Roger Nils Folsom, Ph.D.

I joined the San Jose State economics faculty in Fall 1976. I retired from formal full-time classroom teaching, but not from economics, in June 1999.

Before coming to San Jose, I taught macro and micro economics and mathematical economics, including applications to military defense, at the Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, California. I taught there as a civilian from 1972-1975, and as a U.S. Navy Reserve officer on active duty, from 1965-1969.

For my other teaching and research experience, please see my Curriculum Vitae, and my Personal Information page.

My fascination with economics began with three events during my undergraduate years at Stanford university:

1. In an economics principles course, reading John Kenneth Galbraith’s American Capitalism;
   
   
2. Taking Edward S. Shaw’s intermediate macroeconomics course with Joseph P. McKenna’s Aggregate Economic Analysis as the text; and
   
   
3. Taking Eugene L. Grant’s Engineering Economics (capital budgeting) course with his own seminal book Principles of Engineering Economy as the text.
   
   

But, it took awhile for me to decide to become a university economist. For the history of other influences that moved me in that direction, see my Personal Information page’s final section, “How I Became an Academic Economist.”

Ph.D.	Economics, Claremont Graduate School, 1974
Dissertation:	Linear Constant Coefficient Difference or Differential Equations for Economic Models (725 pp.)
Fields:	Courses emphasized macro and microeconomic theory and policy, including mathematical economics, national income analysis, cycles and growth, monetary theory, public finance, industrial organization, labor economics, and statistics and econometrics.
M.A.	Economics,Claremont Graduate School, 1964
Thesis:	The Full Inclusion of Capital Gains and Losses in the Taxable Income of Individuals (178 pp.)
A.B.	History, Stanford University, 1959
Additional Coursework:	Political science and government, economics and statistics, industrial economics, business law, and theology.
Union Theological Seminary (New York City),	Rockefeller Fellow, to consider the Presbyterian Ministry, 1959-1960

Macroeconomic theory, including international finance. Micro economic theory, including managerial economics. Mathematical economics, particularly disequilibrium (non-market-clearing) dynamics with stock and flow quantity variables. Also, public choice theory, and public finance, including taxation, fiscal and monetary policy.

Although my primary long run research interest is economic dynamics, I have been easily distracted. My research has included and continues to include thinking and writing (usually in collaboration with others) about economic theory and policy on a variety of specific topics, listed below.

Economic Theory: Determinants of the money supply; Determinants of the demand to hold money; Dual equations of exchange (for output and input), including applications to U.S. economic growth; Monetary change and velocity in a Keynesian model; Real versus nominal consumption as functions of nominal income; Growth models; International monetary exchange rates and trade deficits; Marx and Keynes.

Microeconomics’ confusing teaching vocabulary; Production function characteristics; Optimization with integer choices; Qualitative calculus; Discrete and continuous time difference equation stability conditions; Polynomial matrices; Advertising as a barrier to new firms entering a market; Properties of mathematical functions used to estimate job accident costs.

Effect of government size on future government growth; Feasibility of a desirable minimal state; Efficient tort liability rules.

Economic Policy: U.S. foreign trade deficits; The dollar’s international value; Macroeconomic effects of the 1970’s “oil shock”; Military personnel policy, and conscription; Capital gains taxation; Misleading aggregation (of purchases and transfer payments) in the federal government budget; A generalized median voter model, and its estimated voter perception of property tax incidence.

For detailed lists of my research projects and publications, please see my Curriculum Vitae.