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Harvard. Final exam for graduate economics course on methods. Carver, 1902

 

This post resumes the systematic transcribing of Harvard economics exam questions year-by-year and course-by-course. Today we visit young Thomas Nixon Carver‘s graduate methods course (incidentally attended by zero graduate students during the second semester of the 1901-02 academic year). The recently hired assistant professor found Frank Taussig’s methods course dropped into his lap when the latter went on a two year leave for personal health reasons (Schumpeter called it recovery from a “nervous breakdown”, i.e., Taussig almost certainly suffered from clinical depression).

Carver’s exam questions from 1900-01 for the course have been previously posted.

Fun fact with supporting image: While a graduate student at Cornell, Thomas Nixon Carver rowed on the varsity crew. He is seen sitting on the far left in the yearbook image posted above.

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Methods of Economic Investigation
[2nd half-year, 1901-1902]

Primarily for Graduates

[Economics] 13. Methods of Economic Investigation. Half-course (second half-year). Tu., Th., at 1.30. Asst. Professor Carver.

Course 13 will examine the methods by which the important 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. 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 Archives. Official Register of Harvard University 1901-1902. Box 1. Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Division of History and Political Science (June 21, 1901), University Publications, New Series, No. 16, pp. 45-46.

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Enrollment 1901-02

ECONOMICS 132

Economics 132 hf. Asst. Professor Carver. — Methods of Economic Investigation.

Total 5: 1 Senior, 1 Junior, 1 Sophomores, 2 Others.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College, 1901-1902, p. 78.

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Semester Final Examination

ECONOMICS 13

Discuss the following topics.

  1. The relation of economics to history, to ethics, and to sociology.
  2. The division of economics into departments.
  3. Methods of reasoning, methods of investigation, and methods of exposition as distinguished from one another.
  4. The nature of an economic law.
  5. The methods of investigating the causes of poverty.
  6. The use of hypotheses in economic investigation.
  7. The application of mathematics to economics.
  8. The meaning of an economic quantity.

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University Examination Papers, 1873-1915. Box 6, Bound volume, Examination Papers, 1902-03. Sub-volume Papers Set for Final Examinations in History, Government, Economics, … in Harvard College (June 1902).

Image Source: The Cornell varsity crew of 1894. Thomas Nixon Carver standing on the far left. The Cornellian 1895, p. 197.