Category: Harvard

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Exam Questions Harvard

Harvard. Final Exam for Persons’ Commercial Crises Course, 1924

 

 

Here we add to the previously posted course outline with links to nearly the entire reading list (!) of Professor Warren M. Persons’ course at Harvard on Commercial Crises from first semester of 1923-24. The final examination questions for that course are transcribed below along with a description for the same course a year later. 

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Course Description (1924-25)

37 1hf. Commercial Crises. Half-course (first half-year). Tu., Th., Sat., at 9, or by arrangement. Professor Persons.

The history, literature, and theories of economic prosperity, crises, and depression, with special reference to the problem of forecasting.
An analysis from the point of view of business cycles of the statistics of speculation, prices, production, trade, interest rates, money and banking.

Source: Harvard University. Division of History, Government, and Economics in Official Register of Harvard University, Vol. XXI, No. 22 (April 30, 1924), p. 74.

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Final Examination
Commercial Crises
Professor Warren Milton Persons

1923-24
HARVARD UNIVERSITY

ECONOMICS 371

Write on three or more questions

1.     (a) What classes of fluctuations are to be found in series of economic statistics?

(b) How may the sequence in cyclical movements of economic series be established?

(c) What is the sequence of movements of stock prices, New York bank debits, pig-iron production, general commodity prices, outside bank debits, bank loans and discounts, and rates on commercial paper?

(d) Give an economic interpretation of the sequence.

2.     (a) What are the levels and directions of movement of commodity prices, manufacturing output, stock prices, and money rates:

During the months immediately preceding an economic crisis?
After the culmination of commodity prices?
During business revival and prosperity?

(b) Discuss the ways, means, and limitations of forecasting general business conditions.

3. State the fact and discuss the significance with reference to business cycles of the following:

(a) The correlation between the output and prices of manufactured goods;

(b) The correlation between the production and prices of agricultural goods;

(c) Differences in the violence of fluctuation of the output of producers’ and consumers’ goods, transportation of goods, merchandising, and consumption of goods;

(d) Differences in the violence of fluctuations of various classes of commodity prices.

4. Discuss the following:

(a) The periodicity of business cycles.

(b) Are crises and depressions international?

(c) Are business cycles “self-generating”?

(d) Is there a “typical” cycle?

5.    (a) Classify according to any scheme you please the theories of Veblen, Hobson, Aftalion, Bouniatian, Hawtrey, Robertson, Mitchell, Moore, and others.

(b) Discuss your classification.

(c) Outline and criticize the theory of any one of these writers.

6.     Give and discuss in full a program for the stabilization of industry and prices.

 

Final. 1922.

 

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University. Final Examinations, 1853-2001 (HUC 7000.28, 66 of 284). Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Papers Printed for Final Examinations: History, History of Religions, … , Economics, … , Psychology, Social Ethics, June, 1924.

Image Source: Harvard Album, 1924.

 

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Economists Harvard

Harvard. Appointment of Leontief as Economics Instructor in 1932

 

 

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

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To President Lowell from Dean Murdock, February 23, 1932

Harvard University
Cambridge

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

February 23, 1932.

Dear Mr. Lowell:

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

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

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

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

Very truly yours,

(signed)

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

 

President A. Larence Lowell,
5 University Hall.

________________________

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

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

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

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

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Exam Questions Harvard

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

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

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

 

_____________________________

 

Enrollment

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

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

 

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

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Final Examination
Principles of Sociology
Professor Thomas Nixon Carver

 

1922-23
HARVARD UNIVERSITY

ECONOMICS 8

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

 

Final. 1923.

 

 

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

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

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Economic History Exam Questions Harvard

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

 

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

 

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

1921-22
HARVARD UNIVERSITY

ECONOMICS 2a1

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

Final. 1922.

 

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

Image Source: Harvard Class Album, 1923.

 

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Exam Questions Harvard

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

 

 

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

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Course Announcement and Description

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

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

 

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

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Final Examination
Economics of Agriculture
Professor Thomas Nixon Carver

1917-18
HARVARD UNIVERSITY

ECONOMICS 91

 

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

 

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

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

 

 

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Exam Questions Harvard

Harvard. Intro to Mathematical Economics Final Exam, Schumpeter 1935

 

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

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Course Announcement

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

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

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

 

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

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Course Enrollment

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

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

 

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

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

1934-35
HARVARD UNIVERSITY

ECONOMICS 8a1

Answer at least THREE of the following questions:

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

 

Final. 1935.

 

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

 

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

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 Schumpeter’s handwritten answer to question 2

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

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

 

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

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

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Exam Questions Harvard

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

 

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

Not all artifacts here have been created equal.

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Final Examination
Economic Theory and Policy
Arthur Eli Monroe

1947-48
HARVARD UNIVERSITY

ECONOMICS 1a

Discuss FOUR topics.

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

Final. January, 1948.

 

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

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Final Examination
Economic Theory and Policy
Arthur Eli Monroe

1947-48
HARVARD UNIVERSITY

ECONOMICS 1a

Discuss FOUR topics.

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

Final. May, 1948.

 

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

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

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Exam Questions Harvard

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

 

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

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

1948-49
HARVARD UNIVERSITY

ECONOMICS 115

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

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

 

Final. January, 1949.

 

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

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

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Exam Questions Harvard

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

 

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

 

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Final Examination
Money, Banking, and Cycles
Seymour Harris

1933-34
HARVARD UNIVERSITY

ECONOMICS 3

Answer 1, 2, and THREE other questions.

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

Final. 1934.

 

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

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

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Exam Questions Harvard

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

 

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

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

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

1939-40
HARVARD UNIVERSITY

ECONOMICS 1

Answer SIX questions, including number 7 or 8.

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

 

Final. 1940.

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

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