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Exam Questions Johns Hopkins Theory

Johns Hopkins. Exam for Welfare Economics. Lerner, 1958

 

Abba Lerner changed his academic locations (including leaves of absence to accept visiting positions) with a frequency rivaled by few. The academic year 1957-58 found him visiting the department of political economy at Johns Hopkins University. The artifact for this post is the final examination for Lerner’s course on welfare economics.

Lerner’s notes for seminars on social welfare functions held at the IMF and at the Cowles Commission in  1952.

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THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY
Welfare Economics
18-640

Final Examination May 20th 2-5 p.m., 1958.
Abba P. Lerner

Answer four questions, in separate blue books, in ink.

  1. Discuss the meaning, the validity and the significance of the proposition that it is impossible to derive a social welfare function from individual preference functions.
  2. How far can one carry the analogy between a political voting procedure and the economic price mechanism, and between the rationale of voting between alternative policies and that of allocating dollars between alternative purchases?
  3. Discuss the rational elements in relation to other elements in the social objectives of optimum distribution of income, optimum population, and optimum rate of saving.
  4. What is sound, what is unsound, and what is useful in the doctrine of consumers’ surplus?
  5. Why is it socially desirable to have the prices of products equal to the value of the marginal factors used in their production? How is this objective affected by equity elements such as the need for subsidies?
  6. Under what conditions would a partial freeing of trade be harmful to society in the largest sense? In your answer explain the treatment of this problem in terms of “second best” and the use of the concept of “divergence”.
  7. Compare the arguments for the imposition of trade restrictions for the sake of affecting the international terms of trade with those undertaken for the sake of affecting the domestic distribution of income. Give special attention to the interdependence of efficiency and equity considerations.

Source: Johns Hopkins University. The Eisenhower Library. Ferdinand Hamburger, Jr. Archives. Department of Political Economy [Records], Series 6/7, Box 3, Folder “Department of Political Economy, Graduate Exams 1933-1965”.

Image Source: Photograph of Abba Lerner printed in an announcement for his speech “Israel—The Next Ten Years” (February 25) at the 1958 Forum presented by Beth Emet the Free Synagogue (Evanston, Illinois). Library of Congress, Manuscript Division. The Papers of Abba P. Lerner, Box 6, Folder 8 “ ‘B’ miscellany”. A copy of the announcement was posted by Ellen Blum Barish in Tablet (January 14, 2014).