, and don’t know him from Irving. If you (pointing to Lion) go around humiliating students and saying incomprehensible things, nobody will know the difference.
Lion: All right, I’ll do it. I’m gonna go in and set the system of equations (1) in the normalized form (4) after deleting the columns corresponding to the a priori known elements of beta and gamma, which will allow us to use equation (14) to derive the Fiml estimator delta-hat in instrumental variable form. And there’s only one thing I want you guys to do.
All: What is it?
Lion: Talk me out of it!
Scarecrow: Okay, let’s go!
(Dorothy comes running out)
Tin Man: Come on Dorothy!
Wicked Witch: You won’t escape me!
(Dorothy trips over wire)
Wicked Witch: What have you done? You’ve pulled my plug! I’m going down, I’m going down…
Tin Man: The Wicked Witch is dead; but now how are we going to get the coefficients?
Scarecrow: Well, since I don’t have a brain, I always cars this HP 55 with me, since it’s the next best thing. Maybe we can calculate them on this.
Dorothy: But will it do everything we need?
Scarecrow: Not by itself, but we have all sorts of special accessories. (While this happens, computer begins moving into audience, saying “Mommy”, “Where’s Browyn Hall?”, etc.)
Lion: For example, we can test for cereal correlation with this (pulls out a box of cereal)
Oil Can: And correct for it using the special CORC attachment! (pulls cork out of bottle, passes bottle around)
Tin Man: We can take t-statistics with these (tea bags)
Lion: And we can perform Chow tests with this! (dog food)
Scarecrow: We can use Almon Lags (almonds), and it will be no problem to scramble the variables (eggs).
Dorothy: Stop! We’ll never get them unscrambled! But can we get a variance?
Oil Can: You’ll have to go to the zoning board for that.
Scarecrow: And this will be only too glad to do hill-climbing for us (climbing gear)
Dorothy: It sure looks like a lot of work.
Scarecrow: That’s true, but it may be what God made graduate students for. Presumably she had somethingin mind.
(computer now speaks to Bronwyn Hall)
Computer: Good evening, Mrs. Hall. Here’s something you thought you’d never see: the very last bug from TSP (gives her bug).
Dorothy: (places coefficients before Wiz) Are they blue enough? Will they get me back home?
Wizard: That depends on whether the Lerner-Lewis-Leontief-Lousy operator meets the Bishop-Bowley-Bentham-Bogus condition on top of the Samuelson-Savage-Slutsky-Silly contour integrals.
Lion: But the coefficients—will they give me courage?
Wizard: (absent-mindedly) This reminds me of what Cournot said to Bernoulli when they were ruining gamblers in St. Petersburg…
Scarecrow: Please Wizard! Tell us if the coefficients are good enough to give me a brain!
Wizard: Or am I thinking of the time Edgeworth trampled on Pareto’s bordered Hessian and Villy came after him swinging a Markoff chain?
Tin Man: (knocking over poster of wizard to expose man reading Newsweek) Hey, this is no wizard—he’s a fake!
Wizard: Yes I admit—I get all my economics from Newsweek—I don’t understand those things I say any more than anyone else does.
Dorothy: You mean you don’t know what Shephard’s lemma is?
Wizard: I’ve never even seen a sheep.
Lion: You don’t understand the Wong-Viner envelope?
Wizard: I’ve never even been in a Chinese stationery store.
Dorothy: Then you can’t get me back home!
Lion: You can’t give me courage!
Scarecrow: Or me a brain!
Tin Man: Or me restraint!
Dorothy: I can’t believe that all the Munchkins have been saying how great you are when you’re a complete phony.
Wizard: I’m sorry, my dear, but it’s true. I’m an exact, pure humbug with or without the social contrivance of Munchkins. Now, Scarecrow, Lion, and Tin Man. Don’t get excited. There’s one thing that will help you all—when you have it the lack of brains, courage, and restraint doesn’t matter at all.
Scarecrow, Lion, Tin Man: (together) What is it?
Wizard: (sings)
I’m a dullard and a coward
and my math’s not so high-powered
my column’s not so wise.
Though I made a lot of money
No one thought my jokes were funny
‘Til I won the Nobel prize.
Though my thought is quite as narrow
as that of Kenneth Arrow
my ego’s twice his size.
Though I make a silly blunder
No one ever seems to wonder
How I won the Nobel prize.
refrain:
Koopmans, Kantorovich, Frisch
Tinbergen—I’m better than them all.
Next to me they scarcely count at all
I love me so
And you should know…
If you want a commendation
Just give me a small donation.
I’ll tell all sorts of lies.
So you see you can be winners
even though you’re just beginners
When you win your Nobel prize.
Scarecrow, Lion, Tin Man: (together) Oh, thank you Wizard!
Wizard: It was nothing. But Dorothy, how are we going to get you back to Kansas?
Dorothy: Kansas? What’s all this about Kansas—I want to go back to Australia.
Source: Personal copy of the script of Irwin Collier.
Image: Left to right: Paul Krugman as the Wizard of Mit, Jeffrey Frankel as Oil Can, Margaret (Feiger) Agnew as Dorothy, Irwin Collier as Lion, Dick Startz as Tin Man. From Irwin Collier files (photographer unknown).
It was from the Ilsa and Sam scene and the Rick and Sam scene from Casablanca that a mad M.I.T. economics graduate student was distilling his frenzy in 1978. That fourth year graduate student, Jeffrey Frankel, was the producer/head-writer for his cohort’s contribution to the annual skit party of the department of economics. At the time I was on the other side of the Berlin Wall so that I missed both the creation and performance of “Casablank”. I contacted Jeff recently and asked if he still had a script. He did, and now Economics in the Rear-view Mirror is proud to provide the script for that legendary skit as well as the lyrics to “And God Knows Why”.
Production trivia. When asked about the casting decision to have Miguel Beleza in drag playing Ilsa, Jeff Frankel answered [Warning–irony and hyperbole!]: “I was violently opposed…But the others thought I was being a spoilsport; this was the price for their (reluctant) agreement to putting on my precious masterpiece.”
Note: To hear a well-crooned rendition of the entire Herman Hupfeld song “As Time Goes By” (Lyrics), that includes the introduction not sung in the movie but included in the MIT skit, listen to Rudy Vallée with Orchestra on the Victor label (78 rpm).
The same cohort of graduate students at M.I.T. was responsible for the skit Analysis in Wonderland that was written and performed in 1975 and transcribed for an earlier post.
____________________
*Script author and lead-author for lyrics to And God Knows Why.
Rick Gain [J.F. = Jeff Frankel]
Ugotme [Andy = Andy Abel]
LeBruin [Bill = Bill Krasker]
Major Strasbusch [Dick = Dick Startz]
Samuelson [Jay = Jay Helms]
Ilsa [Luis = Luis Miguel Beleza]
Narrator [Ray = Ray Hill]
Man [Bob = Bob Cumby]
Professor [Pedro = Pedro Aspe]
Student [Pat = Patricia D. Mooney]
S.S. [Ray = Ray Hill]
Vector Lieslow [Henry = Henry Brady]
NARRATOR: (solemnly) With the coming of the recent recession, the eyes of the world turned hopefully or desperately, to the field of Economics. A Ph.D. became the great embarkation point. But nobody could get a Ph.D. directly. And so a tortuous, roundabout refugee trail sprang up. From grade school to high school, from high school to college, and then, by GRE’s or grades or inside connections, to Graduate School. Here the fortunate ones, through money or influence or luck, might obtain an exit thesis, and thus get their Ph.D. and get a job in the world of Economics. But the others are stuck in Graduate School, where all they can do is wait…and wait…..and wait.
(Scene: Robnett’s Café American. People drinking: Man at one table, Student and Professor at another, Ugotme playing cards with others at a third table, and LeBruin at a fourth. Samuelson at piano.)
MAN: (despairingly) Waiting, waiting, waiting! I’ll never get out of here. I’ll die in Graduate School!
PROF.: (examining paper of nervous student) B+.
STUDENT: But can’t you…make it just a little bit more, please?
PROF: I’m sorry madame; exchange rate models are a drug on the market; everybody sells exchange rate models. There are exchange rate models everywhere. B+.
(Rick enters from left. Pause. SS comes to door on right.)
RICK: (blocking entrance) I’m sorry, this is a private room.
SS: Of all the nerve! I know there’s bridge-playing going on in there; you can’t keep me out! Do you know who I am?
RICK: I do; now get out. (SS leaves.)
UGOTME: (standing up) Who was that, Rick?
RICK: S.S.
UGOTME: S.S.?
RICK: Yeah. Sloan School.
UGOTME: Rick, why do you despise me? Oh, you object to the kind of business I do, huh? But think of all those poor students who must rot in this place if I didn’t help them. Through ways of my own, I provide them with thesis topics.
RICK: For a price Ugotme. They have to buy you dinner.
UGOTME: Look, Rick. (Takes paper from pocket.) Something that even you have never seen. A proof that unemployment can exist under rational expectations. I’d like you to keep it for me. (Hands paper to Rick. Retakes his seat.)
(Rick walks over and sits down with LeBruin.)
RICK: Hello, LeBruin.
LEBRUIN: Have some wine. Oh I forgot, you don’t drink with customers. I’ve been wondering, Rick. What in heaven’s name brought you to Graduate School?
RICK: The social life. I came to Graduate School for the social life.
LEBRUIN: (in astonishment) What social life? We are in a wasteland!
RICK: I was misinformed.
LEBRUIN: We are expecting a famous visitor here: Vector Lieslow, the liberal economist. He would give anything to get a proof that unemployment can exist under rational expectations.
RICK: What makes you think I’d help Lieslow?
LEBRUIN: Because, my dear Ricky, I suspect that under that monetarist shell, you’re at heart a Keynesian. (Rick laughs) Oh, laugh if you will, but I happen to be familiar with your record. In 1972, you worked for George McGovern. In 1968 you organized protest demonstrations at the Chicago School.
RICK: And got paid for it on both occasions.
(Strasbusch enters right. Nods to LeBruin, clicking his heels. Sits down with LeBruin and Rick.)
LEBRUIN: We are very honored tonight, Rick. Major Strasbusch is one of the reasons the Chicago School enjoys the reputation it has today.
STRASBUSCH: Mr. Gain, you came here from California.
RICK: There seems to be no secret about that.
STRASBUSCH: Are you one of those people who can’t imagine Milton Friedman in their beloved California?
LEBRUIN: Rick is completely neutral about everything. And that includes the neutrality of money.
STRASBUSCH: You were not always so carefully neutral. We have a complete dossier on you. We know what you did in College, and also we know why you left College.
RICK: (getting up) If you gentlemen will excuse me, (stunned) that girl Lieslow is with! Ilsa!
(Lieslow and Ilsa walk in, right. Look around, sit at a table.)
RICK: (Dreamily) I knew her in College, in the more innocent days before the recession. We were in French class and the SDS together. We believed in poetry and ideals like economic equality for all…and…and…the downward-sloping Phillips Curve. (Coming back to reality.) But then conservatism set in; the SDS was thrown off campus, and French class was replaced by Accounting. (sits down)
ILSA: (Leans over and talks to Samuelson.) Play it, Samuelson. Play “And God Knows Why.”
SAMUELSON (sings first half of song.)
This day and age we’re living in
Gives cause for consternation
With the speed of price inflation
And disintermediation.
I get a trifle weary
With economic theory;
I can find no explanation
In graduate education.
No matter what the progress
Or what may yet be proved
The stylized facts of life are such
They cannot be removed.
You must remember this
We’re just economists.
We know the prime rate’s high
So also is the money supply
But God knows why.
And when the market’s bearish
The small investors perish
On that you can rely.
The fundamentals don’t apply
And God knows why.
Exercises in futility
Like multiple regressions,
Or maximizing our utility
With Jacobians and Hessians
Don’t give us the ability
To forecast our recessions;
That no one can deny.
It’s still the same old trouble
A speculators’ bubble:
A case of sparkling wine.
The Dow breaks seven-forty nine
And God knows why.
(Then applause from everyone but Strasbusch. Strasbusch, then LeBruin, stand up.)
STRASBUSCH: (to LeBruin, sternly) I have decided that we need this space for an S.S. classroom. I advise that the Robnett Café be shut up at once!
LEBRUIN: But I have no excuse to close it.
STRASBUSCH: Find one!
LEBRUIN: (blows whistle) Everybody is to leave immediately. This café is closed until further notice!
RICK: On what grounds?
LEBRUIN: I’m shocked! Shocked to find that bridge-playing is going on here! (Everyone leaves except Rick and Samuelson, who start to straighten chairs. LeBruin comes back to take bottle and glass. Ilsa enters suddenly.)
ILSA: Rick, I know you have the proof that unemployment can exist under rational expectations. You must give it to me, so Vector Lieslow and I can get out of here.
RICK: Why should I help you?
ILSA: If you don’t help us, Vector Lieslow will die in Graduate School.
RICK: What of it? I’m going to die in Graduate School. It’s a good place for it.
ILSA: Rick, you were a Keynesian too once.
RICK: I believe in self-interest now, sweetheart.
ILSA: I don’t like the way you are acting.
RICK: You’re no Ingrid Bergman yourself.
ILSA: I think that under that protective covering of neutrality, you still believe in an activist fiscal policy.
RICK: No, under this protective covering of neutrality…(Taking off trench coat and revealing Superman insignia) is Superneutrality!
(Ilsa turns and leaves in disgust.)
RICK: Play it again, Samuelson.
SAMUELSON (sings second half of song. Then leaves with Rick.)
You must remember this
We’re just economists.
Steel prices are still high,
Despite excess supply.
And God knows why.
Though the deutschemark is up
So are the sales of Krupp;
The Germans still sell and we still buy.
The fundamentals don’t apply,
And God knows why.
Upturns and downturns,
Wage hikes and price hikes,
Miller follows Burns,
Miller’s union strikes.
Every student learns,
Whether or not he likes
The fount of wisdom runs dry.
It’s still the same old textbooks;
Each one looks like the next looks.
Sales of Dornbusch and Fischer
Will make the authors richer,
But God knows why.
(Scene: LeBruin seated at desk. Rick, Ilsa and Lieslow enter together.)
RICK: (handing paper to LeBruin) LeBruin, this exit thesis is being submitted in the names of…Mr. and Mrs. Vector Lieslow.
ILSA: Oh, Rick!
LEBRUIN: Just as I suspected. At heart, you are a Keynesian.
(Major Strasbusch stalks in. Grabs paper and looks at it.)
STRASBUSCH: This thesis is not complete. There is no econometric evidence.
RICK: I have my programmable H.P. right here (tapping pocket of trenchcoat).
STRASBUSCH: You’re bluffing.
(Rick reveals calculator in holster. Strasbusch reveals his, draws. Rick draws. Both hit buttons furiously, with calculators pointed at each other.)
RICK: (while calculating) Regressing unemployment on the government deficit…holding constant for labor force composition…the t-statistic is…2.0!!
STRASBUSCH: (in horror) Oh, no! Fatal at the 95% level!! (Falls over.)
RICK: (chucking Ilsa under chin) Here’s looking at you kid.
(Ilsa and Vector exit)
(Lights out.)
Source: Transcribed from copy of original script and lyrics provided by Jeffrey Frankel .
The following M.I.T. economics skit from ca. 1971 attains biblical proportions or at least displays biblical pretensions. The script comes from Robert Solow’s file of many such skits that Roger Backhouse has copied during his archival research. Alas this script displays some half-dozen gaps, but there is always some hope that the missing parts (mainly lyrics for songs noted below) will be found eventually in some other economist’s archived papers.
While there is no explicit date on the manuscript, the references to President Nixon, a mention of the eighth edition of Samuelson’s Economics (published in 1970) and the reference to Bishop and Domar who last taught the first graduate microeconomic and macroeconomic courses in 1970-71 are sufficient to give us a reasonably tight point estimate of early 1971 for this skit.
I have taken the liberty of correcting the many spelling errors and obvious typos. To improve readability I have also added boldface, alignment formatting etc. Comments are found within square brackets in italics.
Nerd humor, crude double entendre, puns coexist along side of flashes of wit and emotion. But it is mostly nerd humor.
_________________________
Opening Song [Lyrics missing]
Announcer [Text missing]
Narrator:
In the beginning God created the endowments and utility.
And God looked on the utility and saw that they were goods.
And there was darkness upon the face of the utility and the utility was without form.
And God said let there be light and there was light and the preferences were revealed.
And God said let there be a social welfare function and so it was that the preferences were ordered.
And God said let there be liberation of consciousness and there was consciousness of liberation.
And created economic man in his own image.
And on the seventh day God rested because the Robnett was closed.
[Robnett was name of the room in the Sloan Building that served as a graduate student lounge.]
[Enter Adam]
Adam: Like man, what am I gonna do with this endowment of two nuts I got stuck with. There ain’t no one to exchange ‘em with. I can’t get no satisfaction.
[Enter Eve tossing apple]
Eve: Hey man wanna bite of my apple
Adam: Now we’re getting down to the core of the problem.
Eve: Can I have one of your nuts if I give you a bite of my apple.
Adam: Well you see, I suffer from a certain lumpiness in my endowments. One nut ain’t no good to you on its own but I’ll exchange both of my nuts for 2 bites of your apple.
Eve: Hold it: I got a better idea. Why don’t we put your nuts and my apples together and reproduce them. Perhaps we can make a date.
[Gong and Lights]
God: Stop! In creating this perfect static world for you, I forbade you to break the budget constraint. Now you have reproduced your endowments and broken the budget constraint. Henceforth I condemn all economic men to conduct their intercourse only through the medium of money, and each and every man shall maximize his profits.
[Exit God]
Narrator: ….and so it came to pass that a whole stream of prophets came into existence. And the first and greatest of these was Paul, son of Samuel, who led his tribe out of the gates of Harvard. And whilst resting at Tech. Square Paul saw a flash of burning light from behind the NASA building. And God spoke unto Paul and Paul wrote down these words on a tabernacle later to be called the Ten Foundations.
[Enter Paul]
Paul: Adam Smith who begat Malthus who had a surplus so he begat Ricardo who begat Marx, who By God was a bigoted begat. But Böhm-Bawerk begat Jevons who then begat Marshall who then get begat John Keynes. But Schumpeter came from the Austrian school and finally begat me.
While we’re waiting for Joan to print up the tabernacles for us why don’t we have a sing-song to make sure you know the begetting chain.
SONG – WHEN ECON.
[For the melody: Paul Robeson’s rendition of the original hymn]
LET MY PEOPLE KNOW
[Joan enters gives notes to Paul]
Paul: During the five minutes left to me I’ll read to you from the Ten Foundations.
TEN FOUNDATIONS
[Text missing]
[Gong, lights]
God: Paul! the promised land lies before the tribe of econs and thou must lead them unto this land of math and money. Thou shalt find it on a piece of old wasteland between the factories down on the river.
[Exit God]
Narrator: …and so the tribe of economists came to rest but Paul was not to become head of the tribe but instead the church grew and a Bishop was made head.
[Enter Bishop]
Bishop… Reads from manuscript in Pious voice
Everybody: Get off that’s last year’s skit.
[Exit Bishop]
Narrator: But the economists were not to live in peace for long for the mighty hosts of the Philistines fell upon them and besieged them.
[Enter 2 economists]
1st Econ: They say that these Philistines have a great warrior called Goliath who has issued a challenge to all economists to face him as champion of the Philistines.
2nd Econ: This character sounds Frankly Fishy to me
[Enter Frank]
Frank: No one calls Frank a Philistine. Take that and that.
[kills two economists.]
Narrator: And now a word from my sponsor: [Aitken Ad:]
Announcer: When you wake up in the morning, do your residuals seem to be going round and round?
If they do, you may be suffering from serial correlation. For severe bouts of serial correlation, especially if accompanied by lagged endogenous variables, see your local econometrician. But for the ordinary, everyday serial correlation, try Aitken’s, generalized least squares.
Don’t confuse Aitken’s with any ordinary least squares.
Scientific tests have proved that ordinary least squares is inefficient when it comes to serial correlation. Ordinary least squares merely covers up the problem, making you feel better by giving you optimistically high R2’s, low standard errors. Aitken’s heals while it conceals.
So for all of you who suffer from low Durbin-Watson statistics, the swing is to Aitkens’s. Aitken’s generalized least squares, brewed in Edinburgh, and other fine cities. But you know that.
[Others sing Amazing Frank]
[For the melody: Paul Robeson’s rendition of the original hymn]
Amazing Frank how sweet the sound
To save a wretch like me
I once was lost but now I’m found
Was blind but now I see.
That precious day that Frank appeared
The hour I first believed
Twas Frank that taught my heart to fear
And Frank my fears relieved.
Through many dangers toils & snares
I have already come
‘Tis Frank that’s brought me safe this far
And Frank will lead me home.
Narrator: ….and there was among the economists one called David.
David: All of my people are being killed—I must rescue them.
[hands cigarette to Frank who dies]
All Econs: How did you do it?
David: It’s easy—he got stoned!
All: Oh!
Narrator:…and so David became King of the tribe of Economists.
…and David begat a wise son called Solomon who inherited the ability to always know the question when given the answer
[QUESTION AND ANSWER: Text Missing]
Narrator:…But the economists lost their respect for the elders of the tribe and the world became more and more evil. This threw the economists into an economic and moral problem. The reproduction rate became higher, a labour saving device had to be introduced.
[LET’S CONTRACEPT: Lyrics or Text Missing]
[Bishop enters]
Bishop: I’m not surprised the world’s becoming more evil that Nixon just sits and fiddles while Arthur Burns. I must read the economic word to the econs
[23rd Psalm: Lyrics or Text Missing]
My lesson isn’t working, just listen to the people
[ain’t gonna deflate]
AIN’T GONNA DEFLATE
[Sung to the tune Blood on the Risers (Gory Gory What a Helluva Way to Die)]
VERSE
CHORUS:
Glory Glory what a hell of a way to go (3 times)
And we ain’t gonna deflate no more
CHORUS:
CHORUS
CHORUS
Narrator: ….one man alone was good in all this world.
[Franco Sawing]
[Gong, lights]
[The following Noah’s ark piece borrows heavily from the 1963 comedy album “Bill Cosby is a Very Funny Man….Right!” ]
God: Franco! (3 times) crescendo
Franco: No answer.
God: This is the Lord, Franco (Thunderously)
Franco: I’ll be with you in about 5 minutes.
God: Franco I want you to build me a model. I want it to be 60 equations long and 30 variables wide.
Franco: But I don’t know any econometrics.
God: So! Franco I want you to take two of every kind of variable into your model. Your model alone can save mankind for I shall flood the world with money.
Narrator: ….and so Franco worked feverishly not to say Frank-tically gathering variables from all his students until eventually he had two of every kind.
[Gong, lights]
God: Franco
Franco: What!
God: The time has come Franco
Franco: Do you know what I’ve been through. I’ve got all these variables and stuck them all in my model. They all look the same to me. How am I supposed to identify them?
Besides you didn’t tell me those variables were homoskedastic.
Now the investment’s got galloping consumptions, that infant industry’s riding his business cycle everywhere, income’s got a growth.
The whole model’s exploding.
[Gong, lights]
Franco: My God it’s shorting
Narrator:…and so money rained for forty days and forty nights.
[Franco looks out from model]
Franco: It’s stopped.
[Lights, gong]
God: Franco
Franco: Here we go again
God: You must tell all the variables to leave the model and multiply.
[Exit God]
Franco: Easier said than done. All right, come on out all you variables. Go away and multiply…go away and multiply.
[Enter 2 adders kissing]
1st Adder: We can’t multiply
Franco: Why not?
2nd Adder: We’re adders
Franco: There must be some way. God’s always right. Look, look, they’ve multiplied. How did you manage it.
1st adder: It’s marvelous what you can do with Logs isn’t it.
[Exeunt]
Narrator:…and so a population explosion occurred over night. And new preachers of the true economic world arose.
Announcer: And they begat three economists, Diamond, Modigliani, and Bhagwati.
[SONG: JAG, PETER, AND FRANCO]
[Still need to establish the original song used to parody]
THREE ECONOMISTS
(soft shoe routine)
Together: I’m Peter, I’m Franco, I’m Jagdish Bhagwati
We are the finest teachers in the world
Peter: I teach public finance though it’s sometimes hard to tell
Franco: I teach monetary and I give my students hell
Jagdish: I just sit and listen to the questions of Steve Zell
Together: Oh we are the finest teachers in the world.
[Peter does his thing, commentator describing. Text/Lyrics missing]
Together: I’m Peter, I’m Franco, I’m Jagdish Bhagwati
We all have our own teaching techniques.
Peter: I like mathematics—it’s a discipline sublime
Franco: I think talking slowly is a really awful crime
Jagdish: I draw Johnson diagrams—a dozen for a dime.
Together: Oh we all have our own teaching techniques
[Franco does his ad for the MITFRB model. Text/Lyrics missing]
[Jagdish does his offer curves spiel. Text/Lyrics missing]
Together: I’m Peter, I’m Franco, and I am Jagdish B.
We are the hardest workers in the world
Peter: I worked through Thanksgiving but I didn’t get much done
Franco: I run back and forwards from Cambridge to Washington
Jagdish: My output of articles is measured by the ton
Together: Oh we are the hardest workers
No we couldn’t be called shirkers
Yes we are the hardest workers in the world, oh yeah.
[STUDENTS LAMENT]
THE GRADUATE STUDENTS’ SONG
[To the tune of “My God how the money rolls in”]
[swaying from side to side, arms linked, on choruses]
ALL:
Rolls in, rolls in, my God how the money rolls in, rolls in
Rolls in, rolls in, my God how the money rolls in.
(pleading)
Give in, give in, oh faculty won’t you give in, give in
Give in, give in, oh faculty won’t you give in.
Competition, competition, to give Paul some competition, ‘tition
Competition, competition, to give Paul some competition.
Rolls in, rolls in, my God how the money rolls in, rolls in
Rolls in, rolls in, my God how the money rolls in.
Source: Duke University. David M. Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library. Economists’ Papers Archives, Papers of Robert M. Solow, Box 83.
Image Source: Sir John Betjeman—an English poet, writer, and broadcaster. From “Myrth Study” at the National Geographic Website (23 Dec 2013). He has nothing to do with the history of economics, but I love this picture of laughter!
The title of the Christmas skit presented by the Graduate Economic Association players at MI.T. in December 1951 , “God and Keynes at M.I.T”, is a clear reference to the political screed, God and Man at Yale (1951), by the young and future conservative pundit, William F. Buckley, Jr. This is one of many MIT skits found in the papers of Robert M. Solow and has been graciously shared for ERVM transcription by Roger E. Backhouse of, most recently, Becoming Samuelson, 1915-1948 fame.
One of the signs you are dealing with truly academic humor is the use of footnotes to provide proper attribution. In particular we find here seven items borrowed (and sometimes modified) from the University of Chicago Political Economy Club repertoire. Thus we see not only were some of the Greatest-Hits of Chicago skit humor “remastered” in the Windy City but also that the G.E.A. of M.I.T. was not above performing “covers” of Freshwater Hits. ERVM has already transcribed a few of these and for the sake of completeness will soon complete this list with the Chicago originals:
There is still plenty of original material in the following skit, and the few modifications worth noting include a key substitution of Keynes (MIT) for Marshall (Chicago) and another substitution of “psychology and sociology” (MIT) for “Macroeconomics and Probability” (Chicago).
________________________
*Items so marked are modified versions borrowed from the University of Chicago, Political Economy Club.
(the scene is set to reveal the young college graduate relaxing in his home. He has made application to M.I.T. for entry to Course XIV. We hear the door-bell ring, and the letter arrives. He reads:)
An economics department great in dignity
In fairest Cambridge, where we lay our scene
Offers to disturb you, from present peace
To come to our proximity.
From forth of this great and new transition
A host of new subjects will take their position;
Econometrics, propensities, and laboristic relations;
Matrices, consumption, and similar sensations.
And if you will survive the economic pains
We’ll make of you another John Maynard Keynes.
So won’t you please say that you will come and stay;
Let me know real soon, signed sincerely, C. P. K.
(the student arrives at Tech, finds the library, and enters the elevator. On the way up to the third floor he hears:)
(the student steps out of the elevator into the third floor hall. He sees before him many doors, all with different names on them. He decides to investigate each one. First, he comes to:)
(he knocks. The door opens, and out steps an angel, wings, white sheet, and all. The angel says:)
‘He ain’t here; but you’ll meet him in the long run!’
(on to the next door:)
(the door opens, and the chorus sings:)
They call me a Keynesian, a Keynesian economist
That I can never deny
For I am a heretic, a classicist critic—
Bold little Keynesian, I.
I’ve equations and functions, and marginal assumptions
All here in my little kit bag.
I’ve tricky proposals for income disposals
All lest the economy sag.
To deficit spending and government lending
I give a hearty “Huzzah”.
I distrust automaticity despite its simplicity—
I doubt it would work at all.
For I am a Keynesian, a Keynesian economist
That I can never deny
For I’m a heretic, a classical critic—
Bold little Keynesian, I.
When faced with deflation or misallocation
I feel that the former is worse
I abominate waste with Ricardian distaste
But first things always come first.
And yet they deplore me, criticize and abhor me
For I am the standard straw man
But blows I don’t heed—Oh, I’ll stick to my credo
That a plan is a plan is a plan.
For I am a Keynesian, a Keynesian economist
That I can never deny
For I’m a heretic, a classical critic—
Bold little Keynesian, I.
(scene, his classroom, where the students are singing:)
We must be rigorous,
We must be rigorous,
We must fulfill our role;
If we hesitate
Or equivocate,
We won’t achieve our goal.
We must investigate
Our system, complicated
To make our models whole;
Econometrics brings about
Statistical control.
Our esoteric seminars
Bring statisticians by the score.
But try to find economists
Who don’t think algebra a chore.
O, we must urge them all emphatically
To become inclined mathematically
So that all that we’ve developed, may
Someday be applied.
(repeat first 11 lines)
(the door opens, and we hear a voice say:)
Intuition is the basis
on which decisions should be made;
These are really the foundations
On which economics has been laid.
All that’s mathematical
Definitely is tabled;
Even the little diagrams
Never have been labeled.
Be careful, however
That you never neglect
The varied use
Of the Kindleberger effect.
Art or skill
or merely a quirk
This man’s intuition
Does the work.
(the door opens, and we find snow falling. The chorus is on a toboggan, singing:)
Maximize, maximize, that’s the crucial key;
Allocate resources by their productivity.
Equalize V.M.P.’s with their prices, and
Your production function is the finest in the land.
(voice) In the course of industrialization men have observed the alternating rises and falls of economic activity. And, lo, see what befell us:
(the voice continues:)
To shoot, or overshoot, ah, there’s the cycle;
Whether ‘tis nobler from underinvestment to suffer
Than to prolong the period of gestation
And, by consumption end it?
To history! No more of economics; and by the use of it
To end the confusion and million little theories
That economics left us;
That’s the solution we plan to introduce.
(chorus)
To fill the gap
On the Keynesian map
We must again raise taxes;
The prices rise
If we don’t equalize
Savings, investment and taxes.
(solo)
Income grows
In ever rising flows
We must again raise taxes;
In government spends
There seem no ends
Up must go the taxes.
(solo)
dC/dY
Is all awry
We must raise those taxes
The propensity
It’s a calamity
Up must go those taxes.
(chorus)
The interest rate
Is out of date
So we must raise those taxes;
Though bonds recede
We must proceed
To raise again those taxes.
(solo)
The crystal balls
In the third floor halls
Say raise those taxes;
Or you will fret
And long regret
If you don’t raise those taxes.
(solo: and how!)
Flexibility
Cries the C.E.D.
Boys, raise those taxes
Says the N.A.M.
It’s all a sham
Don’t raise those taxes
(chorus)
But God and Keynes
Have the true refrains
Up must go the taxes;
At M.I.T.
We all agree
More savings and more taxes.
(by now, our student has traveled one-half the length of the hall. He approaches the other half, where a voice speaks:)
Friend; first year man; lend me your ear.
I come to convince you that industrial relations
Occupies a so much higher station
That economics—while ’t is good and fine
Must of necessity bow under our sign.
The evil that me do lives after them;
The good is oft interred within their books;
So let it be with economics.
We offer to show you the extent of cooperation
Between management and labor in every relation,
And prove to you that what’er your belief
Our unique methods will give either side full relief.
Economists, you know, often speak of productivity;
But that’s a matter of total relativity
Since our writers—Shultz, Myers, Coleman and Brown
Are the most productive in a many a college town.
(the door opens, and we see Myers writing vigorously and adding stacks of manuscripts to already huge piles labeled “To Prentice Hall,” “To McGraw-Hill,” and “Rejects—to Technology Press.” Secretary enters:)
Secretary: “Prof. Myers, here’s that book you asked me to write for you.”
Myers: “Good; don’t forget to start on that other one for me.”
(enter George Shultz carrying a manuscript)
Myers: “Hello, George. I see we’ve written another book. Mind if I look at it?”
Shultz: “Not at all, Charlie. I’ve already begun on the other one for us. You know, though, I think we’re getting a bit too abstract. We ought to go down to a level where it’s good and dirty.”
Myers: “In that case, let’s call in Joe Scanlon. Hey, Joe. Come here.”
(the chorus enters, dressed as bums; they sing:)
There once was a bright young man
Who thought he had a plan
He studied cost
And jobs he lost
His name is Joe Scanlan
He soon met a man named Phil
Whose work gave him a thrill
He organized and compromised
He always fought up-hill.
This made of him a wreck
And so he came to Tech.
He sells his plan
To all the clan;
You ought to see his check.
CHORUS:
O you can’t scare us, we’re sticking with Scanlon,
Sticking with Scanlon, sticking with Scanlon;
Oh you can’t scare us, we’re sticking with Scanlon,
Sticking with Scanlon, until we die.
When the bosses have no dough
They always call for Joe;
They shed their tears
And buy him beers
And up their profits go—
(repeat CHORUS)
(as the final chorus ends, the door opens, and we see a body on the table)
Bishop: “What’s the matter with him, Morrie Adelman?”
Adelman: “He’s just been brought in; he’s suffering from a severe case of elephantiasis.”
Bishop: “Oh, don’t worry; I’ve got a classical solution. It contains some of Euler’s serum.” (pull up a jug so labeled and apply to patient’s arm)
Adelman: “Well, what do you expect that to accomplish?”
Bishop: “It’ll create perfect competition among the disease germs. What could be better?”
Adelman: (pause) “Well, I don’t see him recovering.”
Bishop: “But it’s not a pure case. Perhaps we should call in Dr. D. V. Brown. He’s had medical experience. (enter D.V.B.)
Brown: “Hi-ja.” (looks at body, and shows surprise) “My goodness, Charlie! I always knew he’s work too hard.” (looks at body more closely) “Looks to me like an impure case of oligopoly.”
Adelman: “O-o-o-oh! Let me see!” (goes over to feel arm) “No, there’s no concentration here. But even if there were, there’s really no harm in it.”
Brown: “Well, I’d like to stay, but I have to dash off to a court case.”
Judge: “The court is now in session. Bring in the first case.”
Prosecutor: “Your honor, this man is accused of attempting to overthrow the neo-classical Chicago School.”
Judge: “What’s your name?”
Coleman: “Sir, my name is Jack Coleman.”
Judge: “Prosecutor, define more explicitly what the charge is against this man.”
Prosecutor: “This man is presently collaborating with a well-known group of collectivists.”
Judge: “What proof have you of this?”
Prosecutor: “I have here my star witness.”
Judge: “What is your name?”
Buckley: “Your honor, sir, my name is Ludwig von Buckley.”
Judge: “Speak.”
Buckley: “I have here a book written by Paul A. Samuelson, and it says here on page.–., Oh, well, let’s not bother with the page number now. It says: “…know…conclusively…that…Karl Marx…is…(turn pages back towards front)…correct.”
Judge: “Speak no more. Any man collaborating with the author of such a book must be guilty of attempting to overthrow the Chicago School. I hereby sentence you to six months of solitary confinement, with a copy of Hazlitt’s “Economics in One Lesson.” Next case.”
(Coleman leaves; enter Herb Shepard)
Prosecutor: “Your honor, this man is accused of playing marbles with the fabulous Alex Bavelas.”
Judge: “What is your name?” (say it aggressively)
Shepard: “Say, you’re unusually aggressive today. Has your wife stopped beating you? How’s your libido?”
Judge: “Now that you mention it, I have been feeling rather despondent.”
Shepard: “Judge, I’m a Freud…you’re tending toward a psycho-social orientation that no longer promotes an optimization of gratification.”
Judge: “Noooooo—I’m too JUNG to die!….But what am I saying! Herbert Shepard, for this circumlocutionist behavior, I hereby sentence you to the marble pits in ex-communication.”
(the student next comes to a door marked “reserved for Chicago U. delegates to the A.E.A. Convention.” He knocks, the door opens, and he hears:)
If you want to pass your prelims
You must listen now to me;
You must learn your catechism
If you want to get your ‘B’
They have flunked the finest people
The department ever had
And they never said ‘too bad.’
CHORUS:
Stick, stick, stick with Henry Simons;
Henry is the man to see you through;
He’s the most consistent [man]
With an economic plan;
His rules go marching on.
He would nationalize the railroads,
He would atomize the firm,
He would then repeal the tariff
And the “E” bonds he would burn;
He would cleanse the banking system
Of the Federal Reserve;
His rules go marching on.
[Repeat] CHORUS:
He is the man who’d fix up
The progressive income tax;
He would fill in every item that
The present structure lacks;
He’d repeal the excise levies
And forget the margarine tax;
His rules go marching on.
[Repeat] CHORUS:
(by now the student will have reached the end of the hall; but questions linger in his mind. He wonders how the student takes all this. And as if in answer, he hears this song between students and faculty:* (to the tune of the ‘Sergeant’s Song’ from the Pirate[s] of Penzance)
From nine around to nine—Tarantara! tarantara!
We remain in that salt mine—Tarantara!
-Our eyes are growing dim–Tarantara! tarantara!
Our hair is getting thin—Tarantara!
As we while away our youth—Tarantara! tarantara!
In sedate pursuit of Truth—Tarantara!!
Searching stacks and aching backs,
Third degree for a PhD—Tarantara! tarantara! tarantara!
Faculty: (to the tune of “Mabel’s Song” from the Pirate[s] of Penzance)
Go, you students, you’ll not be sorry.
You’ll contribute to MY great story.
You shall live in footnote glory.
Go to immortality!
Go to work and hold off suicide,
For if your work with our needs coincide,
Our reluctance to grant degrees we’ll override.
Go, you heroes, go and work!
(finally, as our student reaches the end of his journey, he meet the one ‘older and wiser than thou’, and listens as he tells of the ‘impending doom’.)
Twas the night before Orals
When all through the room
A feeling forecast
The impending doom.
The facts were placed
In each head with care
In hopes that when needed
They’d surely be there.
The victims then nestled
All snug in their beds
While visions of cost curves
Danced in their heads.
I soon fell asleep
And began to dream
I sat in a room
All filled with steam.
When out in the yard
There arose such a clatter
I sprang from the chair
To see what was the matter.
Over to the window
I flew like a flash
Tore open the shutters
And threw up the sash.
When what to my wondering
Eyes there appears
A miniature sleigh
And eight tiny examineers.
Instead of the four
They usually required
They sent me four more
If the others got tired.
As I drew in my head
And was turning around
In through the window
They came with a bound.
They were dressed all in black
From their head to the toe;
Whose funeral, I asked,
Someone I know?
A wink of their eyes,
A twist of each head
Soon gave me to know
I had plenty to dread.
They spoke not a word
But went straight to their work
Of filling the blackboards
Then turned to the jerk.
The questions commenced
Like machine gun fire;
I couldn’t keep straight
The seller from buyer.
Now sir, please listen
One of them said
Try to imagine
All this in your head.
Nansen and Johansen
Have only one sled;
They’re at the North pole
And have not bread.
Suddenly there appears
A giant Tartar
Coming from Siberia
Looking to barter.
They can bake some bread
At increasing cost
Yet without a compass
They’ll certainly be lost.
He has a compass
And they have bread
And without exchange
They all will be dead.
They started to bargain
Until he did tell you
That the Russians decided
The ruble to devalue.
Only Sterling is recognized,
So they start to bake
Instead of the bread
A large pound cake.
Then suddenly Nansen
Thought to remember
That neither of them
Was a union member.
Closed shops were enforceable
As a matter of fact
For this was before
The Taft-Hartley Act.
They went ahead anyway,
They didn’t give a hoot;
It was so cold
They needed a union suit.
Before they acted
Or did anything drastic
They examined their demand curve
To see if it was elastic.
Their cost curve was unknown–
It had never been seen;
How lucky they were
That Nansen was really Joel Dean.
Their consumption function told them
Just how to behave;
They knew what to consume
And how much to save.
Please consider the theories
of Tibor Scitovsky
And the two fisted cowboy
two-gun Baranowsky.
If you remember these facts
And keep them in mind,
The right answer, I know
You certainly should find.
I shivered and shook,
In the chair I did writhe;
Now the question, they said
Who was Adam Smythe?
The leader then yelled
For a decision it’s time;
This man has suffered,
He has paid for his crime.
And laying a finger
Aside of his nose
Out of the window
All eight of them goes.
It was the leader then
That I heard exclaim
As he shouted and whistled,
And called them by name:
Now Myers, now Bishop
Now Shultz and C.P.K.
On Coleman, on Solow,
Let’s now dash and dash away.
They sprang to their sleigh
And away they flew
Like they were speeding
To another rendezvous.
Although some details
Of this horrible nightmare
Still seem a bit hazy
I certainly would swear,
Before I awoke
I heard them say
Merry Christmas to all,
And to all a good day.
As disproved by classical economics
All good things much reach an end;
And so we must leave our attempt at comics,
Hoping we’ve pleased both foe and friend.
‘Tis true enough that our little parody
Has given economics unusual clarity,
And that our writers if circumstances permit it
Will prefer to have their names omitted.
So then, since ours must be the last say,
a real Merry Christmas from the G.E.A.
Source: Duke University. David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library. Economists’ Papers Archive. Robert M. Solow Papers, Box 83, Folders “Economic Skit Parties”.
Image: Cover art from “God and Keynes at M.I.T.” December 15, 1951. Ibid.
Because of the reference to Jaroslav Vanek’s leaving Harvard, we are able to date the following script to 1962-63 since Vanek left Harvard to work at the State Department in 1963. Almost everything about this script would lead me to conclude that it was used in a Harvard graduate student skit that somehow wound up in the folder for the Graduate Student Association at the Department of Economics of M.I.T. The folder is otherwise filled with clearly M.I.T. skit material from the 1960s. One of the students is identified as “David” another “Bob” and the third looks like “Les”.
Lester Thurow did get his Ph.D. from Harvard in 1964 and came to M.I.T. in 1968 so it is not inconceivable that the following transcription is indeed based upon his personal typed script copy with original pencil stage directions that made its way into the folder.
One thing that I find rather surprising about the text is just how many Harvard professors’ names have been misspelled.
__________________________
D—This is a review with a message—a message no economist can afford to ignore. The year is 2000 A.D. 16 years have now passed since 1984, that Armageddon of the economics profession when Professor Wassily Leontief finally established that the world really was homogeneous of degree one. The then President of the United States, Mr. Norman Mailer, immediately issued the great Marginal Product Proclamation. Everyone was to receive their marginal product.
B— But there was nothing left over for the economists. Economists became the hand-loom weavers of the 20th. century.
L—Arthur Schlesinger Jr. vividly described their position in a 17-volume work entitled “The Coming of the Raw Deal.” Economists everywhere, after the first shock, set out upon new careers. Tonight we shall discover what happened to some of those whom we know and love.
D—Several of them went into the movie industry and we will now let you hear the soundtrack of the preview of one of their movies.
(Epic Music—Bruckner?)
[Insert: Stand]
L—Ladies and Gentlemen, 21st Century Fox are proud to present Arthur Smithies and Joan Robinson in….The Big Push, the story of the unbalanced growth of an economist….
B—Production by Karl [sic] Kaysen
D—Copyright by Edward Hastings Chamberlain [sic]
L—All labor disputes on location and with Elizabeth Taylor arbitrated by John Dunlop.
B—Continuity by Simon Kuznets
L—Editing by Seymour Harris, of course.
D—Costumes by Robert Dorfman.
B—This is the story of Ragnar Maynard von Eckstein (his parents had always wanted him to be an economist). After many struggles at last he got to Harvard Graduate School.
L—It is a tale of |horror. See him now at a seminar on the economics of Medical Care…..
D—This after-noon I am going to discuss the economics of Blood-banking. One of the crucial problems in this field is what proportion to maintain of liquid assets. In this category we have blood [Insert: L. What about near blood] near-blood. We also have non-liquid assets—bonds in the form of pounds of flesh. Another problem is the current shortage of tellers, for we can only employ vampires with a strong liquidity preference. If we cannot get more it will clot up the flow of funds and reduce the velocity of circulation.
L—It is a tale of |ambition…..
B—Coming from a family whose marginal product was zero, Ragnar Maynard realized that to get on quickly he must publish something. But what? He had not written anything. But our resourceful hero saw a way out: he would publish his first book before it was written. It was called First Draft, a revised tentative, preliminary, provisional text. It was based on Photostat copies of his blackboard notes.
L—It is a tale of |love….
D—Ragnar Manyrd fell passionately in love with a beautiful capital theorist, played in the movie by ravishing Joan Robinson. His demand for her love was infinitely elastic; her supply could not meet him—at least not at his price. The price was to join him in his exhausting search over peaks and through troughs for the elusive U-shaped cost curve.
L—It is a tale of |excitement
B—See Ragnar Maynard trying to free himself from the dreaded liquidity trap.
Insert: D—It’s true, it really is thicker than water
L—All this and more you can see in this movie—The Big Push is a take-off point in the development of the motion-picture.
B—See the exciting attempt on Professor Leontief’s life (with a 202 rifle) to try to prevent him revealing his startling discovery of a constant returns world.
D—See the world’s largest input-output table which proved it—drawn by the Economic Research project in the sand of the New Mexican desert.
L—You cannot afford to miss this motion picture. Filmed in wonderful new—Solocolor. An introducing revolutionary—Rostowscope.
(concluding epic music)
[Insert: Sit]
D—But the movies could not accommodate everybody…
[Insert: Bob in middle]
[Insert: one illegible word]
L—Professor Leontief, having escaped with his life, and using his input-output table from Scientific American as a testimonial, got into the business of designing bathroom tiles.
B—Professor Duesenbery [sic] was well qualified to go into the demonstration business. He drove Cadillacs around low-income districts to stimulate demand. And changed his name to Jones so that it would be him that everyone was keeping up with.
D—In England many economists went to work for the government where they produced a remarkable effect. Before 1984 political speeches had sounded something like this.
B—Good evening; I’m the Prime Minister. My name is….. [insert: ad lib] etc.
D—But now all this has changed…
B—Good evening…[insert: ad lib] etc.
L—Professor Tom Schelling took up a career in Madison avenue. It was he who was responsible for some of the following products…
D—Ladies, now you can wear the most powerful and alluring perfume in the world—First Strike—the only perfume with complete credibility. It also contains the only deodorant with overkill.
B—Now at last there is a product to take away the smell of deodorant—it is called Counterforce. Only Counterforce gives you 24-hour protection against odorlessness. [Insert: 5120 or S120]
[Insert: STAND]
L—For years girls have been searching for a perfume which will attract the men and yet prevent them from taking liberties—now they have it in the form of Deterrence—the perfume which is effective [Insert: only] if you don’t use it.
D—He also introduced a city wide deodorant campaign under the title of Civil defence.
L—And the only really safe method of birth control—Early Warning.
B—Meanwhile Professor Dunlop had become a truck driver and a shop steward for Jimmy Hoffa.
D—And Professor Kuznets took to selling abacuses.
[Insert: Some economists, not from Harvard opened a cafeteria.]
[Insert: Bob-Les—come forward]
L—Professor Galbraith first thought of becoming a rice farmer. But he soon saw that since there was no more need for economists he could now come into his own. After a coup d’etat he took over the Littauer building and changed it into the department of Affluent Studies. The idea was the ultra-popularization of economics; the main qualification for admission was to be a good phrase-monger. The new department published books like…
B—The Economics of Sex, with an appendix on the second derivatives of Jayne Mansfield. A geometric interpretation with diagrams.
D—The department became identified with a new theory of economic decline, published as a non-Rostovian manifesto. All countries, it said, tend to decline, and their speed of decline is determined by their relative degree of economic advancement. Its five stages of decline started with the age of mass consumption, through the age of preconditions for decline, coming then to the crucial landing stage.
B—Other books appeared like ‘The Naked Truth about Public Squalor, and so on.
[Insert: Pause—back to audience]
L—Only one of the redundant economists took the highest calling of all. Let us now eavesdrop on a sermon by [Insert: his eminence] Archbishop Gerschenkron…
[Insert: seated]
B—You know, when I was an economist one of my graduate students wrote a very good paper for my course. Matthew, [Insert: I said] why don’t you publish this paper, no, really why don’t you publish. But you know youll have to change the title. What journal is going to publish a paper called ‘the First Gospel’? But you know it really was a very good paper. There was a lot of interesting material about the farm problem in Egypt and about the almost miraculous elasticity of supply of loaves and small fishes in Gallillee [sic]. Then there was a very good section about Christ throwing the money-changers from the temple. Well, you see, the rate of interest was very high then. Don’t you think that the real reason why Christ did this was to reduce the rate of interest and to stimulate investment. You see, I wanted Matthew to rewrite his paper for the Quarterly Journal and call it ‘Christ as a proto-Keynsian’ [sic] But no, he was a very strong-willed boy and he brought it out in a syposium [sic] edited by Seymour Harris, called the Bible, essays in honor of God. But, you know, it was still required reading for my course.
D—Professor Harberler [sic] took to song writing, and here is a sample…
[Insert: stand behind table]
(tune: God bless America)
[Insert: All:] God bless free enterprise,
[Insert: MOC or HOC or NOC] System divine,
Stand beside her and guide her,
Just as long as the profits are mine.
[Insert: Salute]
Corporations may they prosper
Big business, may it grow!
[Insert: MOC or HOC or NOC] God bless Free Enterprise,
The Status quo!
L—Well, David, I guess that’s it. Do you think they’ll throw us out?
D—I dont know. But I dont suppose we’ll ever be allowed to pass generals. There are still some jobs you can get without a Ph.D.
B—No chance at all is there? I mean about generals….
D—Well they were all in it weren’t they—all the generals board.
L—What about Professor Vanek? He emerged unscathed.
D—That’s true but he’s leaving.
B—That’s fair, of course.
L—Yes, he hasn’t done much since he’s been here really.
D—Half a dozen good articles…
B—4 books, or is it 5?
L—He’s become an acknowledged expert on at least two major fields of economics…
D—A clear and stimulating teacher…
And a nice guy…
L—Not much really. [Insert: Clearly not a Harvard type]
B—Not surprised they’re letting him go
D—Well, that’s it then.
B—One more thing actually…The perpetrators of this entertainment would like it to be known that any resemblance of characters in this review to any person or persons living or half-dead is purely intentional.
L—So be it.
All—In the name of the Holy Trinity:
D—Dorfman,
L—Samuelson,
B—and Solow.
All—Amen
Source: MIT Archives. Department of Economics Records, Box 2, Folder “GEA 1961-67”.