The following exam questions on Methods of Economic Investigation were for a course listed as primarily for graduate students, taught by Thomas Nixon Carver at Harvard, 1907-08. It is hard for me to imagine there was any period in the last 120 or so years when anyone might have been impressed by this shallow dive into questions of methodology. Am I missing something?
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Some biographical details
for Thomas N. Carver
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Exams from earlier years
1900-01
1901-02
1903-04
1904-05
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Course Enrollment
1907-08
Economics 13 hf. Professor Carver. — Methods of Economic Investigation
Total 3: 2 Graduates, 1 Divinity.
Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College, 1907-1908, p. 67.
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ECONOMICS 13
Mid-year examination, 1907-08
- How can the method of difference be applied to the determination of the shares in the distribution of wealth.
- What do you understand by the analytical method in economics? Give examples.
- Is the mathematical and diagrammatic method capable of being used in investigation, or it is only a method of exposition? Give reasons for your answer.
- Is there a noticeable tendency among certain writers to treat economics as though it were the science of surplus wealth, and among others to treat it as a science of human well-being? What is the real difference between the two points of view.
- How would you subdivide economics into departments; (a) if you were going to write a text-book; (b) if you were going to organize a department of economics in a university where you could have a teaching staff, say, of 8 specialists, and could get men who would fit into whatever special fields you might plan for them?
Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University. Mid-year Examinations, 1852-1943. Box 8, Bound Volume: Examination Papers, Mid-Years 1907-08.
ECONOMICS 13
Year-end examination, 1907-08
- To what extent is the question of method determined by the kind of information which the investigator is seeking? Illustrate.
- Is the question of method ever confused with the question of the source from which information must be gathered? Illustrate.
- Is the mathematical method a method of investigation or of exposition? Explain and illustrate.
- What quantitative concepts are, or should be, used when we speak of a quantity of land, of oats, of capital, of labor, of money?
- Describe and criticise three methods of ascertaining to what extent immigration, since 1820, has increased the population of the United States.
- Contrast three methods of ascertaining the causes of poverty.
Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University, Examination Papers, 1873-1915. Box 8, Bound vol. Examination Papers 1908-09 (HUC 7000.25), pp. 36-37.
Image Source: Harvard football poster (1907) by F. Earl Christy. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.