Theodore Morgan had a distinguished career as professor of economics at the University of Wisconsin. Rather unusual for someone going on for a Ph.D. in economics (even for the 1930s/40s) is that Morgan earned his A.B. and A.M. degrees in English. He shared this distinction with one of my Yale professors, the economic historian William Parker whose A.B. at Harvard was also in English. It would be interesting to have a list of other economists who began their academic journeys in the humanities before crossing over to economics.
Incidentally the business cycles syllabus transcribed below was found in Martin Bronfenbrenner‘s Papers at Duke’s Economists’ Papers Archive.
___________________
Harvard Economics Ph.D. (1941)
JOSEPH THEODORE MORGAN, A.B. (Ohio State Univ.) 1930, A.M. (ibid.) 1931, A.M. (Harvard Univ.) 1940. Subject, Economics. Special Field, Economic History since 1750. Thesis,”The Development of the Hawaiian Economy, 1778-1876.” Adjunct Professor of Economics, Randolph-Macon Woman’s College.
Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College, 1940-41, p. 182.
___________________
[Pencil note: Morgan]
University of Wisconsin
Spring semester, 1950-51
Economics 181
Business Cycles
I. Business Cycles: History and Description
| Feb 5 – 9 | Achinstein: Introduction to Business Cycles, Chs. 14-16, 18-20 | 121 pp |
| Kondratieff: “The Long Waves in Economic Life”, Ch. 2 in Readings in Business Cycle Theory | 22 | |
| Hansen: Monetary Theory and Fiscal Policy, Ch. 1 (“The Historical Ratio of Money to Income”) | 13 | |
| Feb 12 – 16 | Schumpeter: “Railroadization”, in Business Cycles, Vol. 1, pp. 325-351 | 26 |
| Feb. 19 – 23 | Hansen: Business Cycles and National Income, Chs. 1-5 | 86 |
| – Optional: Schumpeter: “The Analysis of Economic Change”, Ch. I, in Readings in Business Cycle Theory Garvy: “Kondratieff’s Theory of Long Cycles”, Review of Economic Statistics, November 1943 Beveridge: Full Employment in a Free Society, Appendix A |
II. Theories of Business Cycles
| Feb 26 – Mar 2 |
Hansen: Monetary Theory and Fiscal Policy, Ch. 2 (“The ‘Creation’ of Money” | 26 |
| Achinstein, Chs. 1-5, 11-13 | 92 | |
| – Optional: Hansen: Business Cycles and National Income, Chs. 13-20 |
||
| Mar 5 – 9 | Clemence and Doody: The Schumpeterian System | 93 |
| Hansen: Monetary Theory and Fiscal Policy, Chs. 9, 10 | 24 | |
| – Optional: Hansen: Business Cycles and National Income, 13-24 |
III. The Measurement of Income, Output, and Employment
| Mar 12 – 1 | Achinstein, Ch. 17 | 23 |
| – Optional: “How Much Unemployment?” symposium in the Review of Economics and Statistics, February, 1950 Morgan: Introduction to Economics, Ch. 25. |
IV. Savings and Investment: the Keynesian, Robertson, and Swedish Approaches…The Keynesian System
| Mar 19 – 23 | Achinstein, Chs 6-10 (pp. 55-117) | 62 |
| Keynes: General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money, pp. 27-34, 245-249, Ch. 22 (pp. 313-332) | 29 | |
| Morgan: Introduction to Economics, Ch’s 30, 31; Ch. 32 to p. 583; Ch 28 to p. 505 | 68 | |
| Skim: Keynes, Ch. 23 and 24 |
||
| – Optional: Dillard: The Economics of J.M. Keynes, pp. 59-71, and Ch. 5 (pp. 75-101) Duesenberry, in Income, Employment, and Public Policy Ch. 3 (“Income-Consumption Relationships and their Implications”, pp. 54-81) Haberler, Prosperity and Depression, 1941 ed., in Ch. 8 (“Some Recent Discussions Relating to the Theory of the Trade Cycle”), pp. 170-185 Hansen: “The Robertsonian and Swedish Systems of Period Analysis”, Review of Economics and Statistics, February, 1950. R.F. Harrod, J.A. Schumpeter, and P.M. Sweezy, “Keynes, the Economist: Three Views”, Chs. 8, 9, 10 of S.E. Harris, ed., The New Economics |
||
| Mar 26 – 30 | G. Haberler and J.M. Keynes on The General Theory Chs. 14 and 15 of S.E. Harris, ed., The New Economics |
V. The Stagnation Thesis
| Achinstein, Ch. 24 (pp. 373-387) | 14 pp. | |
| – Optional: Terborgh: The Bogey of Economic Maturity |
VI. Secular Trends, and Public Policy
| May 7 – 11 14 – 18 |
Achinstein, Chs 21, 22, 25 (pp. 319-348, 388-409) | 205 |
| Hansen: Economic Policy and Full Employment, Chs. 5, 9, 10, and 11-22 | ||
| May 21 – 25 | Hansen: Business Cycles and National Income, Chs. 25-31 (pp. 501-605 | |
| Skim: The Economic Report of the President, January 1951 |
||
| Schumpeter: Business Cycles, Vol. 2, pp. 1011-1050 | 39 | |
| May 28 – June 1 | Clark, Kaldor, Smithies, Uri, Walker: National and International Measures for Full Employment (A United Nations Report, 1949), pp. 19-47, 75, 81-84. (can be found in Gayer, Hariss, Spencer: Basic Economics, pp. 437-457) | 20 |
Source: Duke University. David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library. Economists‘ Papers Archive. Martin Bronfenbrenner Papers, Box 25, Folder “Macro-economics: problems and exercises 1 of 2. 1961-70, n.d.
___________________
MEMORIAL RESOLUTION OF THE FACULTY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON
ON THE DEATH OF PROFESSOR EMERITUS THEODORE MORGAN
Faculty Document 2138
5 October 2009
Theodore Morgan, age 98, died peacefully on Sunday, February 8, 2009. He had been in failing health following a stroke on December 4, 2008. He was an economist and writer, valued colleague, loving husband and father, and affectionate friend with a wry and gentle sense of humor.
Professor Morgan was born on May 31, 1910, in Middletown, Ohio, the youngest of three sons of Ben and Anna Louella (Knecht) Morgan. He grew up on the family farm and survived the flu he contracted in the great flu epidemic of 1917. His first two years of schooling occurred in a one-room school. He went on to complete his AB and MA (1931) in English at Ohio State University, with Phi Beta Kappa honors and a thesis on Joseph Conrad.
Shortly after graduating he was diagnosed with melanoma. The cancer was cured and never returned. At the time, however, he thought his life might be shortened, and he developed a sense of adventure. He sailed to Japan and China in 1934, working in the engine room of the SS President Coolidge. In the summer of 1935 he traveled by bicycle and train through Europe, observing the harsh economic conditions of the time and brewing political changes in France, Germany, and the Soviet Union. While there he took hundreds of photographs that vividly depicted the economic effects of the world-wide depression. A selection of these photos was published with commentary in the Wisconsin Academy Review (2004).
Professor Morgan’s teaching career began at the University of Hawaii-Manoa where he taught English from 1936-38. His stay in Hawaii began a life-long affection for the islands. It also gave him material for the first of many books. His curiosity about the causes of the Great Depression led him to shift from English to economics. He enrolled in Harvard University’s graduate economics program in 1938 and was awarded his PhD in Economics in June 1941. He spent the next year teaching economics at Randolph-Macon Woman’s College in Lynchburg, Virginia. He returned to teach at Harvard from 1942 to 1947. While teaching at Randolph-Macon, he met at a tennis match Catharine Moomaw, a painter and adjunct professor of art at the college. They were married in 1943.
In 1947 Professor Morgan joined the economics department at the University of Wisconsin in Madison and, with the exception of nine years abroad, taught there until his retirement in 1980. The year he joined the Wisconsin department Ted’s career received a major boost when he published Income and Employment, one of the first books to present the new approach to macroeconomics developed by John Maynard Keynes. His academic focus soon shifted, driven in part by a new emphasis in U.S. foreign policy to aid the underdeveloped countries of the world. In his early work he made important contributions in assessing the growth effects of changes in the terms of trade of developing countries and understanding the discrepancies between the export value of goods and services reported by these countries and the recorded import value of these goods reported by the countries receiving these goods.
Ted was skeptical of the theoretical models of economic development widely discussed in the 1950s and 1960s. He became one of the first development economists to assert that the complex process of economic development should reflect local priorities and values rather than imported Western theories. His views on economic development, published in numerous books and articles, were influenced by his years of work overseas. In addition to many articles in professional journals and reports on economic conditions in the countries where he worked, he authored or coauthored a number of books, including: Hawaii: A Century of Economic Change, 1778-1876 (1948); Introduction to Economics (1950); Readings in Economic Development (1963); Economic Planning in Southeast Asia (1965); and Economic Development: Concept and Strategy (1975). He published his last academic paper in 1995.
Professor Morgan’s overseas work began with service as economic adviser to the government of Ceylon and deputy director of the Central Bank of Ceylon from 1951-53. He directed the Wisconsin-Ford Foundation project and taught at Gadjah Mada University in Indonesia from 1959-60. In 1964-65 during the Johnson Administration, he served as a senior staff economist at the President’s Council of Economic Advisors in Washington, D.C. His other overseas posts included teaching at the University of Singapore (1967-69), advising the Ministry of Economic Affairs in Thailand (1970), and additional work in Kenya, Chile, Malaysia, and in Sussex and Manchester, England. Finally, in 1990 he taught economics at Nankai University in China, a decade after his retirement.
Throughout his career, Professor Morgan strongly supported the education of foreign graduate students in the United States, and he headed an American Economic Association committee that in the late 1950s established the Economic Institute in Boulder, Colorado, to prepare foreign students for successful graduate studies in economics. He maintained warm friendships with many of his former students and delighted in their accomplishments.
An enthusiastic athlete, Ted played a fine game of tennis, and enjoyed bicycling, skiing, swimming, and running. He loved hikes and walks, and took pleasure in gardening, especially growing tomatoes and begonias. As a student he learned by heart many poems of, among others, Tennyson, Browning, Shakespeare, and Swinburne, and could still recite them into his 99th year. His parents, his brothers Donald and Mark, and his wife of 57 years, Cathy, all died before him. He is survived by three daughters, Stephanie (Madison), Marian (Charlottesville, VA), and Laura (New York, NY); one grandchild Brihannala (San Francisco, CA); nephews and nieces, cousins, and many friends.
MEMORIAL COMMITTEE
Robert E. Baldwin
W. Lee Hansen, chair
David B. Johnson
James Stern
H. Edwin Young
Source: Theodore Morgan memorial. University of Wisconsin. Memorial resolutions presented to the Faculty Senate, 1999 February—2016 April.
Image Source: Portrait of Theodore Morgan. University of Wisconsin Archives. Images. UW-Madison Collection.