The Usda Graduate School: Government Training in Statistics and Economics, 1921–1945

Abstract

The USDA Graduate School was founded in 1921 to provide statistical and economic training to the employees of the Department of Agriculture. The school did not grant degrees, but its graduate courses were accepted for credit by a significant number of universities.In subsequent years, the activities of the school grew rapidly to provide training in many different subject areas for employees from almost all federal departments. The training in statistics provided by the school was often highly advanced (instructors included Howard Tolley and, later, Edwards Deming), while the economics taught displayed an eclectic mix of standard and institutional economics. Mordecai Ezekiel taught both economics and statistics at the school, and had himself received his statistical training there. Statistics instruction in 1936 and 1937 included seminar series from R.A. Fisher and J. Neyman, and courses on the probability approach to sampling involving Lester Frankel and William Hurwitz became important after 1939. The instruction in economics was noticeably institutionalist in the period of the New Deal. Towards the end of the period considered here, the instruction in economics became narrower and more focused on agricultural economics.The activities of the school provide a basis for understanding some of the sources of the relative statistical sophistication of agricultural economists and of the statistical work done in government in the interwar period. It is noteworthy than within the USDA Graduate School, and in contrast to the Cowles Commission, statistical sophistication coexisted with an approach to economics that was not predominantly neoclassical. It also provides a light on the place of institutional economics in the training of government economists through the same time span.

KEYNES’S TREATISE, STATISTICAL INFERENCE, AND STATISTICAL PRACTICE IN INTERWAR ECONOMICS IN THE UNITED STATES

“…Malcolm Rutherford (2011) provides additional information about statistics instruction at the USDA Graduate School in the interwar period. Given that G. Udny Yule's (1911) Introduction to the Theory of Statistics was a standard text for the year-long course in the 1920s, it is reasonable to assume that students were exposed to Yule's treatment of the theory of sampling and to formulas for the standard errors of basic sample statistics.…”

“…In 1933 Edward Deming introduced a new course at the Graduate School in which he compared Ronald Fisher's new methods of fiducial inference with previous attempts to use probability theory as an aid to statistical inference. In 1936, Fisher gave three lectures at the Graduate School on statistical inference, and in 1937 Jerzy Neyman gave a series of lectures that included discussions of hypothesis tests and confidence intervals (Rutherford 2011). Sarle's response in the late 1930s to the development and refinement of inferential methods based on probability theory was to strongly advocate for new data collection methods at the USDA that would produce samples meeting the assumptions required by the new methods.…”

Clashing Analyses of Speculation and the Early Regulation of Us Futures Markets

“…The GFA commenced operations at nearly the same time as the USDA formed its Bureau of Agricultural Economics (BAE) and its prestigious Graduate School. So the USDA’s prominence in economic and statistical research was still a few years off (Rutherford 2011). 6 Duvel’s occasional suggestion that a statistical method used by seed scientists might be helpful did not ever seem to bear fruit, and he was quite reliant upon Paul Mehl and the other economists on his staff.…”

The Introduction of the Cobb-Douglas Regression and Its Adoption by Agricultural Economists

“…A further bias towards empiricism was created by the principle that their research should help create knowledge that was practically useful for farmers (Fox 1989). As a result, training in statistical methods was emphasized in graduate programs in agricultural economics, and many of the pioneering econometricians of the interwar period came out of the field of agricultural economics (Rutherford 2009, Fox 1986). So, when Douglas's production studies, with their innovative use of regression analysis, began to appear, agricultural economists were in a better position than economists in general to understand them, and were more likely to be intrigued by the statistical issues they raised.…”

“…Rutherford's (2009) account of the USDA graduate school indicates the type of statistical and economic training received by agricultural economists during the period. Fisher (1928) was used in statistics classes by the early 30's, as were his papers on fiducial limits; Fisher also visited the school on more than one occasion, speaking on statistical inference an hypothesis testing in 1936 (Rutherford 2009, pp.…”