From 1958 through 1962 Richard Musgrave was Professor of Economics at Johns Hopkins. One thinks of him today as a giant in the history of public finance but the examination below reminds us that he was also an economist who still taught graduate courses in monetary economics/policy at least into the early 1960s.
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More about Richard Musgrave
All posts with the tag “Musgrave” here at Economics in the Rear-view Mirror.
In particular one post with biographical and career information.
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Richard Musgrave
Faculty of Arts and Sciences — Memorial Minute
At a Meeting of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences April 8, 2008, the following Minute was placed upon the records.
Richard Musgrave, the Harold Hitchings Burbank Professor of Political Economy, Emeritus, was the leading public finance economist of his generation. He died on January 15, 2007, at the age of 96.
Richard Abel-Musgrave was born in Königstein, Germany, and educated in Munich and Heidelberg. He was of half Jewish ancestry, his paternal grandfather and maternal grandmother both being Jews who had converted to the Christian faith.
He came to the United States in 1933 as an exchange student at Rochester University but soon transferred to Harvard where he received his PhD in 1937. He decided not to return to Germany and applied for U.S. citizenship in that same year. At that time he dropped the hyphen in his family name, becoming Richard Abel Musgrave. He was known thereafter as Richard Musgrave.
After completing his PhD, Musgrave worked at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve until 1948. He then taught at Johns Hopkins, the University of Michigan and Princeton before joining the faculty at Harvard in 1965. He held simultaneous appointments in the economics department and in the Harvard Law School, the first person to hold a joint appointment in both the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and the Law School. Professor Musgrave took emeritus status in 1981 and moved to California where he was an adjunct professor at the University of California at Santa Cruz.
Although the 19th-century giants of political economy, David Ricardo and John Stuart Mill, wrote extensively about the theory of taxation, by the middle of the 20th century the teaching and writing on public finance in the United States was largely descriptive and institutional. Richard Musgrave changed all of that with his major volume, The Theory of Public Finance, published in 1959.
The Theory of Public Finance was both a theoretical research monograph and a text book. It applied the analytic tools of price theory and of Keynesian macroeconomics to the issues of tax incidence (i.e., who bears the burden of taxes), of efficiency (i.e., measuring the losses caused by the distorting effects of taxes), and of achieving full employment. All of this was done in a very readable and accessible way that made the book very widely studied. The book proved to be a particularly significant resource for tax law professors in their teaching and writing about federal tax policy.
A key feature of Musgrave’s Theory of Public Finance was the division of the problem of public finance into what Musgrave called three “branches.” One “branch” was devoted to the problem of achieving full employment. Here Musgrave applied the ideas of Keynesian fiscal policy to using tax reductions and government spending to increasing aggregate demand. A second “branch” focused on economic efficiency, i.e., on the design of taxes that would raise revenue with the least distortion to incentives and therefore the least loss of real incomes. The third “branch” then dealt with issues of redistribution to achieve a politically acceptable distribution of income. These branches were of course just pedagogical devices and not a way of organizing the actual making of policy.
Richard Musgrave was an inspiring teacher. It was clear to his students that he cared about both the analytic science in public finance and the practical implications of that analysis for improving our tax system. He taught students to think about the impact of taxes on economic efficiency while not losing sight of their distributional consequences. Or, as he might have said, to think about the distribution of the tax burden and the use of taxes and transfers to redistribute income while not losing sight of the consequences of the progressive tax and transfer structure on economic efficiency.
In the weekly graduate seminar in public finance, graduate students and visiting faculty would present their latest research. The seminar brought together not only graduate students and faculty from the department of economics, but also tax specialist members of the Harvard Law School faculty. Their presence added a greater degree of practical focus to the seminar’s discussion of tax reform. Musgrave’s questions and insights kept the seminar focused on the substantive importance of the problems rather than on the more abstract methodological issues. Many of the students taught by Richard Musgrave went on to do important work in public finance.
Although Musgrave felt strongly about tax policy and about transfer programs like Social Security and unemployment insurance, he was not an activist who tried to influence outcomes in Washington. He appeared to believe that he was most effective in developing the analysis and teaching students who would carry this material into practice.
An important exception to this was a major report on fiscal reform in Columbia that Musgrave prepared jointly with Malcolm Gillis in 1971. This report, prepared under the auspices of the Harvard International Tax Program of the Harvard Law School, was based on extensive and detailed work in Columbia.
Richard Musgrave was elected a Distinguished Fellow of the American Economic Association in 1978. Musgrave was one of the organizers of the International Seminar in Public Economics which brought together American and European faculty members who specialized in public finance. He also served as an honorary president of the International Institute of Public Finance.
Professor Musgrave collaborated with his wife, Peggy Musgrave, in writing a popular undergraduate text book, Public Finance in Theory and Practice, which was published in 1973. The Musgraves also found time to reach out to young colleagues and their wives at their homes in Belmont and in Vermont.
Respectfully submitted,
Lawrence Summers
Bernard Wolfman
Martin Feldstein, Chair
Source: The Harvard Gazette. June 12, 2008.
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THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY
Economics 611
Final Examination
Prof. R. A. Musgrave
January 22, 1960
I
Write for forty-five minutes.
There is by now pretty general agreement, among monetary theorists, regarding the various relationships by which the supply of money may affect the level of output and prices. Nevertheless, there remains a division between those who prefer to study the role of money in the framework of an income-expenditure approach, and those who prefer the quantity theory of equation of exchange tradition. What, if any, substantive justification is there for retention of this dichotomy? If there is none, which approach is to be retained? If there is, what distinct purposes are served by the two approaches?
II
Write on two out of the following three questions, thirty minutes each,
- Various writers, including Wicksell, Fisher and Keynes, have treated the problem of monetary disequilibrium and the nature of the equilibrating process, in terms of the differential between two rates of interest. Discuss these approaches and compare the concepts of interest used therein.
- Where do you stand on the loanable funds—liquidity preference controversy? In particular, are you satisfied that the distinction between the stock and the flow approach to monetary theory is purely terminological?
- “It was a great misfortune for the development of monetary theory, that Marshall and Pigou did not stick with their initial intent to relate k to wealth, but proceeded to relate it to income. Thereby was postponed the recognition — so essential for a fruitful approach to monetary theory — that the demand for money must be dealt with in the context of a general portfolio theory.” Discuss.
III
Write on the following three statements, for fifteen minutes each. Indicate whether the statement is right or wrong and why.
- “The real balance effect implies that the demand schedule for money has unit elasticity, from which it follows that the price level changes proportionately with the money supply.”
- “The liquidity trap is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for under-employment equilibrium.”
- “Classical theory was mistaken in assuming that the rate of interest is determined by income independent of money supply. As Keynes has shown, interest is determined by money supply and then determines income.”
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Dr. R. A. Musgrave
Friday, May 20, 1960
ECONOMICS 611
- The following changes occur: Bill holdings at the Federal Reserve rise by 100 million, while bond holdings fall by 80 million. Also, bank holdings of bills fall by 70 million, non-bank holdings of bills fall by 30 million, and non-bank holdings of bonds rise by 80 million. What is the resulting change in excess reserves, assuming a reserve ratio of 20%, and why? (Assume that the system retains such changes in excess reserves as result, without reacting with corresponding changes in loans.)
- Assume that the system is always loaned up. What will be the effects on member bank reserves and demand deposits of (a) an increase in vault cash by 100; (b) a decrease in currency in circulation by 200; (c) a gold outflow of 300; (d) a decrease in treasury deposits at commercial banks by 500. The reserve ratio is again 20%.
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: Richard A. Musgrave page at the University of Michigan’s Faculty History Project.