Born in Denmark and educated at Dakota Wesleyan University, University of Minnesota, and the University of Chicago, Jens Peter Jensen is now officially added to our Meet-an-Economics-Ph.D. series with the profile below written for the 1937 yearbook at the University of Kansas.
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From the List of Economics Ph.D. dissertations of the University of Chicago
(1894-1926)
1926. Jensen, Jens Peter.
Thesis Title: The general property tax.
A.B. Dakota Wesleyan University, 1913; A.M. University of Minnesota, 1917.
1883, April 8. Born in Trustrup, Denmark.
1900. Emigrated to U.S.
1917-18. Fellow in Political Economy, University of Chicago.
1918-19. Taught at Beloit College.
1919. Instructor, University of Chicago.
1919-21. Assistant Professor of Economics and Commerce. University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kan.
1921-. Associate Professor of Economics and Commerce. University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kan.
1924. Problems of Public Finance. New York, Thomas Y. Crowell Company.
1930-31 (Visiting) Associate professor of economics, University of Chicago.
1931. Professor of Economics, University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kan.
1937. Government Finance. New York, Thomas Y. Crowell Company.
1938. Professor of Economics, University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kan.
1942, August 26. Died in Brush, Colorado.
Obituary: In Memoriam: Jens P. Jensen, 1883-1942 by John Ise in The American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Vol. 2, No. 3 (Apr., 1943), pp. 391-392.
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Profile of Kansas Economics Professor Jens Peter Jensen (1937)
… Jens Peter Jensen, native of Denmark, gives advice to the state of Kansas on problems of taxation, public revenues, and text collections. In February, 1935, he was a member of the commission which surveyed the state government of Oklahoma and its system of public finance. Frank Marland, then Sooner governor-elect, proposed the plan that caused this commission to be organized.
Since 1925, Mr. Jensen has written the annual report of progress in the field of land and public taxation and corporation and bank taxation for the American Yearbook.
For the Tax Research Foundation (under the New York Tax Commission), he prepares the Kansas charts to indicate the status of tax law and legislation in this state.
Since 1920, Mr. Jensen has been a member of the National Tax Association, has been Kansas’ delegate to its annual conventions, and has served three years on the association’s executive committee. Too, he was for a time an associate editor of the association’s official Bulletin.
Under the auspices of the Kansas State Chamber of Commerce. Mr. Jensen, with Harold Howe, professor of agricultural economics at Kansas State College, Manhattan, prepared “Tax Studies in 13 Lessons.” Distributed by the sponsors, these lessons were used in study clubs and civic organizations of the state for adult education in public finance.
Among the books which Mr. Jensen has written are A Text in Public Finance, Property Taxation in the United States, The Tax System in Colorado, and Government Finance. He has contributed articles to the Annals of the American Association of Social and Political Economy, Law and Contemporary Events (published by Duke University), American Economic Review and Journal of Political Economy.
Especially noteworthy is the fact that Mr. Jensen has done all of this work in 31 years. Born of a Swedish father and a Danish mother on April 8, 1883, twenty-one-year-old Jens Jensen left Denmark in 1905. Son of a poor family, he had to terminate his common school education in the eighth grade to work on the farm and then to learn to creamery trade.
Landing in the United States with only his tradesmen’s knowledge, he journeyed to Minnesota, got a job. But by 1907 he left his job, went to Mitchell, South Dakota, where he enrolled in the Academy and College of Dakota Wesleyan University, graduated with an A. B. degree in 1913. His alma mater honored him within honorary doctor of laws degree only last spring. In 1917, he received his A. M. degree from the University of Minnesota; his Ph.D. degree from the University of Chicago in 1926.
Since 1919, Mr. Jensen has been associated with the University of Kansas. He has taught in two summer sessions at the University of West Virginia. In 1930-31, he was given leave of absence to do a year’s work on research and government finance of counties. He did this work at the University of Chicago.
Married, Mr. Jensen has one daughter. His hobby is traveling, and he has been in three-fourths of the states of the United States and in all but two of the Canadian provinces. He returned for his first visit to Denmark in 1926, visiting also Scotland, England, Norway and Sweden.
Here is a member of the Trinity Lutheran Church, the Lawrence Chamber of Commerce, and the University club. The most tedious three months in his life, he says, were spent in the Student Army Training Corps at the University of Minnesota in 1918. Previous to his enlistment he was statistician and economist for the food administration under the then Secretary of Commerce, Hoover.
Source of text and image: University of Kansas, Jayhawker (yearbook). Christmas number, 1937, p. 100.