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Harvard. Final Exam for International Trade and Tariff Policies. Taussig, 1921-22

 

Normally I double check the instructor listed in the course announcements (ex ante) with the instructor named in the Harvard presidential report for the year (ex post). For some reason this information for instruction during the academic year 1921-22 was not published in the annual presidential report. Fortunately Frank Taussig kept a scrap-book of all his course examinations, where we find a copy of the 1922 mid-year exam for Economics 9b. Thus we can be sure International Trade and Tariff Policy was actually taught by the grand old man of the Harvard economics department that year as well.

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Course Announcement
First Half-Year

9b 1hf. International Trade and Tariff Policies

Half-course (first half-year). Tu., Th., at 2.30.  Professor Taussig.

Source: Harvard University. Announcement of the Courses of Instruction offered by the Faculty of Arts and Sciences for the Academic Year 1921-22, 3rd edition, p. 110.

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1921-22
HARVARD UNIVERSITY
ECONOMICS 9b1
[Mid-Year Examination]

Arrange your answers strictly in the order of the questions. Answer all the questions.

I

One page at most for each of the following; one hour at most for the entire group.

  1. How did the reciprocity treaty with Hawaii affect the price of sugar to the consumer in the United States? the reciprocity treaty with Cuba?
  2. What is meant by the “compensating system” for woolens? Was it applied in 1909? In 1913?
  3. What might the development of the copper industry be supposed to show concerning the effects of the tariff? What does it show in fact?
  4. What do you conceive to be meant by a tariff for revenue with incidental protection? One for protection with incidental revenue?
  5. Explain:
    —comparative advantage,
    —superior advantage,
    —inferior disadvantage.
    Are the effects of the conditions described by these terms, on international trade, essentially similar or essentially different?

II

To be answered more fully.

  1. If there were universal free trade between nations, would there be a tendency toward
    1. Equalization of money wages?;
    2. equalization of “real” wages?;
    3. equalization of the price of commodities?
  2. Is the theory of international trade and international payments verified or not verified by (a) the course of events in Canada 1900-10? (b) the course of imports and exports in the United States 1900-10?
  3. “The real reason why Americans are more likely to hold their own where machinery is much used and where hand labor plays a comparatively small part in the expenses of production is”—what? Answer and explain.
  4. “Would it be a reasonable law to prohibit the importation of all foreign wines merely to encourage the making of claret and burgundy in Scotland? But if there would be a manifest absurdity in turning towards any employment thirty times more of the capital and industry of the country than would be necessary to purchase from foreign countries an equal quantity of the commodities wanted, there must be an absurdity, though not altogether so glaring, yet exactly of the same kind, in turning towards any such employment a thirtieth, or even a three-hundredth part more of either. Whether the advantages which one country has over another be natural or acquired is in this respect of no consequence. As long as the one country has those advantages, and the other wants them, it will always be more advantageous for the latter rather to buy of the former than to make. It is an acquired advantage only, which one artificer has over his neighbor, who exercises another trade; and yet they both find it more advantageous to buy of one another than to make what does not belong to their particular trades.”
    Who wrote this passage? [A. The quote is from Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations.] Is there a manifest absurdity? Is it of “exactly the same kind” in the second case stated [a thirtieth or three-hundredth part]? Is it of no consequence whether the advantages of a given country be natural or acquired?
  5. In what way, if at all, does the existence of “non-competing groups” within a country operate to make the country’s international trade different from what it would be if there were no such groups?

 

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University, Mid-year examinations, 1852-1943. Box 10, Bound volume: Examination Papers, Mid-Years, 1920-22.

Image Source: Frank Taussig, March 22, 1917. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA.