I have had the enormous good fortune of having excellent mentors during the course of my own economics education. The first was Professor Merton J. Peck who taught the double credit course “Early Concentration Economics” during the fall semester of my freshman year at Yale (1969-70). He liked a paper I wrote enough to show it to his colleague James Tobin who thought it was good enough to be written by a graduate student, or at least so I was told. With such a boost to my self-esteem, how could I not have continued in economics?
Mr. Peck (at Yale professors are addressed without the honorific “Professor”) offered me a job to be his bursary boy, a 10 hour a week student assistantship, with a variety of tasks spanning photocopying articles and chapters to editing his rough drafts (what humility, allowing a sophomore/junior at Yale to improve his writing!) When I complained to Mr. Peck once that there was no course in the History of Economics at Yale at that time, he told me to give “Willy Fellner” a call. That led to my second Yale mentor and the beginning of my education in the history of economics (a two semester tutorial reading economic classics). There were two major projects that Mr. Peck was working on during my years working for him: on industrial/technological policy in Japan for a Brookings book Asia’s New Giant and Economic Aspects of Television Regulation (with Roger Noll and John McGowan).
Incidentally, in Robert Litan’s book (Trillion Dollar Economists, p. 103) I discovered to my delight that my mentor had spotted the talent in the young Frank Fisher and forwarded Fisher’s undergraduate paper to his colleague Carl Kaysen.
As I was looking at my collection of syllabi from Harvard this evening, I spotted the course below co-taught by Carl Kaysen and Merton J. Peck. This syllabus is my first tribute to the memory of my mentor Joe Peck. I have appended his official Yale obituary. He is also of interest for my project on graduate education, having received a Harvard Ph.D. (1954).
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HARVARD UNIVERSITY
Department of Economics
Spring Term 1955
Economics 161
Professor Kaysen and Dr. Peck
- Markets of Large Numbers (2 Feb. – 28 Feb.)
General introduction
Agriculture
Crude oil
Women’s clothing
R. Schickele, Agricultural Policy, Ch. 9-11, 13-17.
J.K. Galbraith, Basic Factors in Farm Price Policy (mimeo.)
K. Brandt, Farm Price Supports, Rigid or Flexible?
N. Ely, “The Conservation of Oil,” Ch. 11 in Readings in the Social Control of Industry.
E.V. Rostow, A National Policy for the Oil Industry, Part II.
“Adam Smith on 7th Avenue,” Fortune, Jan. 1949.
- The Regulated Industries (2 March – 30 March)
Electric Power
Transportation
Twentieth Century Fund: Electric Power and Government Policy, Ch. I-IV, X
M.L. Fair and E.W. Williams, Jr., Economics of Transportation, Ch. 18-23, 25, 30, 32.
- Economic Mobilization (11 April – 18 April)
D.H. Wallace and L.V. Chandler, Economic Mobilization and Stabilization, Ch. 1-5, 23-26.
- Nationalization and Planning (20 April – 27 April)
J.E. Meade, Planning and the Price Mechanism.
R.W. Lewis, British Planning and Nationalization, Ch. 1-3.
H.A. Clegg and F.E. Chester, The Future of Nationalization, Ch. 1, 3.
Reading Period
A.A. Berle, 20th Century Capitalist Revolution.
Source: Harvard University Archives. Syllabi, course outlines and reading lists in Economics, 1895-2003. Box 6, Folder “Economics, 1955-1956 (2 of 2)”.
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In memoriam: Merton Joseph Peck
YaleNews, March 6, 2013
Merton Joseph Peck, the Thomas DeWitt Cuyler Professor Emeritus of Economics, died March 1, at age 87. He resided in Florida and had been ailing for quite some time, according to his family.
Peck was a specialist in industrial organization, and wrote on a variety of topics including the aluminum industry, transportation, the defense industries, and cable and television. He also wrote about the transition to a market economy in the Soviet Union, as well as technological change.
He served in the U.S. Defense Department under Robert McNamara 1961–1963 as director of systems analysis, and he was designated by Time Magazine as one of the “Pentagon Whiz Kids” in 1962. Peck returned to Washington in 1968 to serve on Lyndon Johnson’s Council of Economic Advisors.
At Yale he served as department chair in various years throughout the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, setting a record for number of years in that post. He also served as director of graduate studies, director of undergraduate studies, and acting dean of the Yale School of Management. He was a fellow of Pierson College at Yale.
Peck was born in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1925. Much of his very early youth was spent in Germany and Strasbourg in Alsace France. His father, Kenneth Peck, was head of European production for American Rake and Hoe. Both his parents died before he was 12, and he was subsequently raised by his aunts and grandmother in various small towns in Ohio. During World War II, Peck served in the Army Signal Corp and participated in the occupation of Japan. After leaving the army, he attended Oberlin College and graduated in 1949. He received his Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University in 1954 under the tutelage of Edward Mason.
Peck taught at Michigan (1955-1956) and Harvard (1956-1962) before coming to Yale, where he served on the faculty 1963–2002. He was also associated with the Rand Corporation and Brookings Institution.
He is survived by his children Richard, Katherine, Sarah, and David; and four grandchildren. His wife of 55 years, Mary Bosworth Peck, predeceased him in 2004.
Source: YaleNews, March 6, 2013.
Image Source: ditto.