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Harvard. Economics Departmental (General) Exam for A.B., 1939

Majors in economics at Harvard had to pass a battery of examinations in their Junior and Senior years (7.5 hours for non-honors candidates and 10.5 hours for honors candidates) before they could graduate. A printed copy of questions for thirteen component A.B. examinations in economics at Harvard for the academic year 1938-39 (over thirty pages!) are to be found in the Lloyd A. Metzler papers at Duke’s Economists’ Papers Project. 

Concentrators in Economics will have to pass in the spring their Junior year a general examination on the department of Economics, and in the spring of their Senior year an examination correlating Economics with either History or Government (this correlating exam may be abolished by 1942), and a third one on the student’s special field, which is chosen from a list of eleven, including economic theory, economic history, money and banking, industry, public utilities, public finance, labor problems, international economics, policies and agriculture.
Courses in allied fields, including Philosophy, Mathematics, History, Government, and Sociology, are suggested by the department for each of the special fields. In addition, Geography 1 is recommended in connection with international policies or agriculture.
[Source: Harvard Crimson, May 31, 1938]

This posting gives the questions from the Departmental Examination and the topics for the Essay Paper that all economics majors were required to take.  

  • One Departmental Examination from the Department of Economics consisting of two parts:

Essay Paper (May 5, 1939; 1.5 hours)
Departmental Examination (May 8, 1939; 3 hours)

  • One of the Five Division Special Examinations. (May 10, 1939; 3 hours)

Economic Theory,
Economic History since 1750,
Money and Finance,
Market Organization and Control,
Labor Economics and Social Reform.

  • One of the Six Correlation Examinations given to Honors Candidates. (May 12, 1939; 3 hours)

Economic History of Western Europe since 1750,
American Economic History,
History of Political and Economic Thought,
Public Administration and Finance,
Government Regulation of Industry,
Mathematical Economic Theory.

 

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If you find this posting interesting, here is the complete list of “artifacts” from the history of economics I have assembled thus far. You can subscribe to Economics in the Rear-View Mirror below.  There is also an opportunity for comment following each posting….

 

 

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DIVISION OF HISTORY, GOVERNMENT, AND ECONOMICS

DEPARTMENTAL EXAMINATION
DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMICS
[1939]

(Three hours)

Answer SIX questions; at least ONE question must be answered in each part. A senior may not take more than ONE question in that section of Part II which covers his special field.

PART I

  1. How may industrial fluctuations affect the distribution of income?
  2. Explain and discuss the probable immediate economic consequences in this country of the outbreak of a general European war in the near future. If we should stay out of it, what might be some of the long-run effects of the war on our economy?
  3. What various causes may lead to an increase in the general level of real wages in the country?
  4. Discuss some of the economic implications of declining population growth.
  5. Do you think that abolition of the institution of inheritance would have important social and economic consequences?
  6. If there were one hundred automobile manufacturing firms, would the process of determination of the prices of automobiles be different from what it is now? Do you think that the prices would be different? Explain.
  7. Explain briefly the principal short-run and long-run consequences in an economy of a succession of cost-reducing innovations by individual firms.
  8. Name and explain briefly as many of the possible economic consequences of the New England hurricane as you can think of.

PART II

A
STATISTICS AND ACCOUNTING

  1. What problems would be met in an endeavor to obtain a curve of marginal cost by an analysis of the actual monthly expense data of the firm?
  2. How would you treat a time series of employment data to reveal (a) the rate of change in secular growth and (b) changes in the intensity of cyclical fluctuations?
  3. What differences do you find between concepts used by accountants and those used by economists in analyzing profits? Do you think that these differences should be eliminated? Explain.
  4. Discuss the relevance to different situations of various methods of measuring appreciation.

B
PUBLIC POLICY AND SOCIAL STRUCTURE
(As Aspects of Modern Economic History)

  1. Discuss the causes, course, and outcome, and the interests and the views represented on both sides, of the struggle over the money question in this country in the last three decades of the nineteenth century.
  2. “The achievements in economic policy of America’s liberal or progressive statesmen have always been limited, because they have approached their tasks in this field too largely as moral crusaders against ‘predatory’ business interests, and too little as unbiased students of the technical economic problems involved.” Discuss, with special reference to the career of either Theodore Roosevelt or Woodrow Wilson.
  3. What British statesman, during the 19th century, made the most important contributions in developing or establishing the public policies which chiefly aided, or removed impediments to, or reformed abuses connected with, Great Britain’s industrial development? Name several statesmen and the principal measures or policies each one stood for, and discuss the career and achievements of one man in some detail.
  4. Sketch the social security legislation in Germany prior to 1910. Do you think that this legislation had any influence on the strength and achievements of the Social Democratic Party in the post-war period?

C
MONEY AND FINANCE

  1. How do you account for changes in the velocity of circulation of money in bank credit? What are some of the consequences of changes in velocity? Can velocity be controlled by the central bank authorities?
  2. “The whirling dervishes of deflation and the experts of castor-oil economics assure us that ultimately we arrive at some mysterious automatic equilibrium point from which recovery can proceed.”
  3. Discuss the natures and effects on world economic conditions of some of the principal new types of restrictions on international trade imposed by various countries in the last two decades.
  4. “The disappearance of the gold standard is the disappearance of one of the safeguards of private property. For in giving the State a free hand to manage the money and credit supply, we are giving political pressure-groups a potent weapon for effecting arbitrary changes in all property-values and in the distribution of wealth.”
  5. Discuss the possible effects of each one of three different kinds of taxes on the annual amount of new investment in capital goods in the community.
  6. Would you advocate return of all the leading nations to a gold standard of the pre-war type? If not, what sort of international monetary arrangements do you favor?
  7. “The advocates of public spending as the way to open ‘save capitalism’ are either disingenuous about their objective, or ignorant of the nature of capitalism. For the continuance of capitalism requires economy in public, as well as in private spending.”

 

D
MARKET ORGANIZATION AND CONTROL

  1. “Corporate reorganization is merely a family squabble among investors over a pie which turned out to be a donut. The results have no significance to consumers or to labor.”
  2. Explain why you favor or oppose government ownership and operation (in the United States) of the railroads or of the bituminous coal industry.
  3. “Once recovery has been attained most agricultural problems can be left to the market.”
  4. Should differences in electric rates to different consumers reflect only differences in costs?
  5. “The law should be revised so as to prevent any business from becoming bigger than it can grow when subjected to the test of the free market.”
  6. Discuss the problem of improving efficiency in the distribution of some one farm product, or group of products, with respect to obstacles, possible achievements, and possible results to farmers, processors, middlemen, and consumers.
  7. “The price-cutter is worse than a criminal – he is a fool. He not only pulls down the standing of his goods; he pulls down himself and his trade. He scuttles the ship in which he himself is afloat. Price-cutting is not business any more than smallpox is health.”

 

E
LABOR ECONOMICS AND SOCIAL REFORM

  1. Discuss the relative merits, from the standpoints of labor and the public, under present-day American industrial conditions, of the principles of labor organization represented by the A. F. of L. And those represented by the C. I. O.
  2. “The rise of Fascism is due to the failure of events to bear out one of the predictions of Marx. In Germany and in Italy the lower-middle-class, instead of disappearing, has become not only desperate enough but strong enough to impose its patriotic will on both the plutocracy and the proletariat.”
  3. Do you think that a spread of collective bargaining in a community is likely to have any appreciable consequences for the total national income and the total amount of employment?
  4. “A vigorous labor movement always has as its basis in the motives and mentality of the workers, much less their economic interests as individuals, than their capacity for emotional loyalty to an ideology and a fighting ‘cause’ which plays the role, in their lives, of a class religion.”
  5. What basic tenets of Marxism in economic theory underlie both its explanation of capitalist crises or depressions, and its explanation of imperialist wars? Explain the underlying theory and how it leads to these two theories, and discuss the basic issues as issues in economic theory.
  6. What is your opinion of the view that redistributing wealth by taxation would be an ineffectual method of reform because it would leave untouched the unequal distribution of power.
  7. “If we wish to preserve our democratic, liberal, and capitalistic or ‘free enterprise’ society, by making it possible for the masses to be and remain contented with it, no means to this end is more important than development of an adequate program of social security.”

 

PART III

  1. “The idea that the sins and the errors of judgment of businessmen bring on depressions is a groundless myth. The business cycle is the product of impersonal forces, and would follow the same course even if all men were invariably honest and made no mistakes.”
  2. “To such extent as possible people are able to engage in competition upon the basis of quality and service, rather than price, trade will be raised to a higher level, and will be more to the advantage of the general public.”
  3. “If all employers agreed to pay the same wages then higher wages will hurt no employer, but will, instead, benefit all employers by increasing demand for their products.”
  4. “So long as consumers do not have purchasing power there is no need for further investment to increase facilities for production. If no one can buy, the facilities are not needed.”
  5. “Stabilization of individual prices is inherent in our financial structure because industry is based largely on a credit structure and any radical drop in prices makes fixed charges unbearable.”
  6. “Unemployment is a problem which Society must solve and we believe it is a better solved by businessmen than by passing it over to the government for solutions.”
  7. “The prices created in the process of buying and selling regulate our lives far more minutely than could an efficient despot – and often as arbitrarily as a capricious tyrant.”
  8. “Practical questions no more form part of the science of Political Economy and navigation forms part of the science of astronomy. The conclusions of the economic of the economist do not authorize him in adding a single syllable of advice.”

May 8, 1939.

 

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DIVISION OF HISTORY, GOVERNMENT, AND ECONOMICS

 

ESSAY PAPER
DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMICS

(One hour and a half)

Candidates for honors may write on ONE topic only. Others may, if they prefer, write on TWO topics. Please note on the front cover of the bluebook the number of each topic upon which you write.

  1. The meaning and significance of economic progress.
  2. Economics of war – planning and financing.
  3. Would political and economic isolation be the best course for the United States?
  4. The concept of ideal output in a community.
  5. “The disappearance of the free competitive market must mean the eventual disappearance of liberty and democracy, political and economic.”
  6. The significance of specialization in economic activity.
  7. Effects of the business cycle on farmers, labor, investors, professional men, retailers.
  8. “The New Deal efforts at recovery were supported by theory, especially by doctrines explaining prosperity, that had gained popularity during the New Era of the twenties.”
  9. A book review giving your assessment of An Economic Program for American Democracy.
  10. The concept of ideal distribution of income.
  11. “The competitive price system is a scheme of social organization without resort to mass forces.”
  12. The significance of monopoly elements, of various sorts, in an economy.
  13. The functions of the study and teaching of economics.
  14. “The twentieth century clearly does not offer any comfortable prospect of a smoothly functioning economic Utopia.”
  15. A comparison (for the United States or for the world at large) of the principal features of the period of boom and depression in the 1920’s and to 1930’s with those of any period of boom and depression in the nineteenth century.
  16. The economic consequences of the next European war.
  17. “The growing acceptance of the idea that there must be a large, permanent body of unemployed is a passive recognition of the defeat of private capitalism.”
  18. The importance, and the outlines of the skillful integration of government policies with respect to money, public finance, industry, agriculture, public utilities, and labor into a consistent whole, for the purpose of achieving full use of the country’s economic resources.
  19. “The economic order of the western world is undergoing in this generation set of structural changes no less basic and profound in character and that transformation of economic life and institutions which we are wont to designate by the phrase ‘Industrial Revolution_.”
  20. Can economic theory be of practical value to business executives?
  21. Can economic theory aid in the development of public policy?
  22. Can economic theory explain “what goes on” in the economy of a totalitarian state?

May 5, 1939.

Source: David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University. Lloyd A. Metzler Papers, Box 7; [Harvard University], Division of History, Government and Economics, Division Examinations for the Degree of A.B., 1938-39.