Here we add to the previously posted course outline with links to nearly the entire reading list (!) of Professor Warren M. Persons’ course at Harvard on Commercial Crises from first semester of 1923-24. The final examination questions for that course are transcribed below along with a description for the same course a year later.
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Course Description (1924-25)
37 1hf. Commercial Crises. Half-course (first half-year). Tu., Th., Sat., at 9, or by arrangement. Professor Persons.
The history, literature, and theories of economic prosperity, crises, and depression, with special reference to the problem of forecasting.
An analysis from the point of view of business cycles of the statistics of speculation, prices, production, trade, interest rates, money and banking.
Source: Harvard University. Division of History, Government, and Economics in Official Register of Harvard University, Vol. XXI, No. 22 (April 30, 1924), p. 74.
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Final Examination
Commercial Crises
Professor Warren Milton Persons
1923-24
HARVARD UNIVERSITY
ECONOMICS 371
Write on three or more questions
1. (a) What classes of fluctuations are to be found in series of economic statistics?
(b) How may the sequence in cyclical movements of economic series be established?
(c) What is the sequence of movements of stock prices, New York bank debits, pig-iron production, general commodity prices, outside bank debits, bank loans and discounts, and rates on commercial paper?
(d) Give an economic interpretation of the sequence.
2. (a) What are the levels and directions of movement of commodity prices, manufacturing output, stock prices, and money rates:
During the months immediately preceding an economic crisis?
After the culmination of commodity prices?
During business revival and prosperity?
(b) Discuss the ways, means, and limitations of forecasting general business conditions.
3. State the fact and discuss the significance with reference to business cycles of the following:
(a) The correlation between the output and prices of manufactured goods;
(b) The correlation between the production and prices of agricultural goods;
(c) Differences in the violence of fluctuation of the output of producers’ and consumers’ goods, transportation of goods, merchandising, and consumption of goods;
(d) Differences in the violence of fluctuations of various classes of commodity prices.
4. Discuss the following:
(a) The periodicity of business cycles.
(b) Are crises and depressions international?
(c) Are business cycles “self-generating”?
(d) Is there a “typical” cycle?
5. (a) Classify according to any scheme you please the theories of Veblen, Hobson, Aftalion, Bouniatian, Hawtrey, Robertson, Mitchell, Moore, and others.
(b) Discuss your classification.
(c) Outline and criticize the theory of any one of these writers.
6. Give and discuss in full a program for the stabilization of industry and prices.
Final. 1922.
Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University. Final Examinations, 1853-2001 (HUC 7000.28, 66 of 284). Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Papers Printed for Final Examinations: History, History of Religions, … , Economics, … , Psychology, Social Ethics, June, 1924.
Image Source: Harvard Album, 1924.