Economics at Harvard

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Early Harvard Economics

• Charles Franklin Dunbar, 1830-1900.

• Frank W. Taussig, 1859-1940.

• Thomas Nixon Carver, 1865-1961.

• Allyn A. Young, 1876-1929.

• Lauchlin B. Currie, 1902-1993

• Sumner H. Slichter, 1892-1959

• Gardiner C. Means, 1896-1988.

• James W. Angell, 1898-1986.

• Edwin Bidwell Wilson, 1879-1964 - (1)
• Vector Analysis, 1901
• "Review of Pareto's Manuale", 1906, Bulletin of the AMS
• Advanced Calculus, 1912
• "A Generalization of Pareto's Demand Theorem", 1935, QJE
• "Pareto versus Marshall", 1939, QJE
• E.B. Wilson was a famous mathematician only an amateur's interest in economics.  A student of Gibbs, he was instrumental in the popularization of vector analysis and calculus.   While at M.I.T., he developed his research in mathematical physics and aeronautics.  He moved to Harvard in 1922, where his interest shifted towards statistics.  His early interest in economics, mostly in Pareto and the Lausanne School and his recurrent methodological forays in favor of mathematical economics, led him to be elected to the first council of the Econometric Society. He has been credited amply by Paul Samuelson as one of his most important influences at Harvard.  

The Harvard Barometer Group

• Charles Jesse Bullock, 1869-1941.
  • The Finances of the United States, 1775-89, 1895.
  • Introduction to the Study of Economics, 1897
  • Essays on the Monetary History of the United States, 1900
  • "The Variation of Productive Forces", 1902, QJE
  • "The Construction and Interpretation of the Harvard Index of Business Confidence", with W.M. Persons and W.L. Crum, 1927 REStat
  • "Postal Revenues and the Business Cycle", with J.B. Fox and A.R. Eckler, 1931, REStat
  • "Foreign Trade and the Business Cycle", with H.L. Micoleau, 1931, REStat
  • "The Harvard Index of Economic Conditions: Interpretations and Performance, 1919-1931", with W.L. Crum, 1932 REStat
  • Economic Essays, 1936
  • Politics, Finance and Consequences, 1939.
  • Harvard economist and director of the Harvard University Committee on Economic Research, which helped develop Persons's  "barometric" approach to business cycles.

• Warren Milton Persons, 1878-1937.
• "The Quantity Theory as Tested by Kemmerer", 1908, QJE
• "The Correlation of Economic Statistics", 1910, Quarterly of ASA
• Statistical Averages, 1914 - review
• "Review of Moore's Economic Cycles", 1915, AER
• "Construction of a Business Barometer Based upon Annual Data", 1916, AER
• "Review of Moore's Forecasting the Yield and Price of Cotton", 1918, AER
• Indices of General Business Conditions, 1919
• "A Non-Technical Explanation of the Index of General Business Conditions", REStat
• "Statistics and Economic Theory", 1925, REStat
• "The Construction and Interpretation of the Harvard Index of Business Confidence", with C.J. Bullock and W.L. Crum, 1927 REStat
• The Construction of Index Numbers, 1931
• Forecasting Business Cycles, 1931.
• Harvard economist and creator of the "three curve barometer", an indicator of turns in the business cycle, first published in 1919.  The first editor of the Review of Economics and Statistics.  A pioneer in the methods of seasonal adjustment and trend-elimination in time-series.

The Depression Generation (1930-1950): Faculty and Students

• Joseph Schumpeter, 1883-1950.

• Alvin H. Hansen, 1887-1975.

• Wassily Leontief, 1906-99

• Edward H. Chamberlin, 1899-1967.

• Gottfried von Haberler, 1900-

• Richard M. Goodwin, 1913-1997.

• Seymour E. Harris, 1897-1975.

• Edward S. Mason, 1899-

• Paul M. Sweezy, 1910-

• Paul A. Samuelson, 1915-

• Abram Bergson, 1914-

• Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen,1906-1994.

• John Kenneth Galbraith, 1908-

• James Tobin , 1918-

• Wolfgang F. Stolper, 1912- (1)
• "Protection and Real Wages", with P.A. Samuelson, 1941, RES
• Germany Between East and West, 1960
• The Structure of the East German Economy, 1960
• Planning Without Facts, 1966
• Joseph Alois Schumpeter: The Public Life of a Private Man, 1994.

• John T. Dunlop, 1914-
• "The Movement of Real and Money Wages", 1938, EJ
• Wage Determination under Trade Unions, 1944
• "Productivity and Wage Structure", 1948, in Metzler et al., Income, Employment and Public Policy
• "The Task of Contemporary Wage Theory", 1957, in Dunlop, editor, Theory of Wage Determination
• Industrial Relations Systems, 1958
• Industrialism and Industrial Man, with C. Kerr, 1960
• "Job Vacancy Measures nad Economic Analysis", 1966, in Measurement and Interpretation of Job Vancices
• Labor and the American Community, with D.C. Bok, 1970.
• "Past and Future Tendencies in American Labor Organizations", 1978, Daedalus

• Robert Triffin, 1911-

• Lloyd A. Metzler, 1918-1980.

• Richard A. Musgrave, 1910-

• Robert Heilbroner, 1919-

• Shigeto Tsuru, 1912- 

Later Harvard Personae

• Simon Kuznets, 1901-

• Robert Dorfman, 1916-

• James S. Duesenberry, 1918-

• Alexander Gerschenkron, 1904-1978.

• Francis M. Bator, 1925-

• Hendrick S. Houthakker, 1924-

• Dale W. Jorgensen, 1933-

• Otto Eckstein, 1927-1984

• Kenneth J. Arrow, 1921-

• John Rawls, 1921-

• Thomas C. Schelling, 1921-

• Andreu Mas-Colell, 1944-

• Robert J. Barro, 1944-

• Benjamin M. Friedman

• Martin Feldstein, 1939

• Drew Fudenberg,

• Eric S. Maskin,

• Oliver D. Hart, 1948-

• Janos Kornai, 1928-

Resources on Harvard Economics

• HET Pages:  The Paretian System: Social Welfare, Phases of the Marginalist Revolution, Theory of Production
• Department of Economics, Harvard University
• Journals Affiliated with Harvard, including the Quarterly Journal of Economics and the Review of Economics and Statistics
• Harvard Institute for Economic Research - discussion papers
• The Harvard Guide