Personal Page : Roger Nils Folsom

Major influences on my understanding of economics included not only the Stanford undergraduate courses and books listed on my home page, but also the Claremont graduate courses taught by Franklin V. Walker and Lorne C. Cook (“Keynesian” macroeconomics and Monetary macroeconomics); Procter Thomson and Daniel C. Vandermeulen (microeconomics and mathematical economics); and Harold F. McClelland and Douglas C. Eldridge (public finance).

In graduate school, and then when teaching at the Naval Postgraduate School and at San Jose, the following books were especially important to me:

• Macroeconomics and Public Finance: Gardner Ackley’s Macroeconomic Theory (Macmillan, 1961); Thomas F. Dernburg and Duncan M. McDougall's Macroeconomics (McGraw-Hill, 1060-1976); Milton Friedman and Anna Jacobson Schwartz, "The Great Contraction, 1929-1933 " (chapter 7) of their A Monetary History of the United States, 1867-1960, National Bureau of Economic Research, Princeton University Press, 1963); Robert J. Gordon’s (editor) Milton Friedman’s Monetary Framework: A Debate with his Critics (papers by Friedman, Karl Brunner and Allan H. Meltzer, James Tobin, Paul Davidson, and Don Patinkin, U of Chicago Press, 1970); Richard A. Musgrave’s The Theory of Public Finance (McGraw-Hill, 1959); Joseph A. Pechman’s Federal Tax Policy (Brookings, 1987); Charles J. Hitch and Roland N. McKean’s The Economics of Defense in the Nuclear Age (including Alain C. Enthoven’s Appendix, “The Simple Mathematics of [Inequality Constrained] Maximization,” also known as Nonlinear Programming; Rand 1960, Atheneum 1965).

• Microeconomics: Alpha C. Chiang's Fundamental Methods of Mathematical Economics (first through third editions, 1967-1984); James M. Henderson and Richard E. Quandt’s Microeconomic Theory (first through third editions, McGraw-Hill, 1958-1980); Allan M. Cartter’s Theory of Wages and Employment (Irwin, 1959); Kalman J. Cohen and Richard M. Cyert’s Theory of the Firm (second edition, Prentice-Hall, 1975); William Baumol's Economic Dynamics (third edition, Macmillan, 1970) and his Economic Theory and Operations Analysis (second and fourth editions, Prentice-Hall, 1965, 1977) and many of his other works; Cliff Lloyd’s Microeconomic Analysis (Irwin, 1967); Kelvin Lancaster’s Mathematical Economics (Macmillan, 1968); Arthur Benavie’s Mathematical Techniques for Economic Analysis (Prentice-Hall, 1972); Michael D. Intriligator’s Mathematical Optimization and Economic Theory (Prentice-Hall, 1971); Ragnar Frisch’s Maxima and Minima (Rand McNally, 1966); Olvi L. Mangasarian’s Nonlinear Programming (McGraw-Hill, 1969).

• Also, dealing with both macro and microeconomics: Mark Blaug, Economic Theory in Retrospect (first edition, Irwin; fourth edition, Cambridge University Press, 1985).

My Ph.D. dissertation has a long list of key reference articles and books. But the books that initially drove my dissertation were Baumol’s Economic Dynamics (listed above), and Dale W. Bushaw and Robert W. Clower’s Introduction to Mathematical Economics (Irwin, 1957), especially chapters 3-4 which (despite their “Macroeconomics” titles) introduced me to demand-supply function stock-flow models. Then Roy George Douglas’ Mathematical Economics (second edition, reprinted with alterations, MacMillan,1963) filled in a lot of the gaps.

Despite (or perhaps because of) being very different from anything listed above, Thomas Sowell's Knowledge and Decisions (Basic Books, 1980) has had a powerful effect on my view of the purpose and basic concepts of economic analysis -- as did Milton (and Rose) Friedman’s Capitalism and Freedom (University of Chicago Press, 1962).

How (And Maybe Why) I Became an Academic Economist

While I was an undergraduate at Stanford, I majored in history, with additional courses including economics and industrial (managerial) economics. And to fulfill general education requirements, I took a theology course, found it interesting, and then took a few more theology-philosophy courses. An entirely unexpected result was that two theology professors encouraged me to take a post-graduation year at Union Theological Seminary in New York City, to consider entering the Presbyterian ministry. It was an interesting year, but I concluded that the ministry was not my calling.

I decided to make high school teaching my career. I returned to California, and spent 1960-1961 at Claremont Graduate School taking courses for an economics M.A (and also education courses for a high school teaching credential). In September 1961 I began teaching economics and civics at Sunny Hills High School in Fullerton, California.

But shortly before the 1961-1962 school year began, the Soviet Union raised the wall that physically separated Berlin’s Soviet controlled sector from the Western (U.S., British, and French) sectors, and in response President John F. Kennedy called me and many others to military service. Although my service was postponed until after I completed teaching the 1961-1962 school year, I knew I would be drafted in June.

That would have been fine, except that a Claremont public finance professor had encouraged me to return to Claremont for a Ph.D. (to prepare for a subsequent career in college teaching), and also had invited me to join him in a summer tax study for the state of Nebraska. I was intrigued by the idea of college teaching, and in any case I very much wanted to participate in that tax study.

To further postpone my active duty military service until after I had completed not only the tax study but also at least some additional graduate economics courses, I enlisted in a U.S. Naval Reserve Construction Battalion (the “Seabees”), as a monthly “weekend warrior” vehicle mechanic. After participating in the tax study, I returned to Claremont. I was there for two additional years of coursework and one year of initial dissertation work, in 1962-1965.

While I was at Claremont, it became apparent that my military service probably would be in Vietnam, which again was fine with me. But, due to a recommendation by a fellow Claremont student who was on leave from the Naval Postgraduate School faculty, in 1964 the Navy asked me to get an officer’s commission, and then to teach at NPS. I taught there from 1995-1969 as a military officer, and from 1972-1975 as a civilian. In 1970 and 1971, and as time permitted in other years, I worked on my Claremont Ph.D. dissertation, which I had started in 1965 and which I completed in 1974.

At NPS, I had the opportunity to teach fairly advanced graduate courses (MBA level and higher) to hard working students, and I learned a lot. But after the Vietnam war was over, the NPS needed fewer faculty because its student body had declined by roughly 50 percent, and it was time for me to move to a civilian academic environment. After a semester teaching at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, San Jose State invited me to join its faculty, and I did so.