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Exam Questions Harvard Public Finance

Harvard. Exam for undergraduate public finance. Bullock, 1905-1906

Charles Jesse Bullock compressed his two semester public finance sequence at Harvard that was pitched to graduates and advanced undergraduates in 1904-05 into a single semester for undergraduates in the following academic year. This compression and “dumbing down” [?] resulted in a significant increase in enrollment. Who knows, maybe he even lowered the curve for grading?

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Exams from the two semester sequence in public finance (1904-05)

1904-05. Introduction to Public Finance (post includes two obituaries for Bullock)

1904-05. Theory and Methods of Taxation

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Course Enrollment
1905-06

Economics 7 2hf. Asst. Professor Bullock. — Public Finance considered with special reference to the Theory and Methods of Taxation.

Total 137: 13 Seniors, 54 Juniors, 55 Sophomores, 4 Freshman, 11 Others.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College, 1905-1906, p. 72.

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ECONOMICS 7
Year-end Examination, 1905-06

  1. Discuss the history of federal expenditures in the United States since 1860.
  2. Discuss the past and the present policy of the United States with respect to its public lands.
  3. Give an account of the present status of the municipal ownership movement in the United States.
  4. Discuss the proposition that income is the normal source of taxation.
  5. What is your opinion concerning the justice of progressive taxation?
  6. What was decided in the income tax decisions of 1895?
  7. Give a detailed account of the present method of taxing personal property in Massachusetts.
  8. Compare the general corporation tax of Massachusetts with that of Pennsylvania.
  9. Write an account of the present status of the inheritance tax in the American commonwealths.
  10. Write a history of federal taxation in the United States from 1789 to the present day.

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University, Examination Papers 1873-1915. Box 8, Bound volume: Examination Papers, 1906-07; Papers Set for Final Examinations in History, Government, Economics,…,Music in Harvard College (June, 1906), p. 32.

Image Source: Illustration by Louis M. Glackens in Puck, April 8, 1908. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/ppmsca.26261