Impact on Oxford Economics via Teaching and Graduate Supervision
Max Corden's impact on Oxford economics was not confined to his writings. His lectures, his graduate seminar and his conscientious supervision of graduate students all contributed to create a fertile environment in which work on international economics flourished at Oxford during his time there and subsequently.
Besides giving an annual lecture series to graduates, he organised a regular graduate seminar at Nuffield in international economics with support from two colleagues, Vijay Joshi and Peter Oppenheimer.[190] Joshi describes the impact of the Corden seminar as follows:What I would highlight about Max is the huge difference he made to graduate teaching of economics at Oxford (Jim Mirrlees also played a major role). I remember very well the style of graduate teaching in international economics in the pre-Max era. There were no lectures to speak of. There were seminars but they were quite casual affairs with Sir Roy Harrod and Maurice Scott seated in armchairs. A student would read a paper, which no one had read, and of which no one other than the speaker had a copy. After the student had finished, there was a desultory discussion. This was not a useful way to teach the subject (though both Harrod and Scott were of course distinguished economists). Max changed all that with German efficiency and Australian informality. I still remember his international economics seminar fondly, with Max leaping up and down to draw diagrams and make things crystal clear. For students, he was a godsend (author, personal communication, 2 November 2018).
The seminars were meticulously organised. The topics for each term were published in advance. Papers were delivered by students or visiting academics. When a student presented a paper, it was reviewed in draft by Corden and the final version was then distributed in advance to the seminar participants.
After the seminar was over, the discussions would often continue in Corden's room at Nuffield over drinks. As the author can testify from personal experience, presenting a paper at the Corden seminar could be a daunting experience for a student but Corden was always gracious and kind to the presenters even when they made mistakes. He never showed off his own mastery of the subject but always tried to make the exposition of the underlying arguments as clear as possible.[191]Corden's renown attracted many leading international economists to Oxford, either to give presentations to the seminar or to stay for longer periods as visitors at Nuffield. During his own sojourn in Oxford from 1972 to 1977, the author remembers visits from such luminaries as Robert Baldwin, Jagdish Bhagwati, Rick Brecher, Alan Deardorff, Carlos Diaz-Alejandro, Ronald Findlay, Jacob Frenkel, Herbert Grubel, Ron Jones, Charles Kindleberger, Peter Lloyd, Fritz Machlup, Steve Magee, Michael Mussa, Robert Stern and Wolfgang Stolper.
Corden also took his supervisory duties very seriously. Many of the graduate students he supervised went on to have distinguished careers in academia, international organisations and elsewhere. For example, Paul Collier has described his experience of being supervised by Corden:
Max supervised my thesis and I remain in debt to him for what I learnt. In those days, I was a ferment of ideas, mostly inchoate and muddled. Martin Wolf, then as now a model of clarity, would walk around Nuffield with me, listening to my confusion before interjecting an illuminating “what you really mean is”. Max raised these lessons in clarity of thought to the highest professional level. He taught me how to think my ideas through to their conclusion, and most importantly, how to express them clearly. I recall such an occasion when, surely driven to exasperation, but as always determined to relate to his students in the most kindly and helpful manner, he responded to one of my wilder passages of analysis: “Paul, you write economics as if it were poetry”. At the time, entirely mistakenly, I found the notion that I was bestowing the glamour of poetry on the dismal science quite appealing. But I gradually faced up to the intellectually demanding process of clarity (author, personal communication, 31 January 2019).[192]
During his time at Oxford, Corden was also instrumental in founding the International Economics Study Group (IESG) with David Wall (Sussex University). The founding committee also included John Dunning, Brian Hindley, Tim Josling and Harry Johnson. The Group no longer exists, but for many years it organised regular seminars at LSE and an annual conference which brought together international economists from all over the UK and abroad.
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