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Comment by huitzitziltzin | Hacker News Reader

(Former) econ prof here (now in industry), though definitely not at Harvard.

To be honest "draw a map of a rail yard" or "write up a waybill" does not seem like the kind of exam material college students should be engaging in in 2024. The standard is higher now, a lot of the material more difficult and the questions have changed. The material being tested on that exam looks like middle-high school in parts?

In an _intro_ economics class I'd like students to understand what we (think we) know about supply and demand and apply it to relevant public policy issues - housing supply, taxation of vices, etc. I'd like them to discuss policy trade offs.

"Railroad economics" was presumably an elective, where the standards now would be even higher than in my intro class.

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High-level theory is nice. Ditto public policy savvy. And quite a few of the other questions on the 1906 exam reflect that.

But back at the coal face -

Rail yards were a very important and expensive part of a ~1906 railroad's infrastructure - both to build, and to operate. And the efficiency differences between a well-designed and poorly-designed yard were huge. A prospective RR manager who can't quickly map out a good rail yard is someone who simply does not understand the at-scale operation of a railroad.

Similarly, waybills were the core document for moving individual customer's loads around on an RR. If (fake name) EconoAir's manager at your local airport did not understand Flight Plans well enough to quickly draw one up - would you want to own EconoAir's stock, or fly on their airplanes?

> If (fake name) EconoAir's manager at your local airport did not understand Flight Plans well enough to quickly draw one up - would you want to own EconoAir's stock, or fly on their airplanes?

So since universities obviously do not focus on teaching that material, do you suppose that people in positions of authority at airlines don't understand flight plans?

Universities are institutions of higher learning, you can acquire the industry-specific mundane details on the job.

If you used Scheme in your CS program, you can figure out whatever tech stack your company is using. It's really not any different.

There certainly are both bachelor and master programs for airline management, air traffic control, cargo management, airline safety, etc.

https://www.vaughn.edu/degrees-programs/bachelors-degrees/ai...

The issue seems to be one of terminology. The questions on the exam (and thus topic of the course) appear to be about technical competence at a handful of skills highly specific to the railroad industry. That's fine and valuable, but its not what most people would describe as "economics". I wouldn't expect the skills taught in an "economics" class to be concerned with the specific price of shipping a very particular bill of goods on a very specific line on a very particular railroad. I wouldn't expect "economics" to mean the fine grain details of the practical engineering challenges in laying out track. I would expect "economics" to mean some sort of underlying analysis of railroad pricing and capital expenditure practices.

A notable and interesting example I remember of "economics" being used to refer to practical skills is in "Home Economics"[0], which actually has nothing to do with home prices or underlying theories about spending in households. It's practical skills in social care, meal prep, and basic maintenance relevant to on-the-ground families.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_economics

Having actually taught economics undergrads at Harvard, albeit in a science elective, I can the standards are not quite so high as you might think.

Assume two things and it makes more sense:

1. Harvard was aiming their students to jump straight into middle management (as it does today). 2. No ERP. No Excel spreadsheets. Mechanical calculation if you're lucky. Little communication if you're the manager in a small office. Lots of paper.

Just like today, middle managers need to know how to make business decisions quickly and correctly. This is how you get gains at the margin.

Would students of the time have learned about these things at any time before Harvard?

I think at the time this represented key aspect of the business that someone managing it should know about. Nowadays things may be too diverse and complex for people to learn, or be taught such specifics in college, but people taking senior positions in any companies still do a much better job if they know how the business works from the bottom up.

just accepting the demand supply curve mantra is accepting a lot of consumerism dogma. and the math is not even that solid, as you know very well.

What exactly isn't solid about it? Like most things, the theory may have exceptions and it isn't the only force at play. However, things like finding theoretical price points for a basic product based on demand, supply, and pricing is well established as a concept. The math behind it is very simple. When we get incorrect results, it's usually because one of the input numbers didn't match what we observed in reality, not because of an actual math issue.

it presumes some huge things.

like, that selling light bulbs that expire in weeks is better for the supply curve.

or presumes that workers might never beat the prisoners dilemma and the central banks will always keep the correct unemployment rate.

or that consumers will never make any informed purchase and will always drive process to bottom for a good demand curve.

etc.

the thing is, it works very well, because the system accepted that dogma just like feudalism accepted looks were ordained from god, despite having to hold an army to keep god's word... so the models work, but you must accept the whole theology, which is never mentioned in any level of economics (well, it's briefly mentioned as tools in development economy)

None of those things are universally true. For example, you don't have to race to the bottom for demand. Luxury products and branding are extremely obvious counter examples.

No offense intended, but your comment reads a bit like a word salad of some economics concepts which you likely don’t fully understand.

- “presumes that workers might never beat the prisoners dilemma” - that has nothing to do with demand curves. I have no idea what you are talking about.

- “[presumes??] that consumers will never make any informed purchase” - nothing of the sort is true.

- “selling light bulbs that expire in weeks is better for the supply curve.” What??

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