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M.I.T. Industrial Economics Syllabus. Bishop. 1957

Robert Lyle Bishop was born June 4, 1916 in St. Louis, Missouri. He graduated summa cum laude from Harvard in 1937.  He was awarded a Sheldon Travelling Fellowship that financed a ten month study tour in Europe. He then went to Princeton for the following year (1938-9), but returned to Harvard where he received an appointment as instructor in economics and tutor in the Division of History, Government and Economics. Bishop moved to M.I.T. in September 1942. Robert Bishop received his Ph.D. in economics from Harvard in 1950. The title of his doctoral dissertation was “The Mechanization of the Glass-Container Industry: a Study in the Economics of Technological Change.”  Besides having served as department chairman (1958-1965) and as dean of the School of Humanities and Social Science (1964-73),  his biggest mark in the education of economists at M.I.T. is to be found in his mimeographed notes for 14.121, the graduate-level introduction to microeconomic theory. Bishop died February 7, 2013.

This reading list for Robert L. Bishop’s first term in a two-term sequence is found filed in a folder of reading lists in Robert Solow’s papers at Duke.

Fun fact: A future president of the United States, an undergraduate named John F. Kennedy, lived in the suite directly below Bishop’s tutorial quarters in F entry of Winthrop House.

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Course Enrollment

“Problems in Industrial Economics” (14.271) in the Fall term of 1957 was taught by Professor Robert L. Bishop. The course met three hours per week. Seven students were enrolled.

Source: MIT Libraries, Institute Archives. MIT Department of Economics Records, Box 3, Folder “Teaching Responsibility”.

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Brief Course Description

The prerequisite for the course was the intermediate microeconomics course “Prices and Production” (14.03).

Small and large enterprises in the American economy; market structures; degrees of monopoly and competition; requisites of public policy.

Source: Course Catalogue of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1957-1958, p. 234.

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14.271 Reading List
Fall, 1957

  1. General

  1. P.W.S. Andrews, “Industrial Economics as a Specialist Subject,” Journal of Industrial Economics, Nov. 1952.
  2. W. Leontief, “Input-Output Economics,” Scientific American, Oct. 1951.
  3. Bureau of the Census, 1952 Annual Survey of Manufactures, pp. 1-12, 201-06.
  4. Conklin and Goldstein, “Census Principles of Industry and Product Classification”, Universities: National Bureau of Economic Research, in Business Concentration and Price Policy, pp. 15-55.
  5. J.S. Bain, “Price and Production Policies,” in Ellis (ed.), Survey of Contemporary Economics, Vol. I., pp. 129-73.
  6. J.K. Galbraith, “Monopoly and the Concentration of Economic Power,” in Ellis (ed.), Survey of Contemporary Economics, Vol. I. pp. 99-128.
  7. E.A.G. Robinson, The Structure of Competitive Industry.
  8. Foss and Churchill, “The Size Distribution of the postwar Business Population,” Survey of Current Business, May 1950, pp. 12-20.
  9. Survey of Current Business, National Income Supplement, July 1954, Tables 7, 12, 13, 14, 15, 18, 19, 20, 25, 27, 29.

  1. Big Business Concentration, and the “Monopoly Problem”

  1. A. A. Berle, The 20th Century Capitalist Revolution, pp. 1-60.
  2. Joel Dean, Managerial Economics, pp. 97-109.
  3. A. Papandreou, “Problems in the Theory of the Firm, “ in Haley (ed.) Survey of Contemporary Economics, Vol. II, pp. 183-222.
  4. Kaplan and Kahn, “Big Business in a Competitive Society,” Fortune, Feb. 1953, pp. 1-14.
  5. Corwin Edwards, “Conglomerate Bigness as a Source of Power,” in National Bureau of Economic Research, Business Concentration and Price Policy, pp. 331-60.
  6. T.N.E.C. Monograph No. 27, Part I, pp. 1-18, 54-57; Part V, 273-96, 407-12; Part VI, pp. 581-91, 660-71.
  7. Stocking and Watkins, Monopoly and Free Enterprise, pp. 53-84.
  8. National Bureau of Economic Research, Cost Behavior and Price Policy, pp. 219-66.
  9. A. N. Burns, The Decline of Competition, pp. 1-42.
  10. E.S. Mason, “Industrial Concentration and the Decline of Competition,” in Explorations in Economics, pp. 434-43; also available in Mason, Economic Concentration and the Monopoly Problem, pp. 16-43.
  11. J.M. Clark, The Economics of Overhead Cost, pp. 434-50.
  12. Butters, Lintner, and Cary, The Effects of Taxation: Corporate Mergers, Chs. IX, X.
  13. M.A. Adelman, “The Measurement of Industrial Concentration,” Review of Economics and Statistics, Nov. 1951, pp. 269-96.
  14. Edwards, Stocking, George, and Berle, “Four Comments on ‘The Measurement of Industrial Concentration,’ with a Rejoinder by Professor Adelman,” Review of Economics and Statistics, May 1952, pp. 156-78.
  15. J.M. Blair, “The Measurement of Industrial Concentration: A Reply,” M.A. Adelman, “Rejoinder,” Lintner and Butters, “Further Rejoinder,” Review of Economics and Statistics, Nov. 1952, pp. 343-67.

  1. General Motors and the Automobile Industry

  1. Joel Dean, Managerial Economics, pp. 397-403, 427-57.
  2. Donaldson Brown, “Pricing Policy in Relation to Financial Control,” Management and Administration, Feb., Mar., and Apr., 1924.
  3. Albert Bradley, “Financial Control Policies of General Motors,” paper read to American Management Association, 1926, revised 1928.
  4. H.B. Vanderblue, “Pricing Policies in the Automobile Industry,” Harvard Business Review, (1939), Vol. 18, pp. 385-401, and Vol. 19, pp. 64-81.
  5. Wall Street Journal, “How Auto Firms Figure Their Costs to Reckon The Price Dealers Pay”, December 10, 1957.
  6. General Motors Corporation, The Dynamics of Automobile Demand, articles by Horner and S.M. Du Brul, pp. 3-18, 124-139.
  7. D.A. Moore, “The Automobile Industry,” in Adams (ed.), The Structure of American Industry, 2nd ed., pp. 274-325.

  1. Competition in the Steel Industry

  1. Walter Adams, “The Steel Industry,” in Adams (ed.), The Structure of American Industry, 2nd ed.
  2. R.L. Bishop, “Price Stability v. Flexibility,” manuscript.
  3. U.S. Steel Corporation, Business, Big and Small, Built America, articles by D. Austin and B.B. Smith, pp. 69-111.
  4. Synopses and Excerpts from Affidavits in U.S. v. Bethlehem Steel and Youngstown Sheet and Tube, 1957.
  5. R.L. Bishop, “On the Definition of Markets,” manuscript.
  6. Fritz Machlup, The Basing-Point System, Chs. 1, 3, 5.
  7. J.M. Clark, “Basing Point Methods of Price Quoting,” Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science, 1938, pp. 477-89.
  8. Carl Kaysen, “Basing Point Pricing and Public Policy,” Quarterly Journal of Economics, Aug. 1949.

  1. Cost Determination and Analysis

  1. J. M. Clark, The Economics of Overhead Costs, pp. 17-69, 201-03, 459-79.
  2. National Bureau of Economic Research, Cost Behavior and Price Policy, pp. 1-32, 51-218.
  3. Caleb Smith, “Survey of the Empirical Evidence on Economies of Scale,” in Universities, National Bureau of Economic Research, Business Concentration and Price Policy, pp. 213-38.
  4. J.S. Bain, “Economies of Scale, Concentration, and Condition of Entry in Twenty Manufacturing Industries,” Economic Review, 1954, pp. 15-39.
  5. Leonard J. Doyle, “Most Profitable Product Volume,” N.A.C.A. Bulletin No. 30 (Feb. 1, 1949), pp. 643-52.
  6. James Earley, “Marginal Policies of ‘Excellently Managed’ Companies,” American Economic Review, Mar. 1956, pp. 44-70.
  7. Joel Dean, Managerial Economics, pp. 247-347.

 

Source: Duke University. Rubenstein Library. Papers of Robert M. Solow, Box 68, Folder “Reading lists”.

Image Source:   Robert Lyle Bishop. MIT Museum.