Harvard. A.B. Division Examination, Economic Theory, 1939

Today’s posting is a transcription of the “special examination” questions in economic theory given at Harvard in May 1939.

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]

A printed copy of questions for twelve A.B. examinations in economics at Harvard for the academic year 1938-39 can be found in the Lloyd A. Metzler papers at Duke’s Economists’ Papers Project. 

• One Departmental Examination from the Department of Economics.
• Five Division Special Examinations.

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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DIVISION OF HISTORY, GOVERNMENT, AND ECONOMICS

DIVISION SPECIAL EXAMINATION
Economic Theory

(Three hours)

A candidate may, at his option, write hour essays on TWO topics in Part I and omit Part II.

Part I

(About one hour)

1. Write an essay on one of the following topics:
   1. monopolistic competition and excess capacity,
   2. selling costs and social waste,
   3. the theory that interest is the price paid for ‘the service of waiting’,
   4. the effects on employment of a general cut in money wage-rates in the early stages of depression,
   5. the nature and causes of ‘pure profit’.

Part II

(About one hour)

Answer two questions.

2. Explain, and discuss briefly, the meanings, the main ‘geometric’ properties and relations, and the main uses as aids to analysis, of the following ‘tools’: the demand curve for a firm’s output; the firm’s marginal revenue curve; its short- and long-period curves of average total unit costs; and its curve of marginal costs.
3. “Although the ‘individual firm approach’ to value theory is in general superior, the ‘whole industry approach’ of Marshall still is capable of being used, without assuming ‘pure competition’, as an effective way of exploring certain important problems, which the other approach leaves out of sight.” Discuss.
4. Explain the essential propositions of the ‘marginal productivity theory’ of income distribution in an economy characterized by pure competition; and the principal changes which must be made in this theory when account is taken (a) of monopoly elements in the markets in which products are sold, and (b) of monopoly elements in the markets in which factors are hired.
5. “Those who hold that competitive allocation of economic resources in free markets would bring maximum satisfaction only if incomes were approximately equal, are in effect admitting that the market neither does, nor can, give sound guidance in any economic system that relies upon the profit motive to keep going.”
6. Discuss the proper definitions, provinces, difference in assumptions, and relation to each other, of economic ‘statics’ and ‘dynamics’.
7. Explain and discuss one major, novel concept introduced into economic theory by J. M. Keynes.

 

Part III

(About one hour)

Discuss two of the following questions.

8. “Men are no longer units; they are being compulsorily coagulated into groups, and the forces of combination and regulation are producing a society very different from that which the nineteenth century Political Economy set out to interpret.”
9. “The nature of an economic law is such that it can be neither established nor refuted by an appeal to the facts.”
10. “The conception of the economic process as a circus off commodities and prices divorced from class relations is neither Marxian nor Classical.”
11. “If we find something approaching pure competition in any branch of production, we can conclude that it is subject to increasing costs.”
12. “Given fresh natural resources to develop, a rapidly increasing population, and foreign markets for goods and capital, even a trustified capitalism might be able to maintain high utilization of economic resources and an increasing national income. But in the absence of these favoring conditions it will be undermined more and more by direct government action to ward off the ever-present tendency to continuous depression.”

 

May 10, 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.