Category: Harvard

Categories
Exam Questions Harvard

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

 

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

 

_____________________________

Final Examination
Money, Banking, and Cycles
Seymour Harris

1933-34
HARVARD UNIVERSITY

ECONOMICS 3

Answer 1, 2, and THREE other questions.

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

Final. 1934.

 

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

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

Categories
Exam Questions Harvard

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

 

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

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

_____________________________

 

 

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

1939-40
HARVARD UNIVERSITY

ECONOMICS 1

Answer SIX questions, including number 7 or 8.

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

 

Final. 1940.

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

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

Categories
Exam Questions Harvard

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

 

 

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

_____________________________

Course Description

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

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

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

___________________________

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

1940-41
HARVARD UNIVERSITY

ECONOMICS 1b2

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

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

Final. 1941.

 

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

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

Categories
Exam Questions Harvard

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

 

 

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

_____________________________

 

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

1897-98
HARVARD UNIVERSITY

ECONOMICS 71

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

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

 

Mid-Year. 1898.

 

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

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

Categories
Economic History Exam Questions Harvard

Harvard. Recent Economic History, Final Exam. 1935

 

 

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

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

_____________________________

Final Examination
Recent Economic History
Professor Edwin Francis Gay

1934-35
HARVARD UNIVERSITY

ECONOMICS 23

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

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

Final. [May or June] 1935.

 

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

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

Categories
Exam Questions Harvard

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

 

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

_____________________________

Final Examination
Public Finance
Professor Harold Hitchings Burbank

1935-36
HARVARD UNIVERSITY

ECONOMICS 52

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

Final. [May or June] 1936.

 

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

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

Categories
Exam Questions Harvard

Harvard. Final Exam Questions for “The Corporation and its Regulation”, 1935

 

 

While the Harvard archives collection of printed final examinations has a few serious gaps and is sometimes incomplete (especially with respect to the mid-year exams for year-long courses), it is truly a great resource, especially when the exams get paired to the corresponding syllabus/reading-list found elsewhere in the archives. I’m am now roughly a third of the way in matching exams to course syllabi/reading-lists that I have already posted. Once I catch up, I’ll be posting the combinations regularly from thereon out.

Today takes us back to the extremely popular (in the mid-1930s) Harvard course co-taught by Messrs. Crum, Mason, and Chamberlin on the corporation and its regulation. It is interesting to note that Henry Simons’ pamphlet “A Positive Program for Laissez-Faire” (1934) while not be included in the reading list was important enough to account for 50% of the examination (Q. 1) below. 

_____________________________

 

Final Examination
The Corporation and its Regulation

Professors William Leonard Crum, Edward Sagendorph Mason, and Edward Hastings Chamberlin

1934-35
HARVARD UNIVERSITY

ECONOMICS 4a1

1. Note: Allow about an hour and a half for this question. Discuss any two of the following proposals:

A recently published programme for a liberal economic policy proposes in part:

  1. That no corporation which engages in the manufacture or merchandising of commodities or services shall own any securities of any other such corporation.
  2. That corporations may issue securities only in a small number of simple forms prescribed by law, and that no single corporation may employ more than two (or three) of the different forms.
  3. That investment corporations (including holding companies) shall hold stock in operating companies without voting rights, and shall be prohibited from exercising influence over such companies with respect to management.

2. Write on any three of the following:

  1. “The Securities Act is merely an attempt to make the corporation lawyer and financier the scapegoats of the depression.” Discuss.
  2. “It is not possible in a modern corporation to discover who performs the entrepreneurial function, nor to apply to a modern corporation any theory of profits based on the assumption that individual proprietorships and partnerships are the typical forms of business enterprise.” Discuss.
  3. Distinguish between earned and capital surplus. What is the importance of the distinction? In what various ways may a capital surplus arise? Discuss the declaration of dividends out of surplus.
  4. “One of the largest textile mills in the United States found itself in 1932 with $2,000,000 cash, no bonds, and hardly any current obligations. Its stock was quoted at $30 a share, though the corporation had nearly $35 in net quick assets. Accordingly, it purchased some of its own shares. Obviously, by whatever course of reasoning we proceed, this was of advantage not only to the corporation, because it reduced the number of shares upon which it must pay dividends in order to maintain its investment credit, but also to the great body of stockholders, because it increased the available equity of each share. We may add that it was of advantage to the individual shareholder who was forced to sell his shares, in that it increased the number of purchasers.” Discuss.

 

Final. [February] 1935.

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

Image Source: Crum, Mason and Chamberlin from Harvard Album 1934.

Categories
Exam Questions Harvard

Harvard. Final Examinations for Graduate Economic Theory. Chamberlin, 1948

 

From the Harvard archives I have transcribed the final examinations for the both semesters of a two-semester course in graduate economic theory taught in 1947-48 by Edward H. Chamberlin. The syllabus/reading-list for that course was transcribed in an earlier posting.

___________________________

 

Enrollments

[Economics] 101a. Professor Chamberlin—Economic Theory, I (F).

Total 84: of which 32 Graduates, 11 Seniors, 4 Junior, 17 Public Administration, 12 Radcliffe, 8 Others.

[Economics] 101b. Professor Chamberlin—Economic Theory, I (S).

Total 88: of which 37 Graduates, 10 Seniors, 1 Junior, 21 Public Administration, 8 Radcliffe, 11 Others.

 

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College 1947-48, p. 90.

_____________________________

Final Examination
Economic Theory I
Professor Edward H. Chamberlin

1947-48
HARVARD UNIVERSITY

ECONOMICS 101a

Write on the first question (one hour) and any four of the others (1/2 hour each). (The first question will receive double weight).

  1. (one hour) The Marshallian analysis of monopoly required only the demand curve for the monopolist’s product, and the cost curve for the monopolist’s production, in order to determine the price-output combination which would make profits a maximum for the firm. In what respects does monopolistic competition theory replace or supplement the earlier analysis? Was the earlier analysis logically wrong, incomplete, or both?
  2. (1/2 hour) Mill gave great importance to the category of constant cost in his theory of value. More recently, as a result of the Marshallian analysis, some have concluded that constant cost is of no importance whatever, whereas others would retain it as a major category. Discuss the issues involved and give your own conclusion.
  3. (1/2 hour) Suppose a firm already to possess a certain plant, and to contemplate its expansion. Using a diagram, distinguish between, and relate to each other, the following six curves:
    1. The average and marginal cost curves for the original plant.
    2. The average and marginal cost curves which would be relevant to deciding on the expansion policy.
    3. The average and marginal cost curves after the expansion has taken place.

Explain the most significant principles involved in this analysis.

  1. (1/2 hour) Explain Marshall’s concept of “quasi-rent,” distinguishing it from the concept of “rent.” Explain the analytic use to which Marshall puts the concept, and give an illustration (preferably one of your own).
  2. (1/2 hour) A production surface may be regarded as a hill which may be “sliced” in various directions. Draw a diagram, or “indifference map,” which shows the following “slices,” all passing through the same point:
    1. Constant product
    2. Constant outlay
    3. Constant proportions of factors
    4. One of the two factors constant.

Show also (5) a “scale line” passing through this same point.
Explain in each case the meaning of the curve you have drawn.
What is the relation of this diagram to the cost curve analysis?

  1. (1/2 hour) “There is no use discussing whether or not we measure utility. The alternative to measurement is chaos, and since markets are not chaotic, there must be measurement.” Discuss the issues involved in this quotation and in measuring utility generally. To what extent are they solved by the use of indifference curves instead of demand curves?
  2. (1/2 hour) What is the essential feature of oligopoly which makes the behavior of an oligopolistic firm so intractable to ordinary analysis? Indicate at least one technique whereby the problem of price determination under oligopoly (or, in the special case of two: duopoly) has been reduced to manageable proportions and some conclusion reached. Criticize this technique and the conclusion.

Final. January, 1948.

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

_____________________________

 

Final Examination
Economic Theory I
Professor Edward H. Chamberlin

1947-48
HARVARD UNIVERSITY

ECONOMICS 101b

Please write on the cover of your bluebook the numbers of the questions you have answered, in the order in which they appear in the book.

Part I

Answer both questions, allowing 45 minutes each.

  1. Discuss any three specific problems involved in defining the marginal product of a factor of production. You may discuss particular factors, as well as the general problem.
  2. Discuss the major issues in “welfare economics” with respect to any three of the following subjects:
    1. The significance of “perfect competition” in welfare economics
    2. The production and exchange conditions for maximum economic welfare
    3. Equality of incomes
    4. Interpersonal comparisons
    5. Elements of monopoly
    6. Economic vs. non-economic welfare

Part II

Answer any three questions, allowing 30 minutes each.

  1. “Interest is a payment necessary to induce people to give up part of their current income to make capital formation possible. In a static state no capital formation takes place; therefore the interest rate in a static state would be zero.” Discuss.
  2. Outline a theory of profits taking into account all the factors which in your opinion influence both total profits and the earnings of particular Define your terms.
  3. Explain and contrast either Ricardian or Marshallian rent with Robinsonian rent. What is your own view on the main issues involved?
  4. Assume that trade unions consider the demand for the labor of their members in determining their wage objectives. Suppose a number of craft unions in an industry (say, the building industry) to be amalgamated into a single union. How would you expect this amalgamation to affect their wage objectives? (Do not discuss the question of bargaining strength).
  5. Discuss the equilibrium of the firm under conditions such that selling outlays are profitable.

 

Final. May, 1948.

 

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

Image Source: Edward H. Chamberlin in Harvard Class Album 1946.

Categories
Exam Questions Harvard

Harvard. Final Exam for Charles Bullock’s Public Finance, 1916

 

From the Harvard archive’s collection of final examinations I have transcribed the final examination for Charles J. Bullock’s Public Finance Course from June 1916. The course readings were transcribed for an earlier posting. A brief note on Bullock is found over at The History of Economic Thought website.

_____________________________

 

Enrollment

[Economics] 8. Professor Bullock—Public Finance, including the Theory and Methods of Taxation.

Total 60: of which 27 Graduates, 28 Seniors, 5 Others.

 

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College 1915-16, p. 60.

_____________________________

 

Final Examination
Public Finance
Professor Charles Jesse Bullock

1915-16
HARVARD UNIVERSITY

ECONOMICS 5

  1. Trace historically the position occupied by the customs revenue in the finances of the United States. What principles should be observed in establishing a system of customs duties? Discuss the incidence of these duties.
  2. To what extent and for what reasons has the working of the general property tax in Switzerland been different from the working of the same tax in the United States?
  3. Discuss briefly and concisely the characteristic features of three of the following: (a) The impôt-personnel mobilier; (b) The French business tax; (c) The Prussian business tax; (d) inheritance taxes in the United States.
  4. Explain and discuss critically the methods employed in the taxation of incomes in England and in Prussia.
  5. (a) What are the different theories regarding the best method of apportioning taxes?
    (b) Distinguish between “funded” and “unfunded” incomes. On what grounds can the heavier taxation of funded incomes be urged?
  6. What principles should govern the prices charged for the services of public commercial undertakings?
  7. Enumerate and discuss critically all the maxims, or canons, of taxation, with which you are familiar.
  8. State either the case for or the case against the single tax.

Final. 1916.

 

 

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University Examinations. Papers Set for Final Examinations in History, History of Religions, … , Economics, … , Fine Arts, Music in Harvard College. June, 1916. (HUC 7000.28, 58 of 284), pp. 53-54.

Image Source: Harvard Class Album 1915.

Categories
Exam Questions Harvard

Harvard. Final Examination Questions for Carver’s Sociology, 1918

 

For new visitors to Economics in the Rear-view Mirror and as a reminder to everyone else, Sociology was not a distinct department at Harvard until the 1930s but instead was one field taught within the economics department.

Today’s posting provides the examination questions for the final examination in Thomas Nixon Carver’s course  “Principles of Sociology” from June, 1918. The syllabus to the course along with links to the individual items has been posted earlier. The mid-year examination questions from February, 1923 for the later academic year and the final examination questions from June, 1923 have been also posted as well.

___________________________

Course Announcement

[Economics] 8. Principles of Sociology. Mon., Wed., Fri., at 9. Professor Carver, assisted by Mr….

A study in social adaptation, both passive and active. Problems of race improvement, moral adjustment, industrial organization, and social control are considered in detail.

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

___________________________

Course Enrollment

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

Total 17: of which 7 Seniors, 8 Juniors, 2 Other.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College 1917-18, p. 54.

___________________________

Final Examination June 1918

1917-18
HARVARD UNIVERSITY

ECONOMICS 8

 

1.      (a) What is meant by adaptation in general?

(b) In what sense must the individual be “fitted into” the group?

(c) What special significance attaches to the sovereign group?

(d) In what sense must the sovereign group itself be “fitted into” something larger?

2.      (a) What is the relation of variation and selection to the process of adaptation?

(b) What is meant by passive adaptation?

(c) What is meant by active adaptation?

(d) In what respects does human adaptation differ from the adaptation of plants and animals?

3.      (a) Upon what factors must a program for the improvement of the race chiefly depend? Explain?

(b) What factors are now at work toward the improvement of the race in a modern, civilized society?

(c) What factors are tending to produce deterioration?

4.     (a) Under what circumstances might the fact that a man could prosper in an industrial society prove his fitness to survive, from the standpoint of race improvement?

(b) Under what circumstances might it prove the opposite?

(c) Is economic success a sign of fitness more frequently than of unfitness? Give reasons.

5.     (a) What is meant by moral adaptation in general?

(b) What is the ultimate test of the soundness of a moral code, from the standpoint of this course?

(c) What is the relation of religion to the problem of adaptation?

6.     (a) What is the relation of economic scarcity to the conflict of human interests?

(b) What are the chief causes of economic scarcity?

 

 

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University. Papers Set for Final Examinations in History, History of Religions, … ,Economics, … , Fine Arts, Music. June, 1918. (HUC 7000.28, 60 of 284).

 

Image Source: Harvard Class Album 1915.