Tag: Smithies

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Economics Programs Harvard Undergraduate

Harvard. Undergraduate economics concentrators dropped over 50% in 1950s.

 

This post provides some backstory to the next post that features the reading lists for Harvard’s junior year tutorial in macroeconomics (Arthur Smithies) and microeconomics (Edward Chamberlin) used in 1960-61. The following Harvard Crimson article describes the undergraduate program in crisis (as seen in the massive drop in economics concentrators). The fall in numbers was attributed to the observation that economics “instruction gyrates widely from verbal triviality to mathematical incomprehensibility”.  Now one might say that much economics instruction gyrates from verbal incomprehensibility to mathematical triviality.

Alfred Marshall tried to design his own Cambridge Curriculum to address two classes of students, those needing general economics training for leadership careers in business and government and those needing advanced training for research careers in economics. Integrated training of the two classes within a single program at Harvard appears to have reached its limits by the second half of the twentieth century. 

Marshall, Alfred. The New Cambridge Curriculum in Economics. London: Macmillan, 1903.

________________________

Economics: Undergraduate Program Undergoes Extensive Re-Evaluation
By Michael Churchill

The Harvard Crimson, November 14, 1959

C. P. Snow, British scientist and author, recently called attention to what he termed the problem of two cultures in our society–the gap in understanding between the traditional humanities and social sciences on the one hand and modern science and technology on the other. Both exist side by side, yet remain intellectually divorced in our modern society. This dichotomy serves well in considering the difficulties surrounding the discipline of economics, for its midway position in such a scheme is indicative of its problems.

The subject matter of economics is the productive system, with all its relations to the world of technology. The concern of economics, however, is this system’s role in society and its effect on men, their livelihood, and their institutions. Not an integrator of the two cultures, nevertheless it must span the separation.

The Economics Department is currently undergoing a crisis. It has failed up to now to accommodate both elements in a coherent program. The result is strikingly demonstrated by the flight of undergraduate concentrators from the field. In less than a decade the number has declined by over half; from 709 in 1949 to 340 in 1958. Although the decline may partially reflect a nationwide tendency, it also is the result of the confusion and frustration attending the undergraduate program here, as the instruction gyrates widely from verbal triviality to mathematical incomprehensibility.

Though economics stands mid-way between two cultures, it is its similarity to the natural sciences that causes the greatest problems. Professional economics shares with the sciences an analytic technique “remote from the common experience of the layman and a language that is principally mathematical,” to use the words the Bruner Committee applied to the natural sciences. And to judge from the current trend this will become increasingly so.

Another similarity with science is that the study of economics is often cumulative, thereby necessitating an extensive introduction to provide the requisite basic knowledge. These are the same problems with which the Bruner Report was concerned in the teaching of natural sciences in a liberal arts program. That report dealt primarily with the problem of the non-concentrator in science–the General Education courses in natural sciences. The Economics Department, however, because of the interest of its concentrators, encounters the same problems throughout its program.

Some of the concentrators are presumably economists, and the Department little wishes to discourage their interests. The vast majority, however, will be lawyers, doctors, and even, despite the Department’s hostility, businessmen.

A final similarity with the sciences lies in the difficulty both areas have in getting the proper senior faculty to teach undergraduate courses. Because of the vast gap between the level of professional work and the elementary nature of undergraduate work–a gap so great that the difference is not only of degree of sophistication but of content–many professors are either reluctant to teach undergraduates or incapable of making the transition.

The combination of the inherent difficulties in teaching economics in a liberal arts college plus the almost total neglect of the undergraduate program in past years has resulted in the precipitous decline in concentrators. The hope of halting that decline lies at the bottom of the Department’s plans to re-design the undergraduate program, which are now under way.

Arthur Smithies, Chairman of the Department, met frequently this summer and again this fall with a Department Committee on Undergraduate Education appointed last spring. Headed by Professor Dunlop, members of the group are Professors Chamberlin, Duesenberry, and Meyer, Assistant Professors Gill and Lefeber, and instructors Baer and Berman.

The results of this increased attention are already apparent in changes made this year in Economics 1 and Junior tutorial, Ec. 98. Historical and topical subjects have gained emphasis at the expense of some of the more theoretical and analytical material, which is now consigned to Sophomore tutorial. In former years economic theory was presented in a historical vaccum without any consideration of the evolution of the economic system from a local medieval subsistence economy to the modern international productive system. The first month of Economics 1 is now devoted to filling this gap. Other changes include an increased emphasis upon the problem of underdeveloped countries and the substitution of a three-week study of the economy of the Soviet Union for the former week’s survey of comparative economic systems.

Along with these changes in content have come those of organization. Gone is the “parade of stars” which formerly masqueraded as lectures. Instead there are now blocs of integrated lectures covering single aspects of the course, for example the series of lectures the first month that Professor Gill gave on economic history. Another long-standing distinguishing trait of the course, its extensive use of teaching fellows, is also on the way out.

The changes are clearly tending to make the course less an introduction into the Department and more a General Education course in the social sciences. The stress, in the attempt to interest the non-concentrator through presentation of historical and topical issues, is now upon political economy rather than upon economics. In a liberal arts college such a solution to the problems affecting the discipline seems to be the most logical and rewarding for an introductory course.

Faced, however, with the task of teaching its concentrators some of the methods and techniques of the economist, the department has moved towards increasing utilization of Sophomore and Junior tutorial for this purpose. The analytic material ejected from Ec. 1 has found refuge in Sophomore tutorial, while Ec. 98 (Junior tutorial) although heavily biased towards the empirical is the only course in the Department offering an overall view of the field.

But there is this year, in addition, an increased amount of attention towards policy questions and topical economic issues in both courses, a reflection of the prevalent belief that meaningful economics on the undergraduate level should relate, as Smithies said, “to the great public issues of the day.” In practice these two elements–the analytical tools and the social framework in which they must fit–still remain divorced in these courses, but at least the attempt is being made to integrate them.

The most perplexing problems facing the Department occur in the area of the middle group courses. To some extent they are aggravated by the Department’s quantative approach to the number of concentrators, with its concern to retain the marginally interested student within the Department. And again the nature of the field, with its disparity between advanced professional techniques and an undergraduate approach, intensifies the problem that confronts many other departments in the College–that of withstanding the polar attractions of pre-professional orientation or of superficiality. Concerning the middle course group area, Dunlop’s committee has only just begun its discussions, but the major alternatives are well known.

There is general agreement, according to Dunlop, that the undergraduate program as part of a liberal arts program should not be a pre-professional training. Disagreement, however, becomes manifest quickly after that statement. Many members of the department, for instance, feel that the best concentrators, the potential future economists, should be allowed to take courses on the graduate level, and indeed should be encouraged to do so. In effect these students would be obtaining a pre-professional training, but the supporters of this proposal feel that this is the only way whereby the interest of the economics-oriented student can be prevented from obstruction by the triviality of normal undergraduate economics courses. At present many undergraduates already take graduate level courses, but the new plan would make a sharper distinction between those who do and do not.

Another group in Department, however, voices the opinion that the College student should not clutter his schedule with pre-professional courses, but rather use his time to study such fields as music, literature, and mathematics. If a student does do graduate work later in economics he will have no trouble picking up whatever advanced analytic tools he needs at that time, while if he does not intend to do so there is no sense in wasting his time with a lot of specialized technique, this bloc maintains.

One proposal, approved by nearly all and sorely needed, is to introduce a greater flexibility into the program through increased use of half-year courses. Presently over half of the seventeen courses offered run from September to June. Many of these, it is admitted, could be pared down to a half-year.

This leads to the proposal for a new type course to replace the far-flung surveys. They would probe smaller areas, but penetrate deeper. Based on the combined desire to attract more students, and the premise that the goal is a more intelligent understanding of the public issues of the past and present, the courses would be designed around the topical approach. Examples would be courses on the corporation, on the economic impact of government activity, the present course on the Soviet Union, a half-year course on underdeveloped countries. In discussing this approach, Dunlop stressed that these would not be “watered down versions of the analytic approach but a new crosscut.” It should be noted that, while not analytical, these courses would still include some quantitative analysis or even simple economic models, but these methods would not become ends or major concerns of the courses.

Another proposal is to set up a core program in the Department. There is, in fact, almost one already. Ec. 141–Money and Banking, Ec. 161–Industrial Organization, and Ec. 181–Industrial Relations, cover the major areas of the field and at least two of them are necessary to handle Generals well. A real core program where all concentrators would progress from one level of the next has many advantages; it provides a common background which the lecturer can assume, gives a common training, and insures that a student will not neglect a vital aspect of the field. But it also has disadvantages, the primary one being the difficulty of handling non-concentrators who have not had this core. Separate sections in a course might be a simple answer here. A more difficult problem is that of time. Ec. 1, 98, and 99 already constitute three-fifths of the required courses. A central core program of another three semesters would aggravate the present lack of flexibility.

For the Economics Department this is a time of discussion, but it must soon reach the hour of decision. Certainly the present situation is not tolerable. By its over-concern with theoretical models and tools, the Department has separated itself from the true materials of a liberal arts education in economics. It should not, however, allow itself to reach the other extreme, in its quest for concentrators, of reducing the content of the courses to a point where an economics student is no more qualified to discuss and solve an issue of political economy than an intelligent government concentrator.

There is little question of the importance of economics today, with its strategic position between the technological productive system and the literary tradition of the social sciences, and with its unique combination of the empirical and theoretical. It remains only to be taught well.

 

 

Categories
Columbia Economist Market Salaries Teaching

Columbia. Due to exploding graduate economics enrollments, Stigler hired as visiting professor, 1946

 

 

The graduate economics courses at Columbia University were swamped by registrations one year after the end of the Second World War. Over 160 students were registered for the two graduate economic theory courses offered by A.G. Hart and William S. Vickrey. The executive officer of the economics department, Carter Goodrich, requested the central university allow the department to hire a visitor to ease the burden on Hart and Vickrey. That victory won with the visiting appointment for George Stigler (then a professor at Brown), Goodrich next pushed for an increase in the general budget for teaching assistants as well as for hiring Dorothy Fox assist him in his U.S. economic history class.

______________________

Columbia University
in the City of New York
(New York 27, N.Y.)

Faculty of Political Science

September 30, 1946

Dr. Frank D. Fackenthal
Acting President, Columbia University
Low Memorial Library

Dear Mr. President:

The extremely heavy enrollment for the graduate work in economics raises serious questions for the future staffing of the Economics Department. I should very much appreciate the opportunity to discuss these with you when the final figures are in, and when we can assess the situation more fully.

Meanwhile, however, there is one question on which emergency action at once seems essential. We advise the great majority of our students to take a general, systematic course in economic theory or economic analysis. We offer this year two such courses: Economics 153-4, given by Prof. A.G. Hart; and Economics 159-60, given by Mr. William S. Vickrey. Prof. Hart and Mr. Vickrey have between them over one hundred and sixty students registered. The work in these courses cannot be given on a mass lecture basis in a way that would meet the standards of any first-rate institution. It would not serve the purpose for which the Department intends it if there were not at least some degree of individual instruction.

I wish, therefore, to request an additional man to take one section of this basic course. I should like authority to approach Prof. Arthur Smithies, who taught Economic Theory at the University of Michigan, but who is at present in the Bureau of the Budget, at Washington. The proposal would be that the class should meet for two hours one day a week. I suggest $2500 for the year as the appropriate compensation. If preferred, $500 of this might properly be described as traveling expenses.

The money is available in the present budget, partly from the salary allotted for the professor of international economics on which only a half-time appointment was made for the present year, and from the money available for the unfilled position on economic history. Both these salaries, I should add, will be needed next year.

I should be most grateful if you would give me a decision on this at once, since the step must be taken immediately if it is to bring effective relief.

Sincerely yours,
[signed]
Carter Goodrich

CG:jg

______________________

Columbia University
in the City of New York
(New York 27, N.Y.)

Faculty of Political Science

October 14, 1946

Dr. Frank D. Fackenthal
213 Low Memorial Library.

Dear Mr. President:

This time the report is not wholly negative. Following our conversation of Thursday afternoon, I invited Prof. George J. Stigler, of Brown University, to come to help us in the emergency situation in Economic Theory. Prof. Stigler has agreed to come for the first semester, but is not as yet prepared to commit himself for the entire year. I am therefore enclosing a form for his appointment for the Winter Session on the terms agreed. The salary for the first semester is available from the unused portion of the salary of Professor A.F. Burns.

I hope that we may be able to persuade Prof. Stigler to continue the work throughout the year. If not, there is a possibility that Prof. Smithies may be able to come for the second semester.

Sincerely yours,
[signed]
Carter Goodrich

______________________

[Carbon Copy]

October 18, 1946

Professor Carter Goodrich
Fayerweather

Dear Professor Goodrich

I have your letter of October 14 in regard to the appointment of Stigler as Visiting Professor and will see that the appointment goes through the next meeting of the Trustees.

Maybe I had better point out that there is no money available in Prof. Burns’ position. In addition to his own half pay, the salaries of Vickrey ($2000) and Alexander ($1700) have already charged against that. However, we will make the appointment against the balance remaining in the vacant professorship.

Very truly yours

Frank D. Fackenthal
Acting President

VS

______________________

Columbia University
in the City of New York
(New York 27, N.Y.)

Faculty of Political Science

October 22, 1946

Dr. Frank D. Fackenthal, Acting President,
213 Low Memorial Library.

Dear Mr. President:

I very much appreciate your action on the Stigler appointment.

The second paragraph of your letter of October 18 puzzled me, since I had never heard of Alexander. We have tracked the matter down and it appears to be an appointment in Contemporary Civilization, chargeable to a budget of Dean Carman’s. It should not be a charge on the Department of Economics.

Sincerely yours,
[signed]
Carter Goodrich
Executive Officer, Department of Economics.

______________________

Columbia University
in the City of New York
(New York 27, N.Y.)

Faculty of Political Science

October 24, 1946

Dr. Frank D. Fackenthal, Acting President,
213 Low Memorial Library,
Columbia University

Dear Mr. President:

In my letter of September 30th I spoke of the problems raised for the Economics Department by the extremely heavy enrollment in the graduate school. Now that the final enrollment is in, I wish to recommend two further measures, in addition to the emergency adjustment in Theory which you have been good enough to authorize. The total registration in the graduate courses borne on the budget of the Department of Economics for this session is double that for the Spring Session of 1946, which in turn was very much larger than that for the Winter Session of 1945. In 22 courses last spring there were 788 registrations; in 24 courses this session there are 1578. 7 of these courses have enrollments of more than 100 students (Angell, 112; A. R. Burns, 127, 153; Bergson, 142; Goodrich, 141; Nurkse, 130; Wolman, 140.)

To meet this situation I request, first, that the appropriation for Assistance be raised from $1,000-$1,500. Prof. Taylor estimates the needs of the College department, which has in the past used the greater part of the Assistance fund, as $500. Professors Angell, Bergson, A.R. Burns, Nurkse, and Wolman have all asked this year for reading assistance and will certainly need it in these courses.

Second, I request the appointment of Mrs. Dorothy G. Fox as an assistant in Economics to aid in my own course Economic history of the United States, so that a part of the time may be given to discussion in sections of a reasonable size. Mrs. Fox is at present an instructor in Economic principles in University Extension. I propose a salary of $700 for the academic year.

Money for these adjustments may be taken, if necessary, from what remains in the salary allotted to the vacant professorship. I should add, however, that these adjustments are made necessary solely by the extraordinary enrollment and that making them would not in any way diminish the long-run needs of the Department.

Sincerely yours,
[signed]
Carter Goodrich
Executive Officer of the Department of Economics.

______________________

Columbia University
in the City of New York
(New York 27, N.Y.)

Faculty of Political Science

January 15, 1947

Dr. Frank D. Fackenthal, Acting President,
Columbia University

Dear Mr. President:

I beg to request the appointment of Dr. Moses Abramovitz as Visiting Lecturer in Economics for the Spring Session, at a compensation of $1,000. This is a further adjustment to meet the emergency situation in economic theory. As indicated in my letter of October 14th, 1946, Professor Stigler, of Brown University, agreed to come for the first semester, but was not prepared to commit himself for the entire year. He has informed us, much to our regret, that he cannot continue and I am therefore proposing a substitute. Dr. Abramovitz is one of the very best of the recent Ph.D.’s in this Department and holds a responsible research position with the National Bureau of Economic Research. He taught the same course in this Department during 1940-1941 and 1941-1942.

The total compensation for Professor Stigler, as you recall, was $1,250, of which $250 was counted as traveling expenses. The $1,000 requested for Dr. Abramovitz is available, $500 from the unused portion of the salary of Professor Arthur F. Burns and $500 from the funds for the vacant professorship.

I am enclosing the form for Dr. Abramovitz’ appointment and I very much hope you will be able to make it.

Respectfully yours,
[signed]
Carter Goodrich
Executive Officer, Department of Economics.

 

Source:  Columbia University Archives. Rare Book and Manuscript Library. Central Files 1890-. Box 406, Folder “Goodrich, Carter. 1/1”.

Image Source: Low Memorial Library, Columbia University from the Tichnor Brothers Collection, New York Postcards, at the Boston Public Library, Print Department.

Categories
Gender Harvard Michigan

Harvard. Ph.D. Alumna (1951). Michigan Professor Eva Mueller. 1920-2006

 

One probably would have forecast that Eva L. Mueller who was awarded her economics Ph.D. (Radcliffe College) in 1951 with the dissertation “Business Savings and the Business Cycle” would have gone on to become a macroeconomist. Arthur Smithies was the chairman of the Harvard economics department at the time she received her Ph.D. and when asked for his help in finding a job, Eva Mueller remembered him saying “…he couldn’t help me, since economics wasn’t a woman’s field”. She did find a job at the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research where she transformed herself into a population and development expert.

I have copy-and-pasted a variety of biographical memoirs and obituaries for this post. One cannot help but be touched by the deep affection and respect of her Michigan colleagues that one can read in and between the lines. Macro’s loss was development economics’ gain.

_____________________

Professor Eva Mueller, 1920-2006

Professor Eva Mueller died on November 19, 2006 at the age of 86.

Dr. Mueller, a U-M Professor Emerita of Economics and Research Scientist at PSC at the time of her death, had a long and fruitful career at Michigan. But she faced many challenges on her path to success.

Fifty-five years ago, when Mueller received a PhD in economics from Harvard University, she asked the chairman of the department for help finding a job. “He said he couldn’t help me, since economics wasn’t a woman’s field,” she recalled. Undeterred, Mueller found a research job at the Institute for Social Research (ISR), where she helped to pioneer the use of surveys to analyze consumer behavior. After six years, she received a tenure-track appointment as an assistant professor in the Department of Economics and in 1964 was named a full professor.

“The struggle isn’t over yet,” she said, accepting the Carolyn Shaw Bell Award Jan. 6, 2001 from the American Economic Association’s Committee on the Status of Women in the Economics Profession.

Mueller was nominated for the award, given annually to an individual who has furthered the status of women in economics, by several former students, along with David Lam, professor of economics and director of ISR’s Population Studies Center, and Sherrie Kossoudji, associate professor of social work and adjunct associate professor of economics.

“Eva was really unusual as a woman breaking into the male-dominated field of economics,” noted Lam. “She was a real role model for many of us,” said Kossoudji. “She was also consistent in her support for young female students. And she made us tough. ‘You must do better,’ she told us. ‘You must work harder.’ That was always her approach.”

Born February 26, 1920, Mueller said she was influenced by the Great Depression in making her career choice. “It impressed me that what the world needed was to rescue its economies,” she said. Also, her mother, who had a PhD in chemistry, emphasized education for her children. “She had her mind set that all her children must get PhDs.”

During WWII, she said, when the Harvard Economics Department “was more or less closed down… because all of the faculty was in Washington working on the war effort,” she took a job at the Federal Reserve Bank in New York.

After the war, Mueller studied under Alvin Hansen, “at the time the number one Keynesian in the U.S.” Upon completing her PhD, she needed a job.

“I wrote some letters to people whose stuff I had read and thought they would be interesting to work for. One was George Katona. He happened to know George Garvey, for whom I had worked at the Federal Reserve, so he wrote to him and asked if I would be a plausible candidate. That’s how I came to Michigan to the Institute for Social Research.

I wanted to go to the economics department, but they would not accept me. Then I was sort of on the waiting list. John Lansing and, I think, even Jim Morgan, were on the waiting list ahead of me. They eventually got to me.”

In 1951 Mueller joined the staff of the Survey Research Center; in 1957 she joined the Department of Economics, where she became a full professor in 1964. Six years later, she became a research scientist at the Population Studies Center. Mueller had been a Professor Emerita since 1988.

During her long and active career at Michigan, Eva Mueller made important contributions in several areas of economic research. For the first two decades, her research emphasized analysis of consumer behavior in the U.S. She later moved on to work related to economic development and economic demography. Her published papers cover a wide range of topics and countries, including the impact of unemployment on consumer confidence in the U.S., the economics of fertility decline in Taiwan, and the time allocation of women and children in Botswana.

In addition to her contributions as a researcher, she played an important role in building the economic demography training program run jointly by the Population Studies Center and the Department of Economics. She served as an advisor to many PhD students in economic demography who have gone on to positions in universities, government, and international agencies.

The Eva Mueller New Directions in Demography and Economics Fund has been established to support research and training in demography and economics, especially projects focusing on low income countries and projects dealing with the socioeconomic position of women and investments in children’s health and human capital.

 

Source: Announcement of the death of Eva L. Mueller by the University of Population Studies Center, Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan.

_____________________

Select Career Publications

Dr. Mueller studied the interaction of economic and demographic change. One particular focus of her research was the relation between income change and fertility change. Within this context she was interested in the methodology of collecting useful employment statistics, including the methodology of time-use studies.

Journal Articles

Mueller, Eva. 1984. “The Value and Allocation of Time in Rural Botswana.” Journal of Development Economics, 15(1-3): 329-60. Abstract.

Watanabe, B., and Eva Mueller. “A Poverty Profile for Rural Botswana.” World Development, 12, no. 2 (1984): 115-27. Abstract.

Kossoudji, S., and Eva Mueller. “The Economic and Demographic Status of Female-Headed Households in Rural Botswana.” Economic Development and Cultural Change, 31, no. 4 (July 1983): 831-59.

Mueller, Eva. “The Impact of Demographic Factors on Economic Development in Taiwan.” Population and Development Review, 3, no. 1&2 (1977): 1-22. Abstract.

Mueller, Eva, and R. Cohn. “The Relation of Income to Fertility Decisions in Taiwan.” Economic Development and Cultural Change, 25, no. 2 (January 1977): 325-47.

MacDonald, M., and Eva Mueller. “The Measurement of Income in Fertility Surveys in Developing Countries.” Studies in Family Planning, 6, no. 1 (January 1975): 22-28. Abstract.

Mueller, Eva. “Economic Motives for Family Limitation.” Population Studies, 27, no. 3 (November 1972): 383-403. Abstract.

 

Chapters

Mueller, Eva. 1976. “The Economic Value of Children in Peasant Agriculture.” In Population and Development: The Search for Selective Interventions edited by Ronald Gene Ridker. Baltimore : The Johns Hopkins University Press.

 

PSC Reports

Mueller, Eva. “Time Use Studies: Their Potential Contribution to the Policy Dialogue in Developing Countries.” PSC Research Report No. 85-86. 9 1985.

Mueller, Eva, and Kathleen Short. “Income and Wealth as They Affect the Demand for Children in Developing Countries.” PSC Research Report No. 82-35. 9 1981.

Kassoudji, Sherrie, and Eva Mueller. “The Economic and Demographic Status of Female Headed Households in Rural Botswana.” PSC Research Report No. 81-10. 3 1981.

 

Source:  University of Population Studies Center, Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan.

_____________________

Eva L. Mueller
Memoir
1988

Eva L. Mueller, Professor of Economics and Research Scientist in the Population Studies Center and Center for Research on Economic Development, will retire from active faculty status on December 31, 1988, after a most productive career as a teacher and researcher.

A native of Germany, Professor Mueller became a naturalized citizen in 1944. She received her B.A. degree from Smith College in 1942, her M.A. degree from New York University in 1945, and her Ph.D. degree from Harvard University in 1951.

From 1951-68, Professor Mueller was on the staff of the Survey Research Center at the Institute for Social Research. She joined the Department of Economics in 1957 as an assistant professor; she was promoted to associate professor in 1960 and to professor in 1964. Since 1968, she has also been affiliated with the Center for Research in Economic Development and the Center for South and Southeast Asian Studies, and in 1970, she accepted an additional appointment in the Population Studies Center. From 1974-78, Professor Mueller served as associate dean in the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts.

For several years, Professor Mueller has directed the NIH-sponsored Economic Training Program in Economic Demography, which has attracted many of the brightest students in the Ph.D. program in economics. Several of the department’s most successful female students have been recruited into the program. They were attracted by the setting Professor Mueller created, which was encouraging and supportive, and in which Professor Mueller herself has acted as an extraordinary role model.

Professor Mueller has conducted exciting and important research in the area of fertility and female labor supply in developing countries. Some of her work has been conducted under the auspices of the World Bank and the U.S. Agency for International Development, taking her to India, Thailand, Brazil, and Botswana.

The Regents now salute this distinguished educator and researcher for her dedicated service by naming Eva L. Mueller Professor Emeritus of Economics.

 

Source: Mueller named Emerita Professor at University of Michigan. Faculty History Project.

_____________________

 Obituary
Eva L. Mueller
1920 – 2006

Eva Mueller, Professor Emerita of Economics, died November 19, 2006, in Ann Arbor, at the age of eighty-six.

Professor Mueller received her B.A. in 1942 from Smith College with a major in economics. In 1951 she received her Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University and joined the staff of the University of Michigan’s Survey Research Center. In 1957 she joined the Department of Economics. She became associated with the Center for Research in Economic Development and the Center for South and Southeast Asian Studies in 1968, and joined the Population Studies Center in 1970. Her many roles at the University of Michigan included service as Associate Dean in the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts.

Mueller received a number of distinctions during her career. She was a Fellow of the American Statistical Association. She served on the Board of Directors of the Population Association of America and was elected Vice-President of the Association. In 2001 she received the Carolyn Shaw Bell Award from the American Economics Association. This award is given by the AEA’s Committee on the Status of Women in the Economics Profession “to an individual who has furthered the status of women in the economics profession, through example, achievements, increasing our understanding of how women can advance in the economics profession, or mentoring of others.”

Mueller made important contributions in several areas of economic research. For the first two decades, her research emphasized analysis of consumer behavior in the United States. She later moved into research related to economic development and economic demography. Her published papers cover a wide range of topics and countries, including the impact of unemployment on consumer confidence in the U.S., the economics of fertility decline in Taiwan, and the time allocation of women and children in Botswana. In addition to her contributions as a researcher, she played an important role in building the economic demography training program run jointly by the Population Studies Center and the Department of Economics. She served as an advisor to many Ph.D. students in economic demography who have gone on to positions in universities, government, and international agencies.

—David Lam, Department of Economics

Source: Obituary for Eva L. Mueller, University of Michigan. Faculty History Project.

Image sources:  Early career portrait of Eva L. Mueller from University of Population Studies Center, Institute for Social Research. Later portrait from University of Michigan, Faculty History Project.

Categories
Economists Harvard Seminar Speakers

Harvard. Galbraith’s Special Tuesday Evening Seminar, 1973

 

One of the delights of working with the papers of John Kenneth Galbraith is that the man was simply incapable of writing a straight memo. Some flash of wit or felicitous use of the English language always breaks in. The following announcement gives us some insight into the sort of university service that Galbraith most gladly provided. Soft power was his instrument of choice for departmental politics.

___________________

SPECIAL TUESDAY EVENING SEMINAR

As in earlier years, Professor Galbraith will conduct a series of evening discussions for first year graduate students and others who are interested. Meetings will be in the Littauer Lounge at 7 o’clock, and participants are urged to arrive reasonably on time. They may leave when they wish. Following very brief introductory comments by Professor Galbraith and guests, the subject will be open for discussion. No competently presented argument, however inconvenient, will be denied a hearing. Discussion will continue as long as the audience or the supply of useful ideas endures. This year’s subject and dates are listed below. The guest list is still tentative.

 

October 2, 1973—THE ECONOMICS OF THE PRESENT INFLATION

Guests:
Hendrik S. Houthakker
James S. Duesenberry
John Dunlop

October 16, 1973—THE CORPORATION: IS IT RESPONSIBLE: HAS IT BOUGHT THE COUNTRY

Guests:
Theodore Levitt
Marc Roberts
Abram Chayes
Richard Caves

October 30, 1973—WHAT AND HOW SHOULD ECONOMICS BE TAUGHT AND A Ph.D. EARNED OR ACQUIRED

Guests:
Dale Jorgenson
Robert Dorfman
Sam Bowles
Art McEwan

November 13, 1973—WHAT ARE THE ECONOMICS OF SEX DISCRIMINATION, ARE WOMEN ECONOMIC ARTIFACTS

Guests:
Carolyn Bell
Betsy Munzer
Hazel Denton
Arthur Smithies
Lester Thurow

December 4, 1973—ECONOMICS AND THE PUBLIC PURPOSE

An evening for or against the book. (On this evening, a reasonable quantity of champagne of indifferent quality will be supplied from the accrued royalties, if any)

Guests:
John Kenneth Galbraith
Steve Marglin
Zvi Griliches

 

Source: John F. Kennedy Presidential Library. John Kenneth Galbraith Papers. Box 78. Series 5. Harvard University File, 1949-1990. Folder: “Courses, Non-credit seminar1973”.

Image Source: John Kenneth Galbraith in academic regalia from the Harvard Class Album, 1968.

Categories
Chicago Economist Market Economists

Chicago. Marschak on potential hires for department, 1946

 

In his magnificent article about the departmental politics behind the appointment of Milton Friedman at the University of Chicago in 1946, David Mitch refers in passing to a February 1946 memo written to the Chancellor and President of the University by Vice-President Rueben G. Gustavson in which the Vice-President reports on a discussion he had with Jacob Marschak about various economists being considered for appointment.

Mitch’s online Appendix to his article provides an excellent selection of archival artifacts to which the transcription of the Gustavson memo below may be added. In this memo it looks like we are observing active lobbying (at least providing his “spin”) on Marschak’s part rather than a senior faculty member summoned by an administrator to provide deep background on prospective hires.

It is worth noting that the names of five future Nobel prize winners in economics can be found in a single 1946 memo. It is also interesting that the last two candidates mentioned in the memo, namely Lloyd Metzler and Milton Friedman, were the only two to turn out to become permanent acquisitions of the department.

 

See: David Mitch, “A Year of Transition: Faculty Recruiting at Chicago in 1946,” Journal of Political Economy 124, no. 6 (December 2016): 1714-1734. [working paper version (ungated)]

__________________________________

Biographical Note of Rueben Gilbert Gustavson

Rueben Gilbert Gustavson was born (April 6, 1892-February 24, 1974) to Swedish immigrants James and Hildegard Gustavson. As a young man Gustavson developed a strong belief in moral responsibility to others. After a childhood injury made following in his father’s footsteps as a carpenter impossible he attended high school where he excelled in his studies. In deference to his father’s wish he learn practical skills Gustavson took courses in typing and stenography. These classes enabled Reuben to gain employment with Colorado and Southern Railroad where he became secretary to the auditor. The monies Gustavson earned working at the railroad enabled him to enroll in at the University of Denver, DU. After obtaining his bachelor’s degree DU Gustavson decided to pursue a master’s degree in chemistry. He received his MS in chemistry in 1917 and briefly became a chemist at the Great Western Sugar Company. He accepted an offer to teach at the Colorado Agricultural College in Fort Collins but became disillusioned when told that as a professor he could not teach and conduct research. Gustavson returned to DU where he remained for the next seventeen years. During that time he spent summer breaks working toward his PhD at the University of Chicago. Initially, specializing in radioactivity the loss of his advisor enabled him to change to biochemistry. Gustavson received his PhD in 1925 and taught at the University of Chicago during the 1929-30 academic year. A disagreement over what Gustavson felt were unethical practices involving student athletes led to him leaving DU. University of Colorado President, George Norlin, invited Gustavson to join the faculty as a professor of chemistry. He was appointed chairman of the chemistry department and remained in that position from 1937-42. In 1942 the Dean of the Graduate School became ill and Gustavson was chosen as a temporary replacement but when the dean died the position became permanent. Now involved in the academic administration of the university Gustavson was chosen to substitute for the new president of the University of Colorado, Robert L. Stearns, during World War II. Stearns was commissioned as an officer in the Army Air Corps. Gustavson accepted the position with the understanding that Stearns would resume the presidency when he returned. After the war Gustavson became the Vice President and Dean of Faculties at the University of Chicago for a short time in 1945-46. During Gustavson’s time at the University of Chicago he worked with Enrico Fermi and Edward Teller on the atomic bomb project. The destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki convinced Gustavson the only hope for human survival was the promotion of peace through education that taught appreciation of other peoples and cultures. In 1946 Gustavson moved to the University of Nebraska where he remained as Chancellor until 1953. After leaving the University of Nebraska Gustavson became the first president of Resources for the Future where he served from 1953-1959. An outgrowth of his work on the atomic bomb project this organization conducted economic research and analysis to help craft better policies on the use and preservation of natural resources. Gustavson then resumed teaching at the University of Arizona and was a member of the chemistry department from 1960 until his death in 1974.

Source: John Patrick McSweeney. The Chancellorship of Reuben G. Gustavson at the University of Nebraska, 1946-1953. Lincoln: Digital Commons @ University of Nebraska, 1971.

__________________________________

Gustavson Memorandum of Discussion with Jacob Marshak

THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO

Date February 19, 1946

To:     RMH [Robert Maynard Hutchins, President of the University of Chicago (1929-45); Chancellor (1945-51)]; ECC [Ernest Cadman Colwell, President of the University of Chicago (1945-51)]
From: RGG [Reuben G. Gustavson, Vice-President of the University of Chicago (1945-1946)]

Professor Marschak came in to talk to me about possible recommendations for men in the Department of Economics. He discussed the following:

  1. John Hicks of London. He is now at Oxford but is coming to this country. He is about forty years of age. He is quite well known, especially for his book called the “Brainwork of Social Economy.” [sic, The Social Framework: An Introduction to Economics] This book is now being used in the College.
  2. Paul Samuelson is a much younger man than Hicks. He is now an associate professor at M.I.T. He is known for his work in the general theory of disequilibrium.
  3. Arthur Smithies is professor at the University of Michigan. He is now in the Bureau of the Budget at Washington. Marschak describes him as a man who is concerned with economic policies. He takes the empirical approach to the study of economics.

Marschak states that Mr. Hicks is also a good man in local finance [Hicks’ wife, Ursula Hicks, probably mentioned by Marschak]. He says also that T. Koopmans, Research Associate with the Cowles Commission, who has been recommended for an associate professorship, is a very fine man. He is in mathematical statistics. He speaks highly of Lionel Robbins of the London School. Marschak says he is an all-around personality. He has been of great service to the English government during the war.

He thinks very highly of Lloyd Metzler. He was an instructor at Harvard. He as applied the modern methods of Samuelson to international trade.

Professor Marschak also thinks very highly of Milton Friedman, who is a graduate of the University of Chicago.

I shall discuss all these men with Schultz.

 

Source: University of Chicago Library, Department of Special Collections. Office of the President. Hutchins Administration. Records. Box 284, Folder “Economics, 1943-1947”.

 

Image Source: Reuben G. Gustavson from University of Chicago Photographic Archive, apf1-06588, Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library.

Categories
Funny Business Harvard M.I.T.

Harvard or MIT. Economics graduate student skit, ca. 1963.

 

Because of the reference to Jaroslav Vanek’s leaving Harvard, we are able to date the following script to 1962-63 since Vanek left Harvard to work at the State Department in 1963. Almost everything about this script would lead me to conclude that it was used in a Harvard graduate student skit that somehow wound up in the folder for the Graduate Student Association at the Department of Economics of M.I.T. The folder is otherwise filled with clearly M.I.T. skit material from the 1960s. One of the students is identified as “David” another “Bob” and the third looks like “Les”.  

Lester Thurow did get his Ph.D. from Harvard in 1964 and came to M.I.T. in 1968 so it is not inconceivable that the following transcription is indeed based upon his personal typed script copy with original pencil stage directions that made its way into the folder. 

One thing that I find rather surprising about the text is just how many Harvard professors’ names have been misspelled.

__________________________

D—This is a review with a message—a message no economist can afford to ignore. The year is 2000 A.D. 16 years have now passed since 1984, that Armageddon of the economics profession when Professor Wassily Leontief finally established that the world really was homogeneous of degree one. The then President of the United States, Mr. Norman Mailer, immediately issued the great Marginal Product Proclamation. Everyone was to receive their marginal product.

B— But there was nothing left over for the economists. Economists became the hand-loom weavers of the 20th. century.

L—Arthur Schlesinger Jr. vividly described their position in a 17-volume work entitled “The Coming of the Raw Deal.” Economists everywhere, after the first shock, set out upon new careers. Tonight we shall discover what happened to some of those whom we know and love.

D—Several of them went into the movie industry and we will now let you hear the soundtrack of the preview of one of their movies.

(Epic Music—Bruckner?)

[Insert: Stand]

L—Ladies and Gentlemen, 21st Century Fox are proud to present Arthur Smithies and Joan Robinson in….The Big Push, the story of the unbalanced growth of an economist….

B—Production by Karl [sic] Kaysen

D—Copyright by Edward Hastings Chamberlain [sic]

L—All labor disputes on location and with Elizabeth Taylor arbitrated by John Dunlop.

B—Continuity by Simon Kuznets

L—Editing by Seymour Harris, of course.

D—Costumes by Robert Dorfman.

B—This is the story of Ragnar Maynard von Eckstein (his parents had always wanted him to be an economist). After many struggles at last he got to Harvard Graduate School.

L—It is a tale of |horror. See him now at a seminar on the economics of Medical Care…..

D—This after-noon I am going to discuss the economics of Blood-banking. One of the crucial problems in this field is what proportion to maintain of liquid assets. In this category we have blood [Insert:   L. What about near blood] near-blood. We also have non-liquid assets—bonds in the form of pounds of flesh. Another problem is the current shortage of tellers, for we can only employ vampires with a strong liquidity preference. If we cannot get more it will clot up the flow of funds and reduce the velocity of circulation.

L—It is a tale of |ambition…..

B—Coming from a family whose marginal product was zero, Ragnar Maynard realized that to get on quickly he must publish something. But what? He had not written anything. But our resourceful hero saw a way out: he would publish his first book before it was written. It was called First Draft, a revised tentative, preliminary, provisional text. It was based on Photostat copies of his blackboard notes.

L—It is a tale of |love….

D—Ragnar Manyrd fell passionately in love with a beautiful capital theorist, played in the movie by ravishing Joan Robinson. His demand for her love was infinitely elastic; her supply could not meet him—at least not at his price. The price was to join him in his exhausting search over peaks and through troughs for the elusive U-shaped cost curve.

L—It is a tale of |excitement

B—See Ragnar Maynard trying to free himself from the dreaded liquidity trap.

Insert: D—It’s true, it really is thicker than water

L—All this and more you can see in this movie—The Big Push is a take-off point in the development of the motion-picture.

B—See the exciting attempt on Professor Leontief’s life (with a 202 rifle) to try to prevent him revealing his startling discovery of a constant returns world.

D—See the world’s largest input-output table which proved it—drawn by the Economic Research project in the sand of the New Mexican desert.

L—You cannot afford to miss this motion picture. Filmed in wonderful new—Solocolor. An introducing revolutionary—Rostowscope.

(concluding epic music)

[Insert: Sit]

D—But the movies could not accommodate everybody…

[Insert: Bob in middle]

[Insert: one illegible word]

L—Professor Leontief, having escaped with his life, and using his input-output table from Scientific American as a testimonial, got into the business of designing bathroom tiles.

B—Professor Duesenbery [sic] was well qualified to go into the demonstration business. He drove Cadillacs around low-income districts to stimulate demand. And changed his name to Jones so that it would be him that everyone was keeping up with.

D—In England many economists went to work for the government where they produced a remarkable effect. Before 1984 political speeches had sounded something like this.

B—Good evening; I’m the Prime Minister. My name is….. [insert: ad lib] etc.

D—But now all this has changed…

B—Good evening…[insert: ad lib] etc.

L—Professor Tom Schelling took up a career in Madison avenue. It was he who was responsible for some of the following products…

D—Ladies, now you can wear the most powerful and alluring perfume in the world—First Strike—the only perfume with complete credibility. It also contains the only deodorant with overkill.

B—Now at last there is a product to take away the smell of deodorant—it is called Counterforce. Only Counterforce gives you 24-hour protection against odorlessness. [Insert: 5120 or S120]

[Insert: STAND]

L—For years girls have been searching for a perfume which will attract the men and yet prevent them from taking liberties—now they have it in the form of Deterrence—the perfume which is effective [Insert: only] if you don’t use it.

D—He also introduced a city wide deodorant campaign under the title of Civil defence.

L—And the only really safe method of birth control—Early Warning.

B—Meanwhile Professor Dunlop had become a truck driver and a shop steward for Jimmy Hoffa.

D—And Professor Kuznets took to selling abacuses.

[Insert: Some economists, not from Harvard opened a cafeteria.]

[Insert: Bob-Les—come forward]

L—Professor Galbraith first thought of becoming a rice farmer. But he soon saw that since there was no more need for economists he could now come into his own. After a coup d’etat he took over the Littauer building and changed it into the department of Affluent Studies. The idea was the ultra-popularization of economics; the main qualification for admission was to be a good phrase-monger. The new department published books like…

B—The Economics of Sex, with an appendix on the second derivatives of Jayne Mansfield. A geometric interpretation with diagrams.

D—The department became identified with a new theory of economic decline, published as a non-Rostovian manifesto. All countries, it said, tend to decline, and their speed of decline is determined by their relative degree of economic advancement. Its five stages of decline started with the age of mass consumption, through the age of preconditions for decline, coming then to the crucial landing stage.

B—Other books appeared like ‘The Naked Truth about Public Squalor, and so on.

[Insert: Pause—back to audience]

L—Only one of the redundant economists took the highest calling of all. Let us now eavesdrop on a sermon by [Insert: his eminence] Archbishop Gerschenkron…

[Insert: seated]

B—You know, when I was an economist one of my graduate students wrote a very good paper for my course. Matthew, [Insert: I said] why don’t you publish this paper, no, really why don’t you publish. But you know youll have to change the title. What journal is going to publish a paper called ‘the First Gospel’? But you know it really was a very good paper. There was a lot of interesting material about the farm problem in Egypt and about the almost miraculous elasticity of supply of loaves and small fishes in Gallillee [sic]. Then there was a very good section about Christ throwing the money-changers from the temple. Well, you see, the rate of interest was very high then. Don’t you think that the real reason why Christ did this was to reduce the rate of interest and to stimulate investment. You see, I wanted Matthew to rewrite his paper for the Quarterly Journal and call it ‘Christ as a proto-Keynsian’ [sic] But no, he was a very strong-willed boy and he brought it out in a syposium [sic] edited by Seymour Harris, called the Bible, essays in honor of God. But, you know, it was still required reading for my course.

D—Professor Harberler [sic] took to song writing, and here is a sample…

[Insert: stand behind table]

(tune: God bless America)

[Insert: All:] God bless free enterprise,
[Insert: MOC or HOC or NOC] System divine,
Stand beside her and guide her,
Just as long as the profits are mine.
[Insert: Salute]
Corporations may they prosper
Big business, may it grow!
[Insert: MOC or HOC or NOC] God bless Free Enterprise,
The Status quo!

L—Well, David, I guess that’s it. Do you think they’ll throw us out?

D—I dont know. But I dont suppose we’ll ever be allowed to pass generals. There are still some jobs you can get without a Ph.D.

B—No chance at all is there? I mean about generals….

D—Well they were all in it weren’t they—all the generals board.

L—What about Professor Vanek? He emerged unscathed.

D—That’s true but he’s leaving.

B—That’s fair, of course.

L—Yes, he hasn’t done much since he’s been here really.

D—Half a dozen good articles…

B—4 books, or is it 5?

L—He’s become an acknowledged expert on at least two major fields of economics…

D—A clear and stimulating teacher…
And a nice guy…

L—Not much really. [Insert: Clearly not a Harvard type]

B—Not surprised they’re letting him go

D—Well, that’s it then.

B—One more thing actually…The perpetrators of this entertainment would like it to be known that any resemblance of characters in this review to any person or persons living or half-dead is purely intentional.

L—So be it.

All—In the name of the Holy Trinity:

D—Dorfman,

L—Samuelson,

B—and Solow.

All—Amen

 

Source:   MIT Archives. Department of Economics Records, Box 2, Folder “GEA 1961-67”.

 

Categories
Curriculum Harvard Uncategorized Undergraduate

Harvard. Undergrad economics program described in The Harvard Crimson, 1953

 

 

The Harvard Crimson has a really useful search function that can get you a student’s perspective on undergraduate economics education in Harvard’s ivy-covered (well, sometimes) lecture halls. I added links to courses and professors for a bit of value-added. Otherwise the article speaks for itself.

_______________________

The Harvard Crimson
April 22, 1953

Economics
Number of Concentrators: 331.
1952 Commencement Honors: cum, 17; magna, 20; summa, 1; 2 cums in General Studies.

The fact that Economics can boast one of the top faculties in the country, and probably has more nationally known professors than any other department in the College, is one of the main drawbacks to the concentrator. For few undergraduates are able to claim having really studied under any of them.

Most of the courses are conducted under the lecture system which does allows the undergraduate little contact with the men who divide their time between Washington and Cambridge.

The mistake should not be made that a concentrator in Economics will be trained in how to make his first million, no illusions should be developed that Economics is just another term for business administration. What the Department of Economics attempts to do is quite simple: the development of the economic background to present day social and political issues.

Tutorial

Economics I, required of every concentrator, is designed to introduce the student to the field. Its main criticism is that it is too general. But in the past it has been quite efficient in preparing students for the more advanced courses.

In an attempt to introduce some personal contact, the Department has now extended tutorial to all sophomores and juniors. According to Departmental chairman Arthur Smithies, its purpose is threefold: 1) to make specific things brought up in classes more concrete, 2) to tie the various fields of economics together, 3) to bring out the close relationship between economics and the other social sciences.

Tutorial in the junior year, usually limited to honors candidates, is now open to non-honors candidates also. Called “presumptive honors tutorial,” it meets in sessions conducted along honors tutorial lines. The program was opened last year with the hope of inducing more concentrators to apply for honors in their senior year. According to Ayers Brinser ’31, Head tutor of Economics, a great majority of the juniors who enter the junior tutorial with no intention of being an honors-candidates, change their minds during the junior year. By offering the presumptive tutorial, the department enables students who did not sign for honors to change in their senior year.

Basic Courses

Requirements for concentration do not impose too great a restriction on the concentrator’s program. Four Economic courses including Economics I are a must for non-honors men, while honors candidates are held for five. Three of the courses must be chosen from the basic courses: Economics 101, Economic Theory and Policy; Economics 141, Money, Banking and Economics Fluctuations; Economics 151. Public Finance; Economics 161, Business Organization and Public Regulation; Economics 171, Economics of Agriculture; and Economics 181a and b, Trade Unionism and Collective Bargaining, Public Policy and Labor.

Honors candidates may elect to take tutorial for credit for one semester of their senior year, while they work on their 40,000 word theses. Currently, more than a third of the concentrators are honors candidates.

The department also requires all concentrators to take full courses in Government, History, Social Relations or the second group Social Science courses.

Most popular of the advanced courses last year was Economics 161. Professors Kaysen and Galbraith divided last year’s schedule. The course deals with the structure and character of business and their markets; the attitude of the public toward combination and regulation, including the transportation industry and the public utilities; and the problems of resource conservation and industrial mobilization.

Labelled by most concentrators as the most difficult of the basic courses, Economics 141 crams a great deal into its program. Most concentrators prefer to get this one out of the way in their sophomore or junior year, since it is a good foundation for other courses in the field.

Labor Economics

One of the most popular professors teaching an undergraduate courses, John Dunlop will be back to give the two semesters of Labor Economics. Different from the other basic courses in that it emphasizes more human aspects, Economics 181 combines human and legal aspects of the labor movement as well of the economic foundation.

Economics 101, the basic theory course for undergraduates, is restricted to honors candidates in their last year of study.

Source: The Harvard Crimson, April 22, 1953.

 

 

Categories
Harvard Regulations

Harvard. Regulations regarding graduate degrees in economics, 1951

 

 

This 1951 draft of the regulations governing the award of A.M. and Ph.D. degrees in Harvard was submitted by Arthur Smithies to his colleagues. There were few changes when compared to the 1947 regulations, the reduction of field examinations from six to five appears indeed to have been the most significant change.

With this posting Economics in the Rear-view Mirror has reached 500 transcribed artifacts!  

_____________________________

[3/5/51]

DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMICS
MEMORANDUM

TO:      Members of the Department
FROM: Arthur Smithies

I am distributing an edited copy of the present requirements for the Ph.D. It incorporates our decision to reduce the number of fields to five and makes what I think are editorial improvements.

I invite your attention specifically to Paragraph 4 under the Ph.D. requirements. I feel very strongly that something on these lines should be said here but feel there is a great deal of room for improvement in my own statement.

The Graduate School is anxious to get out a new printed edition of this announcement, so I hope we can dispose of it at the next Department meeting.

_____________________________

HARVARD UNIVERSITY
The Graduate School of Arts and Sciences
DEGREES IN ECONOMICS

MASTER OF ARTS

  1. Residence—Two full terms of advanced work with acceptable grades at Harvard.
  2. Languages—A reading knowledge of advanced economic texts in French, German, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Scandinavian languages, or Russian, which is to be tested by a rigorous two-hour examination in which foreign language texts are to be translated into English. The examinations are given by the Department in the first week of November and March. This requirement must be met before taking the general examination.
  3. Plan of Study—Plans of Study must be approved by the Chairman of the Department at the end of the first term in residence.
  4. General Oral Examination—The candidate will be examined on four fields, as presented in the Plan of Study, selected from the groups below:
    1. Two from Group A, including Economic Theory
    2. Two from Groups A, B, and C (not more than one from Group C)

GROUP A

  1. Economic Theory and its History, with special reference to the Development of Economic Thought since 1776.
  2. Economic History since 1750, or some other approved field in Economic History
  3. Statistical Method and its Application

GROUP B

  1. Money and Banking
  2. Economic Fluctuations and Forecasting
  3. Transportation
  4. Business Organization and Control
  5. Public Finance
  6. International Trade and Tariff Policies
  7. Economics of Agriculture
  8. Labor Problems
  9. Land Economics
  10. Socialism and Social Reform
  11. Economic History before 1750
  12. Consumption Distribution and Prices
  13. Economics of Public Utilities
  14. Social Security

Group C

  1. Forestry Economics
  2. Any of the historical fields defined under the requirements for the Ph.D. in History
  3. Certain fields in Political Science listed under the requirements for the Ph.D. in Political Science.
  4. Jurisprudence (selected topics)
  5. Philosophy (selected topics)
  6. Anthropology
  7. History of Political Theory
  8. International Law
  9. Sociology. Certain fields defined under the requirements for the Ph.D. in Sociology.
  1. Preparation for General Oral Examination—(a) The fields of study are covered in part by formal course instruction, but supplementary reading must be undertaken to meet the requirements. (b) Preparation for the field Economic Theory and its History will normally require two full courses in the field at the graduate level, or equivalent private reading. (c) In Statistics, Economics 121, or its equivalent, is a prerequisite to graduate instruction. Professor Frickey should be consulted. (d) Usually four terms of graduate study at Harvard are necessary as preparation for the general examination, but a candidate who has been credited with graduate work of high order at another institution may be able to prepare himself in a shorter period.
  2. Arranging the Examination—The oral, or general, examinations are not set at any specified date. The arrangements for the examination must be made at least six weeks in advance of the date proposed by the candidate. Consult the Secretary of the Department, M-8 Littauer Center.
  3. Quality of Work—Candidates for this degree must give evidence, in their course records, of the capacity for distinguished work. Ordinarily, candidates whose records at Harvard do not average at least B will not be allowed to present themselves for the general examination.
  4. Excuses from Final Course Examinations—Candidates for the Master’s degree who are not candidates for the Ph.D. degree must take the final examinations in courses.
  5. Application for Degree—An application for the Master’s degree must be filed by December 1 for a degree at midyear and by March 1 for the degree at Commencement. Two terms in residence at the full tuition rate at Harvard University are required for each degree conferred.

SPECIAL MASTER OF ARTS FOR VETERANS

The only changes from the stated conditions given above are:

  1. On petition a candidate may present himself for an oral examination in which quantitatively the requirement in Economic Theory is one that can be met in one year of graduate study.
  2. The requirements regarding the offering of Economic History or Statistics are eliminated.
  3. General Oral Examination—The candidate will be examined on four fields as presented in the Plan of Study. (See list of fields of study above.)
    1. Economic Theory
    2. Three from Groups A, B, and C (not more than one from Group C.)

It must be understood that the oral examination for this degree will not be accepted as part of the formal requirements for the Ph.D. degree.

This special Master of Arts for veterans is open only to those veterans who entered the armed services before 1945.

 

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

The requirements for this degree are:

  1. Residence—Not less than four terms devoted to advanced studies approved as affording suitable preparation for the degree. At least three of these terms must be spent in residence at Harvard University. Graduate work completed in another institution may be offered in full or partial fulfillment of the fourth term. Consult the
  2. Languages— A reading knowledge of advanced economic texts in two foreign languages which is tested by a rigorous two-hour examination in each language in which foreign language texts are to be translated into English. One of the languages in which examination is taken is to be either French or German. The second language can be chosen from the following: French, German, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Scandinavian languages, and Russian, which is to be tested by a rigorous two-hour examination in which foreign language texts are to be translated into English.

Students have the option of substituting Mathematics for the second language. In this case, the student must take an examination to show his capacity to read and understand the more elementary mathematical presentations used in economics. This includes such knowledge of analytic geometry as is frequently given in the first year of college and such knowledge of differential calculus and integral calculus as is frequently given in a single-year course in college. In terms of present courses at Harvard College, this means through Mathematics 2. By exception, a pass grade in Math 2a and 2b at Harvard or Radcliffe or adequate grades in mathematics courses taken elsewhere will be accepted in place of the special mathematics examination.

Students whose native language is not English may petition the Department to be excused from examination in the second language. The student would then be examined in either French or German. In considering such petitions, account is taken of the amount of original economic literature written in the student’s native language, as well as of his general academic standing.

Language requirements should be met at least six months before the Special examination.

  1. Plan of Study—Every candidate is required to submit to the Department for its approval a plan showing his fields of study and his preparation in these fields. This plan of study must be submitted at the end of the first term of graduate work. Candidates may present for consideration of the Department reasonable substitutes for any of the fields named in the several groups.

The plan of study must include five fields, approved by the Department, selected as follows from the list of fields stated under the requirements for the Master’s degree:

  1. The three subjects in Group A are required, and
  2. Two from Groups B and  Group C (not more than one from Group C)
  1. General Oral Examination—The general oral examination for the Ph.D. is the same as the examination for the Master’s degree.

However, while preparation for the M.A. degree will normally consist of formal course work, Ph.D. candidates are encouraged to be more flexible; and to avoid the tendency of the course system to compartmentalize knowledge. In preparation for the general examination the student’s main purposes should be to provide himself with tools of analysis, to be aware of the contributions that theory, history and statistics can make to the solution of economic problems and to appreciate the relation of economics to other disciplines.

During their first year of graduate study, students will normally take formal courses in Theory, History, and Statistics; but during their second year they are encouraged to take informal reading courses as part of their programs of study.

  1. Excuses from Final Course Examinations— Ordinarily candidates are excused from the final examinations in courses included in the fields presented for the general examination provided the general examination is passed after December 1 in the fall term and April 15 in the spring term and before the course examinations are held. Students must receive at least a grade of “good” in the general examination to be excused. Students taking the general examination at the end of the second term are expected to take the course examinations.
  2. Fifth Field (write-off field)—The requirement regarding the fifth field of study in the Ph.D. program is usually fulfilled by the passing of the equivalent of a full year graduate course offered at Harvard and completed with the grade of B Plus or higher. Seminars offered by the Graduate School of Public Administration are not acceptable for “write-off” purposes. One-half course must have been completed in the write-off field with a grade of B Plus or higher before the general examination.
  3. Thesis—The thesis should be written in one of the fields taken in the general oral examination. It must show an original treatment of its subject and give evidence of independent research.

Every candidate should report to the Department, as soon as possible after his general examination, the subject of his thesis and the member of the Department under whom he intends to work. Two bound copies of the thesis (the original and first copy) must be in the hands of the Chairman of the Department by December 1 and April 1 for degrees at midyear or Commencement. The thesis must be accepted by the Department before the candidate can be admitted to the final examination. It must be accompanied by two copies of a brief summary, not exceeding 1200 words in length, which shall indicate as clearly as possible the methods, material, and results of the investigation. Wherever possible students are urged to begin work on their thesis as soon as possible after the general examination.

  1. Special Oral Examination—The special examination is intended to give the student an opportunity to defend his thesis.

At present it is expected that one year of residence will elapse between the general and the special examinations. The preparation for the doctorate is regarded by the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and by the Department as a continuous process. Ordinarily, the candidate must stand for the final examination within five years after passing the general examination.

To arrange for the date of the special examination, consult the Secretary of the Department, M-8 Littauer Center, six weeks in advance of the proposed date. Application for the Ph.D. degree must be filed by December 1 for the degree at midyear, and March 1 for the degree at Commencement. The special examination must be taken within five years of the general examination. (Note: two terms of residence at full tuition rate in Harvard University are required for each degree conferred.)

 

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN BUSINESS ECONOMICS

  1. The program of study for the degree will be made up of six fields chosen from the groups given below. Four (or under certain conditions, three) of these fields, including Economic Theory, which is required, will be presented for the general examination. Only two fields, including Economic Theory, may ordinarily be chosen from Group A. Fields other than those here stated may be offered. Emphasis is placed upon an integrated program. In all cases the program of study must be approved by the Chairman of the Department of Economics. For advice, see the Chairman of the Department of Economics. For advice, see the Chairman of the Department of Economics on courses relating to economics and the Secretary of the Doctoral Board at the Graduate School of Business Administration for business subjects.

GROUP A

  1. Economic Theory and its History, with special reference to the Development of the History of Economic Thought since 1776.
  2. Economic History since 1750.
  3. Public Finance and Taxation.
  4. Economics of Agriculture.

GROUP B

  1. Accounting
  2. Marketing
  3. Foreign Trade
  4. Production
  5. Money and Banking
  6. Business Organization and Control
  7. Transportation
  8. Insurance
  9. Statistical Method and its Application
  10. Economics of Public Utilities
  11. Labor
  1. Special Examination and Thesis—The procedure in general follows that outlined for the Ph.D. in Economics. The field for the special examination should ordinarily be chosen from Group B.

Further information regarding courses and programs of study may be obtained by writing directly to the Department of Economics, Littauer M-8, Cambridge 38, Mass.

March 8, 1951

 

Source: John F. Kennedy Presidential Library. Personal Papers of John Kenneth Galbraith, Series 5 Harvard University File, 1949-1990. Box 517, Folder “General Correspondence 12/7/49-12/31/53”.

 

Categories
Agricultural Economics Economists Harvard

Harvard. Memorial Minute for Agricultural Economist, J. D. Black, 1960

 

 

John Kenneth Galbraith was the chairman of a committee commissioned to write a faculty minute in honor of John D. Black (1883-1960) who taught courses in the economics of agriculture at Harvard from 1927 through 1959. Anyone familiar with Galbraithian prose can see that this minute was overwhelmingly, if not exclusively, the work of Galbraith. I do not think it an exaggeration to see in Galbraith’s praise of this or that aspect of Black’s career and scholarly style a projection of Galbraith’s own creed for academic life. Admiration, gratitude (Black pushed hard to get Galbraith promoted to a full professorship at Harvard), and affection all shine through this memorial minute, a genuine positive outlier in the art of the obituary.

Willard W. Cochrane wrote a profile “Remembering John D. Black” that was published in Choices (Magazine published by the Agricultural & Applied Economics Association in the 1st Quarter 1989 issue) pp. 31-32.

______________________

FACULTY OF ARTS AND SCIENCES

At a meeting of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences on October 18, 1960, the following minutes were placed upon the records.

JOHN DONALD BLACK

John D. Black, Henry Lee Professor of Economics, was the nation’s leading student of the economics of agriculture, and, to a greater extent than any other man, he gave the modern dimension and form to this branch of economics. His books, monographs, and papers were more widely and attentively read than those of any other scholar in the field; he was a premier source of ideas and a leader in research; his students have held and still hold a large proportion of the professorships in this subject; they have been equally influential in the United States Department of Agriculture and influential also in the colleges and departments of agriculture in foreign countries; and Black himself had a marked influence on the agricultural legislation passed in 1933 and thereafter. The price paid for milk in this community is set in accordance with a complex formula devised by Black. Not the least of his achievements was to make Harvard, an institution with no very intimate ties to farming, a major center during his lifetime of agricultural research and instruction.

Black’s first interest in life was as a teacher of advanced students — students who would find their career in one or another branches of his subject. His teaching had little style; preparation was at best an afterthought. But his students soon came to realize that they were, incomparably, the most important people in his life. They could count, literally, on his unlimited time and his impersonal but equally unlimited affection. And they discovered that beneath his formless lecturing were solid theoretical premises, a strong scientific attitude, and a profound contempt for anything suggestive of cant or pretense. He was immensely tolerant of students of average ability and was content if they became, in his hands, a little better than average. But he rejoiced in his good students and saw in all their achievements his own. Black’s students were his students for life. He knew them all by name; he expected to be consulted when they changed jobs; and he liked to be informed on their personal life. He was deeply concerned with the quality of instruction in agricultural economics not alone at Harvard but throughout the country. High level instruction he identified, not inaccurately, with this own students. So for many years he carried with him a small black book containing a list of former students and in his mind a list of college and university departments where he felt his influence could be enhanced. A vacancy in any of these institutions led promptly to a recommendation of a man who could be counted upon to extend what he did not hesitate to call “the Black point of view.”

Though subordinate in its claim on his time (during his nearly thirty years at Harvard his door was always open to students from nine until five) Black’s research and writing was of first importance and was prodigious in volume. His Production Economics, published in 1926, though unfinished in some respects, was a landmark in the development of the production function and in the theory of the competitive firm. It led Black to develop an entirely new approach to farm management research and instruction, one that reflected far more adequately the conceptual character of the farm firm and which in time largely supplanted the older methods based on comparative accounting data. Marketing, agricultural co-operation land tenure, land economics, price analysis, forestry, population theory, food and nutrition, farm labor, and national policy were among the subjects which engaged his attention at one period or another. A selection from his writings published last year by the Harvard University Press was from nearly three hundred books, papers, pamphlets, congressional submissions, reports, and manuscripts. Black had little patience with refinement in economic theory or method; he made no effort to conceal his opinion that much discussion of finer points was pretentious nonsense. He spoke often of the need to “open up a subject”—to initiate investigation and to offer the preliminary findings. This repeatedly he did. The results were never well formed or polished. But they were always supremely relevant, and they usually paved the way for the more detailed efforts of less original men.

Throughout his life Black was a trusted adviser on a wide range of matters concerning agricultural policy. He could not be readily typed either as a liberal or as a conservative. But he was sympathetic and pragmatic. He mistrusted the men who resolved matters on general theoretical grounds, and he was profoundly interested in results. Thus during the thirties, when many economists opposed the farm legislation of the period as an improper interference with the free market, Black was concerned only with how it might be made to work. Similarly on other matters. As a result, he was called on constantly by a succession of Secretaries of Agriculture, by agricultural officials, farm leaders, congressional committees and, especially in recent years, by foreign governments.

John Donald Black was born in 1883 in the log house on the original family homestead in Cambridge, Wisconsin. He was fourth in a family of talented children — one that include three teachers, a distinguished chemist, and a leading businessman. Black made his way through normal school, became a high school teacher of algebra, botany, and physical geography and the coach of the high school athletic teams. With earnings from teaching, he proceeded to the University of Wisconsin and to a degree in English. He taught English first at Western Reserve University and then for four years at the Michigan College of Mines (as it then was) on the upper Michigan peninsula. This latter college was in a raw and bitter community; in the neighboring copper mines bitterness and strife were endemic. He became impressed, especially after a long strike in 1915, with the urgency of the social problems. It seems likely, also, that he had become increasingly less impressed by the urgency or even the feasibility of teaching English grammar to these engineers for, in any case, he had begun to smuggle economics into his courses in the form of assignments in English composition. But on returning to study labor economics at a University of Wisconsin summer school, his attention was caught by the fledgling work in farm economics of Henry C. Taylor. He turned to this subject and took his Ph.D. degree with a thesis on land tenure in Wisconsin. On completion of his degree in 1918, he went to the University of Minnesota. His academic progress there may well serve as a model for the ambitious young scholar. He was assistant professor for six months, associate professor for two years, and the head of his department from the beginning.

In the ensuing ten years, the University of Minnesota became by far the most interesting center for research and discussion of the social problems of agriculture in the United States. A brilliant group of scholars gathered to work with Black. From them came a striking series of pamphlets and monographs — those on empirical methods and the nature of market supply responses were especially noteworthy. Before long, Black had a disproportionate share of both graduate students and budget — a development which he never found it in his heart to deplore.

By the late twenties his work was widely known and, at the behest of Thomas Nixon Carver, he was invited to visit Harvard for a term. This he did in 1927, and the visit was soon followed by an offer of a professorship. Now the students came to Cambridge instead of St. Paul. Few of them had funds to afford Harvard tuition, and by an incredible exercise of energy and resourcefulness Black found them money with which to study and do research. In 1929 and the years following the Social Science Research Council awarded one hundred twenty scholarships to improve the level of teaching and research in agricultural economics and rural sociology. Of the recipients, no fewer than forty-five came to Harvard to work with Black. In some subsequent years as many as a quarter of all the students in economics belonged to what came to be called “the Black Empire.”

In 1917 Black married Nina Van Steenberg, a woman of serene good humor and keen intelligence who, with their three children — Guy, Margaret, and Alan — survives him. The Black house in Belmont was for hundreds of graduate students nearly as much a part of Harvard as were his rooms in Widener or (later on) in Littauer. Black, to the wonder of all who knew him, worked prodigiously, imperturbably, and without evident strain. The serenity, charm, and quiet good humor of his household is surely a part of the explanation.

In his relations to colleagues and university, Black was the epitome of the inner-directed man. His view of what he needed and wanted was extremely clear. Since, in the end, it invariably prevailed, the Department eventually adopted the wise course of acceding to his wishes at the outset. Where he found university rules inconvenient, he unhesitantly ignored them. The rule that members of the faculty, though sound in body and mind, should retire at some specified age, struck him as especially absurd. He continued to teach until last December when he was seventy-six. He had a certain quiet pride in the devices by which he accomplished this defeat of authority, and it was his belief that no one in the modern history of the university had approached his record.

Black was an early President of the American Farm Economic Association and one of the life Fellows of that organization. He had a founding role in the organization of the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations, and in 1955 he was President of the American Economic Association.

Last January he was stricken by the first of a series of severe heart attack. He died on April 12.

Edward S. Mason
Arthur Smithies
John Kenneth Galbraith, Chairman.

 

Source: Harvard University Gazette, Vol. LVI, No. 7 (October 29, 1960), p. 36-8. Copy in the Papers of John Kenneth Galbraith (Box 527), John F. Kennedy Presidential Library.

Image Source: Harvard University. Class Album 1945.

Categories
Economists Harvard

Harvard. Haberler Argues Against Galbraith And On Behalf of Samuelson, 1948

 

Gottfried Haberler was apparently unable to attend an Executive Committee meeting of the Department of Economics at which it must have been decided to recommend John Kenneth Galbraith as the successor to Harvard’s agricultural economist J. D. Black. Haberler was so unhappy with this decision that he went behind the backs of his colleagues in a letter to the Dean. Apparently one of his former graduate students and his later Harvard colleague, Abram Bergson, must have heard about the letter some three decades later and asked Haberler about it. It certainly looks like Haberler had to ask the Dean’s Office in 1981 to have a copy of that 1948 letter sent to him. At least as important as learning about Haberler’s opinion of Galbraith, we are also treated to a full-throated praise of Paul Samuelson’s virtues. We also get a glimpse of a coalition of School of Public Administration economists wanting to hire a policy-oriented economist with  some one or other(s) of the stock of senior economic theorists protecting their turf from Samuelson at his Wunderkind-best.

___________________________________

1981 Letter from Haberler’s AEI Secretary to Abram Bergson

American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research
1150 Seventeenth Street, N. W. Washington, D. C. 20036

(202) 862-5800

August 17, 1981

Professor Abram Bergson
Department of Economics
Harvard University
Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138

Dear Professor Bergson:

When Professor Haberler called his office from abroad today, he asked that the attached copy of a letter he wrote to Professor Buck in 1948 be sent to you. He also asked that you be told that although he “was ashamed his memory failed him and he did not remember writing it, he was not ashamed of the letter.”

I am certain that on his return to the office around September 8th Professor Haberler will be in touch with you.

Sincerely yours,

Secretary to
Professor Haberler

Encl.

___________________________________

1981 Cover Note from Dean Rosovsky to Gottfried Haberler

HARVARD UNIVERSITY
Faculty of Arts and Sciences

Office of the Dean

5 University Hall
Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138

 

For Professor Haberler from Dean Rosovsky

[handwritten note: 8/11/81, cc to Sils, Envelopes#2]

___________________________________

1948 Letter from Gottfried Haberler to Provost Paul H. Buck

Harvard University
Graduate School of Public Administration

International Economic Relations Seminar

Littauer Center
Cambridge 38, Massachusetts

November 27, 1948

Provost Paul H. Buck
University Hall
Harvard University
Cambridge 38, Mass.

 

Dear Mr. Buck:

I had to go to Paris, London, Oxford and Cambridge for a brief visit in connection with the creation of an International Association of Economists and was therefore prevented from attending the meetings of the Executive Committee of the Department of Economics on November 17 and 24.

Let me inform you by letter that in my opinion the recommendation to appoint J. K. Galbraith to the remaining vacant professorship is a great mistake and calculated to reduce the level and reputation of our Department. I am rather hesitant to put it so bluntly, because I am on the best of terms with Galbraith. (For that reason I would be obliged if you would treat this letter as confidential.) But I think it is my duty to state my views clearly in such an important matter.

In my opinion, Galbraith is not a first-rate man. As you have said to me on one or two occasions, he has shot his bolt and there is no new evidence, it seems to me, which would warrant a change of that judgment. Galbraith is good average, not more. Moreover, he is not an agricultural economist. For years, not only during the time he served in Washington, he has written on subjects like monopoly and competition, international economic relations, full employment policies and the like. This shows a wide range of interests, but in none of these fields is he regarded as an outstanding expert. Yet he is now to be appointed as successor to John D. Black.

I am afraid the Department is on its way to fill all vacancies with respectable mediocrities. This is the more astonishing and inexcusable, because we could have a man who is almost universally regarded as one, if not the, most outstanding economist, namely P. A. Samuelson. As you know, Samuelson was awarded the Walker medal [sic, “Clark medal” is correct] by the American Economic Association which is to be given to the most outstanding economist under forty. He has had offers from first-rate universities, Chicago among others. He has without doubt the most brilliant record of all living economists under forty. He is an excellent teacher and would fit ideally into the Department from the point of view of our age distribution, a factor which has been, in my opinion very rightly, stressed by the Administration of the University. (Galbraith, on the other hand, falls more or less within the age group which is most strongly represented.)

It is, I think, a scandal (which is recognized and commented on everywhere) that the appointment of Samuelson has been prevented again and again. I have been repeatedly asked, more or less discretely, by leading economists at home and abroad, why a man like Samuelson is not at Harvard. Several of my colleagues admit that they have had the same experience. Samuelson has a tremendous reputation abroad. In London, Cambridge and Oxford where I visited last week, everyone was impressed by him and by the lectures he gave there recently.

I know, of course, the arguments which are used against his appointment. Mason, for example, while admitting that he is the most brilliant scholar in the field, says that Galbraith is more useful for the School for Public Administration. But Smithies has just been appointed to the School. If we look at the University as an institution which is primarily interested in extending the limits of scientific knowledge, rather than as a training school for Government officials, the choice between the two men should not be difficult.

Some members of the Department are afraid that Samuelson would enter the crowded field of theory. It is, of course, unavoidable that a brilliant young man would step on the toes of some older men in the Department. That is the nature of progress. But I would say that our Department is large enough and the students numerous enough to absorb a new man without undue hardship on vested interests. With Schumpeter near retiring age, it is time to look for a successor in the field of theory. Moreover, Samuelson could, and I think would, give instruction in the important field of advanced statistics, where we have an embarrassing void at the present time.

I am under no illusion that it will be possible to change the minds of the majority of the Department, although I know that several members who voted for the recommendation of Galbraith feel about it as I do. But the fact that you have prevented the Department on several occasions from making a fool of itself, gives me hope that it may not be too late. Moreover, I wanted to relieve my own conscience.

Very sincerely yours,

[signed]

G. Haberler

H:B

Source: Hoover Institution Archives. Gottfried Haberler Paper, Box 12, Folder “J. Kenneth Galbraith”.

Image Source:  Harvard Class Album 1950.