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Appendix C: Examination Paper in Political Economy Set by JSM (1872) - The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Volume V - Essays on Economics and Society Part II

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Appendix C: Examination Paper in Political Economy Set by JSM (1872) - John Stuart Mill, The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Volume V - Essays on Economics and Society Part II [1850]

Edition used:

The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Volume V - Essays on Economics and Society Part II, ed. John M. Robson, introduction by Lord Robbins (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1967).

Author: John Stuart Mill
Editor: John M. Robson
Introduction: Lionel Robbins

Part of: Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, in 33 vols.

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Appendix C

Examination Paper in Political Economy Set by JSM (1872)

JSM’s interest in higher education for women led to his being asked to set examination papers in Political Economy for The College, Hitchin, later Girton College, Cambridge. The following paper is reproduced from JSM’s Letters, edited Hugh S. R. Elliot (London, 1910), II, 336-7, where it is dated 6 May, 1872.

1. What is the distinction between Productive and Unproductive Labour, and between Productive and Unproductive Consumption?

2. Does all Productive labour tend to increase the permanent wealth of the country?

3. State any causes, in general operation, which tend to increase the productive power of labour, and any which tend to diminish it.

4. Explain in what sense the value of a commodity depends on supply and demand, and in what sense on cost of production.

5. What cost of production is it which determines the exchange value of the products of agriculture?

6. A state of free trade being supposed, can a country permanently import a commodity from a place where its cost of production is greater than that at which it could be produced at home?

7. What are the effects, first on the national wealth, and secondly, on the wages of labour, of a large government expenditure? and does it make any difference what the expenditure is upon?

8. In what respect are the interest of the labouring classes and that of the employers of labour identical? and in what respects, if in any, opposed?

9. What is the meaning of depreciation of the currency? and what are the principal causes of such depreciation?

10. By what means can a currency be protected against depreciation?

11. What is meant by the terms, a favourable and an unfavourable exchange? and is there any well-grounded objection to that phraseology?

12. How far, and in what respects, is the discovery of new and rich deposits of the precious metals a benefit to the national wealth?

13. Mention the principal circumstances that tend to produce either a rise or a fall in the rent of land.

14. State what are the known modes in which the produce of land, or the proceeds of the sale of that produce, are shared among the different classes of persons connected with the land, and state briefly the advantages and disadvantages of each.