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Exam Questions Industrial Organization Princeton

Princeton. General PhD Exams in Industrial Organisation, 1975-1979

In William Baumol’s papers in Duke University’s Economists’ Papers Archive I came upon a cache of six Ph.D. exams for the field of industrial organization at Princeton from the late 1970s. This is definitely a collection worth the effort of transcribing and presenting in a single post.

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PRINCETON UNIVERSITY
Department of Economics

General Examination
for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy
Industrial Organization

Time: 3 Hours

October 1975

Start a new paper or book for each question.

You are required to answer the question in Part A and then must choose two questions from Part B (except that you cannot choose both questions 1 and 2 in Part B). The questions could easily be the subjects of long books. Instead, please try to summarize the arguments as concisely and yet as thoroughly as time allows.

PART A. One hour

The Justice Department, in relation to its investigation of merger activity, has hired you as a special consultant to determine the nature and extent of economies of scale in industry X. The industry is composed of 60 firms of various sizes. Write a summary of your report which includes:

  1. a discussion of the sources of economies (and diseconomies) of scale generally;
  2. a discussion of the various methods of measuring scale economies, including their strengths and weaknesses;
  3. which method you would choose, and why.

PART B. Two hours

Answer two of the following (except that if you choose either question 1 or 2, you must choose your other question from 3 or 4; you cannot choose both 1 and 2).

  1. The Federal Trade Commission has recently filed an antitrust suit against the four major American breakfast cereal manufacturers. A major part of the case argues that the high advertising rates in this industry are responsible for the high concentration in this industry and for the high profits in this industry. This has been viewed as a landmark case.
    1. Sketch briefly the economic and legal arguments that each side will make.
    2. Indicate how you think the courts will rule on this and what precedents they will use.
  2. The testing of the market structure-profitability hypothesis has generated a great deal of controversy in the journal literature. Write an essay describing that controversy and sorting out the arguments and the points that are at contention.
  3. Schumpeter has argued that high concentration in industries is beneficial because it makes more rapid the page of technological progress in those industries. This would argue for a lax antitrust policy. On the other hand, others have argued that innovation is best encouraged by direct government subsidy (or production) and that a strict antitrust policy is necessary to ensure static efficiencies.
    Write an essay discussing the arguments that each side would offer, and indicate which set of arguments you find more convincing and why.
  4. Economists are nearly unanimous in their contention that the railroad Industry has been strangled by federal regulation. Yet there appears to be no end in sight.
    1. What are the characteristics of rail transportation that appear inevitably both to draw government into the arena and yet commit it to failure?
    2. Do you think public policy should lead in the direction of nationalization, of more enlightened regulation, or of less government control? Why?

_______________________________

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY
Department of Economics

General Examination
for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy
Industrial Organization

Time: 3 Hours

May 1976

Do not write your name on any of your examination papers, but identify them with a Code Number which you will have obtained from Mrs. Coleman.

Start a new paper or book for each question so that the examinations can be assembled by question rather than by candidate. Be sure that your Code Number appears on each sheet or book.

Part A. (One hour) Answer all eight (8) questions. Comment on the validity of each statement.

  1. U. S. v. American Tobacco (1946) represented a new and significant direction for antitrust policy that has had long-lasting effects.
  2. Since advertising constitutes an important barrier to entry, a tax on advertising would improve the competitive functioning of markets.
  3. The Robinson-Patman Act constitutes an important antitrust safeguard to competitive markets.
  4. Hypotheses concerning invention and innovation can be satisfactorily tested by using data on research and development expenses.
  5. Competition is more vigorous if there are four firms of equal size than if there are four firms of unequal size.
  6. Reciprocity always indicates the exercise of monopoly power.
  7. Queues of customers outside doctors’ offices indicate a lack of competition.
  8. Capital markets tend to require a lower rate of interest from larger firms. This is only a pecuniary economy and can not be used as evidence against anti-trust efforts to break up large firms.

Part B. (Two hours) Answer three (3) of the following questions.

  1. A judge asks for your expert opinion with regard to a case in which the three major manufacturers of competing lines of washing machines are accused of engaging in violations of anti-trust law. Consider the following list of pricing practices. On pure economic grounds, which of them support the government’s case? What would be the legal significance of each?
    1. The manufacturers list identical prices for each type of machine. When price changes are made, in most cases one particular firm initiates the change and the other two follow within a week.
    2. Large purchasers are given quantity discounts.
    3. In a recessionary period, the major manufacturers temporarily reduce their prices 25% below their historical average cost. During this time several minor firms go bankrupt.
    4. In a recessionary period, the major manufacturers maintain their prices at pre-recessionary levels and experience a sharp decline in sales.
    5. The manufacturers have all taken advantage of resale price maintenance, where state law has permitted it.
  2. How do you think the domestic airlines would change their fare structures and service quality if government regulation in these areas was eliminated? Support your answer.
  3. “Oligopoly theory is in such poor shape that it is unlikely ever to serve as a reliable guide to policy.” Comment.
  4. “A concentration ratio is a deceptively simple number. In fact, once one begins looking closer, it becomes nearly impossible to determine satisfactorily the level of concentration in an industry. Consequently, antitrust policy simply does not have a good foundation.” Comment.
  5. “There is no satisfactory solution to the problem of regulating a natural monopoly.” Discuss.

_______________________________

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY
Department of Economics

General Examination
for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy
Industrial Organization

Time: 3 Hours

October 1976

Do not write your name on any of your examination papers, but identify them a Code Number which you have obtained from Mrs. Coleman.

Start a new paper or book for each question so that the examination can be assembled by question rather than by candidate. Be sure that your Code Number appears on each sheet or book.

Answer Parts I, II and III.

Part I: Write for roughly 15 minutes each on THREE of the following five questions:

  1. Suppose that you had access to data concerning a number of firms which had been subject to take-over attempts via tender offers, some successful and some unsuccessful. The data includes accounting profits, stock market prices, and dividends paid over a number of years both prior to and subsequent to the take-over attempt. How would you use this data to reach conclusions concerning the efficiency of the market for corporate control and the extent of X-inefficiency in the economy?
  2. Comment on the validity of the following remark:
    “Wasteful self-cancelling advertising can not exist unless consumers act irrationally, because rational consumers will always prefer to buy a less intensively advertised good at a lower price.”
  3. Suppose that you believe advertising expenditures should be treated as capital investments, in the same manner as investments in buildings and equipment, rather than as current expenses. Show precisely how this would affect your measure of a firm’s equity and its rate of return. How would such a change in accounting affect your interpretation of regression equations relating accounting profits to advertising/sales ratios?
  4. Fair trade laws should be re-enacted because they provide an irreplaceable means by which manufacturers can ensure that their goods receive sufficient promotion at the retail level. Comment.
  5. “It is an absurdity to believe that reciprocal dealing by oligopoly firms is anything more than a device for strengthening already rigid price structures.”
    Comment on the validity of this statement.

Part II: Write for roughly 45 minutes on the following question:

  1. Some economists hold that the amount of concentration in an industry, measured by, say, the Herfindahl index, bears a very tenuous relation with the degree of monopoly power, in the sense of ability to control market price and quantity. Furthermore, they claim, even if there were such a relationship it would not necessarily imply that a policy of industrial deconcentration is advisable. What arguments can be used to support this point of view? What weaknesses do they have?

Part III: Answer questions 7 and EITHER question 8 OR question 9. You should spend no more than a half hour on question 7.

  1. There is a durable good, say, a milling machine, which company X alone manufactures at constant costs. This milling wears out in precisely ten years, but is as good as new until it wears out. It cannot be repaired or in any other way made to last more than ten years and its life does not depend on rate of use. Company X contemplates either (a) selling machines outright, in which case there will be a competitive second hand market or (b) retaining ownership in the machines and renting them out.

(i) Show how to determine the ultimate optimum long-run position for company X in both cases (i.e., neglect the initial stage of building up its market) and show that its optimum output is the same in the two cases. Assume perfect capital markets, perfect foresight on its part and its customers’ part, etc.

(ii) Change the preceding case by supposing that the life of milling machines can be prolonged by spending money repairing them, and assume that the repair services can be obtained competitively. Prove that the company’s optimum output would now be different in cases (a) and (b) and indicate in which case, and why, the net rental value would be lower.

  1. The Cable Report to the President, prepared by the Office of Telecommunication Policy, supports a recommendation requiring separation of ownership (or control) between cable television installations and television program sources with the following language: (By “cable system operator,” the OTP means the owner of a local cable facility. That owner is assumed to sell access to the systems to “channel users” who in turn are the owners and/or originators of programs. The “cable system operator” may also charge local viewers for access to the system.)

“If the cable system operator were to have such an interest in a channel user he would have an economic incentive to favor the user in which he had a financial interest. Simply requiring the system operator to treat all channel users on a non-discriminatory basis would not be adequate to prevent anti-competitive behavior. The cable operator could, for example, charge artificially high, but still ‘non-discriminatory’ rates to users of his channels and use the excess profits …  to subsidize his programming affiliate. This cross-subsidization would place the other channel users at a severe competitive disadvantage. Moreover, requiring ‘arms length’ transactions between companies in the same corporate structure and prohibiting cross-subsidization present severe enforcement problems. Such problems typically lead federal or state enforcement agencies to impose rate-of-return, public utility-type regulation to control cross-subsidization and other anti-competitive abuses.”

Elsewhere in its report, the OTP recommends that “rate-of-return regulation of the rates which cable operators charge cable users should not be imposed by any level of government unless there is a clearly defined need for it,” and notes that “the need for such regulation may never arise, since the power of the operator to charge excessive rates for channel leasing would be held in check by the presence of competition from broadcast stations, telephone companies and new technologies.”

Evaluate the economics and the consistency of this pair of recommendations.

  1. Following a decision several years ago to relocate the Newark airport terminal, American Motor Inns, Inc., acquired property facing the new location and proceeded to plan the construction of a Holiday Inn. American Motor Inns at the time was the largest franchisee of Holiday Inns, operating large number of these “motels” throughout the country. After howls of protest from the operator of the existing Holiday Inn at the old Newark airport (and from the operators of other nearby Holiday Inns) Holiday refused American the necessary added franchise. American responded by announcing its intention to build and operate the motel under a Ramada franchise. Holiday then threatened litigation: their existing contracts with American provided that no owner of a Holiday Inn franchise could operate an inn or similar facility under a competing franchise. American promptly sued Holiday for treble damages alleging violation of federal antitrust statutes.

(1) Assess the likely outcome of this litigation on the basis of your knowledge of the law and similar cases.

(2) Indicate and explain briefly your impression of the legality of the exclusive Holiday Inn franchise agreement.

(3) Prior to a final decision in this case, Holiday bought American thereby providing an automatic settlement. Would you argue that such an acquisition could itself be held in violation of the antitrust laws? Why?

(4) From the standpoint of resource allocation, evaluate the effects of:

(a) The Holiday Inn exclusive franchise;
(b) Holiday’s acquisition of American.

In your answers to (a) and (b), make whatever assumptions you feel to be necessary and appropriate regarding the structure or other aspects of this industry.

_______________________________

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY
Department of Economics

General Examination
for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy
Industrial Organization

Time: 3 Hours

May 1977

Do not write your name on any of your examination papers, but identify them with a Code Number which you have obtained from Mrs. Coleman.

Start a new paper or book for each question so that the examination can be assembled by question rather than by candidate. Be sure that your Code Number appears on each sheet or book.

Answer Parts I, II, and III according to the instructions given in each

PART I. (45 minutes)

  1. Write for not more than five minutes on 6 of the following, indicating that you are familiar with the concept or expression and with its relevance to industrial organization:
    1. Satisficing
    2. Regulatory lag
    3. Limit pricing
    4. Per se rule
    5. Gibrat’s law
    6. Standard Industrial Classification
    7. Survivorship Method
    8. Cournot Equilibrium

PART II. Answer EITHER Question 2 OR Question 3
(45 minutes)

  1. Every recent proposal for antitrust reform has advocated either repeal or very substantial revision of the Robinson Patman Act. In contrast there are few economists who would argue that price discrimination, except under very special circumstances, is desirable.
    Are these two positions — one regarding the desirability of anti-price discrimination law, and the other the desirability of price discrimination itself — inconsistent? Explain carefully, making certain that you both define price discrimination and identify the major problems associated with Robinson Patman or alternative instruments of control.
  2. “Perhaps the major area for concern in the economics of American industry today is oligopoly, and oligopoly is precisely that form of organization with which the American antitrust laws cannot satisfactorily cope. Here, as so often elsewhere in that country, the law is written as though by the major corporations themselves.” Do you agree or disagree? Why?

PART III. Answer TWO of the following THREE Questions. (45 minutes each)

  1. “Advertising is not per se a market imperfection; it arises as a corrective response to other market imperfections, such as the public goods nature of information and the peculiarities of the television market. Banning advertising or regulating it significantly is thus inadvisable.”
    Write a broad, coherent essay on the economics of advertising in response to this statement.
  2. In recent Congressional hearings, most airlines have opposed the Civil Aeronautics Board recommendations that the airline industry be substantially deregulated. They have used the following arguments:
    1. We currently have the world’s “finest air transportation system” and “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”
    2. “Airlines are already highly competitive.”
    3. “Deregulation will increase the number of competitors on major routes, reducing load factors and giving rise to wasteful duplication of resources.”
    4. Advocates of deregulation fail to consider network effects. For example, entrants may institute non-stop service from Buffalo to Los Angeles, thereby making unprofitable flights from Buffalo to Chicago, which are more efficient.
    5. Airlines cannot fine-tune capacity to meet demand, since there are a very small number of flights per day on most routes. It is thus unrealistic to expect large improvements in load factors to occur.
    6. Deregulation will hurt airlines’ financing prospects, according to experts in the financial industry.
    7. Airports’ financing of passenger terminals, through the issue of airport revenue bonds, will be undermined by deregulation, because they will no longer be able to get long-term commitments from airlines to use the terminals.

Do these arguments provide valid reasons for opposing deregulation? If not, how would you rebut them?

  1. Vertical integration, under different circumstances, may:
    1. Permit discriminatory pricing that would not be possible without integration.
    2. Be a competitive response to market imperfection.
    3. Be a device for the avoidance of regulation in regulated industries.
    4. Create barriers to entry unrelated to any efficiency gain.

Discuss the validity of each of these propositions using either real or hypothetical cases to illustrate your answer.

_______________________________

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY
Department of Economics

General Examination
for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy
Industrial Organization

Time: 3 hours

May 1978

Do not write your name on any of your examination papers, but identify them with a Code Number which you have obtained from Mrs. Coleman.

Start a new paper or book for each question so that the examinations can be assembled by question rather than by candidate. Be sure that your Code Number appears on each sheet or book.

Answer either IA or IB, but not both. (20%)

IA. What does the survivor technique purport to show about economies of scale, and what are some of its pitfalls? Relate these to pitfalls in estimating a production cost function from a cross-section of firms of different sizes. Which of these pitfalls can lead to mistaken policy conclusions?

IB. What are some of the factors that make firm and plant economies of scale differ? Explicitly model one of them. Do these factors suggest using firm or plant degree of scale economies as a guide for policy towards the firm?

Answer any one of IIA, IIB, or IIC. (20%)

IIA. Explicitly show that a duopoly has the elements of a “Prisoners’ Dilemma” for the two firms. What are some aspects of the industry that would make implicit collusion between the two firms difficult?

IIB. Explain several factors that would lead to the larger firms in an industry being more fully vertically integrated than the smaller firms. Do all of these factors suggest that such integration is socially counterproductive?

IIC. Carefully explain what empirical evidence would support the proposition that market power is socially desirable in that it promotes technological progress.

All must answer this question. (35%)

III. Write and explain a system of simultaneous industry structural relations among the profit level, concentration, minimum efficient scale, advertising intensity, and some exogenous variables. From this perspective, what could be inferred from cross-sectional positive correlations between profit rates, concentration, and advertising intensity? What are some invalid inferences that are sometimes drawn from such findings?

Answer either IVA or IVB, but not both. (25%)

IVA. Consider a new electric utility company which is planning its production facilities. It can choose to install divisible but nonfungible generators dollars of two types. Type i requires ai dollars in fuel cost per KWH generated (up to capacity) and incurs bi dollars in capital costs per KWH of capacity per 24 hour period. The company can operate equipment of either or both types.
Let a1 < a2, b1 > b2, b1 + a1 > b2 + a2 and b1 + 2a1 < b2 + 2a2.
Each 24 hour period is divided into a 12 hour day subperiod and a 12 hour night subperiod. Demand is homogeneous during each subperiod, but day demand far exceeds night demand.
What is the least cost per 24 hour period of generating x KWH each day and y KWH each night, with x > y? If day and night prices were equated to long run marginal costs, would revenues cover total costs? Would the peak period customers pay all capacity costs?
Suppose the plant is built according to plan, new capacity requires one year construction time, and demands in both subperiods exogenously and unexpectedly grow a bit. Describe the new efficient prices. What do they signal about a desirable investment plan?

IVB. Contrast price regulation that constrains the anticipated rate of return on capital with that which constrains the rate of return calculated on the basis of last period’s output, last period’s cost, but current price. In both cases, assume that the regulated firm will do all it can to maximize profit. Can the regulator equate the allowed rate of return on capital to the market rate of return?

_______________________________

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY
Department of Economics

General Examination
for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy
Industrial Organization

Time: 3 hours

May 1979

Do not write your name on any of your examination papers, but identify them with a Code Number which you have obtained from Mrs. Coleman.

Start a new paper or book for each question so that the examinations can be assembled by question rather than by candidate. Be sure that your Code Number appears on each sheet or book.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

Because this is a relatively long test, be sure to allocate your time in accord with the numbers in parentheses below. These numbers will serve as the relative weights aggregating the grades of the different questions. Pithy answers to all questions are suggested.

All must answer this question. Do not spend more than 20 minutes on it. (20 minutes)

I. Consider a monopoly TV station that changed from collecting all its revenues from advertisers to a system by which it collected all its revenues from viewers by means of prices attached to individual programs. Characterize the changes you would expect in the station’s choices of aired programs. Explain how the station would have incentives to implement a price system which would, coincidentally, and alleged externalities aside, give the station incentives to select socially desirable programs.

Answer either IIA or IIB, but not both. (40 minutes)

IIA. Describe some ways in which a firm’s motives for vertical integration would depend on the structure of its own industry and on the structure of the industry into which it might integrate. Briefly, by reference to some polar cases, indicate how your assessment of the social desirability of such integration would be affected by knowledge of those industry structures.

IIB. It is now considered illegal for the manufacturer of a product in interstate commerce to require a franchisee to sell at retail at a specific price. Explain why a manufacturer might have incentives to control the prices at which its franchisees will sell its products, and evaluate the consequences of prohibiting such controls.

Answer either IIIA or IIIB, but not both. (50 minutes)

IIIA. It is a common practice of petroleum retailers in establishing new outlets (gas stations) to buy nearby potentially (or actually) competing sites and subsequently to re-sell those sites with covenants precluding their use for the retailing of petroleum products. Would society necessarily benefit if this practice were prohibited?

IIIB. Describe several different modes of entry deterrence and briefly trace their effects on industry welfare performance. Would these modes of entry deterrence be effective without structural entry barriers? Are there observable clues that such deterrence is taking place?

Answer either IVA or IVB, but not both. (70 minutes)

IVA. [Time-varying rates]

(i) What are the common economic features of the electric power and telecommunications industries that argue for different prices at different times of day?

(ii) Do time-invariant prices necessarily cause cross-subsidization in industries in which the characteristics you identified above are important? How does the answer depend on the presence of product-specific scale economies?

(iii) What factors would enlarge the welfare loss from such time-invariant rates?

(iv) Why might it be appropriate to see peak rates suddenly rise and then later fall after an unanticipated permanent expansion of demand for service during peak times? Might the same considerations pertain to off-peak times?

(v) Why might a regulated firm resist setting time-varying rates?

IVB. [Natural monopoly with no barriers to entry]

(i) Carefully describe a scenario in which an industry is a natural monopoly with no barriers to entry.

(ii) On the basis of a reasonable theory of firm behavior, characterize the principal features of the industry equilibrium.

(iii) In particular, if arbitrage were very costly to consumers, why or why not would you expect to see price discrimination?

(iv) Why or why not would you expect to see cross-subsidization?

(v) If subsidies to the industry were ruled out, and if regulation were costless, what, if any, aspects of industry welfare performance could be improved by regulation?

Source: Duke University. David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library. Economists’ Papers Archive.  William J. Baumol Papers, Box 20, Folder “Indust[rial] Org[anization]”.

Image Source: Princeton seal from Wikimedia Commons.

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Exam Questions Math Princeton

Princeton. Mathematics for Economics Grad Students Exam. 1960

Before one gets too smug about the modest level of mathematical sophistication revealed in the following examination that was taken in 1960 by ten Princeton economics graduate students and only passed by half of them, it is important to keep in mind that the purpose of the examination appears only to have been to permit economics students to substitute mathematics for a foreign language as a formal requirement to be awarded a Ph.D. degree. As far as I am aware, by 1960 the exams to test a reading knowledge of a foreign language (at least those administered by an economics department itself) were rather low hurdles hardly capable of tripping any diligent student and generally a waste of time for all but the area specialists and economic historians. Still five of the ten economics grad students at Princeton failed the mathematics exam transcribed below!

__________________________

On Harold W. Kuhn

Princeton University obituary for Harold W. Kuhn (1925-2014).

Autobiographical sketch in WIKIMIZATION.

__________________________

MEMORANDUM

To: Members of the Economics Department
From: H. W. Kuhn
Re: Mathematics Examination for graduate students.

Attached is a copy of the first Mathematics Examination for graduate students in Economics which, as you know, can substitute for one language examination. This memorandum is to describe what the examination was intended to test, report on the performance of the students who took it, and invite comments from you concerning the design of future examinations. (Will Baumol is writing the next one now.)

By agreement of those charged with the conduct of the examination (Baumol, Coale, Kuhn, Okun, and Quandt), it deals only with two subjects, calculus and matrix algebra. The level of the calculus that is assumed is thoroughly elementary and could be acquired in a one-year course. However, it should be augmented by those calculus tools peculiar to economics such as Lagrange multipliers, partial derivatives, and optimization conditions. Study of R. G. D. Allen’s “Mathematical Analysis for Economists” is recommended. The level of matrix algebra is harder to specify. Almost any standard course is too much. Two indications of the level of proficiency demanded are the matrix algebra sections of “Finite Mathematics” by Kemeny, Snell, and Thompson or the Appendix to Dorfman, Samuelson, and Solow. Another book appropriate for study would be “Mathematical Economics” by R. G. D. Allen

The following is an explanation of the first test, question by question, with remarks on the performance of the ten students who took it.

  1. Straightforward translation of economic terms from words to formulas and back. Four parts out of five was par for the course.
  2. The definition of matrix multiplication and of a production matrix. All answers were correct.
  3. A test of understanding of the first and second order conditions for a maximum. Very poor performance; much confusion between necessary and sufficient conditions.
  4. A test of their acquaintance with an indispensable mathematical tool, the Lagrange multiplier. The first pages of “Value and Capital” will give an example. Good performance.
  5. This was intended to draw out the linear case in which solvability is stated in matrix terms. Good performance.
  6. The proper method was by means of partial differentiation. From the variety of answers (mostly weak), this should have been clued.
  7. This model is reproduced almost verbatim from “Finite Mathematics.” The question is intended to test the ability to translate matrix relations into meaningful economic conditions. The average was about half right.

The test was graded on a strict percentage basis, with 70% a passing grade. Five passed and five failed. This may be somewhat hard on those who failed but reflects my own belief that requirements are better too hard than so easy as to be meaningless.

COMMENTS INVITED

__________________________

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY

Department of Economics
Mathematics Examination

October 26, 1960

Please spend no more than two hours on this examination. No books or papers may be consulted. Please attempt all of the questions.

  1. Let y = f(z) be a production function, where y denotes the quantity of output for a quantity of input z. Let c = g(y) be the associated cost function. Let P = F(y) define the demand schedule.

Give the common names for

    1. dy/dz
    2. dc/dy
    3. Py

Give formulas for the

    1. marginal revenue
    2. price elasticity of demand.
  2. The number of tubes and the number of speakers used in assembling three different models (a), (b), (c) of TV sets are specified by a parts-per-set matrix.

\begin{gathered}\\ \begin{matrix}(a)&(b)&(c)&\  \  \  \  \  \  \  \ \end{matrix}\\ \left[ \begin{matrix}13&18&20\\ 2&3&4\end{matrix} \right] \begin{matrix}\text{tubes}\\ \text{speakers}\end{matrix}\end{gathered}

The number of orders received for the three different models in January and February are specified in a sets-per-month matrix

\begin{gathered}\begin{matrix}\  \  \ &\text{Jan.}&\text{Feb.} \  \ \end{matrix}\\ B=\  \left[ \begin{matrix}12&6\\ 24&12\\ 12&9\end{matrix} \right] \begin{matrix}(a)\\ (b)\\ (c)\end{matrix}\end{gathered}

Express the number of parts used per month as a matrix C in terms of A and B. How many tubes were used in February?

  1. Let y = f (x) be a differentiable function defined for

a ≦ x ≦ b. Let a < c < b.

    1. The conditions f'(c)=0 and f”(c)< are necessary and sufficient for f(c) to be a local maximum value for f. True or false? (Give explanation.)
    2. Describe a method for finding the absolute maximum value of f.
  1. Lagrange multipliers are used to solve what class of calculus problems? Give at least one example from economic theory.
  2. Discuss the assertion: Every system of n equations in n unknowns has a unique solution. (It is clearly false; show this by example and modify the statement to be useful.)
  3. The following formula gives the profit P in dollars as a function of the quantities x1, and x2 of two commodities.

P = x150 x235 + x185

When x1 = x2 = 100, P = 2 • 10170
Approximate P when x1 = 101 and x2 = 100

  1. Consider the following economic model: A set of n goods are produced (jointly by m activities. The ith activity requires aij units of good j and produces bik units of good k.
    Let x = (x1,…,xm) represent the levels of the activities
    and yt = (y1,…,yn) represent the prices of the goods, while A and B denote the input and output matrices. Suppose α and β are non-negative numbers. Give common English interpretations of the following equilibrium conditions:

    1. x (B – α A) ≧ 0
    2. (B – β A) y ≦ 0
    3. x (B – α A) y = 0
    4. x (B – β A) y = 0
    5. x B y > 0

What condition on A would insure that every process uses some good as input?
What condition on B would insure that every good can be produced in the economy?

Source:  Duke University. David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library. Economists’ Papers Archive.  William J. Baumol Papers, Box 10, Folder “Princeton University 1952-69”.

Image Source: Harold W. Kuhn, ca. 1961. Wikimization website.

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U.S. Economics Graduate Programs Ranked, 1957, 1964 and 1969

Recalling my active days in the rat race of academia, a cold shiver runs down my spine at the thought of departmental rankings in the hands of a Dean contemplating budgeting and merit raise pools or second-guessing departmental hiring decisions. 

But let a half-century go by and now, reborn as a historian of economics, I appreciate having the aggregated opinions of yore to constrain our interpretive structures of what mattered when to whomever. 

Research tip: sign up for a free account at archive.org to be able to borrow items still subject to copyright protection for an hour at a time. Sort of like being in the old reserve book room of your brick-and-mortar college library. This is needed if you wish to use the links for the Keniston, Carter, and Roose/Andersen publications linked in this post.

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1925 Rankings

R. M. Hughes. A Study of the Graduate Schools of America (Presented before the Association of American Colleges, January, 1925). Published by Miami University at Oxford, Ohio. (See earlier post that provides the economics ranking from the Hughes’ study)

1957 Rankings

Hayward Keniston. Graduate Study and Research in the Arts and Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania (January 1959), pp. 115-119,129.

Tables from Keniston transcribed here at Economics in the Rear-view Mirror:
https://www.irwincollier.com/economics-departments-and-university-rankings-by-chairmen-hughes-1925-and-keniston-1957/

1964 Rankings

Allan M. Cartter, An Assessment of Quality in Graduate Education Washington, D.C.: American Council on Education, 1966.

1969 Rankings

Kenneth D. Roose and Charles J. Andersen, A Rating of Graduate Programs. Washington, D.C.: American Council on Education, 1970.

Tables transcribed below.

___________________________

Graduate Programs in Economics
(1957, 1964, 1969)

Percentage of Raters Who Indicate:
Rankings “Quality of Graduate Faculty” Is:
1957 1964 1969 Institution Distiguish-
ed and strong		 Good and adequate All other Insufficient Information
Nineteen institutions with scores in the 3.0 to 5.0 range, in rank order
1 1* 1* Harvard 97 – – 3
not ranked 1* 1* M.I.T. 91 – – 9
2 3* 3 Chicago 95 – – 5
3 3* 4 Yale 90 3 – 7
5* 5 5 Berkeley 86 9 – 5
7 7 6 Princeton 82 9 – 10
9 8* 7* Michigan 66 22 – 11
10 11 7* Minnesota 65 19 – 15
14 14* 7* Pennsylvania 62 22 – 15
5* 6 7* Stanford 64 25 – 11
13 8* 11 Wisconsin 63 26 – 11
4 8* 12* Columbia 50 37 – 13
11 12* 12* Northwestern 52 32 – 16
16 16 14* UCLA 41 38 – 21
not ranked 12* 14* Carnegie-Mellon Carnegie-Tech (1964) 39 35 – 26
not ranked not ranked 16 Rochester** 31 39 1 29
8 14* 17 Johns Hopkins 31 56 – 13
not ranked not ranked 18* Brown** 20 52 1 27
15 17 18* Cornell** 21 56 2 21
*Score and rank are shared with another institution.
**Institution’s 1969 score is in a higher range than ist 1964 score.

 

Ten institutions with scores in the 2.5 to 2.9 range, in alphabetical order
(1969)
Duke
Illinois
Iowa State (Ames)
Michigan State
North Carolina
Purdue
Vanderbilt
Virginia
Washington (St. Louis)
Washington (Seattle)

 

Sixteen institutions with scores in the 2.0 to 2.4 range, in alphabetical order
(1969)
Buffalo*
Claremont
Indiana
Iowa (Iowa City)
Kansas
Maryland
N.Y.U.
North Carolina State*
Ohio State
Oregon
Penn State
Pittsburgh
Rice*
Texas
Texas A&M
Virginia Polytech.*
* Not included in the 1964 survey of economics

 

Categories
Columbia Economists Germany Popular Economics Princeton Teaching

New York City Schools. Essay on Economics and the High School Teacher of Economics. Tildsley, 1919

Every so often I make an effort to track down students whose names have been recorded in course lists. I do this in part to hone my genealogical skills but primarily to obtain a broader sense of the population obtaining advanced training in economics beyond the exclusive society of those who ultimately clear all the hurdles in order to be awarded the Ph.D. degree. This post began with a simple list of the participants in Professor Edwin R.A. Seligman’s seminar in political economy and finance at Columbia University in 1901-02 published in the annual presidential report for that year (p. 154).

 John L. Tildsley’s seminar topic was “Economic Aspects of Colonial Expansion.” I began to dig into finding out more about this Tildsley fellow, who was completely unknown to me other than for the distinction of having attended a graduate course in economics at Columbia but never having received an economics Ph.D. from the university.

It turns out that this B.A. and M.A. graduate from Princeton had indeed already been awarded a doctorate in economics from the Friedrichs Universität Halle-Wittenberg (Germany), renamed the Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg in 1933, before he took any coursework at Columbia. A link to his German language doctoral dissertation on the Chartist movement is provided below.

I also found out that John Lee Tildsley went on to a distinguished if controversial career [e.g., he had no qualms about firing teachers for expressing radical opinions in the classroom] in the top tier of educational administration for the public high-schools in New York City. No less a critical writer than Upton Sinclair aimed his words at Tildsley.

For the purposes of Economics in the Rear-View Mirror John L. Tildsley is of particular interest as someone who had done much to introduce economics into the curriculum of New York City public schools.

Following data on his life culled from Who’s Who in America and New York Times articles on the occasions of his retirement and death, I have included his March 1919 essay dedicated to economics and the economics teacher in New York City high schools. 

_________________________

Life and Career
of John Lee Tildsley

from Who’s Who in America, 1934

John Lee Tildsley, educator

Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Mar. 13, 1867;
Son of John and Elizabeth (Withington) Tidsley;
Married Bertha Alice Watters, of New York City, June 24, 1896;
Children—Jane, John Lee, Margaret, Kathleen (deceased).

B.A., Princeton, 1893 [Classmate of A. Piatt Andrew], M.A. 1894;
Boudinot fellow in history, Princeton, 1893-94;
Teacher Greek and history, Lawrenceville (New Jersey) School, 1894-96;
Studied Universities of Halle and Berlin, 1896-98, Ph.D., Halle, 1898;
Teacher of history, Morris High School, New York City, 1898-1902;
Studied economics, Columbia, 1902;
Head of dept. of economics, High School of Commerce, 1902-08;
Principal of DeWitt Clinton High School, 1908-14;
Principal of High School of Commerce, 1914-16;
Associate Superintendent, Oct. 1916-July 1920;
District Superintendent, July 1920, City of New York.

Member: Headmasters’ Assn., Phi Beta Kappa.
Democrat.
Episcopalian.

Formulated and introduced into public schools of New York City, courses in economics and civics for secondary grades. Speaker and writer on teaching and problems of school administration.

Club: Nipnichsen.
Home: [2741 Edgehill Ave.] Spuyten Duyvil, [Bronx] New York.

Source: Who’s Who in America 1934, p. 2356.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

Tildsley’s 1898 doctoral dissertation on the Chartist movement (in German)

Tildsley, John L. Die Entstehung und die ökonomischen Grundsätze der Chartistenbewegung, Inaugural-Dissertation zur Erlangung der philosophischen Doktorwürde der hohen philosophischen Fakultät der vereinigten Friedrichs-Universität Halle-Wittenberg. Halle a.S. 1898.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

New York Times, September 2, 1937

Dr. John L. Tildsley, Associate Superintendent of Schools, retired on Sept. 1, 1937.

One of Dr. Tildsley’s pet ideas has been the formation of special schools for bright pupils. As a result of his efforts two such schools are to be established in this city, the first to be opened next February in Brooklyn.
‘This new school will develop independent habits of work on the part of the superior student,’ he has explained. ‘Special emphasis will be placed upon the development of social-mindedness.’

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

New York Times, November 22, 1948

Dr. John L. Tildsley died November 21, 1948 in St. Luke’s Hospital, New York, N.Y.

In 1920, having fallen out of the graces of Mayor John F. Hylan because of a political speech, he was denied a second term as associate superintendent.
At the urging of many admirers, he was assigned to the position of assistant superintendent which he held until the Fusion Board of Education restored him to his former rank in the spring of 1937.
When Dr. Tildsley was demoted he refused to be silenced, constantly championing controversial causes. He attacked the ‘frontier thinkers’ of Teachers College, and charged that under the existing high school set up much waste resulted to the city and to the pupil.
He urged the development of ‘nonconformist’ pupils, and angered patriotic organizations by suggesting that patriotic songs and holidays have little value in the schools.
Born in Pittsburgh of British parents, Dr. Tildsley received his early education in schools in Lockport, N.Y., and at the Mount Hermon School. Instead of becoming a minister, as he originally had planned, he decided to study at Princeton University, where Woodrow Wilson was one of his instructors for three years.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

Tildsley became a target of Upton Sinclair’s critical pen for his campaign to regulate teachers’ opinions expressed in school

Upton Sinclair, The Goslings: A Study of the American Schools (1924). See Chapters XV (Honest Graft) and XVI (A Letter to Woodrow Wilson), XVII (An Arrangement of Little Bits).

Cf. Teachers’ Defense Fund. The Trial of the Three Suspended Teachers of the De Witt Clinton High School (1917).

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

HISS TILDSLEY FOR PRAISE OF GERMANS
School Superintendent Aroused Criticism by Talk in Ascension Parish House.
LIKES TEUTON DISCIPLINE
When He Said Their Military Success Was a Credit to Them the Trouble Began.

The New York Times, December 10, 1917.

Dr. John L. Tildsley, Associate Superintendent of Schools in charge of high schools, whose investigation of the opinions of the teachers at the De Witt Clinton High School resulted in the suspension and trial of three of them and in the transfer of six others, was hissed last night in the parish house of the Church of the Ascension, Fifth Avenue and Eleventh Street, when he said that the success of the Germans in military affairs was a credit to them rather than a discredit, and that their “good qualities” ought not to be ignored even if “they happen to be our enemies.”

Dr. Tildsley was also denounced as a “Prussian by instinct and education,” because of his laudation of family life in Germany and because he asserted that it was desirable to have in this country more obedience instinctively to authority as exemplified by the obedience of the German child to its father. The denouncer was Adolph Benet, a lawyer, who said that Dr. Tildsley’s sojourn in Germany, where he studied at the University of Halle, caused him to misunderstand Germany.

“There is one thing that is bad in Germany,” declared Mr Benet. “That thing is unqualified and instinctive respect for authority. And Dr. Tildsley, after living in Germany and observing the country, would come here and try to introduce here the worst part of the whole German system. I say Dr. Tildsley is a Prussian by instinct and a Prussian by education. Why did he not say these things two months ago when many were denouncing a Judge who is now Mayor-elect?”

The stormy part of the evening took place in the parish house, where the audience repaired to ask questions after Dr. Tildsley delivered an address in the church on “Regulation of Opinion in the Schools.” The hissing of the speaker occurred during his explanation of his ideas on obedience. He explained the system of instinctive obedience to authority which marks all Germans, and then said: “German family life is magnificent, and we ought to emulate it.” Here the hissing began. A minute later it began again and grew in volume for about minute, when it stopped.

In reply to another question relating to his charges against teachers, Dr. Tildslev. said that teachers have too much protection in the schools, and that not a single high school teacher in nineteen years has been brought up on charges. In this connection he declared that when a teacher is brought up on charges the Board of Education is handicapped in the handling of the case because must accept such a lawyer as it gets from the Corporation Counsel while the teacher may get the cleverest lawyer that money can buy. This was taken by the high school teacher in the audience to mean that Dr. Tildsley was dissatisfied with handling of the trial against the three teachers by the Corporation Counsel.

In his formal address Dr. Tildsley said that the teachers who were tried and those who were transferred were not accused of disloyalty. Later. in the parish house. he said he believed they were all internationalists and doubted whether a teacher who had the spirit of internationalism had the spirit necessary to teach high school students.

He said the teachers he investigated held that unrestricted expression of opinion was the best means of developing good citizenship. With this point of view he said, he and others differed. He quoted one teacher as being a believer in Bertrand Russell and he read from one of Russell’s works a passage which said in substance that it did not matter what the teacher said but what he felt and that it was what he felt that reached the consciousness of the pupils. It was Dr. Tildsley’s belief that the opinions which the teachers hold are accepted by the pupils, even if they if they were unexpressed. Dr. Tildsley read the letter of Hyman Herman, the sixteen-year-old pupil whose composition was the basis for a charge against Samuel Schmalhauser one of the suspended teachers. In this letter President Wilson was denounced as a “murderer.” Dr. Tildsley said the teacher was in in no way responsible for the letter.

While the speaker said that the teachers loyal he investigated were not disloyal and declared their convictions were honest, he also said that though the nation had gone to war they were unable to subscribe to the decision of the majority. He divided the radical group among the teachers into three classes, those who believe in absolute and unrestrained expression by the students, those who are opposed to the war and do not believe in it, and a third class, born in Germany, , who cannot be blamed for feeling as they do about Germany. The last mentioned he declared, must not allow any of their feelings to escape into their teaching. He gave a clean bill oi health as to loyalty to all the teachers in the De Witt Clinton High School.

“A teacher is not an ordinary citizen who has the right to express his opinions freely,” continued Dr. Tildsley. “Every teacher always teaches himself, and if he has not the right ideas toward the Government he has no right to accept payment from the taxpayers. We make no claim that any of these teachers were consciously disloyal, but if because of this belief in unrestricted utterance they spread disloyalty they are not persons to be intrusted with the teaching of citizenship to students.”

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

From the New York Times, November 5, 1918:

…the dismissal of Thomas Mufson, A. Henry Schneer, and Samuel D. Schmalhausen in the De Witt Clinton High School was upheld by Acting New York Commissioner of Education E. Thomas Finegan.

_________________________

ECONOMICS AND THE TEACHER OF ECONOMICS IN THE NEW YORK CITY HIGH SCHOOLS

John L. Tildsley,
Associate Superintendent in Charge of High Schools.
[March 1919]

Every student graduated in June, 1920 and thereafter from the general course of the high schools of New York City, must have had a course in economics of not less than five periods a week for one-half year. This requirement, recently adopted by the Board of Superintendents, is one of the changes which may be charged directly to the clearer vision of our educational needs which the war has brought us. Many of us have long believed that economics is an essential element in the curriculum of the public high school, whose fundamental aim is to train the young to play their part in an environment whose ruling forces are preeminently industrial and commercial. But it has required the revelation of the dangers inherent in our untrained citizenship to cause us to force a place for the upwelcome intruder among the college preparatory subjects whose vested rights are based on immemorial possession of the field of secondary education.

One of the chief aims of the Board of Superintendents in establishing this new requirement is, without doubt, to give high school students a specialized training which shall bring to them some understanding of the forces economic and political which so largely determine their happiness and general well being, to the end that these students shall discharge more intelligently their duties as citizens in a democracy, and shall develop their productive capacity to the increase of their own well being and to the resulting advancement of the common good. A further reason for introducing economics is the belief that the boys and girls who have had this training will be better able to analyze the various remedies proposed for the evils of our social organization and to detect the iallacies which are so often put forth as measures of reform. These students should find in such training an antidote to the movements which have as their aim the over throw of institutions which the experience of our race has evolved through the centuries.

Because of this realization that economics deals not only with the conduct of business enterprises but also with political institutions and with movements for social amelioration, it is apt to enroll among its teachers the enthusiastic social reformer whose sympathies are all-embracing, who readily becomes a propagandist for his or her pet project of reform, and who finds it impossible to resist the temptation to enroll converts among the trusting students of his or her classes. It is because of this conception of the nature of economics teaching in our educational program that the new subject has been some what despised by the teachers of the sterner disciplinary subjects.

With full sympathy with the vocational aim of economics, I would offer as its chief claim for a place in our high school curriculum, that it is essentially a disciplinary subject, that it can be taught and should be taught so as to yield a training of the highest order, somewhat different in its processes, but no less searching in its demands upon the students, than mathematics or physical science.

It is a subject, therefore, to be taught by the man with the keenly analytical mind, by the man who can detect the untruth and train pupils to detect the untruth in the major premise, by the man who from tested premises can proceed to a valid conclusion. Economics is essentially applied logic rather than a confused program of social reform, as too many of its advocates have led the layman to believe.

Economics in the past has been for the most part a college and university subject. Consequently the well-trained student of economics has found his work in the college, in government service, on newspaper or magazine, and, in ever-increasing numbers, in bank ing and finance. Practically none has sought to find a career for himself in secondary work.

With full knowledge of this fact, we have added economics to the high school curriculum in the hope that ultimately the demand will create a supply of teachers thoroughly trained in economic theory before they begin their teaching. Meanwhile, we confidently expect that men thoroughly trained in other subjects which require a high degree of analysis and synthesis, will come to the rescue as they see the need. Applying the knowledge of scientific method which they possess to the new subject matter, these teachers may speedily acquire that mastery of principles which is necessary for the effective teaching of economics.

In my own experience, as I sought for economics teachers in the High School of Commerce, I found them among the teachers of mathematics and of biology. Certain of these teachers, who had an interest in business and public affairs and who were masters of scientific methods, became in the course of a single term expert teachers of economics. They even preferred the new subject to the old, because of the greater interest manifested by the students in this subject which never fails to enlist the enthusiastic interest of students when properly taught.

I trust, therefore, that some of our teachers who enjoy close, accurate thinking will take up some economic text, such as Taussig, Seligman, Seager, Carver, or Marshall, and, having read this, will follow it up with other texts on the specific fields of economics to which they find themselves attracted. Very soon, I believe, such teachers, in view of the urgent need for teachers of economics, will realize the very great service they can render our schools by utilizing their knowledge of boys and girls, their mastery of method, their awakened interest in economics and social phenomena, in training these boys and girls in this most vital subject.

As a text book for classroom use, I recommend a systematic book, such as Bullock’s Introduction to [the Study of] Economics, which lays the emphasis on principles rather than on descriptions of industrial processes or on the operation of social agencies. There are several books which are more interestingly written, but in the hands of most teachers they will lead to a descriptive treatment of industry and social institutions, to discussions for which the students are not qualified because of their ignorance of and want of drill in economic principles.

Our students need to be trained in economic theory before they attempt to discuss measures of social reform. They need to grasp the meaning of utility, value, price, before they take up the study of industrial processes. It is because of hazy conception of these primary elements that we fall so readily into error. The key to economic thinking lies in a clear understanding of the terms margin and marginal. The boy who has digested the concept “marginal utility” is already on the way to becoming a student of economics. Until he has arrived at an understanding of the nature of value, he is hardly ready to discuss socialism, wage theories, the single tax or other like themes.

The temptation for the untrained or inexperienced teacher is to begin with the study of actual business, partly as a means of interesting the student by causing him to feel that he is dealing with practical life, partly because he conceives business as a laboratory and desires as a scientist to employ the inductive method. The study of the factory or store takes the place of the study of the crayfish. The analogy does not hold. Induction in economics is the method of discovery, it is not the method of teaching, especially of secondary teaching. The method is deductive. The teacher must assume that certain great principles have been shown to be valid. He should drill on these principles and their application till the pupil has mastered them.

Let no one believe that this means a dull grind. Even such a subject as marginal utility can be made interesting to every student. It is altogether a matter of method. The concept must be presented from a dozen different angles. There must be no lecturing, no mere hearing of recitations. The pupil must not be assigned a few pages or paragraphs in the book and then left to work out his salvation. The real teaching must be done in the recitation period, with the teacher at the blackboard with a piece of chalk in his hand, ready to answer all questions and with a dozen illustrations at his command with which to drive home the principle, illustrations with which the pupils are thoroughly familiar because taken from the daily occurrences about them. For example, to explain the principle that the value of any commodity is determined by its marginal utility and that its marginal utility is the lowest use to which any commodity must be put in order to exhaust its supply, take the teacher’s desk as the illustration. Elicit from the pupils the different uses to which that desk may be put, and write the list as it is given on the blackboard. Some boy will remark that the desk could be used for firewood and will ask why the value of the desk is not determined by its utility as firewood; then comes the query, will not the supply of desks be exhausted before it is necessary to use them as firewood? As a result of this give and take process, the boys, in one recitation, may grasp this principle which is the very keystone of our modern economics.

John Bates Clark, our foremost theorist, once said to me that there is no principle in economics so difficult that it cannot be understood by a ten year old child if it is properly taught. But how often it is not properly taught! Teaching economics is like kneading bread. The teacher must turn over these principles again and again until they are kneaded into the boy so thoroughly that they have become a part of his mind stuff. When he has once had kneaded into him the concepts of the margin, marginal utility, the marginal producer, the marginal land, the marginal unit of capital, the marginal laborer, he can move fearlessly forward to the conquest of the most involved propositions of actual business. In business, in government, in all the multitudinous activities of life, we come to grief because our concepts are not clearly defined. Because of deficient analysis, we accept wrong premises and because of muddy reasoning, we allow factors to enter into the conclusion which were not in the premises. If economics be taught with the same degree of analysis of conditions, with the same accuracy in checking the reasoning as in geometry, the teacher will find himself surprised by the ability of the students to solve a most difficult problem in the incidence of taxation or one in the operations of foreign exchange. As a means of testing whether the student has gained a clear concept, problem questions should be assigned at the close of every discussion, to be answered at home in writing by the pupil, and written tests should be given at least once a week. Purely oral work makes possible much confusion of thought on the part of the pupil without the knowledge of the teacher. The slovenly thinking which may thus become a habit will produce a wrongly-trained citizen more dangerous than one who has had no training in economics at all. The problems which this training fits the student to solve are precisely the kind of problems that every businessman is called upon to face every day of his life. For example, the man who keeps the country store at Marlborough or Milton on the Hudson will soon need to decide how large a stock of goods he will order for the fall trade. This may seem to be a simple problem and yet he needs all his experience to enable him to analyze the problem of demand for his goods. This involves the effect of the mild weather on the vines and peach trees, the possibility of his customers again securing boys and girls from New York to pick the crops, the matter of freight rates on fruit, the buying capacity of the people of New York which, in turn, involves a knowledge of conditions in many industries. After he has considered all of these elements, he has come to a conclusion as to demand for his goods, but he has not yet touched the question whether the cost of his goods is to be higher or lower before September next. Do we wonder that failures are so common when we realize that few of our people, even our college graduates, are trained in accurate observation, keen analysis, rigid reasoning? The development of these powers in his pupils should be the fundamental aim of every teacher of economics this coming year. If this aim should be realized for every high school pupil in this country, we should not need to fear for the future of our city, our state, our nation. Inefficient government is due chiefly to the failure of our people to realize the connection between incompetent or dishonest officials and the well-being of the individual. Dangerous movements like the I. W. W. and Bolshevism are due to slovenly thinking, poor analysis of conditions by both the members of these organizations and those responsible for the conditions which breed these dangerous movements. Marxian socialism is based on premises which will not bear analysis, namely, the Marxian theory of value, which is not evolved from experience, the resulting expropriation theory, which depends upon this false theory of value, and the inevitable class struggle and the ultimate triumph of the proletariat, an unwarranted conclusion from invalid premises.

I have indicated that the primary aim of the Board of Superintendents in making economics a required subject was vocational in character. Through the medium of this subject it seeks to train good citizens. I trust I have made clear that this vocational aim can be best realized by making all aims subsidiary to the disciplinary aim; that we should, therefore, make the recitation periods in this subject exercises in exact analysis and rigid reasoning. If our schools can produce a generation of students with trained intelligence, students who can see straight, and think straight on economic data, we need not fear the attacks on our cherished institutions of the newcomers from lands where they have not been permitted to be trained and where the nursing of grievances has so stimulated the emotional nature as to render the dispassionate analysis of industrial movements and civil activities almost an impossibility.

Effective teaching in economics brings to the teacher an immediate reward, for the efficient teacher of economics must keep in touch not only with the changes in economic theory but with the movements in industry and finance, with problems of labor, problems of administration, local and national, with the vast field of legislation, and these not only in America, but in Asia, Australia, South America and Europe as well. Every newspaper, every periodical yields him material for his classroom. Almost every man he meets may be made to contribute to his work. The boundaries of his subject are ever widening. There is, moreover, no need of the stultifying repetition of subject matter, for there is no end to the material for the elucidation of economic principles. Nor is the teacher of economics in the high school compelled to create in his pupils an interest in the subject. for every New York boy is an economist in embryo. Questions of cost, price, wages, profits, labor, capital, are already the subjects of daily discussion.

The complaint so often heard that the teacher is academic, that he is removed from the world of practical affairs, and has little touch with the man in the street, cannot be made of the teachers of economics, who is vitally interested in his teaching. The more he studies his subject, the more he becomes a citizen of the world with an ever-deepening interest in all kinds of men and in all that pertains to man, the broader becomes his sympathies, the wider his vision.

The New York high schools offer great opportunities for men and women who, whether trained students of economics or not, are students of life. Here they may serve the state as effectively as the soldier in the field. Here they may train the young for lasting usefulness to themselves and to the city, while at the same time they are broadening their interests, expanding their vision and growing in intellectual vigor under, the compulsion of keeping pace with the demands of a subject which reflects as a mirror the changing needs and desires of men. The teaching of economics in high schools demands our strongest teachers. There is no place for the man who has finished his growth, who cannot change to meet changed conditions; nor is there place for the man who loves change just because it is change. The teacher of economics in the New York City high schools should be a co-worker with all those who seek to preserve and to develop those institutions, economic and civic, which have stood the test and gained the approval of the wise among us through the years. He should be a man who is fundamentally an optimist, constructive in his outlook on life, not destructive. If his motto be, “All’s wrong with the world,” there should be no place for him as a teacher of economics in a high school in New York City or in any other American city.

Economics is closely allied with the study of civics or government. In every school where there is not a full program in economics, the teacher of economics should also teach the civics. With the great increase in our civics work, there should be established in each school a department of economics and civics. For each of these subjects a license is being issued and separate examinations are being held. For the new department first assistants may be appointed and will be appointed.

May we not, therefore, confidently expect that some of our strongest teachers shall prepare themselves for this most interesting and vital work which will be given in every high school beginning September next?

Source: Bulletin of the High Points in the Work of the High Schools of New York City, Vol. I, No 3 (March 1919), pp. 3-7.

Image Source: Photo of Dr. John L. Tildsley in “Modern Girls Not All Wild; Here is Proof” [Construction of a new building to house Girls’ Commercial High on Classon Avenue, near Union Street] Sunday News,Brooklyn Section, p. B-15.

Categories
Economists International Economics Princeton

Princeton. The Frank D. Graham Memorial Lecturers. 1950-2023

This post is reproduces a table found in the Princeton economics department’s website that lists 69 distinguished economists who were invited by its International Economics Section (formerly known as the International Finance Section) to give the annual Frank D. Graham Memorial Lecture from 1950/51 through 2022/2023. It is quite the who has been or still is who of international economics. Some later post will deal with the historical record of the International Economics Section. For now, one more artifact added to the collection.

____________________________

Frank D. Graham taught at Princeton from 1921 until 1949, and served as the second Walker Professor of Economics and International Finance from 1945 to 1949.  Professor Graham published widely on international trade and international monetary issues. He is perhaps best known for his 1923 paper, “Some Aspects of Protection Further Considered.”  Graham’s contributions to Princeton and to international economics are honored by the Frank D. Graham Memorial Lecture, which is delivered annually by an eminent international economist.

Frank D. Graham Memorial Lecturers
(1950-2023)

1950-1951 Milton Friedman
1951-1952 James E. Meade
1952-1953 Sir Dennis Robertson
1953-1954 Paul A. Samuelson
1955-1956 Gottfried Haberler
1956-1957 Ragnar Nurkse
1957-1958 Albert O. Hirschman
1959-1960 Robert Triffin
1960-1961 Jacob Viner
1961-1962 Don Patinkin
1962-1963 Friedrich A. Lutz
1963-1964 Tibor Scitovsky
1964-1965 Sir John Hicks
1965-1966 Robert A. Mundell
1966-1967 Jagdish N. Bhagwati
1967-1968 Arnold C. Harberger
1968-1969 Harry G. Johnson
1969-1970 Richard N. Cooper
1970-1971 W. Max Corden
1971-1972 Richard E. Caves
1972-1973 Paul A. Volcker
1973-1974 J. Marcus Fleming
1974-1975 Anne O. Krueger
1975-1976 Ronald W. Jones
1976-1977 Ronald I. McKinnon
1977-1978 Charles P. Kindleberger
1978-1979 Bertil Ohlin
1979-1980 Bela Balassa
1980-1981 Marina von Neumann Whitman
1981-1982 Robert E. Baldwin
1983-1984 Stephen Marris
1984-1985 Rudiger Dornbusch
1986-1987 Jacob A. Frenkel
1987-1988 Ronald Findlay
1988-1989 Elhanan Helpman
1988-1989 Michael Bruno
1989-1990 Michael L. Mussa
1990-1991 Toyoo Gyohten
1991-1992 Stanley Fischer
1992-1993 Paul Krugman
1993-1994 Edward E. Leamer
1994-1995 Jeffrey Sachs
1995-1996 Barry Eichengreen
1996-1997 Wilfred J. Ethier
1997-1998 Maurice Obstfeld
1998-1999 Jeffrey A. Frankel
1999-2000 T.N. Srinivasan
2000-2001 Lars Svensson
2001-2002 Jean Tirole
2002–2003 Joseph Stiglitz
2003–2004 Kenneth Rogoff
2004–2005 Guillermo Calvo
2005-2006 Alan Deardorff
2006-2007 Robert E. Lucas, Jr.
2007-2008 Jonathan Eaton
2008-2009 J. Peter Neary
2009-2010 Avinash K. Dixit
2010-2011 Ricardo Caballero
2011-2012 Anthony Venables
2012-2013 Olivier Blanchard
2013-2014 Robert C. Feenstra
2014-2015 Sir Mervyn King
2015-2016 Pascal Lamy
2016-2017 Jaume Ventura
2017-2018 Robert W. Staiger
2018-2019 Samuel Kortum
2020-2021 Andrew Atkeson
2021-2022 Pinelopi (Penny) Koujianou Goldberg
2022-2023 Hélène Rey

Source: Historical list of Graham lecturers posted at the website of the Princeton economics department’s International Economics Section (formerly the International Finance Section). From the copy at the Internet Archive WaybackMachine.

Categories
Exam Questions Money and Banking Princeton

Princeton. Money and Banking exams. Wallich, 1950

Henry C. Wallich

Final examination questions for two courses are followed by the Ph.D. general examination  in money and banking at Princeton from the 1949-50 academic year have been transcribed below. They were found in Martin Shubick’s papers in the Economists’ Papers Archive at Duke University. Note that I have yet to determine who taught Economics 305. The other two exams indicate that Henry Wallich was responsible for the exam questions and they are identically structured, somewhat differently from the Economics 305 exam.

An earlier post in Economics of the Rear-View Mirror provided a reading list for a course in money taught by Henry C. Wallich in 1950.

________________________

[Handwritten note: “Wallich”]

Time: 3 hours

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY
Department of Economics and Social Institutions
Economics 505
Course examination

Spend about half of your time on Parts 1 and 2, the other half on Part 3.

Part 1 — One of the following two topics:

  1. The desirability of returning to an international gold standard system, such as existed before 1914 and between approximately 1925 and 1931. Discuss.
  2. The monetary powers of the United States Treasury and their impact effect on postwar monetary management. Discuss.

Part 2 — Two of the following four topics:

  1. What are the reasons, if any, for regarding investment as more nearly “independently determined” than consumption?
  2. What effects do you believe to be exerted by consumption upon the rate of investment?
  3. How is the plausibility of Hawtrey’s view of the cycle affected by changes in the economy during the last twenty years?
  4. Do you regard the cash balance version of the quantity theory of money or the transactions version as more closely related to the income theory of the value of money? State your reasons.

Part 3 — One of the following two topics:

  1. “The volume of money is more nearly an effect of the level of prices and incomes than a cause.” Discuss.
  2. What views were expressed during the 1920’a by leading economists about the ways in which interest rates affect investment. and how have these views stood up in the light of the experience of the ‘twenties and ‘thirties?

_______________________

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY
DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMICS AND SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS
Economics 302 — Money and Banking
Final Examination
January 21, 1950
Time: 2½ hours

The questions can be answered in two hours actual working time, consideration will, therefore, be given organization and relevance of the material.

I

Explain briefly the following:

    1. quantity theory of money.
    2. cash balance equation.
    3. hoarding of bank deposits.
    4. clearing agreements.

II

  1. What are the major factors that can bring about an increase in the velocity of circulation of money?
  2. Is there a limit to a “velocity inflation”, i.e., could prices go on rising due to an increase in V if the volume of money remains constant? Give your reasons.

III

Suppose a country has to pay reparations. The citizens of the country are taxed and the money is turned over in form of a banking deposit to the country which receives the reparations.

  1. Assuming a gold standard, what will be the effect of the transfer of those funds from the paying country to the recipient country on:
    1. the balance between exports and imports of the paying country,
    2. on the foreign exchange rate,
    3. on gold movements.
  2. Can you think of a case where the reparation payments would have no effect on (b) and (c)?

IV

  1. What are the characteristics of the gold standard that account for its decline? Give reasons.
  2. Explain some of the alternativos that have replaced the gold standard (excluding the monetary fund).

“I pledge my honor as a gentleman that, during this examination, I have neither given nor received assistance.”

_______________________

Henry C. Wallich

Ph.D. Examination

Spend about half of your time on Parts 1 and 2, the other half on Part 3.

Part 1 — One of the following two topics:

  1. What are the relative merits of open market operations and changes in reserve requirements as instruments of central bank policy?
  2. Evaluate the contribution of income determination theories to the analysis of balance of payments adjustment.

Part 2 — Two of the following four topics:

  1. “Most theories of the price level can be reinterpreted as theories of income determination”. Discuss.
  2. “Without the stickiness of money wages, the price level would be exposed to almost unlimited fluctuations.” Discuss.
  3. Do you believe that the theory of the long-term interest rate as presented in the “General Theory” leaves that rate “hanging by its own bootstrap”? State your reasons.
  4. How far would you rely upon the acceleration principle in explaining the upper turning points of the cycle?

Part 3 — One of the following two topics:

  1. Discuss the effect upon monetary policy of the rise in our public debt.
  2. Discuss the impact of the depression of the ‘thirties upon monetary theory.

Source: Duke University. David M. Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library. Economists’ Papers Archive. Martin Shubik Papers, Box 2. Folder “Exams, University of Toronto and Princeton 1947-50”.

Image Source: Portrait of Henry Christopher Wallich, 1962 Fellow of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Colorized by Economics in the Rear-View Mirror.

Categories
France Princeton

Princeton. French Reading Proficiency Exam for Economics, 1949

Gaëtan Pirou (1886-1946)

 

The following Ph.D. examination for French reading proficiency (Princeton, 1949) was found in Martin Shubik‘s papers at the Duke University Economists’ Papers Archives.   Thanks to the BnF Gallica website, I was able to identify the source of the quote: Traité d’économie politique. 1er volume. Introduction à l’étude de l’économie politique (2e édition revue et mise au courant), pp. 86-88. The text is taken from the definition of political economy offered by  Gaëtan Pirou (1886-1946), author of the Traiteé cited. I have restored the use of italics from the original text.

____________________________

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY
Department of Economics and Social Institutions

French Examination
December 8, 1949

Parmi les besoins qu’éprouvent les hommes, il en est dont l’apaisement est aisé parce que la nature offre les moyens d’y pourvoir dans des conditions d’abondance et de gratuité telles que les individus, au moment où le besoin se fait sentir sont assurés de trouver, sans peine ni perte de temps, les éléments d’une suffisante satisfaction. Prenons l’exemple du besoin d’air. Il n’en est sans doute pas de plus impérieux que celui-là, puisque, si l’homme cessait de pouvoir respirer seulement pendant quelques instants, il mourrait. Pourtant, dans la vie courante et en circonstances normales, nous n’avons pas à nous préoccuper de ce besoin; sa satisfaction ne nous demande aucun effort et n’implique de notre part aucune combinaison préalable, parce que l’ambiance dans laquelle nous vivons contient, et met à notre disposition, une quantité d’air très supérieure à ce qui nous est nécessaire.

Pour un grand nombre de nos besoins, il en est autrement. La nature ne nous offre pas spontanément et gratuitement les moyens d’y satisfaire. Il est donc nécessaire que les hommes suppléent à cette pauvreté naturelle en appliquant, sur les éléments du milieu dont ils disposent, une série d’efforts, et opèrent certaines transformations en vue de modifier le milieu et d’en extraire des objets susceptibles d’apaiser leurs besoins, de combler leurs désirs. Ces efforts seront de nature et d’importance très variables selon les cas; ils consisteront tantôt en un déplacement de l’homme qui ira à la chasse ou à la pêche pour se procurer le gibier ou le poisson qu’il convoite, tantôt en une préparation des choses, que la nature renferme mais qui nécessitent, pour être aptes à l’apaisement de nos besoins certain aménagements: cuisson du poisson ou du gibier, dépouillement de l’animal, etc.; tantôt enfin il y aura nécessité d’une véritable fabrication, où l’action humaine sera si profonde que l’on ne reconnaitra plus, dans l’objet finalement obtenu, les matières qui auront servi de point de départ à l’opération. De toute façon, à quelque degré, l’homme aura dû consacrer du temps et fournir du travail pour assurer la satisfaction de ses désirs. Celle-ci aura donc un coût; elle sera onéreuse.

Dans les sociétés primitives chaque individu s’applique, par son effort personnel — et généralement à l’aide d’une technique rudimentaire — à tirer du milieu les moyens de sa propre satisfaction. Si la nature ne lui offre pas un abri suffisant contre les intempéries, il abattra des branches d’arbres, les émondera, les taillera, hypothèse, se construira une hutte. En cette hypothèse un seul et même individu accomplit toute la série des actes qui vont de l’effort à la satisfaction; il parcourt tout le cycle, de la production à laconsommation.

Dans la vie sociale moderne, il n’en est plus ainsi.

Généralement, ce n’est pas le même homme qui produit et qui consomme tel ou tel objet déterminé. Celui qui mange une banane n’a pas d’ordinaire consacré de temps et de travail à faire pousser le bananier. Le vêtement a été fabriqué par d’autres que celui qui le porte. Chaque individu, en effet, se spécialise sous des conditions et des influences que nous aurons plus tard à rechercher, cans la production d’une catégorie particulière d’objets. Un boulanger consacre la plus grande partie de sa journée ou de sa nuit à faire cuire des pains. Un opticien pendant des années s’adonne à la fabrication de lunettes. Le boulanger ne consommera lui-même qu’une très minime fraction des pains qui sortiront de son four. L’opticien, s’il a une vue normale, ne se servira aucunement des verres qu’il taille.  Ainsi, la plupart des individus coopèrent à des productions qui ne sont pas destinées, au moins pour la plus grande part, à l’apaisement de leurs désirs personnels. Ces articles, qu’ils produisent et qu’ils ne consomment pas, ils les vendent, c’est- à-dire qu’ils les échangent contre de la monnaie. Puis, grâce à cette monnaie, ils achètent à d’autres producteurs ou à des commerçants les marchandises diverses qui permettront l’apaisement de leurs désirs les plus variés.

A mon sens, l’économie politique a pour objet l’étude de ces faits d’échange par lesquels un individu abandonne à un autre ce qu’il détient pour obtenir en contre-partie ce qu’il désire — faits grace auxquels est établi le pont entre la production des richesses et la satisfaction des besoins.

Source: Duke University. David M. Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library. Economists’ Papers Archive. Martin Shubik Papers, Box 2. Folder “Exams, University of Toronto and Princeton 1947-50”.

Image Source: Faculté de Droit de Paris. Webpage: LXX (ou 70). Professeurs de Droit de Paris en caricatures (3/3).

Categories
Labor Princeton Sociology

Princeton. Life and writings of economic sociologist Walter A. Wyckoff, 1895-1908

 

At the time of his premature death at age 43, the assistant professor of political economy at Princeton University, Walter A. Wyckoff, had been a member of the American Economic Association for a dozen years. His passing in May 1908 was noted in the AEA’s Economic Bulletin (June 1908, p. 114) where he was described as being “one of the best known of the younger economists.” Wyckoff cultivated the intersection of sociology and economics and made a name for himself through a pair of books that described his observer-participant experiences as a casual laborer during a year and a half tramp across the United States in 1891-93. 

Sociologists today appear to claim exclusive rights to Wyckoff but in his own day, it was far from clear that his particular brand of sociology was anything but a subfield of political economy, labor economics if you will. He can be compared to Edward Cummings at Harvard.

______________________________

Wyckoff’s Greatest Hits

The Workers, an Experiment in Reality: The East. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1897.

The Workers, an Experiment in Reality: The West. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1898.

A Day with a Tramp, and Other Days. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1901.

“In justice to the narratives it should be explained that they are submitted simply for what they are, the casual observations of a student almost fresh from college whose interest in life led him to undertake a work for which he had no scientific training.”

______________________________

Three internet sources about the life of Walter A. Wyckoff

Brett Tomlinson, The worker: How a cross-country trek defined the life of one of Princeton’s first social scientists. Princeton Alumni Weekly, 23 September 2009.

Beau Driver, “ ‘A place among original investigators’: Walter Wyckoff, Alfred Pierce, and Me” originally published in the blog of the Society for Historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era (March 5, 2019). Republished in his personal blog 26 December 2019.

Website by Albert and Phyllis Krause “On the Trail of Walter A. Wyckoff” that traced his cross-country travels 1891-1893.

______________________________

Wyckoff’s life

Born April 12, 1865 in Mainpuri, India. Son of a Presbyterian missionary.

Prepared for college at the Hudson Academy and Freehold Institute.

1888. B.A. from College of New Jersey (i.e., Princeton).

Enrolled at the Princeton Theological Seminary for a year and then left to study and travel in Europe.

1891-1893. Spent 18 or 19 months as an unskilled worker. Left July 1891 to work from Connecticut to California  reaching San Francisco in early 1893.

1893-1894. Travelled twice around the world.

1894. Appointed Social Science Fellow upon return to Princeton.

1895. Wyckoff appointed lecturer in sociology at Princeton

Wyckoff’s 1895-96 course
  1. Sociology. An historical review of the evolution of modern industrialism. A critical analysis of the principal theories of social reconstruction. The genesis and development of a science of sociology. A review of the methods and results of sociological study. Senior Elective and Graduate course; second term [2]. Mr. Wyckoff. Lectures and recitations.

Note: this course was offered in “III. History and Political Science” that was distinct from “IV. Jurisprudence and Political Economy”

Source: Catalogue of the College of New Jersey at Princeton 1895-1896, p. 41.

1898. Promoted to assistant professor of political economy.

1899. Accompanied Princeton biologists on excursion to northern Greenland.

1900-1901.  Princeton academic department V. Political Economy and Sociology (staffed by Daniels and Wyckoff)

Wyckoff’s course listings 1900-1901.
  1. History of Social Theory. An historical and critical analysis of the principal theories of social reconstruction from the early Utopias to the various forms of modern anarchy and socialism. Senior Elective, open to both Academic and Scientific students; first term [2]. Lectures. Professor Wyckoff.
  1. Private Property Rights. The origin of private property rights and their subsequent modifications in civilized society, with special reference to present problems of land tenure and to private and public ownership and management of monopolies. Senior Elective, open to both Academic and Scientific students; second term [2]. Lectures. Professor Wyckoff.

[…]

Economic Seminary

[…]

  1. Genesis of Industrial Order. An ethnological study of industry, including the earliest forms of the division of labor, the domestication of animals and plants, the rise of slavery, the use of money, etc. Seminary course, open to graduates and approved Seniors, both Academic and Scientific; first term [2], not given in 1900–1901. Professor Wyckoff.
  1. Development of Industrialism. This course will continue and supplement course 7, and will treat of the rise of a new industrial order as an outcome of the industrial revolution, of the fac tory system, its development in the growth of capitalism and in the organization of labor, involving combinations, trusts, monopolies, and trades unions. Seminary course, open to graduates and approved Seniors, both Academic and Scientific; second term [2]. Professor Wyckoff.

Source.   Catalogue of Princeton University 1900-1901, p. 59-60.

Early 1900s. interviewed workers in London and Paris.

1903. Marriage to Leah Ehrich from Colorado (they had one daughter).

One of his students Norman Thomas (1905) joked that his (Wyckoff) professor “did a pretty good if by no means lasting job” of explaining to him why socialism could never work.

Economics Course Offerings at Princeton in 1907-08

Princeton University
Department of History, Politics, and Economics
Courses of Instruction in Economics 1907-08

Economics Faculty

Walter Maxwell Adriance, A.M., Preceptor in History, Politics, and Economics

Ernest Ludlow Bogart, Ph.D., Preceptor in History, Politics, and Economics

Winthrop More Daniels, A.M., Professor of Political Economy

Royal Meeker, Ph.D., Preceptor in History, Politics, and Economics.

Walter Augustus Wyckoff, A.M., Assistant Professor of Political Economy

Courses of Instruction

35, 36. Elements of Economics. This course will comprise the essential elements of the abstract theory of economics and some of the more essential applications and exemplifications of the theory, such as money, banking, transportation, international trade, and monopoly problems. There will be regularly one lecture a week, and two recitations in small groups to test the student’s apprehension of the subject matter covered in the reading. Fetter: Principles of Economics. Junior course, both terms, 3 hours a week. Prerequisite course: History 22. Prerequisite to Public Finance and General Social Theory. Professor Bogart and Professor Wyckoff.

[…]

  1. Economics. Public Finance. This course will cover the theory of public finance. Lectures with weekly conferences. Daniels: Public Finance. Reference book: Bullock: Selected Readings in Public Finance. Senior course, first term, 3 hours a week. Prerequisite courses: History 22 and Economics 35, 36. Professor Bogart.
  1. Economics. Social Theory. The course will cover the development of theories of social reconstruction with special reference to modern socialism and anarchy. Rae: Contemporary Socialism. Reference books: Webb: Industrial Democracy; Hobson: Evolution of Modern Capitalism. Senior course, second term, 3 hours a week. Prerequisite courses: History 22 and Economics 35, 36. Professor Wyckoff.

[…]

THE PRO-SEMINARY. In the Department of History, Politics, and Economics there will be a pro-seminary both terms; the pro-seminary to be divided into sections, one for history, one for politics, and one for economics. Admission to the pro-seminary will be conditioned upon a student’s obtaining in the Junior year courses in the Department the standing prescribed for entrance upon pro-seminary work. Professor Garfield will be the director of the pro-seminary, and will will take special charge of the pro-seminary section in politics. Professors Paul van Dyke and McElroy will conduct the historical section, and Professors Wyckoff and Meeker the economic section.

[…]

  1. Advanced Economic Theory. An exposition of economic theory; essentially a contrast of the classical and post-classical theories of distribution. Seminary course for competent graduates. Graduate course, second term, 3 hours a week. Professor Daniels.

121, 122. History of Economics. A résumé of economic ideas from the Middle Ages to modern times. Graduate course, both terms, 3 hours a week. Professor Adriance.

  1. Economic Regulation. A study of Factory Acts, Tenement Acts, Limited Liability Acts, and Employer’s Liability Acts, conducted in connection with the pro-seminary in 1907-1908. Graduate course, second term, 3 hours a week. Professor Wyckoff.
  1. History and Theory of Transportation. A survey of the improvements in methods and instruments of transportation since the application of steam, with the consequent changes in legal and economic theories relating to public carriers. The questions of state control, ownership, and operation are treated with special reference to American conditions. A reading knowledge of French and German will be helpful. Graduate course, first term, 3 hours a week. (Given in connection with the pro-seminary in 1907-1908.) Professor Meeker.
  1. The Industrial Evolution of the United States. An investigation in the development of typical American industries, domestic and foreign commerce, labor organizations, and similar problems. Graduate course, second term, 3 hours a week. Professor Bogart.

Source: Catalogue of Princeton University, 1907-1908, pp. 127, 129-132.

______________________________

Walter Augustus Wyckoff died May 15, 1908 in Princeton at age 43 following an aneurysm of his aorta.

Source: The Princeton yearbook Brick-a-Brack 1910, p. 16. The portrait has been colorized by Economics in the Rear-view Mirror.

Categories
Cambridge Harvard Oxford Princeton Regulations Undergraduate

Harvard. Tutorial System and Divisional General Final Examinations, 1920

 

The Division of History, Government and Economics played a pioneering role in implementing the curricular reforms at Harvard College initiated by President A. Lawrence Lowell around the time of the First World War. The Department of Economics was to play a leading role in the administration of the divisional tutors in history, government and economics.

President Lowell wanted to get away from the extreme laissez-faire implicit in the system of electives left by his predecessor, Charles W. Eliot, to combine elements of concentration with distributional requirements that would leave students a guided sovereignty to elect their courses. Divisional General Examinations and Tutors to provide individually tailored instruction and counseling were institutional means seen as necessary to escape “the mere scoring of a given number of courses which might be wholly unrelated”.

“…the individual student must be considered the unit in any plan of college education which allows some range of choice, but which requires also proof of a well-ordered body of knowledge as a condition of graduation…”

In the opinion of the faculty Committee on Instruction the tutorial system should be established to support the best and brightest students to achieve their individual potentials rather than as a support system to provide remedial instructional services for the “mediocre and lazy”. 

“…there is some danger in college work today that we shall give more consideration to the mediocre and lazy student than to the upper third of the class which contains the men who deserve the best training that can be given them and who are to provide the leaders of their time.”

__________________________

The General Final Examination and the Tutorial System

       The most important educational change, however, in Harvard College during recent years has been the establishment, as a requirement for the bachelor’s degree, of a general final examination on the student’s field of concentration; the problems which arise in connection with this plan are interesting and complex.

       When the Faculty of Arts and Sciences in 1909-10 voted to require each student to concentrate at least six courses in some single field or in related fields of knowledge, it thereby indicated its belief that knowledge of a subject is of more importance than the mere scoring of a given number of courses which might be wholly unrelated and which were often soon forgotten. Provision was made, at the same time, against undue concentration by a system of distribution, which, however, need not be considered here. Yet the requirement of concentration proved not to secure, in all cases, the choice of courses well related, and least of all did it require, or sufficiently encourage, the student to articulate and complete his knowledge of his field, by himself, through work outside the classroom. The next logical step, therefore, was taken in the autumn of 1912-13 when the Faculty passed the following vote:

  1. That the Division of History, Government, and Economics be authorized to require of all students whose field of concentration lies in this Division, in addition to the present requirements stated in terms of courses for the bachelor’s degree, a special final examination upon each student’s field of concentration; and that the passing of this examination shall be necessary in order to fulfill the requirements for concentration in this Division.
  2. That students who pass this special examination may be excused from the regular final examinations in such courses of their last year as fall within the Division of History, Government, and Economics, in the same way that candidates for distinction who pass a public test may now be excused under the rules of the Faculty.
  3. That this requirement go into effect with the class entering in 1913.
  4. That the Division of History, Government, and Economics submit for the sanction of the Faculty the detailed rules for the final examinations and such a detailed scheme of tutorial assistance as may be adopted before these are put into effect by the Division.

       The examinations thus established were first given at the close of 1915-16. Between that date and the end of the year 1919-20, these general examinations had been given to 444 men, of whom 26 (5.8+%) failed and therefore did not receive their degrees unless they passed the general examinations in some subsequent year; of the 418 who passed, 73 (17.4+%) won distinction and 345 (82.5+%) obtained a pass degree.

       General examinations had been used in the Medical School since 1911-12, and in the Divinity School since 1912-13, so that considerable knowledge of the actual working of such examinations was available by the opening of the academic year 1918-19. Accordingly on December 3, 1918, the Faculty passed the following vote under which a committee of nine was established:

       That a Committee be appointed to investigate the working of the general final examinations for degrees now used in various Departments of the University, and to consider the advisability of employing general final examinations on the fields of concentration in all Departments of Harvard College.

       After studying the subject for some months the Committee came to the conclusion that the advantages of the general final examination, particularly as employed in the Division of History, Government, and Economics, might be stated as follows:

    1. The examination has secured “concentration” in related subjects.
    2. It has encouraged the mastery of subjects or fields rather than of courses.
    3. It has given the Division a survey of the student’s capacity at the end of his college course.
    4. It has provided a more satisfactory method of awarding the degree with distinction than the plan formerly in use.

       The Committee therefore made the following recommendations, which the Faculty adopted April 1, 1919:

  1. That general final examinations be established for all students concentrating in Divisions or under Committees which signify their willingness to try such examinations, and that adequate means be provided to enable such Divisions and Committees to administer these examinations; it being understood that the control of the general final examinations shall rest with the several Divisions and Committees in the same manner as the control of the examinations for honors and distinction now given by them.
  2. That the new general final examinations be first employed for the members of the present freshman class.
  3. That, so far as possible, the adviser to whom each student is assigned, be a teacher in the student’s field of concentration.

       All Divisions had previously indicated their desire or willingness to employ such examinations except the Divisions of Mathematics and of the Natural Sciences. The chief reason for the attitude of the Divisions declining appears to lie in the nature of the subjects which they represent, for Mathematics and the Natural Sciences have, by and large, fairly fixed paths of advancement for the undergraduate, so that an examination in an advanced course is, at the same time, an examination on all the work which has preceded, as may very well not be the case in Literary, Historical, and Philosophical subjects.

       Beginning then, with the year 1921-22, general final examinations on the fields of concentration will be required of all candidates for the bachelor’s degree, save in the Divisions named above. The plan is an experiment, and the experience of at least ten years may be needed before its virtues and defects can be fully estimated; but in the meantime, the successful working of such examinations in the Medical School, the Divinity School, and especially in the Division of History, Government, and Economics under this Faculty, the welcome given the plan by the more serious part of the student body, and the interest in the experiment shown by other colleges, give grounds for entertaining much hope.

       The very plan of a general final examination, however, requires that the student shall select his courses wisely, do work outside his formal courses, and by reading and reflection coordinate the details he has learned into a body of ordered knowledge of his subject, so far as this can be done in undergraduate years. In all this he requires guidance and stimulus. The Division of History, Government, and Economics, therefore, from the first, has employed Tutors whose business it is to guide and assist students, individually, in their preparation for the general final examination. Tutoring for this purpose was, on the whole, a new problem in American education, although Princeton University had made some important experiments with its Preceptorial system, and “advisers” for undergraduates had long existed here and elsewhere; moreover, the Oxford and Cambridge system of Tutors obviously could not be transplanted without change to this country because of the differences in secondary and college education. Therefore it was, and still is, necessary to experiment in methods and to develop men for the work. At first tutorial duties were superimposed on other teaching, thus increasing the total amount of instruction given by those who were appointed Tutors, but this plan proved unwise for reasons which now seem fairly clear, but which were not so easily seen in advance. More recently many Tutors have given all their time to tutorial duties, and in some cases this may always be a wise plan; but it appears probable that in many cases it will be unwise for a Tutor to be excluded wholly from giving some formal instruction in his subject by means of a “lecture” course or otherwise, for it is important that every teacher should grow in depth as well as in breadth of knowledge, and such growth can probably usually be best assured him by having him give a course in the subject which he is making especially his own. At present, then, the arrangement which seems most promising is to provide that, so far as possible, each Tutor who desires it shall use a certain proportion of his time in giving formal instruction with the usual classroom methods, the rest, usually the major part of his teaching, being given in the less formal but equally important work of a Tutor.

       Tutorial work means work with the individual student. General suggestions and directions can be given to small groups about as effectively as to single students; yet since the individual student must be considered the unit in any plan of college education which allows some range of choice, but which requires also proof of a well-ordered body of knowledge as a condition of graduation, the Tutors must generally deal with individual students; and this is the regular method employed at the present time. The Tutor meets the students under his charge every week to discuss with them the reading which they have done, to help them solve their difficulties, and to give them suggestions for their future guidance. The good Tutor is in no sense a coach, but a friendly counselor whose knowledge and wisdom are put at the disposal of his students. Unquestionably the total amount of work now required of each student has been somewhat increased over that formerly exacted, but the amount is not so excessive as to call in itself for any remission of the present requirements of courses. The most important purpose, however, of this work done by the student outside his courses under the direction of the Tutor is to teach him how to learn and how to assimilate his knowledge. Ambitious and able students realize the value of such training and give themselves much of it, becoming candidates for distinction in their fields of concentration; the indolent and slow are content with a bare degree. When more experience has been gained the Faculty may well consider relaxing somewhat the requirements of four courses in the Senior year for candidates for distinction, whose previous records give promise of success; but the pass man deserves no increased opportunities for self-discipline since he will ordinarily have proved that he cannot or will not use them.

       In this connection the question may well be raised whether all men should receive equal attention from the Tutors. That there should be equal opportunities for all until some have shown themselves indifferent or unequal to them is beyond doubt; but when the wills and abilities of men have been well tested, as should ordinarily be the case by the end of the sophomore year, it seems only justice to the willing and able to give them more attention than is bestowed on the men who are content with a pass degree. Of course a chance must be given the repentant laggard to climb into the more deserving, and therefore more favored, group during his last two years. But there is some danger in college work today that we shall give more consideration to the mediocre and lazy student than to the upper third of the class which contains the men who deserve the best training that can be given them and who are to provide the leaders of their time.

       In the vote of April, 1919, the Faculty wisely left each Department or Division free to determine the nature of the assistance to be given students concentrating under it and the means by which such assistance shall be given. The Divisions of Philosophy and of Fine Arts propose to use Tutors, as the Division of History, Government and Economics has done from the beginning of the experiment; the several Departments of Languages and Literatures, ancient and modern, will employ advisory committees. But whatever names and methods are employed, the aim will always be to give the individual student assistance and encouragement in acquiring a body of well-organized knowledge in his field. In this direction apparently lies the next advance in the improvement of instruction in Harvard College.

CLIFFORD H. MOORE, Chairman.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College 1919-1920, pp. 100-104.

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Related previous posts

Harvard. First Undergraduate General and Specific Exams in History, Government and Economics Division, 1916.

Harvard. Economics degree requirements, A.B./A.M./Ph.D., 1921-1922

 

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Harvard M.I.T. Math Pedagogy Princeton Teaching Wisconsin

Harvard. Draft memo on “Basic Mathematics for Economics”. Rothschild, ca. 1970

 

“These bewildering cook-books [Allen, Lancaster, Samuelson, Henderson & Quandt] are as helpful to those without mathematical training as Escoffier is to weekend barbecue chefs.”

The 1969 M.I.T. economics Ph.D. Michael Rothschild served briefly as assistant professor of economics at Harvard, a professional milestone that went somehow unmentioned in his official Princeton biography included below. He co-taught the core graduate microeconomic theory course with Zvi Griliches in the spring term of 1971 which is probably why a draft copy of his memo proposing  “a course which truly covers ‘Basic Mathematics for Economists'” is found in Griliches’ papers at the Harvard Archives.

Tip: Here is a link to an interview with Michael Rothschild posted in YouTube (Dec. 4, 2012). A wonderful conversation revealing his academic humility and wit as well as an above-average capacity for self-reflection.

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Courses Referred to in Rothschild’s Memo

Economics 199. Basic Mathematics for Economists

Half course (fall term). M., W., F., at 10. Professor G. Hanoch (Hebrew University).

Covers some of the basic mathematical and statistical tools used in economic analysis, including maximization and minimization of functions with and without constraint. Applications to economic theory such as in utility maximization, cost minimization, and shadow prices will be given. Probability and random variables will be treated especially as these topics apply to economic analysis.

Source: Harvard University, Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Courses of Instruction, Harvard and Radcliffe 1969-1970. Published in Official Register of Harvard University, Vol. LXVI, No. 12 (15 August 1969), p. 142.

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Economics 201a. Advanced Economic Theory

Half course (fall term; repeated spring term). Tu., Th., (S.), at 12. Professor D. Jorgenson (fall term); Professor W. Leontief (spring term).

This course will be concerned with production theory, consumption theory, and the theories of firms and markets.
Prerequisite: Economics 199 or equivalent.

Source: Ibid., p. 143.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

Economics 221a. Quantitative Methods, I

Half course (fall term; repeated spring term). Tu., Th., S., at 11. Assistant Professor A. Blackburn (fall term); Assistant Professor M. Rothschild (spring term).

Probability theory, statistical inference, and elementary matrix algebra.

Prerequisite: Economics 199 or equivalent

Source: Ibid., p. 146.

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DRAFT
[Summer or Fall 1970?]

M. Rothschild

Economics 201a, as Professor Jorgenson now teaches it1, presumes much specialized mathematical knowledge. (See attachment 1) There is no single course which covers all these topics, (chiefly the implicit function theorem, constrained maximization and Euler’s theorem), in either the economics or mathematics departments at Harvard. We are in effect demanding that our students arrive knowing these things or that they learn them on their own. The former is unlikely, the latter more so. Imagine trying to learn the mathematics necessary to follow the standard derivation of the Slutsky equation by studying the standard sources such as Allen, Mathematical Analysis for Economists, Lancaster’s Mathematical Economics or the appendices to Samuelson’s Foundations or Henderson and Quandt. These bewildering cook-books are as helpful to those without mathematical training as Escoffier is to weekend barbecue chefs. Those with some knowledge of mathematics will not find the standard sources much more helpful for they are written in a spirit alien to that of modern mathematics; they give almost no motivation or intuition for their results.

There are other bits of mathematics necessary for a thorough understanding of basic economic theory. For instance, the stability theory of difference and differential equations, the theory of positive matrices and rudiments of duality and convexity theory are required for the stability analysis of simple macro models, input output economics, and linear programming respectively. These are hardly new fangled and abstruse parts of economic theory. Indeed they are topics which should be part of every economist’s competence.

There are courses at Harvard where one can learn these things; the difficulty is that there are so many. Advanced courses in mathematical economics treat of positive matrices, duality and much more. Few students take these courses and almost no first year students do. I have no doubt that somewhere in the mathematics or applied math department, there is a course where one may learn all one would want to know and more of difference and differential equations. But all economists really need to know can be taught in three weeks or less.2

There is an obvious solution to these problems, namely for the department to offer a course which truly covers “Basic Mathematics for Economists.”3 A proposed course outline is attached. The course begins with linear algebra because most of the specialized topics needed for mathematical economics are applications of the principles of linear algebra. I know of no one semester course at Harvard which teaches linear algebra in a manner useful to economists. Another advantage to including linear algebra in this course is that it would make it possible to drop the topic from Economics 221a which is presently supposed to teach linear algebra, probability theory, and statistics in a single semester.4 I doubt this can be done. If linear algebra were excluded from the syllabus of 221a, there would be less reason for offering the course in the economics department. We could reasonably expect that our students learn statistics and probability theory from the statistics department (in Statistics 122, 123 or 190).

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1…and, I hasten to say, as it should be taught

2A word must be said here about Mathematics 21. This excellent full year course in linear algebra and the calculus of several variables contains all the insights, and almost none of the material, which economists should know. With a slight rearrangement of topics, principally the addition of the implicit function theorem, constrained maximization, and the spectral theory of matrices this would be a great course for economists. As it is now it is a good, but rather time consuming, way to develop mathematical maturity which should make it easy to learn the mathematical facts economists need to know.

3The present title of Economics 199 which is a remedial calculus course taken only by those students with almost no mathematical training.

4I became aware of the need for such a course while teaching 221a. After spending three very rushed weeks developing some of the basic notions of linear algebra I had to drop the subject just when it would have been easy to go on and explain the mathematics behind basic economic theory. The desire of the students that I do so is indicated by the fact that most of them were enticed to sit through a second (optional) hour of lecture on a Saturday by the promise that I would unravel the mysteries of the determinental second order conditions for maximization of a function of several variables.

*  *  *  *  *  *

Proposed course outline:
  1. Linear Algebra, vector spaces, linear independence, bases, linear mappings, matrices, linear equations, determinants.
  2. Cursory review of the calculus of several variable from the vector space point of view, the implicit function theorem, Taylor’s theorem.
  3. Quadratic forms and maximization with and without constraints; diagonalization, orthogonality and metric concepts, projections.
  4. The Theory of Positive matrices; matrix power series.
  5. Linear Difference Equations, stability.
  6. Linear Differential Equations, stability.
  7. Convex sets and Duality. (If time permits.)

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Michael Rothschild

Mike Rothschild first came to Princeton in 1972 as a lecturer in economics and quickly rose to the rank of professor three years later. Mike is an economist with broad interests in social science. His 1963 B.A. from Reed College was in anthropology, his 1965 M.A. from Yale University was in international relations, and his 1969 Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology was in economics.

In the early 1970s, Mike published a string of ground- breaking papers studying decision making under uncertainty and showing the effects of imperfect and asymmetric information on economic outcomes. With Joseph Stiglitz, Mike proposed now- standard definitions of what it means for one random variable to be “riskier” than another random variable. He studied consumer behavior when the same good is offered at different prices and when the consumer does not know the distribution of prices. He studied the pricing behavior of fi when they are uncertain about demand and showed that a fi may end up setting the wrong price even when it optimally experiments to learn about the demand for its product. Arguably, Mike’s most important early work was a 1976 paper with Stiglitz on insurance markets in which insurance companies did not know the heterogeneous risk situations of their customers. Mike and Stiglitz showed that under certain circumstances a market equilibrium exists in which companies offer a menu of policies with different premiums and deductibles that separate customers into appropriate risk groups. This research is one of the landmarks in the field of information economics.

Mike left Princeton in 1976 for the University of Wisconsin and moved to the University of California–San Diego (UCSD) seven years later. His research over this period included papers on taxation, investment, jury-decision processes, and several important papers in finance. Mike’s research contributions led to recognition and awards: he became a fellow of the Econometric Society in 1974, received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1978, became a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1994, and in 2005 was chosen as a distinguished fellow of the American Economic Association.

In 1985, Mike decided to branch out from teaching and research, and he spent the next 17 years in university administration. Shortly after arriving at UCSD he became that university’s first dean of social sciences. Under his watch, the division grew dramatically in the number of students, faculty, departments, and programs. He presided over the launching of cognitive science, ethnic studies, and human development. During his deanship, the UCSD social sciences soared in the national rankings, reaching 10th nationally in the last National Research Council tally for 1996.

Mike was lured back to Princeton in 1995 to become the dean of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. During his seven-year tenure as dean, Mike started the one-year Master in Public Policy program for mid-career professionals; the Program in Science, Technology, and Environmental Policy; the Center for the Study of Democratic Politics; and the Center for Health and Wellbeing. Under his leadership, the Wilson School added graduate policy workshops to the curriculum, expanded course offerings, added multi-year appointments of practitioners to the faculty, and enhanced professional development. Mike shared his dean duties with his trusted and loyal dog, Rosie, who became an important part of the school’s community and accompanied Mike throughout campus.

Finally, Mike likes to wear a hardhat. At UCSD he oversaw the planning and construction of the Social Sciences Building, and at Princeton he built Wallace Hall and renovated Robertson Hall. The Princeton community may remember Mike most for turning Scudder Plaza from the home of a formal reflecting pool where guards kept people out of the fountain into a community wading pool that welcomes and attracts students, families, and children (many under the age of three) each summer evening.

Source: Princeton University Honors Faculty Members Receiving Emeritus Status (May 2009), pp. 18-20.

Image Source: Screenshot from the interview (Posted Dec. 4, 2012 in YouTube).