Reddaway's New Methods of Teaching and Research

It will be recalled that Reddaway was trying to make his mark when the Cambridge Faculty of Economics included world-famous stars such as James Meade, Piero Sraffa, Joan Robinson, Richard Kahn, and Nicholas Kaldor. Nevertheless, Reddaway’s lecture course (which, incidentally, was wrongly entitled ‘Statistics’), gained in popularity and attracted a stable audience of about 30 students. Many graduate students started to attend Reddaway’s lectures. Posner (2002) pointed out that these students had to get special permission to attend the Reddaway lectures. Reddaway’s students were obliged to present the results of their analysis in a straightforward manner and without reference to heavy statistical methodology. Moreover, questions began with a practical problem at hand, which might ask how statistics can be effectively, convincingly, and correctly used.

It would perhaps be best to illustrate this point with an actual question set in a typical Reddaway examination:

You are employed by a business tycoon of uncertain politics, who got a II.1 in economics, but did not take the statistics paper. You find that he has gone away for the afternoon leaving the following note:

I spent yesterday evening between two old College friends T. Ory and L. Abour. Ory was trying to convince me that the economic record for 1959—63 reflected great credit on the government, because there had been good rises in the following real terms:

(a) The total production of goods and services.
(b) Output per head in manufacturing.
(c) Foreign trade.
(d) Capital formation.
(e) Personal consumption, both in total and per head of population.

Moreover, he insisted that there were other favourable features, such as:

(i) Unemployment has been negligible.
(ii) The growth in the quantity of money had been no greater than was justified by the rise in production.
(iii) The rise in prices had slowed down to an easily tolerable pace.
(iv) The balance of payments had, on the whole, been favourable.
(v) The international position of the pound had been strengthened.

On the other hand, Abour maintained that in a progressive economy it was natural to have rises in all the items in Ory’s list, and the real feature of the period was their smallness. As for his other points, Abour’s rejoinder was as follows:

1. Unemployment had been rising throughout the period.
2. The movements in the quantity of money were, as such, of no real importance.
3. The rise in prices had been far from negligible, and had been kept down largely by the stability of import prices, for which even a Tory government could hardly claim the credit.
4. By the relevant tests, the balance of payments had been unfavourable, and indeed the Government had used its bad taste as an argument for keeping down wages.
5. We ended the period with less reserves than the start, and greater liabilities.

Please get out the statistics which you consider relevant for judging the truth of the above matters, prepare tables and/or graphs in such a way that I can draw conclusions from them, and write notes on what your own conclusions are, indicating any places where these are of a subjective character (italics in original).

This question was set for second-year Economics Tripos Part II undergraduate students in 1964. The students were provided with the National Income Blue Book and another government source book, Economic Trends. This (though abbreviated slightly) was essentially the whole examination, to be completed within three hours. Although the question is in its nature a simple one, it takes a research stance which demands original thinking and accurate judgement, and would be considered testing even by many doctoral students in British universities. Reddaway thus set a new and intriguing method of teaching applied economics to undergraduates in Cambridge.

As Michael Posner, who as a colleague was well acquainted with Reddaway’s teaching methods, noted: ‘[Reddaway’s] lectures in the 1950s and 1960s... should have been called “economic statistics and how to use them”’ (Posner 2002). He describes how the lectures were filled with both students and colleagues from the Faculty of Economics, who sought permission to audit lectures and were made teaching assistants or given demonstrating roles. Posner describes, ‘students, young bright people with the esoteric thrills and subtleties of high theory, were asked to sit in classrooms, roll up their intellectual sleeves, and attempt to construct charts and tables which would throw light on issues of evident importance and practical interest’. The so-called Reddaway-questions were challenging; they provided economics students at Cambridge with the most important statistical skill—to maximise the relevant information, and to minimise the noise. Posner suggests:

The familiar monthly and annual volumes of government statistics provided the raw material for this class work; but students were challenged to adapt, compare and manipulate the figures so that they yielded the maximum of relevant information and the minimum of noise and confusion. Reddaway and his younger colleagues would write sharp comments on the students’ efforts.

In terms of broader impact, former students of Reddaway would go on to occupy various public offices (e.g. the civil service, the offices of City brokers, and the editorial desks of the better class of newspapers), resulting in, as Posner suggests, ‘the quality of public economic argument...[being]...much improved’ (ibid.).

Thus, contrary to Singh (2006), Reddaway had enormous influence on British economics from the mid-1960s until the early 1980s. He changed the way of doing economics. Indeed, students today are increasingly demanding something like Reddaway’s approach to economic questions at British and other universities around the world.