Harry G. Johnson : Scholar, Mentor, Editor, and Relentless World Traveler - 1923-1977

American Journal of Economics and Sociology, The,  July, 2001  by Max Corden,  James S. Duesenberry,  Craufurd D. Goodwin,  J. Allan Hynes,  Richard G. Lipsey,  Gideon Rosenbluth,  Paul A. Samuelson,  Elizabeth Johnson Simpson,  LAURENCE S. Moss

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Younger economists, especially those who have not been trained in real trade theory and who know Harry Johnson's work mainly through his later survey-style articles, sometimes ask whether he ever contributed much to the fundamental development of economics (Lipsey 1978: S35). [I guess I could say today that this is asked by younger economists who hardly know Harry's name.]

To answer this question with objective evidence, I had taken a recently published graduate-level textbook in international trade theory (Chacholiades 1978) and checked the references. Of the 245 names in the index, 10 received four or more printed lines of references. Among these, Harry was fourth in the number of separate page citations to his name (47, after 62 for Ohlin, 59 for Heckscher, and 58 for Samuelson). Harry was tied with Meade and Vanek for number of chapters in which at least one of his works was cited (12) and was a clear first in number of separate works by him cited somewhere in the book (26 for Johnson, and 18 for the runner-up Samuelson). After laying the data out fully in a table (p. S36), I concluded that "on the evidence of one major textbook, Harry Johnson was one of the major contributors to the currently accepted body of real theory of international trade" (p. S35). If there are fewer references in today's texts, it is because his works on trade theory that were once on the frontier a re now well within the hinterland. Thus, his work has suffered the fate of so many innovators: his ideas have become so much a part and parcel of the subject that few bother any more to reference their source; in deed, many no longer even know the source.

IV

Duesenberry on Harry Johnson's Ph.D. Dissertation

HARRY JOHNSON had a regrettably short life, but he got off to a fast start. According to the data on his application for admission to the Harvard Ph.D. program, he entered the University of Toronto at 16 in 1939, graduating in 1943. After a stint in the Canadian army, he took a second B.A. at Cambridge University in 1945-46 and returned to Toronto for 1946-47. He arrived at Harvard in the fall of 1947. He took eight half courses, receiving six As and one A-, which he balanced up with an A+. He passed the general examination for the Ph.D. in November 1948 with, of course, a grade of Excellent. He moved on to Cambridge University again, where he wrote the papers (later) included in his remarkable dissertation thesis. In the UK at the time, a Ph.D. union card was not required for employment, so Harry didn't bother with finishing it until he was visiting the Merrill Center on Long Island, sometime in 1957. Then, he put together articles that were to appear with one addition as International Trade and Economic Gro wth: Studies on Pure Theory (1958a) and arranged to have a special examination when he was in the United States. It was not easy to find an examining committee in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in August of 1957. I was languishing there for some reason and Paul Samuelson and Franco Modigliani agreed to join me and help out. We had an interesting chat for an hour. In the preface to the printed version, International Trade and Economic Growth, Harry thanked us for our kind suggestions, but I don't recall what they were. Harry's Harvard Ph.D. was awarded in 1958 on the basis of this outstanding collection of papers.