With this post we add Professor Thomas Nixon Carver’s exam questions for a graduate course on methods of economic investigation to our larger data base of economics examination questions. This was the fourth time that Carver offered this particular course at Harvard. The scope of his teaching portfolio was by far the broadest of the department, ranging across economic theory, sociology, schemes of economic reform, and agricultural economics so it is hardly surprising that he would have judged himself competent to teach/preach methodology too.
The last question reveals his trinity of economic methods: historical, statistical and analytical. Judging merely from Carver’s exam questions here, I would hazard a guess that this course might have been considered a “snap” course. I have no explanation for the relatively low enrollment figures, that is unless he assigned significant amounts of German language texts. Taussig did that earlier.
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“Methods of Investigation”
in other years
Economics 13 (Scope and Methods) in 1895-96, Taussig.
Economics 13 (Scope and Methods) in 1896-97, Not Offered.
Economics 13 (Scope and Methods) in 1897-98, Ashley.
Economics 13 (Methods) in 1898-99, Taussig.
Economics 13 (Methods) in 1899-1900, Not Offered.
Economics 13 (Methods) in 1900-01, Carver.
Economics 13 (Methods) in 1902-03, Carver.
Economics 13 (Methods) in 1903-04, Carver.
Economics 12 (Scope and Methods) from 1914-15, Carver.
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Course Enrollment
1904-05
‡Economics 13 1hf. Professor Carver. — Methods of Economic Investigation.
Total 4: 2 Graduates, 2 Seniors.
Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College, 1904-1905, p. 75.
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Course Description
1904-05
[Economics] ‡*13 1hf. Methods of Economic Investigation. Half-course (first half-year). Tu., Th., at 2.30. Professor Carver.
Course 13 will examine the methods by which the leading writers of modern times have approached economic questions, and the range which they have given their inquiries; and will consider the advantage of different methods, and the expediency of a wider or narrower scope of investigation. These inquiries will necessarily include a consideration of the logic of the social sciences. Methods of reasoning, methods of investigation, and methods of exposition will be considered separately, and the sources and character of the facts which are essential to economic science will be examined. Cairnes’ Logical Method of Political Economy and Keynes’ Scope and Method of Political Economy will be carefully examined. At the same time selected passages from the writings of Mill, Jevons, Marshall, and the Austrian writers will be studied, with a view to analyzing the nature and scope of the reasoning.
Course 13 is designed mainly for students who take or have taken Course 2 or Course 15; but it is open to mature students having a general acquaintance with economic theory.
Source: Harvard University. Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Division of History and Political Science Comprising the Departments of History and Government and Economics, 1904-05 (May 16, 1904), p. 49.
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ECONOMICS 131
Year-end Examination, 1904-05
- Discuss the question of the subdivisions of economics.
- Is it possible to discuss economic questions without passing ethical judgements? Explain and give examples.
- Of what use are mathematical formulae and diagrams in economics?
- Compare the historical and the analytical methods in their applicability to the following questions: (1) Is the world likely to become over populated? (2) Would communism tend to increase the rate of multiplication?
- Is there any relation between the theory of probabilities and any class of economic laws? Explain.
- By what logical method is it possible to distinguish the product of a given factor from that of a number of coöperating factors of production?
- Do economists make use of pure hypotheses such as are used in the physical sciences? Give reasons for your answer.
- What do you conceive to be the true relation of the historical method, the statistical method and the analytical method to one another.
Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University, Examination Papers 1873-1915. Box 7, Bound volume: Examination Papers, 1904-05; Papers Set for Final Examinations in History, Government, Economics,…,Music in Harvard College (June, 1905), p. 33.
Image Source: Thomas Nixon Carver photograph from the November 11, 1916 issue of the Harvard Illustrated Magazine, p. 110.Colorized by Economics in the Rear-view Mirror.