Category: Syllabus

Categories
Berkeley Exam Questions Suggested Reading Syllabus

Berkeley. Syllabus and exams. Regulation and Antitrust. Woroch, 1996

 

Every so often I plunge into the Wayback Machine to search for “ancient” economics course materials from as far back as the 1990’s. Today I return with a syllabus, suggested readings for presentations and for paper topics, and some final examination questions for what has/had been the traditional second course in the field of industrial organization that covers regulation and competition policy. 

The course instructor at UC Berkeley was Glenn Woroch who had received his Ph.D. in economics from the University of California, Berkeley in 1983. According to his August 2013 homepage he taught that graduate course “Regulation and Antitrust” three times (Spring 1994, 1996, 1997).

__________________

Glenn Woroch: Short Bio

Dr. Glenn Woroch is Adjunct Professor of Economics, University of California, Berkeley, and Executive Director of the Center for Research on Telecommunications Policy. Dr. Woroch is an internationally recognized expert in the economics of the telecommunications industry, and has served as a consultant to governments and the private sector on a wide range of telecommunications issues.
Dr. Woroch has published numerous articles on industrial organization, regulation, antitrust, corporate strategy and intellectual property. He served on the editorial boards of Information Economics & Policy, the Journal of Regulatory Economics, and Telecommunications Policy and was a founding member of the International Telecommunications Society.
Dr. Woroch is regularly retained as an economic expert witness on litigation matters involving monopolization claims, mergers, intellectual property infringement, and economic damages. Besides his expertise in telecommunications, Dr. Woroch has extensive experience in the broadcast and cable television, computer software, personal computer, computer networking, ecommerce, electric power and food and beverage industries. Dr. Woroch has been an economic advisor to government agencies including the U.S. Departments of Energy and Justice and the Office of Technology Assessment. In addition to his U.S. engagements, he has consulted to private and public sector clients in Latin America, the Pacific Rim and Western Europe.
Previously, Dr. Woroch taught economics at the University of Rochester and Stanford University, and was Senior Member of Technical Staff at GTE Laboratories. He holds a Ph.D. in Economics and M.A. in Statistics from Berkeley.

Source: Short bio of Glenn Woroch linked to his August 2013 webpage. Archived copy at the Wayback Machine internet archive.

__________________

Department of Economics
University of California
Economics 220B, Spring 1996
REGULATION & ANTITRUST
Glenn Woroch

Description. This is the second of two graduate courses in industrial organization. It will cover regulation and antitrust policy, concentrating on control of natural and artificial monopoly in theory
and in practice. Emphasis will be on theoretical developments although an occasional empirical study or case study will illustrate key points.

Instructor. Glenn Woroch, 669 Evans, 642-4308, glenn@econ.berkeley.edu.

Office hours: Wednesday, 2:30-4:00 PM.

Textbooks. No textbook is assigned for this course, but several books cover large portions of the material and have been put on reserve:

Sandy Berg and John Tschirhart, Natural Monopoly Regulation, Cambridge University Press.
Alfred Kahn, The Economics of Regulation, volumes I and II, (2nd edition) John Wiley, 199?.
Jean-Jacques Laffont and Jean Tirole, A Theory of Incentives in Procurement and Regulation, 1993.
William Sharkey, The Theory of Natural Monopoly, Cambridge University Press, 1982.
Daniel Spulber, Regulation and Markets, MIT Press, 1991.
Kenneth Train, Optimal Regulation, MIT Press, 1991.

Assignments. Students will select a paper, either one of the optional readings or a paper that we agree upon, and present it to the class. Each student will also write a paper of moderate length on a topic
related in some manner to the economics of regulation. I will distribute a list of suggested topics shortly. Lastly, there will be a final exam.

READING LIST

* – required, in reader. + – recommended for presentation.

I. NATURAL MONOPOLY AND ITS REGULATION

1. Natural Monopoly

* Panzar, J., “Technological determinants of firm and industry
structure,” Chapter 1 in Handbook of Industrial Organization, (Vol.
1) North-Holland, 1989.
* Faulhaber, G., “Cross-subsidization: pricing in public enterprises,”
American Economic Review, 1975.
Baumol, W., “On the proper cost tests for natural monopoly in a
multiproduct industry,” American Economic Review, December 1977.
Faulhaber, G., and S. Levinson, “Subsidy free prices and anonymous
equity,” American Economic Review, 1981.
+ Evans, D. and J. Heckman, “Multiproduct cost function estimates and
natural monopoly tests for the Bell System,” in Breaking Up Bell,
edited by David Evans, 1983.

2. Efficient Pricing

* Baumol, W. and D. Bradford (1970), “Optimal departures from marginal
cost pricing,” American Economic Review, June.
* Willig, R., “Pareto-superior nonlinear outlay schedules,” Bell
Journal of Economics, 1979.
Baumol, W., E. Bailey and R. Willig, “Weak invisible hand theorems on
the sustainability of prices in a multiproduct monopoly, American
Economic Review, 1977.
Braeutigam, R., “Optimal policies for natural monopoly,” in Handbook
of Industrial Organization, (Vol. 2) 1989.
+ Brock, W., and W.D. Dechert, “Dynamic Ramsey pricing,” William Brock
and W. D. Dechert, International Economic Review, October 1985.
+ Braeutigam, R., “Optimal pricing with intermodal competition,”
American Economic Review, 38-49, 1979.
+ Panzar, J., “The Pareto domination of usage-sensitive pricing,” in
Proceedings of the 6th Telecommunications Policy Research
Conference, H. Dordick (ed.) 1979.

3. Reality Check: Alternative Explanations of Regulatory Policy

* Stigler, G., “The Theory of Economic Regulation,” The Bell Journal of
Economics, 1971.
* Peltzman, S., “The economic theory of regulation after a decade of
deregulation,” Brookings Papers: Microeconomics, 1989.
* Joskow, P., “Pricing decision of regulated firms: a behavioral
approach, Bell Journal of Economics, 1973.
Peltzman, S., “Towards a more general theory of regulation,” Journal
of Law & Economics.
Noll, R., “Economic perspectives on the politics of regulation,” in
Handbook of Industrial Organization (Vol. 2) 1989.
Posner, R., “Taxation by regulation,” Bell Journal of Economics,
1971.
+ Winston, C., “Economic deregulation: days of reckoning for
microeconomists,” Journal of Economic Literature, September 1993.

II. REGULATION IN PRACTICE

1. Rate of Return Regulation

* Baumol, W. and A. Klevorick, “Input choices and rate of return
regulation: an over of the discussion,” Bell Journal of Economics,
1970.
* Averch, H. and L. Johnson, “Behavior of the firm under regulatory
constraint,” American Economic Review, December, 1962.
* Spence, A.M., “Monopoly, quality and regulation,” Bell Journal of
Economics, Autumn 1975.
+ Petersen, C., “An empirical test of regulatory effects,” Bell Journal
of Economics, Spring 1975.
+ Bailey, E., “Regulation and innovation,” Journal of Public Economics,
December 1974.

2. Contracting vs. Administration

* Demsetz, H., “Why regulate utilities?” Journal of Law & Economics,
1968
* Goldberg, V., “Regulation and administered contracts,” Bell Journal
of Economics, 1976.
* Williamson, O., “Franchise bidding for natural monopoly: in general
and with respect to CATV, Bell Journal of Economics, 1976.”
+ Zupan, M. “The efficacy of franchise bidding schemes in the case of
cable TV: Some systematic evidence,” Journal of Law and Economics,
October 1989.

3. Price Cap and Benchmark Regulation

* Brennan, T., “Regulation by capping prices,” Journal of Regulatory
Economics, 1989.
* Brauetigam, R., and J. Panzer, “Effects of the change from rate of
return to price cap regulation,” American Economic Review, 1993.
* Shleiffer, A. “A theory of yardstick competition,” Rand Journal of
Economics, 1985.
Vogelsang, I., “Price cap regulation of telecommunications services:
a long-run,” Rand Report, 1988.
+ Cabral, L. And M. Riordan, “Incentives for cost reduction under price
cap regulation,” Journal of Regulatory Economics, 1989.
+ Sappington, D., and D. Sibley, “Strategic nonlinear pricing under
price-cap regulation,” Rand Journal of Economics, Spring 1992.
+ Armstrong, M., S, Cowan and J. Vickers, “Nonlinear pricing and price
cap regulation,” Journal of Public Economics, September 1995.

III. DESIGN OF OPTIMAL REGULATORY MECHANISMS

1. Iterative and Dynamic Mechanisms

* Vogelsang, I. and J. Finsinger, “A regulatory adjustment process for
optimal pricing by multiproduct monopoly firms, Bell Journal of
Economics, 1979.
* Sappington, D., “Strategic firm behavior under a dynamic regulatory
adjustment process,” Bell Journal of Economics, Spring, 1980.
Salant, D., and G. Woroch, “Trigger price regulation,” Rand Journal
of Economics, Spring 1992.
+ Gilbert, R., and D. Newbery, “The dynamic efficiency of regulatory
constitutions,”Rand Journal of Economics, Winter 1994.
+ Blackmon, G., and R. Zeckhauser, “Fragile commitments and the
regulatory process,” Yale Journal on Regulation, 9:1, Winter, 1992.
+ Logan, J., R. Masson and R. Reynolds, “Efficient regulation with
little information: reality in the limit?” International Economic
Review, 30:4 November 1989.

2. Agency Approach

* Loeb, M., and W. Magat, “A decentralized method for utility
regulation,” Journal of Law & Economics, 1979.
* Baron, D., and R. Myerson, “Regulating a monopolist with unknown
costs,” Econometrica, July 1982.
* Laffont, J.-J., “The new economics of regulation ten years after,”
Econometrica, 1994.
Laffont, J.-J., and J. Tirole, “Using cost observation to regulate
firms,” Journal of Political Economy, 1986.
Baron, D., “Design of regulatory mechanisms and institutions,” in
Handbook of Industrial Organization, (Vol. 2), 1989.
+ Lewis, T., and D. Sappington, “Regulating a monopolist with unknown
demand,” American Economic Review, December 1988.
+ Wolak, F., “An econometric analysis of the asymmetric information
regulator-utility interaction,” draft.

IV. DEREGULATION

1. Regulation with Horizontal Competition

+ Auriole, E., and J.-J. Laffont, “Regulation by duopoly,” Journal of
Economic Management and Strategy, 1993.
+ Riordan, M., “Regulation and preemptive technology adoption,” Rand
Journal, Autumn 1992.
Biglaiser, G., and A. Ma, “Regulating a dominant firm: unknown demand
and industry structure.” Rand Journal of Economics, Spring 1995.

2. Regulation with Vertical Competition

* Laffont, J.-J. and J. Tirole, “Optimal bypass and creamskimming,”
American Economic Review, 1990.
* Panzar, J., “Sustainability, efficiency and vertical integration,” in
Regulated Industries and Public Enterpirse, edited by Paul
Kelindorfer and Bridger Mitchell, 1979.
Vickers, J., “Competition and regulation in vertically-related
markets,” Review of Economic Studies, January 1995.
Baumol, W. “Some Subtle Pricing Issues in Railroad Regulation,”
International Journal of Transport Economics, August 1983.
+ Gilbert, R., and M. Riordan, “Regulating complementary products: a
problem of institutional choice,” Rand Journal of Economics, 1995.
+ Laffont, J.-J. and J. Tirole, “Access pricing and interconnection,”
European Economic Review, 1994.

VI. ANTITRUST POLICY

1. Predation

* McGee, John, (1958), “Predatory Price Cutting: The Standard Oil
(N.J.) Case,” Journal of Law and Economics, pp. 137-169.
* Ordover, J., and G. Saloner, “Predation, monopolization and
antitrust,” chapter 9 in Handbook of Industrial Organization,
(Vol. 2) 1989.
Milgrom, P., and J. Roberts, “Limit pricing and entry under
incomplete inforamtion: an equilibrium analysis,” Econometrica,
1982.
Ordover, J., and R. Willig, “An economic definition of predation:
pricing and product innovation,” Yale Law Journal, 1981.

2. Merger to Monopoly

* Department of Justice, “The Merger Guidelines.”
* Farrell, J., and C. Shapiro, “Horizontal mergers,” American Economic
Review.
+ Baker, J., and T. Bresnahan, (1985), “The Gains from Merger or
Collusion in Product Differentiated Industries,” Journal of
Industrial Economics, 33:4, pp. 427.

3. Exclusion and Foreclosure

* Krattenmaker, T., and S. Salop, “Anticompetitive exclusion: raising
rivals’ costs to achieve power over price,” Yale Law Journal, 1986.
* Ordover, J., G. Saloner, and S. Salop, “Equilibrium Vertical
Foreclosure,” American Economic Review, 1990.
Ordover, J., A. O. Sykes and R. Willig, “Nonprice Anticompetitive
Behavior by Dominant Firms toward the Producers of Complementary
Products,” in Antitrust Regulation: Essays in Memory of John J.
McGowan, Franklin Fisher (ed.), 1985
Whinston, M., “Tying, Foreclosure, and Exclusion,” American Economic
Review, 1990.
+ Salinger, M., “Vertical mergers and market foreclosure,” Quarterly
Journal of Economics, 1988.
+ Economides, N., and G. Woroch, “Interconnection and foreclosure of
network competition,” draft, 1995.

 

Source: Spring Semester 1996 syllabus archived at the Wayback Machine.

________________________

Department of Economics
University of California
Economics 220B, Spring 1996
ADDITIONAL READINGS FOR PRESENTATIONS
Glenn Woroch

Lawrence Pulley and Yale Braunstein, “A Composite cost function for multiproduct firms with an application to economies of scope in banking,” Review of Economics & Statistics, 1992.

Besanko, David and Donnefeld, Shabtai, and Lawrence J. White, “The Multiproduct Firm, Quality Choice, and Regulation,” Journal of Industrial Economics, 1990, vol. 36, pp. 411-429.

Ma, Ching-to Albert and James Burgess, “Regulation, Quality Competition, and Price in the Hospital Industry,” mimeo, 1991.

Fudenberg, Drew and Jean Tirole, “‘A Signal-Jamming’ Theory of Predation,” Bell Journal of Economics, 1986, vol. 17, no. 3, pp. 366-376.

Ordover, Janusz and Robert Willig, “Antitrust for High Technology Industries: Assessing Research Joint Ventures and Mergers,” Journal of Law and Economics, 1985, vol. 28, pp. 311-333.

Guerin-Calvert, Margaret, “Vertical Integration as a Threat to Competition: Airline Computer Reservations Systems,” in L. White and J. Kwoka Jr. (eds.), The Antitrust Revolution, (pp. 338-370). 1989.

Sappington, David, and David Sibley, “Regulating without cost information: the incremental surplus subsidy scheme,” International Economic Review, 29:2, May 1988.

Frank Matthewson and Ralph Winter, “An economic theory of vertical restraints,” Rand Journal of Economics.

Ralph Bradburd, “Privatization of natural monopoly public enterprises: the regulation issue,” Review of Industrial Organization, 1995, 247-67.

Michael Whinston, “Tying foreclosure and exclusion,” American Economic Review, Sept 1990.

Paul Joskow and Richard Schmalensee, “Incentive regulation for electric utilities,” Yale Journal on Regulation, 4:1, Fall 1986.

Baron, David, “Price regulation, quality and asymmetric information,”American Economic Review, March 1981.

Harris, R., and E. Weins, “Government enterprise: an instrument for the internal regulation of industry,” Canadian Journal of Economics, February 1980.

 

Source: Additional Readings for Presentations from the Spring Semester 1996 archived at the Wayback Machine.

________________________

Department of Economics
University of California
Economics 220B, Spring 1996
SUGGESTIONS FOR TERM PAPER TOPICS
Glenn Woroch

The miscellaneous topics listed below are intended to get you thinking about a term paper. Most are applications to specific industries or specific regulatory policies. There are many more possibilities for research in theoretical aspects of regulation.

Problems of erecting incentives for efficient investment and operation of natural monopoly facilities placed under common ownership in a specific case such as an electric power grid or an internet backbone.

Efficient design of auctions to assign rights to common property resources such as radio spectrum or mineral/grazing rights.

Compare the trend toward re-emergence of end-to-end monopoly in telephone with the vertical divestiture in electric power in terms of the tradeoff between vertical economies and anticompetitive behavior.

Efficient design of duopoly policy in markets that are potentially natural monopoly (e.g., cellular telephone)

The increased concentration of hospitals and HMOs through mergers and joint ventures and the implications for the price and availability of health services.

Potential of labor and management sharing in the rents that accrue in trucking, railroad or other regulated industries.

Motivation and long-run sustainability of bypass in the natural gas distribution industry under different regulatory regimes.

Winners and losers from price ceilings, rationing and strategic reserves in the market for oil and gas.

Effectiveness of different ratemaking practices (e.g., ROR vs. price caps) to encourage adoption of new technologies in a specific industry (e.g., electric power, telephone, health care).

Apply principles of economic models of regulation to understand the passage of a particular piece of legislation that regulates, deregulates or re-regulates an industry (e.g., Airline Deregulation Act of 1978, Cable Act of 1992, Telecom Act of 1996).

Cross country comparison (e.g., U.S. vs. Japan) of policy formation on a specific regulatory issue (e.g., regulation of nuclear power or deregulation of telephones), and the relation between the outcome and the possibilities for rent seeking under the different political systems.

Policy alternatives toward a dominant firm that achieves a de facto standard in an industry exhibiting strong complementaries among component products (e.g., Microsoft and Intel).

The use of structural separations or Chinese walls to guard against leveraging market power into complementary product markets.

Compare performance of public enterprises relative to regulated private firms within or across industries (e.g., water, electric power, cable TV, airlines) and relate to management incentives and/or regulatory policies.

Success of regulatory policy that uses a government-owned firm to compete against a dominant private firm.

The relative effectiveness of alternative regulatory mechanisms to elicit relevant information, e.g., yardstick vs. iterative mechanisms.

Success of privatization initiatives based on the nature of the post-privatization regulatory scheme especially with regards to rate regulation and the ease of competitive entry.

Creating efficient incentives for disposal of nuclear and other kinds of hazardous waste.

Tradeoff between efficiency and anti-competitiveness of mergers/alliances/joint ventures among local/long distance/cable/wireless companies aimed at exploiting multimedia opportunities.

Comparison of solutions to pricing interconnection sold to competitors across different industries (e.g., phone v. electric power) or for a single industry across different countries.

Source: Suggested Paper Topics from the Spring Semester 1996 archived at the Wayback Machine.

________________________

Department of Economics
University of California
Economics 220B
Glenn Woroch

TAKEHOME FINAL EXAM
Spring 1996

INSTRUCTIONS: Answer each of the first four questions and then choose just one of the last two questions In each case keep you answers concise. Due the end of business on Friday, May 17th.

  1. Suppose that all firms have available the technology characterized by the cost function:

C(y1, y2) = a y1 + b y2 + c max {y1, y2}

where y1 and y2 are quantities of the two goods, 1 and 2. Further suppose that the market demand for y1 exceeds that for y2 at all relevant output prices.

(a) For y1 > y2 > 0, determine whether this cost function exhibits economies of scope, economies of scale over the entire product set, economies of scale specific to good 1 or economies of scale specific to good 2.

(b) Find the first-best output price for the industry to charge for the two goods. Determine the configuration of firms in the industry that products the corresponding industry wide outputs at least cost for the industry.

(c) Prove that the industry configuration and prices given in you answer to part (b) satisfies the requirements of sustainability

(d) Describe in words what kinds of circumstances might lead to cost functions like this one.

  1. A regulated firm produces two products: A and B. The firm is required by regulators to earn no more than is necessary to cover its operating costs plus a competitive return on invested capital.
    Assume that product B exhibits constant marginal cost of production equal to cB.

(a) Describe the solution to the Ramsey pricing problem. In the process be certain to make explicit whatever demand and cost assumptions you need to support your answer.

(b) Now suppose that an unlimited number of unregulated firms can enter into the market for product B at a constant marginal cost of cE where cE > cB. How does this affect the regulated firm’s pricing, and what is the effect on consumer welfare?

(c) Now suppose that cE < cB. Demonstrate that the regulated firm might gain by selling product B at a price (slightly) below cE.

(d) Since, in general, the regulator does not know the relative sizes of cB and cE , what are the pros and cons of allowing the regulated firm to produce B?

  1. Many schemes for regulating natural monopolies have been tried, and many more have been proposed. Listed below are some the schemes studied in this class.

(i) Rate-of-return regulation
(ii) Vogelsang-Finsinger iterative mechanism
(iii) Yardstick regulation
(iv) Price cap regulation
(v) Demsetz-type franchise auction

Choose two off of this list, and compare their relative merits in terms of each of the following criteria:

(a) short-run allocative efficiency,
(b) speed and likelihood of achieving first/second best outcomes over the long run,
(c) cross subsidization across products
(d) the rents that accrue to producers,
(e) vulnerability to political influence by producers and/or consumers,
(f) incentives to invest in cost-reducing innovations,
(g) informational requirements for implementing the mechanism.

  1. [WARNING: THIS PROBLEM HAD SPECIAL CHARACTERS THAT DID NOT SURVIVE THE ASCII FORMAT SAVE. WHERE YOU SEE A “z”, I HAVE ONLY GUESSED.] Consider the application of the Baron-Myerson Bayesian incentive mechanism to the following special situation. Suppose that production requires an unknown constant marginal cost and a
    known fixed cost: C(y, z) = z y + F, where z is distributed uniformly over the unit interval [0,1]. Let demand for the single product be linear: D(p) = a – bp. Assume that a/b > 1. Finally, assume that the weight attached to consumer surplus, V(p(z),t(z)), is one and the weight attached to firm z’s profit is � where 0 < � < 1.

(a) Find the optimal two-part pricing rule: p(z), t(z). What values do they take on at the extreme of least cost z = 0 and at highest cost z = 1?

(b) At the optimal solution compute the consumer surplus and the firm’s profit as a function of . Again find the values they take on at the extreme of least cost = 0 and at highest cost = 1.

(c) Describe the unit price, fixed fee, consumer surplus and firm profit as z approaches 1.

(d) Compute the profit-maximizing uniform price p(z). Find values for z and for which this unregulated monopoly price is less than the regulated price.

  1. Choose one of the following industries and periods:

(i) Electric power generation and distribution in the 1960s
(ii) Long distance telephone service in the 1970s
(iii) Passenger air transportation in the 1980s
(iv) For-profit hospitals in the 1990s

In that case describe what economic research has to say about the presence of economies of scale and scope, vertical economies and the prevalence of transactions costs. Describer the predominant form of regulation in that industry during that period in the U.S. Evaluate the match between the cost conditions and the form of regulation based on efficiency criteria.

  1. Intense debate has broken out over the years over whether certain industry practices represent an efficient response to market conditions, or an expression of anti-competitive behavior. Identify one of the following practices:

(i) predatory pricing
(ii) exclusive dealing
(iii) product bundling or tying
(iv) resale price maintenance

For the practice that you chose, describe the current antitrust treatment based on court decisions and policies of antitrust authorities. (These may not be unambiguous.) Report the positions of the different sides of the debate, especially the arguments that view the practice as efficiency enhancing and as competitively harmful. Make a persuasive argument for one of these two positions, or for a third position.

Source:  Takehome Final Exam from the Spring Semester 1996 archived at the Wayback Machine.

________________________

Department of Economics
University of California
Economics 220B
Glenn Woroch

FINAL EXAM
Spring 1994

INSTRUCTIONS: The exam has FOUR parts. Please answer each one. To
guide your time allocation, a total of 100 points is distributed as
follows:

Part I: 24 points (= 6 x 4 points)
Part II: 30 points
Part III: 28 points
Part IV: 18 points

  1. Answer TRUE or FALSE and EXPLAIN with 2 or 3 sentences.
    1. If an industry configuration is sustainable, then
      production is cost efficient.
    2. A Ramsey price vector is necessarily subsidy free.
    3. In Peltzman’s private interest model applied to monopoly
      regulation, price obeys an inverse elasticity rule typical
      of efficiency but income distribution may be skewed.
    4. In Joskow’s behavioral model of rate-of-return regulation,
      rate reviews do not occur when unit costs are rising.
    5. Producer and consumer surplus increase with the HH Index in
      a Cournot oligopoly.
    6. The so-called “double markup” that results from monopoly
      power at both the manufacturing and the retail levels can
      be eliminated with a two-part tariff.
  1. Two schemes that are designed to regulate natural monopoly
    are:

(i) Rate-of-return regulation
(ii) Vogelsang-Finsinger iterative mechanism

Evaluate each of the schemes relative to the unregulated
outcome in terms of their effects on:

(a) short-run allocative efficiency,
(b) the rents that accrue to producers,
(c) the welfare of consumers.

  1. Auctioning off monopoly franchises has often been proposed
    as a way to inject some competition into natural monopoly
    markets.
    1. In terms of economic efficiency, compare the following two
      rules for awarding the franchise: give it to the bidder
      with the most attractive price-service-quality package, or
      give it to the bidder that offers the largest cash payment
      for the franchise.
    2. What are the informational requirements needed to implement
      the schemes proposed by Demsetz and by Loeb and Magat?
    3. What difficulties arise over the course of the franchise
      contract that hamper the performance of this scheme?
    4. Under what conditions will the outcome be improved as the
      length of the firm-regulator relationship becomes infinite?
  1. Consider the Baron-Myerson approach to regulating a firm
    with private cost information. For concreteness, let the
    cost function of the firm be C(y,b) which is increasing
    in output of the good y and a cost parameter b.

1. What is meant by an “information rent”? How is it paid to
the firm in the Baron-Myerson scheme?

2. In what sense does a cross subsidization occur across
different cost realizations?

3. What additional features do Laffont and Tirole build into
their model of regulation that generalizes Baron-Myerson?
How does their pricing optimum differ?

Source:  Wayback Machine Archived copy June 1, 2002.

Image Source:  Glenn A. Woroch’s Berkeley webpage (modified 13 Jan 1999). Archived copy at the Wayback Machine internet archive.

Categories
Exam Questions Harvard Suggested Reading Syllabus Undergraduate

Harvard. Reading list and final exam for course “Conflict, Coalition and Strategy”. Schelling, 1970

 

 

There are undergraduate courses, and then there are great undergraduate courses. Today we have the 49 item course bibliography for Thomas C. Schelling’s “Conflict, Coalition and Strategy” along with its ten-page final examination. This material comes to Economics in the Rear-view Mirror from one of the students who took that course, then Harvard undergraduate, Robert Dohner. I am  generally not jealous of Bob’s Harvard undergraduate education, but I’ll admit there are a good half-dozen economics and politics courses in my own Yale training that I would have gladly traded for that single Schelling semester in 1970. You can all thank Bob Dohner for sharing this memory!

The teaching assistant for the course, James T. Campen, was born 1943. He received an A.B. from Harvard in 1965, M.A. at St. John’s College, University of Cambridge in 1971 and Ph.D. from Harvard in 1976. Campen was active early on in the Union for Radical Political Economics and was on the faculty of the University of Massachusetts at Boston from 1977 where he worked up into his emeritus years.

_____________________

Economics 1030
“Conflict, Coalition and Strategy”
Prof. Thomas C. Schelling
Mr. James T. Campen
Fall 1970

(*Contained in Coop package)

Introduction (13 pages)

  1. *Schelling, T. C., “Strategic Analysis and Social Problems,” Social Problems, Vol. 12 (Spring 1965), pp. 367-379.

 

I. Personal Incentives and Social Organization (56 pages)

  1. Hardin, Garrett, “The Tragedy of the Commons,” Science, Vol. 162, No. 3859, pp. 1243-1248.
  2. Olson, Mancur, Jr., The Logic of Collective Action (Harvard University Press, 1965), pp. 1-3,9-16, 53-57,86-87, 132-141.
  3. Luce, R. Duncan and Howard Raiffa, Games and Decisions (John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1957), Chapter 5.4, “An Example: The Prisoner’s Dilemma,” and Chapter 5.5, “Temporal Repetition of the Prisoner’s Dilemma,” pp. 94-102.
  4. Demsetz, Harold, “Toward a Theory of Property Rights,” Papers and Proceedings of the American Economic Association, American Economic Review, Vol. 57 (May 1967), pp. 347-359.

 

II. Rules, Restraints, and Conventions (296 pages)

  1. Schelling, T. C., “Some Thoughts on the Relevance of Game Theory to the Analysis of Ethical Systems,” in Ira R. Buchler and Hugo G. Nutini (eds.), Game Theory in the Behavioral Sciences (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1969), pp. 45-60.
  2. Lorenz, Konrad, On Aggression (Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1966), pp. 68-84, 109-138. NOTE: Different pages in Bantam paperback, pp. 64-80, 104-132.
  3. Piaget, Jean, The Moral Judgment of the Child (The Free Press, 1965, and Collier Books, 1962, same translator and identical pagination in both versions), pp. 65-76, 94-100, 139-174, 197-232. NOTE: Hardcover editions dated 1932 and 1948 have these pages instead: pp. 56-69, 89-95, 135-171, 195-231. To check: the first selection begins, “Consciousness of Rules: II Third Stage.”
  4. Jervis, Robert, The Logic of Images in International Relations (Princeton University Press, 1970), pp. 18, 90-110, 147-152, 197-205, 216-223.
  5. Schelling, T. C., The Strategy of Conflict (Harvard University Press, 1963), Chapter 3, pp. 53-80, and Chapter 4, pp. 89-108.
  6. Lewis, David K., Convention: A Philosophical Study (Harvard University Press, 1969), pp. 5-8, 36-51, 83-107, 118-121.

 

III. Contests and Disputes (123 pages)

  1. Moore, Omar K. and Alan R. Anderson, “Puzzles, Games, and Social Interaction,” in David Braybooke, Philosophical Problems of the Social Sciences (The Macmillan Company, 1965), pp. 68-79.
  2. Langholm, Sivert, “Violent Conflict Resolution and the Loser’s Reaction,” Journal of Peace Research, 1965-4, pp. 324-347.
  3. Galtung, Johan, “Institutionalized Conflict Resolution,” Journal of Peace Research, 1965-4, pp. 348-383.
  4. Goffman, Erving, Interaction Ritual (Anchor Books, 1967), pp. 239-270, “Where the Action Is.”
  5. Skolnick, Jerome H., “Social Control in the Adversary System,” The Journal of Conflict Resolution, Vol. XI, No. 1 (March 1967), pp. 52-70.

 

IV. Formal Processes of Collective Decision (133 pages)

  1. *Steinhaus, Hugo, “The Problem of Fair Division,” Econometrica, Vol. 16 (January 1948), pp. 101-104.
  2. *Farquharson, Robin, “Sincerity and Strategy in Voting,” mimeograph, February 5, 1955, 7 pages.
  3. Schelling, T. C., “What Is Game Theory?” in James C. Charlesworth (ed.), Contemporary Political Analysis (The Free Press, 1967), pp. 212-238.
  4. Buchanan, James M. and Gordon Tulloch, The Calculus of Consent (The University of Michigan Press, 1962), pp. 43-62, 131-145, 249-262.
  5. *Schelling, T. C., “Voting Schemes and Fair Division,” multilith, September 1970.
    [Handwritten note: 23 10th line 12th 1.27 s.b. 1.55. A gets 295 instead of 241. B gets 85]
  6. Leiserson, Michael, “Game Theory and the Study of Coalition Behavior,” in Sven Groennings, E. W. Kelley, and Michael Leiserson (eds.), The Study of Coalition Behavior (Holt, Reinhardt and Winston, 1970), pp. 255-272.
  7. Farquharson, Robin, Theory of Voting (Yale University Press, 1969), Appendix 3, pp. 77-80.

 

V. Individual and Collective Bargaining (266 pages)

  1. Schelling, T. C., The Strategy of Conflict (Harvard University Press, 1963), Chapter 2, pp. 21-52, and Chapter 5, pp. 119-161.

[Handwritten note: Hour Exam]

  1. Fisher, Roger, International Conflict for Beginners (Harper & Rowe, 1969), Chapter 3, “Making Threats Is Not Enough,” pp. 27-59.
  2. Walton, R. E. and R. B. McKersie, A Behavioral Theory of Labor Negotiations (McGraw-Hill, 1965), pp. 4-6, 67-125, 310-340.
  3. Ross, H. Laurence, Settled Out of Court (Aldine, 1970), Chapter IV, “Negotiation.” NOTE: Pending appearance of book, mimeograph copy on reserve, entitled “Negotiation.”
  4. *Schelling, T. C., “Communication, Bargaining and Negotiation,” Arms Control and National Security, Vol. 1 (1969), pp. 69-71.
  5. *Rapoport, Anatol and Melvin Guyer, “Taxonomy of 2 x 2 Games,” Papers, Vol. 6, 1966, Peace Research Society (International), pp. 11-26.

 

VI. Violence and Nonviolence (191 pages)

  1. Sibley, Mulford Q., The Quiet Battle (Anchor Books, Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1963), pp. 9-10, 55-66.
  2. Hubbard, Howard, “Five Long, Hot Summers and How They Grew,” The Public Interest, No. 12 (Summer 1968), pp. 3-24.
  3. Nieburg, H. L., “Violence, Law and the Informal Polity,” Journal of Conflict Resolution, Vol. 13, No. 2 (June 1969), pp. 192-209.
  4. Schelling, T. C., Arms and Influence (Yale University Press, 1966), pp. 1-18, 92-105, 116-125.
  5. Roberts, Adam (Ed.), Civilian Resistance as a National Defense (Stackpole Books, 1968), or The Strategy of Civilian Defense (Faber & Faber Ltd., 1967) (the two versions are identical), pp. 9-13, 87-105, 205-211, 302-308.
  6. Walter, Charles W., “Interposition: The Strategy and Its Uses,” Naval War College Review, Vol. XXII, No. 10 (June 1970), pp. 72-84.
  7. Nozick, Robert, “Coercion,” in Sydney Morgenbesser, Patrick Suppes and Morton White (eds.), Philosophy, Science and Method (St. Martin’s Press, 1969), pp. 440-472.
  8. Shure, Gerald H., Robert J. Meeker and Earle A. Hansford, “The Effectiveness of Pacifist Strategies in Bargaining Games,” The Journal of Conflict Resolution, Vol. IX, No. 1 (March 1965), pp. 106-117.

 

VII. Interactive Models: Large Groups (89 pages)

  1. Penrose, L S., On the Objective Study of Crowd Behavior (H. K. Lewis & Company, Ltd., 1952), Chapter 6, “Panic Reactions,” pp. 28-35.
  2. Boulding, Kenneth E., Conflict and Defense (Harper & Brothers, 1962), Chapter 6, “The Group as a Party to Conflict: The Ecological Model,” pp. 105-122.
  3. Schelling, T. C., “Neighborhood Tipping,” Harvard Institute of Economic Research, Discussion Paper No. 100, December 1969.
  4. *Schelling, T. C., “Models of Segregation,” The American Economic Review, Vol. LIX, No. 2 (May 1969), pp. 488-493.

 

VIII. Interactive Models: Two Parties (145 pages)

  1. Boulding, Kenneth E., Conflict and Defense (Harper & Brothers, 1962), Chapter 2, “The Dynamics of Conflict: Richardson Process Models,” pp. 19-40.
  2. Goffman, Erving, Interaction Ritual (Anchor Books, 1967), pp. 97-112, “Embarrassment and Social Organization.”
  3. *Valavanis, Stefan, “The Resolution of Conflict When Utilities Interact,” Journal of Conflict Resolution, Vol. 2 (June 1958), pp. 156-169.
  4. Schelling, T. C., The Strategy of Conflict (Harvard University Press, 1963), Chapter 9, pp. 207-229.
  5. Boulding, Kenneth E., Conflict and Defense (Harper & Brothers, 1962), Chapter 12, “International Conflict: The Basic Model,” and Chapter 13, “International Conflict: Modifications,” pp. 227-273.
  6. Schelling, T. C., “War Without Pain, and Other Models,” World Politics, Vol. 15, No. 3 (April 1963), pp. 465-487.

 

IX. Randomized Decision (55 pages)

  1. *Schelling, T. C., “Zero-Sum Games,” multilith, September 1970.
  2. Schelling, T. C., The Strategy of Conflict (Harvard University Press, 1963), pp. 175-190, 201-203.

 

Total pages: 1,367

Reading period: To be assigned later [see question 6 in final examination below]

 

Economics 1030
Final Exam
January 22, 1971

There are altogether six questions. The sixth contain several alternatives, according to your choice of reading-period assignment. You are not to answer any five questions out of the six. You may not choose more than one among the alternate forms of question six. Specifically, you may answer the first five questions; you may instead answer any four among the first five and one of the alternates in question 6.

The five questions you answer will be given equal weight and are intended to require about equal time.

  1. Each of the terms, concepts or principles listed on the next page is to be identified by reference to a matrix. Several matrices are provided and are adequate, but you may prefer to construct your own. (There may be more than one matrix shown that illustrates a particular concept; some of the matrices shown may illustrate several concepts. You need not make reference to more than one–your own, or one of those shown.)
    In some cases–marked by an asterisk–you need only identify an appropriate matrix; if, for example, one of the terms were “prisoners’ dilemma,” it would be sufficient to indicate Matrix #1. In other cases–where there is no asterisk–you will have to state clearly just what it is about the indicated matrix that exemplifies the concept; for example, if “promise” were one of the terms listed, you could state that in Matrix #1, if Column had first move, Row could promise first row on condition Column choose column 1, improving the expected outcome from payoffs of 1 apiece to 2 apiece in the upper left cell.

Here are the items to be identified:

    1. warning
    2. inducing move
    3. altruist’s dilemma*
    4. zero-difference game*
    5. Pareto equilibrium
    6. convention*
    7. randomized commitment
    8. dominated strategy
    9. threat-vulnerable equilibrium
    10. social contract*
    11. [a first] alternative concepts of “arms agreement”
    12. [a second] alternative concept of “arms agreement”
    13. Insurance as a bargaining advantage or disadvantage

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

  1. Explain the concept of interposition (Charles Walters, “Interposition: The Strategy and Its Uses”), and compare it with non-violent intervention (Gene Sharp, “The Technique of Non–Violent Action,” or Howard Hubbard, “Five Long Hot Summers and How They Grew”), then examine the strategic similarities and differences between (a) naval-force interposition and (b) tactics used to blockade, occupy or immobilize a campus building.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

  1. John Stuart Mill argued that even

…if it may possibly be doubted whether a noble character is always the happier for its nobleness, there can be no doubt that it makes other people happier, and that the world in general is immensely a gainer by it. Utilitarianism, therefore, could only attain its end by the general cultivation of nobleness of character, even if each individual were only benefited by the nobleness of others, and his own, so far as happiness is concerned, were the sheer deduction from the benefit.

Assuming that the hypothesis which Mill discusses is true (that nobleness in itself detracts from individual happiness), under what conditions would you expect individuals to choose to develop noble characters? Discuss with reference to readings and lectures concerning interplay of individual incentives, social organization and moral codes.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

  1. One of the questions on a makeup examination which you will take tomorrow will be based on either an article by Smith or an article by Jones. Your limited time in the library’s rules make it impossible for you to study both articles. If the exam question is based on the Smith article, you will have a 90 percent chance of answering it correctly if you read Smith, but will surely fail to answer correctly if you read Jones; if the exam question is based on Jones, you will have a 60 percent chance of getting it right if you study Jones, no chance otherwise. You will get the question either right or wrong; no partial credit will be given.
    You want to use your study time to maximize the probability of answering the question correctly. Your examiner will choose the exam question in such a way as to minimize the same probability. Both you and she know all of the information in this paragraph, and both of you are familiar with the basic theory of two-person zero-sum games.

A.

    1. Draw a payoff matrix to illustrate the situation, letting your payoffs be represented by the probability of getting the correct answer.
    2. What will be your strategy in this situation?
    3. What will be the teacher’s strategy be?
    4. If you use the strategy which you indicated in A2, what is the probability that you will get a correct answer?

B.

You suddenly recognize that the librarian whom you will be asking for one of the articles is also your teacher’s secretary, and knows which article the question will be based on.

    1. If you could get the secretary to tell you truthfully which article you should read, what would be your probability of getting the correct answer be? (That is, you are to estimate this probability before asking for the article, on the assumption that the librarian will know the answer and answer truthfully.)
    2. If you felt that the librarian/secretary would answer your question truthfully six chances out of 10 but there was a 40 percent chance the examiner would be told that you tried to cheat, resulting in your receiving an automatic zero on this question (but with no other negative consequences), would asking the library and increase your overall probability of getting credit for the question?

C.

If you knew (and the teacher knew that you knew) that the teacher believed that you would have .7 chance of answering either question, given that you studied the right article, but you alone knew that the chances were 90 percent and 60 percent for the two articles as mentioned above:

    1. What would your strategy be?
    2. What would be your probability of getting the question right?

D

Now consider the situation where you might be able to get the question correct even if you chose the wrong article. The chances of this are 1/5 if the question is based on Smith and 2/5 if the question is based on Jones. (Both you and the teacher correctly understand the situation.)

    1. What is your strategy in this case?
    2. What is the teacher’s strategy?
    3. What are your chances for getting the correct answer?

E.

Consider the same problem as in Part D with one change: you and the teacher both know that he wants you to do as well as possible on the exam.

    1. What is your strategy?
    2. What is the teacher’s strategy?
    3. What is your probability of getting the correct answer?

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

  1. You are one of two students in a small class who have arranged to write a paper in lieu of a final exam. You are certain that the grade your paper receives will depend not only on how much time you spend on it but also on how much time the other student spends on his. Even if the examiner tries to judge your paper on its merits alone he will be unconsciously influenced by how it compares with the other student’s paper.

You estimate…

    1. …that you will lose about 3 grade points on other exams for every 10 hours you spend on this paper;
    2. …that your grade on this paper will be:
      1. 5, 9, 12, 14 or 15 points according as you spend 10, 20, 30, 40 or 50 hours on it,
      2. plus 3, 5 or 6 points if you spend 10, 20 or 30 hours more than your rival, and minus 3, 5 or 6 points if you spend 10, 20 or 30 hours less than your rival.

When you plot a smooth graph of your overall grade, taking all three factors into account–quality of your paper, quality of the competing paper, time taken away from your other courses–you get the following “contours” of your overall net score as a function of the time you both devote to your papers.

The graph is interpreted this way. If you work 30 hours and he does nothing, you get a net score of 9 (i.e., a gross score of 12 for your paper on its merits, plus 6 for superiority, less 9 for the 30 hours taken from other courses). If you both work 30 hours you get 3 (the same 12 on your own paper, less 9 on other courses, and did nothing for superiority). If you work 20 hours and he works 10, you get 6. Every point on the graph denotes a combination of your work time and his; every point has an associated net score for you; points of equal score can be connected by “contour lines” is in the graph. (The dotted lines at 45 degrees represents equal time for the two of you.)

You are quite sure that your rival, whoever he is, has a nearly identical graph when he considers his own grade in relation to the time you both spend on your papers.

  1. Draw your “reaction curve” (otherwise called in Boulding, “partial-equilibrium curve” or “reaction function”), and explain what it means.
  2. Drawing on your knowledge that your rival reaches identical estimates with respect to his own grades, draw his reaction curve.
  3. Locate and characterize any equilibria that occur.
  4. Discuss the likely amounts of work the two of you will do on each of the following alternative assumptions:
    1. Each of you can see the other work–in the library, for example–and can keep count of each other’s time, but you are unacquainted and not permitted to consult each other.
    2. You have no idea who the other student is and no way to monitor the amount of work he does, nor does he know who you are.
    3. You do not know who he is, but are sure that he can recognize you and watches you work in the library, keeping track of how much work you do.
    4. You are well enough acquainted to get together and talk the situation over, reaching an understanding about how much work you intend to do, perhaps reaching a bargain on restraining your competition; but you are not close enough friends to be unselfish toward each other and furthermore you do not know how badly each other may need grade points.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

  1. This question is based on the reading period assignment. If you chose one of the following four books answer Part A:

Edward C. Banfield, The Moral Basis of a Backward Society
J. H. Dales, Pollution, Property and Prices
H. L. Nieburg, Political Violence: The Behavioral Process
Carl M. Stevens, Strategy and Collective Bargaining Negotiation

If you chose James M. Buchanan and Gordon Tullock, The Calculus of Consent, answer Part B.

If you chose Erving Goffman, Interaction Ritual, answer Part C.

If you chose Robert Jervis, The Logic of Images in International Relations, answer Part D.

If you chose Mancur Olson, Jr., The Logic of Collective Action, answer Part E.

  1. Identify one or more major themes or propositions in the book which you chose is the reading period assignment. Discuss what you consider to be the most more interesting and/or important ways that these themes illuminate the body of Economics 1030 and are in turn illuminated by it. Be specific.
  2. Buchanan and Tullock
    1. Using their concept of “cost,” explain the roles ascribed by the authors to unanimity rule, majority rule, and any other competing alternatives rules.
    2. On what conditions, if any, or with what reservations, would you accept their point of view?
  3. Goffman

Goffman’s book contains the word, “ritual,” in its title, and every chapter involves some analysis of ritual in phase-to-face behavior even though the chapters were originally independent essays. Explain what “ritual” means in this context and identify its role in the following topics of Economics 1030:

      1. Personal incentives and social organization
      2. Rules, restraints and conventions
      3. Contests and disputes
      4. Formal processes of collective decision
      5. Individual and collective bargaining
  1. Jervis
    Define signals and indices, then illustrate the manipulation of indices, and the veracity and ambiguity of signals, by reference to any one of the following sources of signals and indices, which you should examine in some detail:

    1. An advertising campaign
    2. A student’s essay on a final examination
    3. The public relations involved in the year-long process of selecting a Harvard president
  2. Olson
    Most of Olson’s book is devoted to an analysis of the behavior of large groups. How important is group size? In what ways does the behavior of small groups differ systematically from that of larger ones? What are the most important reasons for this?
    With reference to college courses, speculate briefly on the location and significance of the boundary between “small” and “large.”

Source: Personal copy of course syllabus and final examination shared for transcription at Economics in the Rear-View Mirror by Robert Dohner (Harvard, 1974; M.I.T., 1980).

Image Source: From Schelling testifying before a Senate subcommittee on national security in 1966. New York Times, Dec. 13, 2016.

Categories
Agricultural Economics Economists Harvard Suggested Reading Syllabus Undergraduate

Harvard. Syllabus for “Consumption, Distribution and Prices” taught by PhD (1952) alumnus, Richard H. Holton, 1954-55

 

 

The Harvard course “Consumption, Distribution and Prices” was an odd amalgam. The first semester was a course in marketing and the second semester was a course in the theory of micro- and macroeconomic consumption and saving functions with an added dash of advertising economics and agricultural economic policy thrown in. The instructor for 1954-55 was an assistant professor of economics, Richard Henry Holton who had completed his Ph.D. at Harvard in 1952.  Holton went on to a successful economic policy and academic administrative career culminating in the Deanship of the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley. His biography is sketched in the memorial piece reproduced below.

The syllabus for Economics 107 “Consumption, Distribution and Prices” completes this post.

_________________________

Ph.D. in Economics awarded by Harvard University in 1952

Richard Henry Holton, S.B. in Bus. (Miami Univ.) 1947, A.M. (Ohio State Univ.) 1948.

Special Field, Consumption, Distribution, and Prices. Thesis, “The Supply and Demand Structure of Food Retailing Service: a Case Study.”

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College, 1951-1952, p. 176.

_________________________

IN MEMORIAM
Richard Holton (1926-2005)
E. T. Grether Professor of Marketing, Emeritus
Dean, Haas School of Business
Berkeley

Richard H. Holton was the E. T. Grether Professor of Marketing, Emeritus and, from 1967 to 1975, dean of the Walter A. Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley. Dean Holton, who joined the UC Berkeley faculty in 1957, was a leader in the fields of marketing, international business and entrepreneurship and left a lasting imprint in these areas at the Haas School. Throughout his career, Dean Holton focused on teaching, campus leadership and public service. On leave from the campus from 1963 to 1965, he served as U.S. assistant secretary of commerce. He was thoughtful, considerate, self-effacing, devoted to the greater good of the school and the University, and always alert toward the welfare of colleagues, friends, and family. He was also known for his good stories to liven an occasion, and to soften conflict in an organizational setting.

Holton grew up in the small town of London, Ohio. He attended Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, graduating Phi Beta Kappa in 1947 with honors in economics. At Miami, he met Constance Minzey, whom he married in 1947. The couple moved to Columbus, Ohio, where he earned a master’s degree in economics at Ohio State University. He then enrolled in the doctoral program in economics at Harvard University. He was a resident tutor in Adams House at Harvard, with Constance (Connie), during several years of his graduate studies.

From 1951 to 1952, Holton was assistant director of marketing projects at the Social Science Research Center at the University of Puerto Rico. His work there led to his 1955 monograph, “Marketing Efficiency in Puerto Rico,” written with the late J. K. Galbraith and others. He also was coauthor, with Richard Caves, of another study, “The Canadian Economy: Prospect and Retrospect” (1959).

He was assistant professor of economics at Harvard from 1953 to 1957, and in 1957 he came to UC Berkeley as an associate professor in the School of Business Administration (later renamed the Haas School of Business). Holton became director of the Berkeley campus’s Institute of Business and Economics Research in 1959. He reorganized it to reflect the growing interest in business science. His own research resulted in a steady flow of publications in marketing policies and competition.

From 1962 to 1963, he served as special assistant to the U.S. Secretary of Commerce. President John F. Kennedy appointed him assistant secretary of commerce in February 1963, and he served until February 1965. Holton’s continuing interest in consumer protection resulted in a year’s appointment by President Lyndon B. Johnson as chairman of the President’s Consumer Advisory Council. He also served from 1968 to 1972 as chairman of the Public Advisory Committee on Truth in Lending Regulations of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System.

In 1967, Holton became dean of the School of Business Administration at UC Berkeley. During his tenure, he fostered stronger relationships with business leaders, and served on numerous advisory boards of business organizations. He is widely credited with launching some of the current distinctive capabilities of the Haas School in entrepreneurship and international affairs, and its part-time M.B.A. program. As dean, he also initiated a system of student ratings of all courses at the Haas School, a practice still used today to gauge teaching effectiveness and improve courses over time.

In 1970, Holton started a course in entrepreneurship and business development, one of the first such courses at any business school, enlisting a widely-experienced entrepreneur and Haas School alumnus, Leo Helzel, to co-teach the course. This association led to new support for research and teaching in entrepreneurship, and the formation, with contributions from Williams-Sonoma Chairman Howard Lester, of the Haas School’s Lester Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation. His work with the program in entrepreneurship and innovation helped to generate the school’s immensely popular annual business plan competitions. He is also credited with developing the school’s first curriculum for international business studies, another key element of the school’s current academic programs.

To reach an important new group of students, in 1972 Dean Holton initiated a part-time M.B.A. Program in San Francisco to serve qualified candidates who wanted to gain the benefits of a management degree but were not able to leave their jobs for a full-time M.B.A. program. That program has since evolved into the Berkeley Evening & Weekend M.B.A. Program, which now enrolls more students than does the full-time M.B.A. program; it is now offered on the Berkeley campus and in Silicon Valley. It has accommodated the steadily growing demand by students for a top-ranked management education on a part-time schedule.

In 1981, Holton expanded on a longtime personal interest in international business when he became dean of visiting faculty of the newly established National Center for Industrial Science and Technology Management Development, which was part of the Dalian Institute of Technology in the People’s Republic of China. Holton and his wife commuted between Berkeley and Dalian for the following five years, while he continued his regular faculty duties at UC Berkeley. Between 1980 and 1992, Holton wrote a number of articles on the emergence of a modern, market-based economy in China, writing about international joint ventures and their financing, China’s state planning as compared to market-driven behavior, economic reform of the distribution sector of China, and China’s prospects as an industrialized country. He also coedited a book, United States-China Relations (University of California Press, 1989). Holton traveled extensively in China and led California Alumni Association-sponsored Bear Trek trips there.

Holton was awarded the Berkeley Citation, the campus’s highest honor, at his retirement in 1991. Even after his retirement, for three years until spring of 2005, when his health began to fail, he taught a freshman seminar, “The Economic Development of Modern China”.

Holton kept taped to his desk lamp at home a quote from Thomas Carlyle, reflecting Holton’s belief in his calling as an educator: “There is nothing more fearsome than ignorance in action.” Holton’s love for the campus community was expressed in his enthusiasm for Cal Bears football, his participation in a campus photography club, and his membership in the all-male Monks Chorus, a group of faculty, alumni and others with campus ties who, clad as Franciscan monks, perform at The Faculty Club Christmas feast. Holton joined the Monks (whose history goes back to 1902) in the early 1960s, and sang bass.

Holton loved the mountains, and took every opportunity to take backpacking trips in the Sierra Nevada. He often made these trips with his friend and colleague of more than 40 years, Fred Balderston, an emeritus UC Berkeley professor at the Haas School.

A generous philanthropist and devoted member of public interest organizations, within a year of moving to Berkeley Holton joined the board of directors of the Consumers Cooperative of Berkeley. His board membership with Alta Bates Hospital spanned nearly four decades. He was to be named a 2006 recipient of the Distinguished Service Award from the Alta Bates Summit Foundation. He also served on the board of the Berkeley Public Library Foundation, the Council of Better Business Bureaus, The World Affairs Council of Northern California, and the board of trustees at Mills College. He and his family shared a longtime commitment to the Point Reyes peninsula and the village of Inverness, California.

As his health failed, he was surrounded by his wife and children. He died peacefully at home in Berkeley on Monday, October 24, 2005, after battling cancer and Parkinson’s disease. Holton is survived by Constance, his wife of nearly 60 years; brother, David, of Washington, D.C.; daughters, Melissa Holton, of Moss Landing and Inverness, and Jane Kriss, of Inverness; son, Tim, of Berkeley; and three grandchildren.

Raymond Miles
Frederick Balderston

Source: Senate of the University of California. In Memoriam—Richard Holton (1926-2005).

_________________________

Course Enrollment
1954-55

[Economics] 107. Consumption, Distribution and Prices. Assistant Professor Holton. Full course.

(F) Total 38: 11 Seniors, 22 Juniors, 3 Sophomores, 1 Freshman, 1 Other.
(S) Total 36: 11 Seniors, 23 Juniors, 1 Sophomore, 1 Freshman.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College, 1954-55, p. 89.

_________________________

Economics 107
Consumption, Distribution and Prices
Fall Term, 1954-55

Texts:

Converse, Huegy and Mitchell, Elements of Marketing, Prentice-Hall, 5thedition
Clewett, Marketing Channels, Irwin

  1. Survey of the distributive sector. September 28-October 7.

Compass of the distributive sector; its quantitative importance in the economy; capital coefficients and value added in the distributive sector; the problem of measuring “efficiency” in distribution in contrast with manufacturing; pressures increasing and pressures decreasing distribution costs; distribution and economic growth.

Converse, Huegy and Mitchell, Chapter 1
Stewart and Dewhurst, Does Distribution Cost Too Much? Chapters 1, 2, 5, 10, 11
Black and Houston, Resource-Use Efficiency in the Marketing of Farm Products, pp. 22-47
Westing, Readings in Marketing, Readings 1, 2, 3.

  1. The nature of marketing channels. October 14-October 26.

Alternative types of marketing channels; factors affecting the nature of the channel; vertical integration and quasi-integration; recent changes in distribution channels.

Converse, Huegy and Mitchell, Chapter 4, 5, 13, 15-20, 23, 24.
Clewett, Chapters 2-17
Westing, Readings in Marketing, 19-21, 23, 25
McNair and Hansen, Problems in Marketing: General Mills, p. 199; Whalen, p. 215; National Rock Drill Co., p. 225; Atlas, p. 254.

OCTOBER 28—MID-TERM EXAMINATION

  1. Costs and products of firms in distribution. November 2-November 30.

Empirical cost studies of retail firms; a priori analysis of cost conditions in retailing and wholesaling; selling costs and the advertising budget; cost allocation and cost control in distribution; the nature of the product in distribution; the problem of selecting the product “mix”; the product mix and price discrimination.

Converse, Huegy and Mitchell, Chapter 27, 28, 29, 31, 32.
Clewett, Chapters 18 and 19
Dean, Managerial Economics, Chapters 3 and 6 (pp. 351-375)
Chamberlin, The Theory of Monopolistic Competition, Chapter 7
Cary Company case (on reserve in Lamont)
McNair and Hansen, Problems in Marketing: Richwell, p. 117

  1. Price policy of firms in distribution. December 2-December 18.

Retailers’ pricing practices; role of cost in distributors’ price policy; the determination of trade discounts; price discrimination under the Robinson Patman Act; resale price maintenance.

Converse, Huegy and Mitchell, Chapter 26
Q. F. Walker, “Some Principles of Department Store Pricing,” Journal of Marketing, January 1950
O. Knauth, “Considerations in the Setting of Retail Prices,” Journal of Marketing, July 1949
R. Alt, “The Internal Organization of the Firm and Price Formation,” Quarterly Journal of Economics, February 1949
Dean, Managerial Economics, Chapter 9
S.D. Rose, “Your Right to Lower Your Prices,” Harvard Business Review, September 1951
E. R. Corey, “Fair Trade Pricing, A Reappraisal,” Harvard Business Review, September-October 1952
McNair and Hansen, Problems in Marketing: Dewey and Almy, p. 575; Canners’ League, p. 581; Boothby, p. 608

Reading Period: Margaret Hall, Distributive Trading, Hutchinson’s University Library

 

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

Economics 107
Consumption, Distribution and Prices
Spring Term, 1954-55

It is suggested, but not required, that students buy Heller, Boddy and Nelson, Savings in the Modern Economy.

  1. The demand for consumer goods; Feb. 3-Feb. 24
    1. Consumption expenditures in the aggregate: consumption expenditures and savings in the national income data; the consumption function, long run and short run; determinants of the savings to income ratio; consumer demand, economic growth, and the business cycle.

Readings:

(Review Samuelson, Economics, Ch. 13)
Richard Ruggles, National Income and Income Analysis, Ch. 4, pp. 67-78
Heller, Boddy and Nelson, Savings in the Modern Economy, contributions by Goldsmith, Woodward and Bryce, pp. 133-155; Duesenberry, pp. 195-203; Morgan and Reid, pp. 213-220; Hansen, pp. 47-55; and Slichter, pp. 64-72.
Arthur Burns, The Instability of Consumer Spending, 32nd Annual Report of the National Bureau of Economic Research, pp. 3-20
James S. Duesenberry, Income, Saving and Consumer Behavior, Ch. 3

    1. The theory of consumer demand and the demand for classes of consumer goods: The theory of consumer demand reviewed; the utility approach and the indifference curve approach evaluated; income elasticity, budget studies and Engel’s law; psychological analysis of consumer behavior; trends in U.S. consumption.

Readings:

(Review Samuelson, Ch. 23 and Appendix)
Ruby Norris, The Theory of Consumer’s Demand, Ch. 3
Converse, Huegy and Mitchell, Ch. 2
Talcott Parsons, Essays in Sociological Theory, Ch. 3, “The Motivation of Economic Activity.”
George Katona, Psychological Analysis of Economic Behavior, Ch. 5
Lerner and Lasswell (ed), The Policy Sciences, Ch. 12, “Expectations and Decisions in Economic Behavior,” by G. Katona
“The Changing American Market,” Fortune, August, 1953

Section Meetings:

Feb. 8: National income and the consumption function reviewed
Feb. 15: Consumption function in the current literature
Mar. 1: Marginal utility; indifference curves

  1. The demand for producer goods; March 1-March 8

Investment expenditures and the theory of income determination; investment expenditures in the national income data; the determinants of investment expenditures; fluctuations in inventory investment; the firm’s demand for producers’ goods; the determinants of corporate savings.

Readings:

R.A. Gordon, Business Fluctuations, Ch. 5
Tinbergen and Polak, The Dynamics of Business Cycles, Ch. 13, pp. 163-182
Joel Dean, Managerial Economics, Ch. 10, pp. 549-600
Heller, Boddy and Nelson, Savings in the Modern Economy, contribution by John Lintner, pp. 230-255

Section Meetings:

March 8: Producer demand

  1. Identifying demand conditions for the individual firm; March 10-March 15

Survey of market research and sales forecasting methods

Readings:

Dean, Managerial Economics, Ch. 4, pp. 141-220 only

Section meetings:

March 15: Market research; read Canner’s League of California case in McNair and Hansen, Problems in Marketing, p. 581

  1. Marketing and public policy issues; March 17-March 24

Economic effects of advertising; the problem of consumer information; FTC and FDA control of labeling, standards, and truth in advertising; consumer research and consumer cooperatives as solutions; resale price maintenance and advertising.

Readings:

L. Gordon, Economics for Consumers, Ch. 24 and 26
Neil Borden, Economic Effects of Advertising, Ch. 28, pp. 837-882

Section meetings:

March 22: Review
March 29: Economic effects of advertising

MARCH 29: MID-TERM EXAMINATION

  1. Marketing of farm products; March 31-April 14

The impact of imperfect markets in agriculture; fluctuations in marketing margins over time; futures market; the functioning and control fo futures markets.

Readings:

Converse, Heugy and Mitchell, Ch. 21 and 22
G. Shepherd, Marketing Farm Products, Ch. 9 and 10
W. H. Nicholls, Imperfect Competition within Agricultural Industries, Ch. 4 to p. 81

Section meetings:

April 12: Impact of price support operations on the marketing of farm products

  1. Federal farm policy; April 21-May 3

The goals of an agricultural policy; predecessors of the present program; details of the present policy; advantages and disadvantages of the present policy; the alternatives

Readings:

T. Schultz, Production and Welfare of Agriculture, Ch. 5, 7, 8
Schickele, Agricultural Policy, Ch. 3, 9-17

Section Meetings:

April 26: Mechanics of parity and price supports
May 3: Review

Reading Period Assignment: Ruth Mack, “Economics of Consumption,” in Survey of Contemporary Economics, Vol. II, plus readings to be assigned; and Editors of Fortune, Why Do People Buy, Ch. 1.

 

Source: Harvard University Archives. Syllabi, course outlines and reading lists in Economics, 1895-2003, Box 6, Folder “Economics, 1954-1955”.

Image Source:  “Happy 120th Birthday, Berkeley Haas!” Webpage from Summer 2018.

Categories
Harvard Suggested Reading Syllabus Undergraduate

Harvard. Syllabus and assigned readings for interdisciplinary course, Social Sciences 2, 1970-71.

 

Regular followers of this blog will have noticed a recurring theme of economics education within a broader historical/social scientific curriculum. This post looks at a long-time staple of Harvard’s undergraduate General Education course offerings, Social Sciences 2 “Western Thought and Institutions” that was conceived and taught by government professor Samuel H. Beer over three decades assisted by a changing stable of “section men”[sic! Theda Skocpol was a section leader in 1970-71]. 

I am a firm believer in the virtues of building a broad interdisciplinary foundation before allowing (compelling?) economics majors and graduate students to turn their attention to the technical methods of the discipline. The former promotes the capacity to pose interesting questions and the latter creates a capacity to seek solutions to those questions. 

Following the two Harvard Crimson articles on Professor Beer and his course, Economics in the Rear-View Mirror is delighted to provide the course syllabus with its reading assignments from the academic year 1970-71. Students had to write three papers each term and according to the source for this syllabus (see below), he spend “as much work for SocSci 2 as [he] did for the other three courses combined”.

__________________

Beer’s Soc Sci 2 Comes to A Close With Last Lecture
by Jaleh Poorooshasb
The Harvard Crimson, May 5, 1978

A chapter of Harvard history ended yesterday as Samuel H. Beer, Eaton Professor of the Science of Government, delivered his last Harvard lecture before retiring.

Beer spoke before a packed hall of about 300 students, admirers and colleagues, some of whom had come as far as a thousand miles to hear the grand finale of Social Sciences 2, “Western Thought and Institutions.”

Although Beer will take advantage of retirement regulations that allow him to teach on a half-time basis, Soc Sci 2, which Beer has taught for 30 years, will be gone from Harvard forever.

“In this case, the man made the course and we would not presume to replace him,” John H. Harvey, assistant director of General Education, said yesterday.

In the lecture, which received thunderous applause and a standing ovation, Beer discussed Nazi Germany and ended with a quote from a prison camp survivor saying good and bad people exist everywhere.

Then, before the audience realized the lecture was over, and began clapping and cheering, Beer bounded out the door. He was halfway down Divinity Ave. before Michael Walzer, professor of Government and a former sectionman for Soc Sci 2, caught up with him and invited him to the Faculty Club, where more than 20 former sectionmen attended a luncheon in Beer’s honor.

The list of former sectionmen in Soc Sci 2 includes such notables as Henry A. Kissinger ’50 and James R. Schlesinger ’50.

Old Soldiers?

“Good courses never die,” Walzer said yesterday, adding that Beer’s influence will continue through his former students.

Beer, who is best known for his work in British politics and federalism in America, will continue to study and write books in both fields, Beer said yesterday.

He will teach two government courses at Harvard next fall and will repeat them during the winter quarter at Dartmouth, he added. One course is entitled “American Federalism” and the other “Modern British Politics and Policy.”

One of a Kind

Beer, former chairman of the Government Department at Harvard and author of several major works, “is a rich scholar of the type that is not created any more,” in a world geared toward specialization,” Sidney Verba ’53, chairman of the Government Department, said yesterday.

Beer said he is “quite content to terminate Soc. Sci. 2.”

“My father took it when he was here but I didn’t sign up because he told me it’s too hard,” one freshman, who wished to remain anonymous, said yesterday.

Beer made no personal observations during the lecture. He began by saying, “I really have changed my lectures over the years. I’ve even changed the jokes. But this lecture I haven’t changed. There’s such an air of finality about it.”

Beer has long been considered one of the foremost American experts on the theory of federalism. His writings include “The Modernization of American Federalism.”

Sam Beer, Legendary Gov Prof, Dies at 97
By Huma N. Shah
The Harvard Crimson, April 14, 2009

Last year, when the Harvard government department organized a meeting for alumni, current professors were asked to give a presentation on their projects and research. One participant was former professor and department chair Samuel H. Beer, who gave a short statement about the nuances of political science during his tenure at Harvard from 1946 to 1982.

“He completely stole the show,” said government professor Stanley Hoffmann, a former student of Beer’s. “[The current professors] were all preempted by the master, who spoke without notes, remembering everyone and everything. No one believed the man was 96 years old at the time.”

Beer, a noted scholar of British and American politics, passed away on April 7, at the age of 97.

“He was a spectacularly good teacher because his classes were all in the form of questions he addressed to himself and his students, for which he had all sorts of arguments before coming to his own conclusion,” said Hoffman. “It was very different from the typical top-down sort of lecturing. It was as if he was struggling with his own opinions.”

Beer, the chair of the Harvard government department from 1954 to 1958, served as the Eaton Professor of the Science of Government for years before moving to Boston College in 1982 to be a professor of American politics.

Receiving his B.A. from the University of Michigan, Beer went to England on a Rhodes Scholarship before receiving his Ph.D. in political science from Harvard in 1943. He was later granted an honorary doctorate from the University in 1997 in recognition of “his scholarship and [the] enormous impact his teaching had on undergraduates for over three decades,” said Peter A. Hall, Beer’s former student, who is currently a European studies professor at Harvard.

Beer was most famous for his self-designed course Social Studies 2: “Western Thought and Institutions,” which he taught for 30 years. Students studied six key moments in the development of Western Civilization, and “used theoretical lenses to understand the historical process,” said former teaching fellow Judith E. Vichniac, the current director of the fellowship program at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study.

“Everywhere he went he was stopped on the streets by people who have taken that course,” Hall said. “It was one that inspired thousands of Harvard students.”

The teaching fellows who worked with Beer often went on to careers as academics or public service officials. Some of his famous students included Henry A. Kissinger ’50, Michael Walzer, and Charles H. Tilly ’50.

Before studying at Harvard, Beer was a staff member of the Democratic National Committee, and occasionally wrote speeches for former President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1935 and 1936.

Active in American politics, Beer was chairman of Americans for Democratic Action during his tenure at Harvard from 1959 to 1962. He also actively opposed student rebellions at Harvard during the late sixties.

Beer was elected president of the American Political Science Association in 1977, and was also appointed as a fellow of the British Academy in 2000.

After earning his Ph.D., Beer earned a Bronze Star fighting with the U.S. Army in Normandy. During his time at Oxford in the 1930s, he travelled to Germany, where he saw Hitlerism first hand, according to Government professor Harvey C. Mansfield ’53, another of Beer’s former students.

“He wanted to know how Germany could have fallen so far to embrace these vicious totalitarian ideas,” Mansfield said. “His courses were often directed to that subject.” Beer described the influence of these travels on his graduate work at Harvard in the Oxford Handbook of Political Institutions.

“By the time I came to Harvard in the fall of 1938, I was a fierce anti-communist, a fervent New Dealer, a devotee of Emerson, and ready to try to put it all together….[in] a defense of liberalism against the totalitarian threat,” Beer wrote. Many of his former students praised Beer’s engaging personality and dedication to teaching.

“He had a very good eye for the most important questions in politics and was intensely engaged with the thinkers over the ages who had worked with those questions,” Hall said. “When you talked to Sam Beer you were engaging in a dialogue with Marx, Weber, or Augustine. He had read an enormous amount, and he thought deeply about the big social and political questions throughout his life.”

“He would come to class wearing his military outfit and pump his fist, and tell us what to think about,” Mansfield said.

__________________

SOCIAL SCIENCES 2
READING LIST
Fall Term 1970-71

The work of the Fall Term consists of three essays, one for each topic, and the mid-year examination. Section men will make specific assignments and suggest additional reading for these essays.

Books for Purchase

Students should own the following books, available at the Harvard Coop, or elsewhere as announced:

  1. Bunyan, John, THE PILGRIM’S PROGRESS
    Paperback: New American Library: Signet Classics
  2. DOCUMENTS FOR CLASS USE (Assize of Clarendon, Writs from the treatis called “Glanville” Magna Carta, and the Constitutions of Clarendon). Pamphlet: University Printing Office. On sale in General Education office, 1737 Cambridge St., Rm. 602.
  3. Hill, Christopher, THE CENTURY OF REVOLUTION 1603-1714
    Paperback: W. W. Norton
  4. Marx and Engels, BASIC WRITINGS ON POLITICS AND PHILOSOPHY
    Edited by Lewis S. Feuer. Paperback: Doubleday (Anchor)
  5. Marx and Engels, COMMUNIST MANIFESTO
    Edited by Samuel H. Beer. Paperback: Appleton-Century-Crofts (Crofts Classics)
  6. SOCIAL CONTRACT: ESSAYS BY LOCKE, HUME, AND ROUSSEAU
    Introduction by Ernest Barker. Paperback: Oxford (Galaxy Books)
  7. Tierney, Brian, THE CRISIS OF CHURCH AND STATE 1050-1300
    Paperback: Prentice-Hall (Spectrum)
  8. Weber, Max, THEORY OF SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC ORGANIZATION, translated by A. Herderson and T. Parsons.
    Paperback: MacMillan Free Press.
  9. Walzer, Michael, THE REVOLUTION OF THE SAINTS
    Paperback: Atheneum

 

Attention of members of the course is directed to the new book written by former section men in Social Sciences too, Melvin Richter (Ed.), Essays in Theory and History: An Approach to Social Sciences (Harvard University Press 1970)

Assigned Reading

Everything on the following list is on “closed reserve” in Lamont and Hilles Libraries. The date suggested here will vary during the semester; lectures and section discussions should be your guides.

TOPIC 1: TRADITIONALISM AND THE MEDIEVAL POLITY

  1. Week of September 28: THE SOCIOLOGY OF AUTHORITY
    Weber, Max, THE THEORY OF SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC ORGANIZATION, pp. 324-392.
  2. Weeks of October 5, 12, and 19: FEUDAL MONARCHY IN ENGLAND
    Bloch, Marc, FEUDAL SOCIETY, pp. 59-92, 103-120, 270-274.
    Poole, Austin Lane, FROM DOMESDAY BOOK TO MAGNA CARTA 1087-1216, chaps, I, II, V, X-XIV.
    Jolliffe, J.E.A., THE CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF MEDIEVAL ENGLAND, pp. 139-263.
    John of Salisbury, THE STATEMAN’ S BOOK (from the POLICRATICUS), translated by John Dickinson, Introduction, Text: IV:1, 2, 3, (pp. 9-10), 4, 11; V:1, 2, 5; VI:18, 20, 21, 24; VII:17-19; VIII:17 (pp. 335-9), 18, 20, 23, (pp. 398-9; 405-10)
    DOCUMENTS FOR CLASS USE: Assize of Clarendon, Writs from the Treatis called “Glanvill,” Magna Carta.

Optional: ENGLISH HISTORICAL DOCUMENTS 1042-1189 (Vol. II of series) edited by David C. Douglas and George W. Greenaway. Nos. 1 (years 1135-154), 10, 12, (pp. 322-4, 331-3, 335-8), 16, 19, 58-9, 268.

TOPIC II: DYNAMICS OF MEDIEVAL DEVELOPMENT

  1. Week of October 26: THE SOCIOLOGY OF RELIGION
    Weber, Max, FROM MAX WEBER: ESSAYS IN SOCIOLOGY, edited by H. Gerth and C. W. Mills, “THE SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY OF WORLD RELIGIONS,” pp. 267-301.
    Weber, Max, THE SOCIOLOGY OF RELIGION, edited by Talcott Parsons, chaps. VIII, XI, XIII.
  2. Weeks of November 2: THEORIES OF SPIRITUAL AND TEMPORAL POWER.
    Lovejoy, Arthur O., THE GREAT CHAIN OF BEING, A STUDY OF THE HISTORY OF AN IDEA, pp. 24-77.
    Tierney, Brian, THE CRISIS OF CHURCH AND STATE 1050-1300, pp. 1-95, 127-138.
    Brooke, Z. N., LAY INVESTITURE AND ITS RELATION TO THE CONFLICT OF EMPIRE AND PAPACY (article listed separately in the libraries)
    Tellenbach, Gerd, CHURCH, STATE, AND CHRISTIAN SOCIETY IN THE TIME OF THE INVESTITURE CONTEST, Introduction, chap. 1 (sections 1 and 3), chap. 2, chap. 5 (section 3) and Epilogue.
  3. Week of November 9: THE GREGORIAN REVOLUTION IN ENGLAND
    Duggan, Charles, “From the Conquest to the Death of John,” THE ENGLISH CHURCH AND THE PAPACY IN THE MIDDLE AGEs, edited by C. H. Lawrence, pp. 65-115.
    Poole, A. L., FROM DOMESDAY BOOK TO MAGNA CARTA, chaps. VI, VII.
    DOCUMENTS FOR CLASS USE: Assize of Clarendon.
    Knowles, David, THE EPISCOPAL COLLEAGUES OF ARCHBISHOP THOMAS BECKET, chap. V.

TOPIC III: RELIGIOUS REVOLT AND POLITICAL MODERNIZATION

  1. Weeks of November 16 and 23: Analytical Perspectives
    Marx and Engels, Basic Writings on Politics and Philosophy, edited by Louis S. Feuer, pp. 1-67, 82-111.
    Marx, Karl, CAPITAL, Modern Library edition, pp. 784-837 (chaps. 26-32). In some editions this is chap. 24, entitled, “Primary Accumulation.”
    Beer, Samuel H., Introduction to Marx and Engels, COMMUNIST MANIFESTO, pp. VII-XXIX,.
    Weber, Max, THE PROTESTANT ETHIC AND THE SPIRIT OF CAPITALISM, translated by Talcott Parsons, pp. 35-c. 62, 79-128, 144-183.
  2. Weeks of November 30, and December 7, 14: THE PURITAN REVOLUTION
    Hill, Christopher, THE CENTURY OF REVOLUTION 1603-1714, chaps. 1-11.
    Bunyan, John, THE PILGRIM’S PROGRESS, portions of the First Part: in Signet edition, pp. 17-30, 66-110, 131-148.
    Hexter, J.H., “Storm Over the Gentry,” in Hexter’s REAPPRAISALS IN HISTORY.
    Walzer, Michael, THE REVOLUTION OF THE SAINTS, chaps. I, II, IV, V (pp. 148-171), and IX.
    Walzer, Michael, “The revolutionary uses of repression,” in Richter (Ed.), ESSAYS IN THEORY AND HISTORY.
    Locke, John, AN ESSAY CONCERNING…… CIVIL GOVERNMENT, chaps. 1-9, 19. Available in SOCIAL CONTRACT: ESSAYS BY LOCKE, HUME AND ROUSSEAU.

 

SOCIAL SCIENCES 2
READING LIST
SPRING TERM 1971

Students are asked to buy the following books, which are available at the Harvard Coop, or, in the one case, at the General Education Office.

  1. BRIGGS, Asa, The Making of Modern England
    Paperback: Harper Torch books. Hardcover title: The Age of Improvement.
  2. BURKE, Edmund, Reflections on the Revolution in France
    Paperback: Bobbs-Merrill: The Library of Liberal Arts
  3. HOBBES, Thomas, Leviathan
    Paperback: Penguin
  4. MILL, John Stuart, On Liberty
    Paperback: Appleton-Century-Crofts: Crofts Classic
  5. NIETZSCHE, Friedrich, The Genealogy of Morals
    Paperback: Vintage
  6. RUDÉ, George, Revolutionary Europe, 1783-1815
    Paperback: Harper Torchbook
  7. de TOCQUEVILLE, Alexis, The Old Regime and the French Revolution
    Paperback: Anchor Books

Everything on the following list is on “closed reserve” in Lamont and Hilles Libraries. The date suggested here will vary during the semester; lectures and sections should be your guides.

TOPIC IV: IDEOLOGY AND REVOLUTION

Weeks of February 8 & 15

HOBBES, Thomas, Leviathan, esp. Intro., Chaps. 11, 13-15, 17-21, 26, 29-30, and Review and Conclusion.
ROUSSEAU, Jean-Jacques, The Social Contract, especially Book I; Book II; Book III, chaps. 1-4, 12-18; and Book IV, chaps. 1-2, 7-8 (in the Galaxy paperback edition used for Locke’s SECOND TREATISE in the Fall Term).
BEER, Samuel, “The Development of the Modern Polity,” chap. 3 (Typescript on reserve).

Weeks of February 22 & March 1

RUDÉ, George, Revolutionary Europe, pp. 65-241
de TOCQUEVILLE, Alexis, The Old Regime and the French Revolution, Forward, pp. 1-211.
RICHTER, Melvin, “The uses of theory: Tocqueville’s adaptation of Montesquieu” in Richter, Essays in Theory and History, pp. 94-102.
TILLY, Charles, The Vendee, chaps. 1, 2, 4, 9, 13.

TOPIC V: MODERNIZATION WITHOUT REVOLUTION

Week of March 8:

BURKE, Edmund, Reflections on the Revolution in France, especially 3-4, 18-129, 138-144, 169-200, 233-266, and 286-291 (Page citations to the Library of Liberal Arts paperback edition).

Weeks of March 15, 22, & 29:

BRIGGS, Asa, The Making of Modern England (Hardcover title, The Age of Improvement), chaps. I, II (sections, 2-3), III (section 5), IV-VI, VIII (sections 1-3, through p. 416), and IX (section 3).
DICEY, A. The Lectures on the Relations Between Law and Opinion in England During the 19th century, Lectures 4, 6, 9, 12 (pt. 1).
BEER, Samuel H., British Politics in the Collectivist Age, Introduction, Chaps. I-II, Epilogue (391-409).
MILL, John Stuart, On Liberty, chaps. 1-2, 4

TOPIC VI: THE CRISIS OF MODERNITY

Week of April 12:

NIETZSCHE, Friedrich, The Genealogy of Morals (trans. W. Kaufmann; Vintage paperback).

Weeks of April 19, 26, & May 3:

PINSON, Koppel S., Modern Germany: Its History and Civilization, chaps. 15-21 (First or Second Edition).
EPSTEIN, Klaus, “Three Types of Conservatism” in Richter, Essays in Theory and History, pp. 103-121.
BULLOCK, Alan, Hitler: A Study in Tyranny, chaps. 1-4, 7.
REICHSTAG, Election Statistics, 1919-1933, Mimeographed. To be distributed.
PARSONS, Talcott, “Certain Primary Sources and Patterns of Aggression in the Social Structure of the Western World”, Mimeographed. (This essay also appears in Parsons, Essays in Sociological Theory).
VIERECK, Peter, Metapolitics: From the Romantics to Hitler (Capricorn paperback subtitle: The Roots of the Nazi Mind), Prefatory Note (or, in paperback, “New Survey,” sections 3-4, & chaps. 1-2, 5-7, 11-13).
ERIKSON, Erik H., “The Legend of Hitler’s Childhood” in Childhood and Society, chap. 9.
ECKSTEIN, Harry, A Theory of Stable Democracy.

Reading Period Extra: Nazi Films
Wednesday, May 12, at 7 p.m., Lowell Lecture Hall

FINAL EXAMINATION June 4

Source: Personal copy of course syllabus shared for transcription at Economics in the Rear-View Mirror by one my longest, dearest economics and personal chums, Robert Dohner (Harvard, 1974; M.I.T., 1980).

Image Source:  Samuel H. Beer, 1953 Fellow of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.

Categories
Exam Questions Harvard History of Economics Suggested Reading Syllabus

Harvard. Graduate history of political economy course. Taylor, 1948-49

 

 

Overton Hume Taylor served as the Harvard economics department’s one-man show of PPE interdisciplinarity at both the undergraduate and graduate level for about two decades covering the middle of the 20th century. Materials from six of his courses have already been posted.

Econ 1. (with Leontief and Chamberlin) Honors Economic Theory, 1939-40
Econ 1b. Intellectual Background of Economic Thought, 1941, [Final Exam for the Course]
Econ 115. (with Leontief) Programs of Social and Economic Reconstruction, 1942-43
Econ 115. Economic and Political Ideas, 1948 , [Mid-year Exam for Economic and Political Ideas]
Econ 111. (with others) Economics of Socialism, 1950
Econ 111. Socialism, 1955

Here is a link to Taylor’s A History of Economic Thought (1960) that puts between two covers much, if not all, of what he had to say about the history of economics, politics and philosophy. 

Kindred spirits are to be found behind the course syllabi by Louis Putterman at Brown (1995) and Michael Piore at M.I.T (1977) posted earlier.

_____________________

Course Enrollment

[Economics] 205a (formerly Economics 105a). Main Currents of Thought in Economics and Related Studies over Recent Centuries (F). Dr. O. H. Taylor.

Total 15: 4 Graduates, 3 Seniors, 6 Public Administration, 2 Radcliffe.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College, 1948-49, p. 77.

_____________________

Course Syllabus

Main Currents of Thought in Economics and Related Studies over Recent Centuries
Economics 205a
1948-49

  1. September 30—October 7. Introduction: Plato and the Middle Ages; Hobbes and the Mercantilists

Reading: (1) Plato Republic, Book II; (2) Hobbes, Leviathan, Chs. 1, 6, 13, 14, 17, 18, 21, 24; (3) One of the following: Sir T. Mun, England’s Treasure; Sir J. Child, Discourses in Trade; Sir D. North, Discourse on Trade; or Locke, Interest and Money

Thursday, September 30, Introductory lecture.

Tuesday, October 5. Plato and the ancient-medieval antecedents of modern-western culture and economic thought. Modernity vs. medievalism; 17th century England; and Hobbes vs. Plato

Thursday, October 7. 17th century English mercantilism and economic theory

  1. October 14—21. Liberalism; Locke, the Physiocrats, and Adam Smith; and Benthamism

Reading: (1) O. H. Taylor, 2 articles on natural law ideas and economics, Quarterly Journal of Economics, Vol. 44; (2) Locke, Civil Government, II, Chs. 2, 5, 7-12, inclusive; and (3) Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, Chs. 1-7.

[Tuesday, October 12, Holiday]

Thursday, October 14. Liberalism and economic thought-varieties of former and their effects on latter—from early-modern times to the present

Tuesday, October 19. Ethical natural law and early-modern liberalism. Locke vs. Hobbes. Locke, Newton, and 18th century ideas of the natural order. Philosophies and economic theories of the Physiocrats and Adam Smith

Thursday, October 21. Benthamism. Utility and natural law. Utilitarian liberalism and classical economics

  1. October 26—November 4. Malthus and Ricardo; the Romantic Reaction: Comte; Early Socialism and J. S. Mill

Reading: (1) Ricardo, Principles of Political Economy, Chs. 11-6; (2) Sabine, History of Political Theory, Chs. 28, 29, 30, 34; (3) A. Comte, Positive Philosophy (translation, Martineau), Introd. Ch. 1; Book VI, 1, 2; and (4) J. S. Mill, Logic, Book VI.

Tuesday, October 26. (1) Malthus vs. the anarchist-socialists; (2) Ricardo’s Economic theory

Thursday, October 28. The romantic reaction against rationalism, science and liberalism. Political and economic ideas of the English romanticists. Special development of this outlook in Germany

Tuesday, November 2. Romanticism, positivism, and the main 18th century outlook-interrelations. The positivism of August Comte vs. liberalism and economic science

Thursday, November 4. (1) Pre-Marxian socialism; (2) J. S. Mill’s attempted synthesis

  1. November 9—18. Marxism

Reading: (1) Burns, Handbook of Marxism, Chs. 1, 13, 14, 22, 26, 29, 30; (2) Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy, Part I.

Tuesday, November 9. “Utopian” socialism, Hegel, Ricardo, and Marx; and the Marxian theory of history

[Thursday, November 11, Holiday]

Tuesday, November 16. The Marxian economics—theory of capitalism

Thursday, November 18. The Marxian vision of the future beyond capitalism; and concluding remarks on Marxism

  1. November 23—December 7. Victorian Conservative Liberalism and Neo-Classical Economics

Reading: A. Marshall, Principles of Economics, Book I, Chs. 1 and 2; Appendices A, B; Book III; Book IV, Chs. 1-3 inclusive and 8-13 inclusive; Book V, Chs. 1-5 inclusive

Tuesday, November 23. How in late 19th century the classical liberalism, originally a radical, became a conservative ideology. Social Philosophy of conservative liberalism, and new developments of economic theory in this context after 1870

[Thursday, November 25, Holiday]

Tuesday, November 30. Utility economics and utilitarianism—the free price system and economic welfare. Marginal productivity and distributive justice—Clark and Carver. And neo-classical theories about capital, money, business cycles, monopoly, and economic progress.

Thursday, December 2. The development, value, and limitations of mathematical economics

Tuesday, December 7. The special views and system of Alfred Marshall

  1. December 9—16. Veblen; Chamberlin; and Keynes

Reading: Max Lerner; The Portable Veblen (Viking Library), pp. 215-297; 306-349; 377-395; 431-467

Thursday, December 9. Thorstein Veblen’s philosophy and sociology (called economics) vs. the main-tradition economics. His contributions to “institutional economics,” and to the “New Deal” and latter-day American  liberalism.”

Tuesday, December 14. Veblen vs. neo-classical theory of competition, and Chamberlin’s theory of monopolistic competition. Critique of latter as analysis, and in its bearings and problems of public policy.

Thursday, December 16. “Keynesianism” the decisive break with neo-classicism and the old economic-liberal orthodoxy. Its antecedents in the main tradition of economic theory, and relations to mercantilism, liberalism, and socialism. Its contribution to analysis and policy, and its limitations.

[Reading Period]

“Dr. Taylor will announce assignment in class.”

[Based on last examination question below, the reading period assignment would probably have been: David Wright, Democracy and Progress]

 

Source: Harvard University Archives. Syllabi, course outlines and reading lists in Economics, 1895-2003. Box 4, Folder “Economics, 1948-1949 (2 of 2)”.

_____________________

Final Examination

ECONOMICS 205a
HARVARD UNIVERSITY
1948-49

Write on four questions, including the first and last in the following list. Devote one hour to the first question, and one hour to one of the others, marking as such your two one-hour essays.

  1. Discuss the statements (a), (b), and (c) below—each in turn, briefly, indicating with reasons your agreement or disagreement. Then either select the one (if any) which you agree with, or otherwise state your own position on the problem; and apply (illustrate) that position through relevant comments on any two of the general patterns of political-and-economic thought considered in the course.
    1. “Historical study of the co-variation of economic with political thought refutes the scientific claims of economics. Economists have always divided into ‘schools,’ on political lines; and each ‘school’ has developed its own system of economic theory, in conflict with all others, and in a close tie-up with its own partisan, political philosophy.”
    2. “Economists have too often mingled and confused suggestions of their personal, philosophical and political opinions with their contributions to scientific, economic theory or analysis. But in reality the former have been irrelevant, the latter independent of them; and the competent economists of all political persuasions have converged to agreement in the field of the science itself.”
    3. “The political philosophies of economists have not as a rule made their economic theories by any means wholly unscientific or non-scientific, nor—however sharp the oppositions between the former—irreconcilable. But they have produced biased concentrations on the special groups of economic-scientific problems seen as important from the standpoints of the political philosophies; and made all economic theories partial analyses, disclosing means to desired ends.”
  2. “Unqualified adherence to the premise that ‘natural’ human behavior is simply rational pursuit of individual self-interest, would have logically obliged Adam Smith and the classical economists after him to follow Hobbes in supporting a ‘Totalitarian,’ despotic government as indispensable for civil peace and order; and to follow the ‘mercantilist’ writers in supporting economic controls by such a government, as indispensable for national prosperity and an orderly working of the national economy. The ‘liberal,’ political and policy views of Adam Smith and his followers required and had as their ultimate foundation, a belief—shared with Locke but not with Hobbes—that moral self-restraint in deference to the rights of others is a ‘natural,’ human disposition, capable of limiting self-interested action to what is consistent with it.” Discuss.
  3. “The entire main tradition of economic theory, in its development from the eighteenth through the nineteenth into the twentieth century, retained, in defiance of growing factual evidence, a strong optimistic bias about the free-competition market economy—identification of its equilibrium with a social-economic optimum—which had its sole origin in the eighteenth century’s optimistic, metaphysical belief in an harmonious, natural order.” Discuss.
  4. Discuss the apparent and often alleged intellectual debts or similarities of basic elements of (a) Ricardian classical economic theory, (b) the later body of ‘neo-classical’ theory emphasizing ‘marginal utility’ etc., and (c) Pigou’s and more recent theories of ‘welfare economics,’ to Bentham’s psychological, ethical, and social theories. What elements of each (a, b, and c) might appear to derive from ‘Benthamism,’ and what real similarities and significant differences do you see between them and the corresponding elements of the latter?
  5. Describe and discuss either (a) the English and German ‘romantic’ or (b) August Comte’s ‘positivistic’ line of attack upon the classical-liberal pattern of political-and-economic thought and its ‘eighteenth century philosophical foundation.’
  6. Compare and discuss Ricardo’s and Marx’s “labor theory of value”—explaining how each author developed, supported, construed, and used the theory; the points wherein you think they agreed or differed; and the points you would make in defense and/or criticism of each author’s theory.
  7. Outline, explain briefly, and discuss critically the main philosophical and economic-theoretical ingredients of the Marxian “dynamic” theory of evolving capitalism.
  8. “In the development of economic theory since its early classical period, the prevalence of a too single-minded pursuit of increasing logical precision and rigor, mistakenly conceived as the whole of scientific progress, has made theory increasingly abstract and decreasingly useful in the study of concrete, real problems.”
  9. Compare and contrast the Veblenian with the Marxian theory of the modern ‘capitalist’ culture, the ‘class’ conflict within it, why and how ‘business’ injures the economic welfare of society, and the kind of régime which should (and will or may) replace ‘capitalism’ in the future; and develop your own appraisal or critique of Veblen’s views on these matters.
  10. Write your own summary of and commentary on the central thesis of David Wright’s “Democracy and Progress,” concerning the historic method or secret of modern economic progress, and the cultural and political trends now menacing its continuance.

 

Source:  Harvard University Archives. Final Examinations, 1853-2001. Box 16, Papers Printed for Final Examinations: History, History of Religions, Government, Economics,…Military Science, Naval Science, Feb. 1949.

Image Source:  Overton Hume Taylor, Lecturer on Economics and Tutor. Harvard Class Album, 1939.

Categories
Economic History Exam Questions Harvard Suggested Reading Syllabus

Harvard. Development of Industrial Society. Course outline, readings, exam. Usher, 1933-34

 

An earlier post provides biographical information as well as links to other economic history courses taught by Abbott Payson Usher at Harvard. This post provides course enrollment data, outline and reading assignments, and the final examination questions for Usher’s course on the industrial history of western Europe up through English industrialisation.

__________________

Course Enrollment

[Economics] 10b1 hf. Associate Professor Usher. – The Development of Modern Industrial Society, 1450-1850.

Total, 12: 10 Graduates, 2 Juniors.

 

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

__________________

Reading, Economics 10b.
1933-34.

  1. Industrial Development, 1450-1850. To be completed, Oct. 30.

Bober, M.M. Karl Marx’ Interpretation of History, pp. 192-201.

Parsons, T. Capitalism in recent German Literature, Journal of Political Economy, vol. 36, pp. 641-661; vol. 37, pp. 31-51.

Usher, A.P. History of Mechanical Inventions, pp. 1-31, 221-355.

Mantoux, P. The Industrial Revolution in the 18thCentury, pp. 47-93, 193-317, 349-452.

Nef, J.U. The Rise of the British Coal Industry, I, 19-22, 165-189; II, 319-330.

Usher, A.P. Industrial History of England, 195-224, 247-271, 314-380.

Webb, S. and B. History of Trade Unionism, pp. 57-161.

  1. The reorganization of the agrarian system. To be completed, Nov. 13.

Mantoux, P. The Industrial Revolution in the 18thCentury, pp. 140-160.

Ernle, Lord. English Farmers Past and Present, (ed. 1917, 1919, 1922.) pp. 55-102, 148-175, 290-315.

Clapham, J.H. The Economic Development of France and Germany, pp. 6-52.

Renard, G. and Weulersse, G. Life and Labor in Modern Europe, pp. 205-247. (French ed. pp. 272-330.)

  1. The Rise of Economic Liberalism. To be completed, Nov. 27.

Armitage-Smith, G. Free Trade and its Results, pp. 39-61.

Marshall, Industry and Trade, (1923) 749-766. (British Move. to F.T.)

Barnes, D.G. History of the English Corn Laws, pp. 68-98, 117-156, 239-284.

Ashley, P. Modern Tariff History, (3rd. Ed.) pp. 3-132.

  1. The Beginnings of the Railroad. To be completed, Dec. 8.

Pratt, E.A. A History of Inland Transport in England, pp. 165-185, 195-257.

Usher, A.P. Industrial History of England, pp. 431-458.

Raper, C.L. Railway Transportation, pp. 61-82, 134-149, 166-177.

Clapham, J.H. Economic History of Modern Britain, I, pp. 75-97.

  1. The Rise of the Bank of England, To be completed, Dec. 22.

Richards, R.D. The Early History of Banking in England, pp. 23-64, 132-175, 189-201.

Andreades, A. History of the Bank of England, pp. 60-71, 284-294, 312-331, 370-389.

Silberling, N.J. The Financial and Monetary Policy of Great Britain during the Napoleonic Wars, Q.J.E., vol. 38, pp. 214-233, 397-439.

Clapham, J.H. Economic History of Modern Britain, II, pp. 333-385.

Reading Period

Economics 10b.

Readings for the graduate members of the course will be found posted in the Graduate Economics Library.

Undergraduates are to read 350 pages from any two of the following titles:

(1) Ashton, T.A., Iron and Steel in the Industrial Revolution.
(2) Nef, J.U., The Rise of the British Coal Industry.
(3) Wadsworth, A.P. and J. Mann, The Cotton Trade and Industrial Lancashire.
(4) Chapman, S.J., The Lancashire Cotton Industry.
(5) Daniels, G.W., The Early English Cotton Industry.

 

Source: Harvard University Archives. Syllabi, Course Outlines and Reading Lists, 1895-2003. Box 2, Folder “Economics 1933-34”.

__________________

European Industry and Commerce
1450-1850
Books for review.

Moffit, Louis W. England on the eve of the Industrial Revolution.

Bowden, Witt. Industrial society in England towards the end of the eighteenth century.

Redford, Arthur. Labour migration in England, 1800-1850.

Tawney, R.H. Religion and the rise of capitalism.

Weber, Max. The protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism.

Warner, Wellman J. The Wesleyan movement in the Industrial Revolution.
and
Grubb, Isabel. Quakerism and Industry before 1800.

Daniels, George W. The early English cotton Industry.

Wadsworth, A.P. and Mann, Julia. The Cotton Trade and Industrial Lancashire, 1600-1780.

Unwin, George. Samuel Oldknow and the Arkwrights.

Heaton, Herbert. The Yorkshire Woollen and Worsted industries.

Ashton, Thomas. Iron and Steel in the Industrial Revolution.

Ashton, T. and Sykes, J. The Coal Industry of the eighteenth century.

Roll, Erich. An experiment in Industrial organization.

Allen G.C. The Industrial development of the Black Country.

Hovell, Mark. The Chartist movement.

Pomfret, J.E. The struggle for land in Ireland.

Albion, Robert. Forests and Sea Power.

Ackworth, A.W. Financial reconstruction in England, 1815-22.

Lord, J. Capital and Steam Power.

Brady, Alexander. William Huskisson.

Ramsay, Anna. Sir Robert Peel.

Cole, G.D.H. Life of William Cobbett.

Jenks, L.H. Migration of British Capital to 1875.

Siegfried, A. La crise Britannique au XXe siècle.

Rappard, William. La révolution industrielle et les origines de la protection légale du travail en Suisse.

Lewinski, Jan de St. L’évolution industrielle de la Belgique.

Hammond, J.L. The age of the Chartists.

Hammond, J.L and B. The skilled labourer.

______________. The rise of modern industry.

Bessemer, Sir Henry. Autobiography.

Wallas, Graham. Life of Francis Place.

Berdrow, W. Krupp: a great business man seen through his letters.

Roe, J. W. British and American Toolmakers.

[handwritten additions follow]

Ballot, Charles. L’introduction du machinisme dan l’industrie française.

Sée, H. Modern Capitalism.

Sée, H. L’Évolution commerciale et industrielle de la France.

Hauser, H. Les débuts du capitalisme.

Boissonnade, G. Colbert et la dictature du travail.

Source: Harvard University Archives. Syllabi, Course Outlines and Reading Lists, 1895-2003. Box 2, Folder “Economics 1933-34”.

__________________

Final Examination

HARVARD UNIVERSITY
ECONOMICS 10b2
June 1934

I
(About one hour.)

  1. Write an essay on one of the following topics:
    1. Graduates:
      the position of Malthus in the light of historical studies of population,
      primary factors affecting the increase of population in the eighteenth or early nineteenth century,
      vital indices and the measurement of material well-being,
      biological laws of population growth,
      the processes of invention and achievement.
    2. Undergraduates:
      an episode in the history of any one of the following industries, cotton, coal, or iron,
      Sée’s concept of modern capitalism and its development, the processes of invention and achievement.

II
(About two hours.)
Answer four questions.

  1. Discuss the development of the factory system in the eighteenth century.
  2. In what ways did the introduction of crop rotations furnish motives for the enclosure of arable land.
  3. What were the purposes of the Corn Laws in the period 1815 to 1840? What was the actual effect of these laws?
  4. Describe the relations between the State and the Railways in France, 1840-1883.
  5. Sketch the development of central banking in England to 1860.

Source: Harvard University. Examination Papers, Finals 1934. (HUC 7000.28) Vol. 76 of 284.

Image Source: Abott Payson Usher faculty picture in Harvard College, Class Album 1939.

Categories
Harvard Socialism Suggested Reading Syllabus Undergraduate

Harvard. Undergraduate economics syllabus. Socialism, O.H. Taylor, 1955

 

 

The economics of socialism was a regular undergraduate course offering at Harvard from the turn of the twentieth century to well into the second half of the century. Besides the syllabus with assigned readings  along with the final examination questions.

Transcriptions of related course materials at the following links:

Economics of Socialism (Ec 111) taught by Taylor in 1952-53

Economics of Socialism (Ec 111) taught by Schumpeter, Taylor with lectures by Gerschenkron and Galenson in 1949-50.

Economics of Socialism (Ec 11b) taught by Schumpeter in 1945-46

Economics of Socialism (Ec 11b) taught by Schumpeter in 1943-44

Economics of Socialism (Ec11b) taught by Sweezy in 1939-40

Economics of Socialism (Ec11b) taught by Mason and Sweezy in 1937-38

Programs of Social Reconstruction  (Ec 7c) taught by Mason  in 1933

Economics of Socialism, Anarchism and the Single Tax  (Ec 7b) taught by Carver  in 1920

Socialism and Communism (Ec 14) taught by Carver and Bushnee in 1901-02

____________________

Course enrollment

[Economics] 111. Socialism. Dr. O. H. Taylor. Half course. (Spring)

Total, 9: 1 Graduate, 3 Seniors. 1 Junior, 1 Sophomore, 3 others.

 

Source:  Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College, 1954-55. P. 89.

   ____________________

Course Syllabus

HARVARD UNIVERSITY
Department of Economics
Spring Term, 1955

Economics 111

  1. Feb. 2-11. Pre-Marxian Socialism.

Reading due Feb. 11: H. Laidler, Social-Economic Movements, chs. [8-12]

Wed., Feb. 2. Introductory Lecture, about the course.

Fri., Feb. 4. Lecture: Antecedents of Socialist thought in European culture — ancient, mediaeval, and early-modern.

Mon., Feb. 7. Lecture: Antecedents of socialist thought, II—The “enlightenment,” liberalism, and socialism; A. Smith, Bentham, Ricardo, and others.

Wed., Feb. 9. Lecture: The “utopian” socialists—St. Simon, Fourier, and R. Owen.

Fri., Feb. 11. Discussion.

  1. Feb. 14-Mar. 4. Marxian Socialism—the Doctrinal System of Karl Marx.

Reading due Feb. 18: Marx and Engels, The Communist Manifesto
J. A. Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy, Part I

Mon., Feb. 14. Lecture: “Utopian” socialism, Hegel, Ricardo, and Marx’s “scientific” socialism.

Wed., Feb. 16. Lecture: Hegel and Marx, philosophers of history; and Marx’s “science” of society and history.

Fri., Feb. 18. Discussion.

Reading due Feb. 25: P. M. Sweezy, Theory of Capitalist Development, parts I, II.

Mon., Feb. 21. Lecture: Marx’s economics. 1—Theories of value, wages, surplus value, accumulation of capital, and evolving capitalism.

Wed., Feb. 23. Lecture: Marx’s economics. 2—Theory of capitalism’s evolution and decline or life-cycle; crises (business cycle), change from competitive to monopoly capitalism, and transition to socialism.

Fri. Feb. 25. Discussion.

Reading due Mar. 4: P. M. Sweezy, Theory of Capitalist Development, Part IV.
J.A. Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy, Part II.
O. H. Taylor article, “Schumpeter and Marx,” Quarterly Journal of Economics, November 1951.

Mon., Feb. 28. Lecture: Modern Marxist (Communist) additions to Marx’s doctrines about capitalism in decline, and the transition; theory of “imperialism,” etc.

Wed., Mar. 2. Lecture: Schumpeter and Marx—two views of capitalism and its history and destiny—a comparison and contrast, illuminating Marxism.

Fri., Mar. 4. Discussion.

  1. Mar. 7-18. Marxian Socialism in Germany and Europe—Party Histories—to World War I.

Reading due Mar. 11: Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, Part V.
P. M. Sweezy, Socialism, Chs.

Mon., Mar. 7. Lecture: Marx, Lasalle, and the German Social Democratic Party, to the Gotha Program.

Wed., Mar. 9. Lecture: The Revisionist Controversy of the German Socialists.

Fri., Mar. 11. Discussion.

Reading due Mar. 18: [blank]

Mon., Mar. 14. Lecture: Histories of French and Italian Socialism.

Wed., Mar. 16. Lecture: History of Scandinavian Socialism.

Fri., Mar. 18. Discussion.

  1. Mar. 21-April 1. English Socialism—History.

Reading due Mar. 25: G.D.H. Cole, A Short History of the British Working Class Movement, Part I, chs. 5-9 incl. and Part II.
The Fabian Essays.

Mon., Mar. 21. Lecture: From Owen to the Fabians.

Wed., Mar. 233. Lecture: Fabian Socialism.

Fri., Mar. 25. Discussion.

Reading due April 1: New Fabian Essays.

Mon., Mar. 28. Lecture: Evolution (since 1900) of the English Labor Party and its Socialism.

Wed., Mar. 30. Lecture: English Socialism, 1945-50—Partial Realization, and Changing Outlook.

Fri., April 1. Discussion.

April 3-10. SPRING RECESS.

  1. April 11-22. Russian Communism and the Soviet System.

Reading due April 15: M. Dobb
A. Baykov, Dev. Soviet Econ. System

Mon., Apr. 11. Lecture: Lenin, the Russian Revolution, and Early Evolution of the Soviet System.

Wed., Apr. 13. Lecture: The Five-Year Plans; Russia’s Industrialization and Economic Policies

Fri., Apr. 15. Discussion

Reading due April 22: [blank]

Mon., Apr. 18. Lecture: The Russian Economy—Operation.

Wed., Apr. 20. Lecture: Russian Society, State, and Civilization—Extra-Economic Features of the System.

Fri., Apr. 22. Discussion.

  1. April 25-May 2. Economic Theory of Liberal Socialism—The Lange Model.

Reading due May 2: Lippincott (ed.), Economics of Socialism

Mon., Apr. 25. Lecture: History of Modern Theory of “Competitive” Socialism: Von Mises, Barone, Lange, etc.

Wed., Apr. 27. Lecture: The O. Lange Model and Argument

Fri., Apr. 29. Lecture: Problems of Full Socialism in Practice.

Mon., May 2. Discussion.

 

Reading Period

David M. Wright. Capitalism (entire book).

 

Source: Harvard University Archives. Syllabi, course outlines and reading lists in Economics, 1895-2003. Box 6, Folder “Economics, 1954-1955 (1 of 2)”.

   ____________________

1954-55
HARVARD UNIVERSITY
ECONOMICS 111
[Final Examination. June, 1955]

Write half-hour answers to six of the following questions including no. 8

  1. (a) Explain and discuss (as to its validity) all that you think Marx meant in describing pre-Marxian socialist thought as “utopian,” and in claiming that his own new kind was “scientific.”
    (b) Briefly characterize the outlook and program either of Fourier or of Robert Owen, and discuss the questions whether, how far, and wherein it was “utopian” in Marx’s sense.
  2. Summarize briefly, and discuss critically, Marx’s general theory of the process and pattern of all human history, or social evolution.
  3. Give a general account and criticism of the main ideas in Marx’s critical analysis of capitalism and its prospects—the main things that he claimed to see and/or foresee as the economic system’s destined-to-become-fatal flaws, and the way in which they would develop and bring on its doom and the advent of socialism.
  4. Discuss what have tended to be the chief problems or difficulties of Marxian socialist parties, endeavoring to adhere closely to the teachings of Marx and at the same time to cope with the practical exigencies arising in their careers as political parties. Illustrate your points from the history of the German Social Democratic Party.
  5. Give a general account of English Fabian socialism—its main distinctive characteristics, ideas, aims, and tactics—in comparison and contrast with Marxian socialism.
  6. Explain and discuss what you think are the main attractions and disattractions of present-day Communism for the world’s economically backward countries.
  7. State and explain your opinions about (a) the theoretically possible and (b) the likely actual success of a (realized) socialism that would do its best to carry out Oscar Lange’s proposals, in serving the economic welfare of the people better than it could be served by private capitalism.
  8. Write a critical review of or commentary on Pigou’s essay “Socialism vs. Capitalism.”

Source: Harvard University Archives. Papers Printed for Final Examinations [in] History, History of Religions, … , Economics, … , Naval Science, Air Science, June, 1955. Included in bound volume Final Exams, Social Sciences, June, 1955 (HUC 7000.28, Vol. 110).

Image Source: O.H. Taylor in Harvard College, Class Album 1952.

Categories
Harvard Sociology Suggested Reading Syllabus

Harvard. Principles of Sociology, Syllabus and Exams. Carver and Ripley, 1902-1903

 

The discipline of sociology was only a subfield of economics at Harvard long after the University of Chicago had  established an independent department of sociology upon the founding of that university in 1892. William Z. Ripley and Thomas N. Carver were jointly teaching the course at Harvard at the turn of the twentieth century. This course was taught for nearly three decades by Carver, e.g. an earlier post with materials for Economics 8, Principles of Sociology taught by Thomas Nixon Carver in 1917-18.

Note: Updated 31 Jan 2023 with links to all the items on the reading list along with the semester examination questions. Colorized portraits of Carver and Ripley have also been added.

Cf. A few years later Thomas Nixon Carver compiled a book of course readings (over 800 pages!): Sociology and Social Progress: A Handbook for Students of Sociology. Boston: Ginn & Company, 1905.

________________

Course Announcement and Description

[Economics] 3. Principles of Sociology. — Theories of Social Progress. Mon., Wed., and (at the pleasure of the instructor) Fri., at 1.30. Professors Carver and Ripley.

The work of the first term will consist of an outline of the structure and development of social and political institutions, based upon a comparative study of primitive, barbarous, and civilized peoples. Among the topics considered will be the following, viz.: the physical and environmental factors in mental and social evolution, the racial elements in nationality and other social phenomena, with a discussion of modern racial problems in the United States and Europe, the interaction of mental and social evolution, the history and development of the family, and of religious, legal, and political institutions, and the relation of custom to religion and law. The principal authors discussed will be Tylor, Maine, Westermarck, and Spencer. The treatment will in the main be historical and comparative; aiming to afford data for the analytical and critical work of the second term.

In the second term this is followed by an analysis of the factors and forces which have produced modifications of the social structure and secured a greater degree of adaptation between man and his physical and social surroundings. The relation of property, the family, the competitive system, religion, and legal control to social well-being and progress are studied with reference to the problem of social improvement. Bagehot’s Physics and Politics, Ward’s Dynamical Sociology, Giddings’s Principles of Sociology, Patten’s Theory of Social Forces, and Kidd’s Social Evolution are each read in part. Lectures are given at intervals, and students are expected to take part in the discussion of the authors read and the lectures delivered.

Course 3 is open to students who have passed satisfactorily in Course 1 [Outlines of Economics].

 

Source:  Harvard University, The University Publications (New Series, No 55). Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Division of History and Political Science Comprising the Departments of History and Government and Economics, 1902-03 (June 14, 1902), p. 41.

________________

Course enrollment

[Economics] Professors CARVER and RIPLEY. — Principles of Sociology. Theories of Social Progress.

Total 44: 8 Graduates, 17 Seniors, 11 Juniors, 3 Sophomores, 5 Special.

 

Source: Harvard University. Annual Report of the President 1902-03, p. 67.

________________

Economics 3

To be read in full

  1. Herbert Spencer. Principles of Sociology. [3 vols., 3rd rev. ed., 1898]
  2. Walter Bagehot. Physics and Politics.
  3. Benjamin Kidd. Social Evolution.
  4. F. H. Giddings. Principles of Sociology.

Collateral Reading.
Starred references are prescribed.

I. Scope and Method of Sociology
  1. August Comte. Positive Philosophy. Book VI. Chs. 2—4.
  2. Herbert Spencer. Classification of the Sciences, in Essays: Scientific, Political, and Speculative. Vol. II.
  3. _______*. The Study of Sociology. Chs. 1—3.
  4. J. S. Mill. System of Logic. Book VI.
  5. W. S. Jevons. Principles of Science. Ch. 31. Sec. 11.
  6. Lester F. Ward. Outlines of Sociology. Pt. I.
  7. J. W. H. Stuckenberg. Introduction to the Study of Sociology. Chs. 2 and 3.
  8. Émile Durkheim. Les Regles de la Méthode Sociologique.
  9. Guillaume de Greef. Les Lois Sociologiques.
  10. Arthur Fairbanks. Introduction to Sociology. Introduction.
II. The Factors of Social Progress
A. Physical and Biological Factors
  1. Herbert Spencer. The Factors of Organic Evolution, in Essays: Scientific, Political, and Speculative. Vol. I.
  2. _______. Progress, its Law and Cause, in Essays: Scientific, Political, and Speculative. Vol. I.
  3. Auguste Comte. Positive Philosophy. Book VI. Ch. 6.
  4. Lester F. Ward. Dynamical Sociology. Ch. 7.
  5. Simon N. Patten*. The Theory of Social Forces. Ch. 1.
  6. Geddes and Thompson. The Evolution of Sex. Chs. 1, 2, 19, 21.
  7. Robert Mackintosh. From Comte to Benjamin Kidd.
  8. G. de LaPouge. Les Sélections Sociales. Chs. 1—6.
  9. August Weismann. The Germ Plasm: a Theory of Heredity.
  10. George John Romanes. An Examination of Weismannism.
  11. Alfred Russell Wallace. Studies: Scientific and Social. [Volume 1; Volume 2]
  12. R. L. Dugdale. The Jukes.
  13. Oscar C. McCulloch. The Tribe of Ishmael.
  14. Francis Galton. Hereditary Genius.
  15. Arthur Fairbanks. Introduction to Sociology. Pt. III.
B. Psychic
  1. Auguste Comte. Positive Philosophy. Book VI. Ch. 5.
  2. Jeremy Bentham*. Principles of Morals and Legislation. Chs. 1 and 2.
  3. Lester F. Ward. The Psychic Factors of Civilization.
  4. G. Tarde. Social Laws.
  5. _______. Les Lois de l’Imitation.
  6. _______. La Logique Sociale.
  7. Gustav Le Bon. The Crowd.
  8. _______. The Psychology of Peoples.
  9. J. Mark Baldwin. Social and Ethical Interpretations.
  10. _______. Mental Development in the Child and the Race.
  11. John Fisk. The Destiny of Man.
  12. Henry Drummond. The Ascent of Man.
  13. Simon N. Patten*. The Theory of Social Forces. Chs. 2—5.
C. Social and Economic
  1. Lester F. Ward. Outlines of Sociology. Pt. II.
  2. _______*. Dynamical Sociology. Ch. 10.
  3. Brooks Adams. The Law of Civilization and Decay.
  4. D. G. Ritchie. Darwinism and Politics.
  5. A. G. Warner*. American Charities. Pt. I. Ch. 5.
  6. G. de LaPouge. Les Sélections Sociales. Chs. 7—15.
  7. T. R. Malthus. Principle of Population.
  8. Bosanquet. The Standard of Life.
  9. W. H. Mallock. Aristocracy and Evolution.
  10. T. V. Veblen. The Theory of the Leisure Class.
  11. W. S. Jevons. Methods of Social Reform.
  12. Jane Addams and Others. Philanthropy and Social Progress.
  13. E. Demolins. Anglo-Saxon Superiority.
  14. Thomas H. Huxley. Evolution and Ethics.
  15. Georg Simmel. Ueber Sociale Differencierung.
  16. Émile Durkheim. De la Division du Travail Social.
  17. J. H. W. Stuckenberg. Introduction to the Study of Sociology. Ch. 6.
  18. Achille Loria. The Economic Foundations of Society.
  19. _______. Problems Sociaux Contemporains. Ch. 6. [English translation (1911)]
  20. E. A. Ross. Social Control.
D. Political and Legal
  1. Jeremy Bentham. Principles of Morals and Legislation. Chs. 12—17.
  2. F. M. Taylor. The Right of the State to Be.
  3. W. W. Willoughby*. Social Justice. Chs. 5—9.
  4. D. G. Ritchie. Principles of State Interference.
  5. W. S. Jevons. The State in Relation to Labor.
  6. Henry C. Adams. The Relation of the State to Industrial Action, in Publications Am. Econ. Assoc. Vol. I. No. 6.

Source:  Harvard University Archives. Syllabi, course outlines and reading lists in Economics, 1895-2003.Box 1, Folder “Economics, 1902-1903”.

________________

Economics 3
Mid-Year Examination
1902-1903

  1. Contrast the status of marriage in the later Roman period, with that in the United States at present, distinguishing causes, direct and indirect results.
  2. What is the primary end of primitive law, and why?
  3. Criticise Spencer’s statement that “political organization is to be understood as that part of social organization which consciously carries on directive and restraining functions for public ends.”
  4. What is the significance of ceremonial in social life? Illustrate by a concrete example.
  5. Need customs be reasonable or logical to be necessarily defensible? Why?
  6. How does Giddings account for the change from metronymic to patronymic societies?
  7. What was the character of Morgan’s contribution to the study of domestic origins? What were its limitations?
  8. Discuss, with illustrations, some of the connections of religious belief and ceremonial with primitive society.

Source: Harvard University Archives. Mid-year Examinations 1852-1943. Box 6. Papers (in the bound volume Examination Papers Mid-years 1902-1903).

________________

Economics 3
Year-End Examination
1902-1903

Discuss eight of the following topics: –

  1. The forms of primitive marriage.
  2. Spencer’s contrast of the industrial with the militant type of society.
  3. Gidding’s elementary social fact.
  4. Kidd’s position as to the function of religion in social development.
  5. The antagonism of interests among the members of society.
  6. Density of population as a condition of a high state of civilization.
  7. The sanctions for conduct.
  8. Social stratification.
  9. The storing of the surplus energy of society.

Source: Harvard University Archives. Examination Papers 1873-1915. Box 6. Papers Set for Final Examinations in History, Government, Economics, History of Religions, Philosophy, Education, Fine Arts, Architecture, Landscape Architecture, Music in Harvard College, June 1903 (in the bound volume Examination Papers 1902-1903).

Image Source: Thomas Nixon Carver (left). The World’s Work. Vol. XXVI (May-October 1913) p. 127.  William Z. Ripley (right) Harvard Library, Hollis Images. Portrait of William Z. Ripley, ca. 1920. Both images have been colorized by Economics in the Rear-view Mirror.

 

 

 

Categories
Harvard Syllabus Undergraduate

Harvard. Principles of Accounting. Davis, 1915

 

This post provides a transcription of the printed syllabus for the Harvard department of economics undergraduate principles of accounting course in 1915 with links to the textbooks and description of course requirements.

A course announcement and description together with the enrollment figures and the course final examination for this principles of accounting course have been posted previously.

An obituary for the instructor written by Joseph H. Willits, “Joseph Stancliffe Davis, (1885-1975)” , was published in The American Statistician 30, no. 4 (1976), p. 199.

______________________

HARVARD UNIVERSITY
ECONOMICS 1b2, 1915

Lectures. 

Mon., Wed., and (occasionally) Fri, at 1.30. Part of the Wednesday lecture will ordinarily be devoted to discussion of the problems then handed in.

Text-books.

W. M. Cole. Accounts: Their Construction and Interpretation (1915 ed.).
W. M. Cole. Problems in the Principles of Accounts (1915).

Problems.

Assignments will be made weekly, usually on Wednesday, and solutions will be due at the beginning of the lecture hour on Wednesdays. Papers will ordinarily be returned on Mondays. Additional problems of the same general nature as those completed in the preceding week will be assigned each Monday (a) for men who received grade D or E on the original solutions, and (b) for men who failed to hand and solutions. The second set of papers will be handed to the laboratory assistant at the student’s laboratory period in the same week.
In neither case will be related solutions be accepted.

Laboratory Work.

There will be one two-hour period weekly. Sections will probably be arranged at each of the following periods: Wednesday, 2.30 – 4.30 (Pierce 307); Thursday, 9 – 11, 11 – 1 (Pierce 302); Thursday, 1.30 – 3.30, 3.30 – 5.30 (Pierce 307); Friday, 11 – 1, 2.30 – 4.30 (Pierce 307).
All possible choices, with order of preference, should be indicated on the individual registration cards.
An additional laboratory period, Wednesday, 7 – 9 p.m., will be held fortnightly for the completion of in completed work or the making up of work missed and absences excused at the Office.
New instructions and material for the work of the day will be given by the laboratory assistant at the beginning of the period, and men will greatly facilitate the work of the whole section by arriving with the utmost promptness.

Hour Examinations.

One will be held late in March, and a second may be given late in April. Just preceding the examination the usual problems or the laboratory work will be omitted.

Grading.

Problems, laboratory work, and examinations will be given roughly equal weight, but departures from the exact average will be made in the discretion of the instructor.

Problem solutions will be graded numerically, and the scale of equivalence will be: A, 90 – 100; B, 80 – 90; C, 65 – 80; D, 50 – 65. A 0 will be given for each failure to hand in either original or additional problems, and for each unexcused laboratory absence.
Form as well as accuracy will be given weight.

Consultation Hours:

J. S. Davis: Monday, 2.30 – 3.20, Upper Dane.
F. E. Richter: Friday, 1.30 – 2.30, Pierce 307.
T. D. Bool: Wednesday evening laboratory period, Pierce 307.

 

Source:  Harvard University Archives. Syllabi, course outlines and reading lists in Economics, 1895-2003”. Box 1, Folder “Economics, 1915-1916”.

Image Source: Joseph Stancliffe Davis, Harvard Class Album, 1916.

 

 

 

Categories
Brown Suggested Reading Syllabus Undergraduate

Brown. Syllabus for History and Philosophical Context of Economic Thought. Putterman, 1995

 

The Brown economics department has its Louis Putterman (Yale Ph.D., 1980) much as the Harvard economics department had its Overton Hume Taylor (Harvard Ph.D., 1928). Both of these economists have been interested in the philosophical underpinnings of economics  as well as the intersection of politics and economics in the history of economic ideas. 

I presume many visitors to Economics in the Rear-view Mirror are kindred spirits to Taylor and Putterman. This reading list is for you and your students! 

Overton Hume Taylor’s 1948 course (Economics and Political Ideas) reading list was transcribed for an earlier post. Here is a link to Taylor’s A History of Economic Thought (1960).

___________________

The History and Philosophical Context of Economic Thought
[Fall, 1995]

Louis Putterman
Department of Economics

Requirements: You may choose one of the following options. (a) A paper of 8 to 10 double-spaced pages on an assigned theme or themes after each three units of the course, totalling four papers, each worth 20% of term grade; (b) a midterm exam worth 30% and a final exam worth 50% of term grade; (c) a paper on a topic approved by the instructor, worth 20% of term grade, plus midterm and final exams, worth 20% and 40%, respectively. Under (c), your paper is due at the final exam, and will be 10-15 pages in length. Under each option, the remaining 20% of the term grade will be determined by class participation.

Part I: A Short History of Political Economy

  1. Classical Economics: Smith, Malthus, and Ricardo.

Readings:

1. Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations [1776], Book 1, Ch. 1, 2, 3, 7, and 10 (Part I); Book II, Ch. 2 (pp. 420-423).

2. Thomas Malthus, Essay on Profits [1798], Chapters 2 and 5.

3. David Ricardo, Essay on Profits [1815], pp. 10-31.

4. William Barber, History of Economic Thought (1967), Chapters on Smith, Malthus, and Ricardo (pp. 23-93).

5. (Optional) Encyclopedia of Social Sciences: (a) “Economic Thought”: subsections on Ancient and Medieval Thought, Mercantilist Thought, and Physiocratic Thought; (b) “Adam Smith”; “Thomas Malthus”; “David Ricardo”. NOR.

  1. Marx’s Economics

Readings:

1. Karl Marx, Capital, Volume I: [1867], Ch. 1, Sec. 1 (pp. 35-41); Chs. IV, V, VI, and VII (pp. 146-7, 167-73, 175-6, and 190-5; Ch. XIV, Sec. 4, 5 (pp. 350-363); Ch. XXXII (pp. 761-764). Volume III: [1894], Ch. X (pp. 173-199) but especially pp. 188-191; Chs. XXI-XXIV (pp. 338-399), skim except for pp. 338-9, 391-3.

2. Maurice Dobb, Theories of Value and Distribution Since Adam Smith (1973), Ch. 6: “Karl Marx.”

3. Robert Heilbroner, Marxism for and Against (1980), Ch. “The Socioanalysis of Capitalism.”

4. (Optional) Frederick Engels, Prefaces to Volumes II and III of Capital (pp. 5-19 and 8-21, only), and Appendix to Vol. III, “Law of Value and Rate of Profit” (891-907).

5. (Optional) Mark Blaug, Economic Theory in Retrospect (1968), Chapter 7, “Marxian Economics.”

6. (Optional) Paul Sweezy, The Theory of Capitalist Development, especially first chapters.

7. (Optional) Joseph Schumpeter, Ten Great Economists, Chapter 1, “Karl Marx.”

  1. The Marginalists

Readings:

1. Alfred Marshall, Principles of Economics [1890], Preface to 1st Edition (pp. v-xi); Book 1, Chapter I, Section 4 (pp. 5-10); Book III, Chapters 3, 4, and 6 (pp. 92-116, 124-137); Book V, Chapters 2 and 3 (pp. 331-350); Book VI, Chapter 13, Sections 11-15 (pp. 712-722); (Optional: Appendix B. The Growth of Economic Science, pp. 754-769.

2. Barber, Chapter 6, “Alfred Marshall and the Framework of Neo-Classical Economics.”

3. William Jaffe, “Menger, Jevons and Walras Dehomogenized,” Economic Inquiry, 1976.

4. Mark Blaug, “Was There a Marginal Revolution?” and G.L.S. Shackle, “Marginalism: The Harvest,” in Black, Coats, and Goodwin, eds., The Marginal Revolution in Economics (1973).

5. (Optional) Emil Kauder, A History of Marginal Utility Theory (1965).

6. (Optional) Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, “Economic Thought”: subsections on the Historical School, The Austrian School, and the Institutional School. NOR.

Part II: Disciplinary Shifts and Disciplinary Boundaries

  1. Political-Economy versus Economics

Readings:

1. Phyllis Deane, The Evolution of Economic Ideas (1978), Chapters 6, 7, and 9 (“Scope and Methodology of Classical Political Economy,” “The Marginal Revolution and the Neoclassical Triumph,” and “The Marxian Alternative”).

2. Philip Mirowski, “Physics and the Marginalist Revolution.”

3. Dobb, Ch. 7, “The Jevonian Revolution,” Section I (pp. 166-183), in Theories of Value…

4. Paul Sweezy, “Editor’s Introduction,” Karl Marx and the Close of His System (1949).

5. Rudolf Hilferding [1904], “Bohm-Bawerk’s Criticism of Marx,” in Sweezy, ed., ibid.: pp. 130-134, 137-140, and 184-189.

6. Assar Lindbeck, The Political Economy of the New Left: An Outsider’s View (1977), Part One, and “Comment” by Stephen Hymer and Frank Roosevelt.

7. (Optional) Frank Hahn, “General Equilibrium Theory,” pp. 123-138 in Daniel Bell and Irving Kristol, eds., The Crisis in Economic Theory, 1981.

8. Ronald Meek, “Marginalism and Marxism,” in The Marginal Revolution in Economics (cited above).

9. (Optional) Thorstein Veblen, “Professor Clark’s Economics,” Quarterly Journal of Economics, 1908 (reprinted in The Place of Science in Modern Civilization).

  1. General Equilibrium Theory

Readings:

1. F.M. Scherer, “General Equilibrium and Economic Efficiency,” The American Economist, 1966.

2. F.M. Bator, “The Simple Analytics of Welfare Maximization,” originally in American Economic Review, March 1957.

  1. The Shift to Ordinal Utility

Readings:

1. Vincent Tarascio, “Paretian Welfare Theory: Some Neglected Aspects,” Journal of Political Economy, 1969.

2. Robert Cooter and Peter Rappaport, “Were the Ordinalists Wrong About Welfare Economics?” Journal of Economic Literature, 1984.

3. Amartya Sen, “Personal Utilities and Public Judgments: or What’s Wrong with Welfare Economics?” Economic Journal, 1979.

Part III: Epistemology and the Methods of Economic Analysis

  1. Background on Method and Epistemology

Readings:

1. Blaug, The Methodology of Economics. Part I: “What you always wanted to know about the philosophy of science but were afraid to ask,” and Part II: “The history of economic methodology,” except Chapter 5 (all listed as “From Received View to View of Popper”).

2. (Optional) Karl Popper, “Three Views Concerning Human Knowledge,” pp. 97-119 in Conjectures and Refutations, 1963.

3. (Optional) Bruce Caldwell, “Clarifying Popper,” Journal of Economic Literature, Vol. 29, No. 1, March 1991.

  1. Contending Views on Methodology; The Making of an Economist

Readings:

1. (Optional) John Neville Keynes, The Scope and Method of Political Economy (1980), pp. 9-30.

2. Daniel Hausman, “Economic Methodology in a Nutshell,” Journal of Economic Perspectives, 2(3) 1989.

3. Ludwig von Mises, “Epistemological Problems of Economics,” pp. 17-22, and “The Scope and Meaning of the System of a Priori Theorems,” pp. 23-30, in Epistemological Problems of Economics [1933].

4. Milton Friedman, “Methodology of Positive Economics,” pp. 3-43 in Essays in Positive Economics, 1953.

5. (Optional) Amartya Sen, “Description as Choice,” Oxford Economic Papers, 1980.

6. (Optional) Axel Leijonhufvud, “Life Among the Econ.,” Western Economic Journal, 1973.

7. Benjamin Ward, “Economics as a Science,” in What’s Wrong with Economics?” (1972), pp. 5-13.

8. David Colander and Arjo Klamer, “The Making of an Economist,” Journal of Economic Perspectives, 1987.

Some additional, strictly optional, material of interest for this topic and topic 10 is:

E.K. Hunt and Howard J. Sherman, excerpts from Economics: An Introduction to Traditional and Radical Views, 1972.

Oscar Lange, “The Scope and Method of Economics,” 1945.

Karl Polanyi, “The Economy as Instituted Process,” (ca.) 1957.

Alfred Marshall, “The Scope and Method of Economics,” 1890.

Ronald Meek, “Economics and Ideology.”

Lionel Robbins, “The Subject Matter of Economics,” in The Nature and Significance of Economic Science, 1932.

Hugh Stretton, “Paul Streeten: An Appreciation,” in Theory and Reality in Development, 1986, especially pp. 4-13 and 26-27.

  1. Examples of Economic Controversy

We will study either the controversy over the effect of “separating” ownership and control in the corporation, or that over the effect of team- versus family-based farming in China, using both theoretical and empirical readings. Readings will be announced after the topic is selected.

Part IV: Economics and Social Philosophy

  1. Political Philosophy and Economics

Readings:

1. John Locke, Treatise of Civil Government [1688], Chapter V, “Of Property.”

2. Selections from Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan [1651], Chapters 13 and 17.

3. S.H. Peterson, ed., Readings in the History of Economic Thought: Bernard de Mandeville, “Fable of the Bees,” [1714], pp. 2-18; Jeremy Bentham, “An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation,” [1789], pp. 178-182; John Stuart Mill, “On Liberty” [1859] and “Utilitarianism,” [1863], pp. 270-290 (all listed under Mandeville).

4. Gunnar Myrdal, The Political Element in the Development of Economic Thought, 1953 [1929] Chapters 1, 2, 3, and 4 (further reading guidelines to be announced).

  1. Economics and Values

Readings:

1. Frank Knight, “The Ethics of Competition,” (1935).

2. Herbert Gintis, “A Radical Analysis of Welfare Economics and Individual Development,” Quarterly Journal of Economics, 1978.

3. Dan Usher, “The Value of Life for Decision Making in the Public Sector,” in E.F. Paul et al., eds., Ethics and Economics, 1985.

4. Richard Thaler and Sherwin Rosen, “The Value of Saving a Life: Evidence from the Labor Market,” in Terleckyj, ed., Household Production and Consumption,, National Bureau of Economic Research, 1976 (read for general idea).

5. (Optional) J.A. Mirrlees, “The Economic Uses of Utilitarianism,” and Frank Hahn, “On Some Difficulties of the Utilitarian Economist,” in Amartya Sen and Bernard Williams, eds., Utilitarianism and Beyond (1982).

  1. Utilitarianism and Other Views of Justice

Readings:

1. R. M. Hare, “Ethical Theory and Utilitarianism,” and John C. Harsanyi, “Morality and the Theory of Rational Behavior,” in Sen and Williams, Utilitarianism and Beyond.

2. John Rawls, “Justice as Fairness” [1958] in Laslett and Runciman, Philosophy, Politics and Society.

3. John Roemer, “An Historical Materialist Alternative to Welfarism,” 1981 reprinted with revisions in Jon Elster, ed., Foundations of Social Choice Theory.

4. James Buchanan, “A Hobbesian Interpretation of the Rawlsian Difference Principle,” (1979) in Karl Brunner, ed., Economics and Social Institutions.

Optional Readings on The Best of All Possible Worlds

5. Murray Rothbard, “Property and Exchange,” from For a New Liberty (1973) (optional).

6. Shlomo Avineri, “The Stages of Socialism,” from The Social and Political Thought of Karl Marx (1968) (optional).

Source: Internet Archive “Wayback Machine” webpage capture from November 20, 1996.

Image Source: Louis Putterman home page at Brown University. (Screen capture from April 8, 2018)