Simon Kuznets
Simon Kuznets | |
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PhD) | |
Academic career | |
Institution | NBER Columbia University, Harvard University (1960–1971) Johns Hopkins University (1954–1960) University of Pennsylvania (1930–1954) |
Field | Econometrics, development economics |
School or tradition | Institutional economics |
Doctoral advisor | Wesley Clair Mitchell |
Doctoral students | Baidyanath Misra Milton Friedman Richard Easterlin Stanley Engerman Robert Fogel Subramanian Swamy Lance Taylor |
Awards | Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences (1971) |
Information at IDEAS / RePEc |
Part of a series on |
Macroeconomics |
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Simon Smith Kuznets (/ˈkʌznɛts/ KUZ-nets; Russian: Семён Абра́мович Кузне́ц, IPA: [sʲɪˈmʲɵn ɐˈbraməvʲɪtɕ kʊzʲˈnʲets]; April 30, 1901 – July 8, 1985) was a Russian-born American economist and statistician who received the 1971 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences "for his empirically founded interpretation of economic growth which has led to new and deepened insight into the economic and social structure and process of development."
Kuznets made a decisive contribution to the transformation of economics into an
Biography
Early life
Simon Kuznets was born in 1901 in
At the turn of the decade, the normal work in the institute was interrupted by the events of the
Emigration to the United States
In 1922, the Kuznets family emigrated to the United States. Kuznets then studied at Columbia University under the guidance of Wesley Clair Mitchell. He graduated with a B.S. in 1923,[11] M.A. in 1924, and Ph.D. in 1926.[5] As his magister thesis, he defended his essay "Economic system of Dr. Schumpeter, presented and analyzed", written in Kharkiv. From 1925 to 1926, Kuznets spent time studying economic patterns in prices as the Research Fellow at the Social Science Research Council. It was this work that led to his book "Secular Movements in Production and Prices", defended as a doctoral thesis and published in 1930.
In 1927, he became a member of the research staff of the
Apart from that, Kuznets collaborated with a number of research organizations and government agencies. From 1931 to 1934, at Mitchell's behest, Kuznets took charge of the NBER's work on U.S. national income accounts, giving the first official estimation of the US national income. In 1936, Kuznets took the lead in establishing the Conference on Research, Income and Wealth, which brought together government officials and academic economists, engaged in the development of the U.S. national income and product accounts, and in 1947 helped to establish its international counterpart, the International Association for Research in Income and Wealth.
During the Second World War, between 1942 and 1944, Kuznets became the associate director of the Bureau of Planning and Statistics of the War Production Board. He took part in work to assess the country's capacity to expand military production. Researchers used national income accounting, together with a rough form of linear programming, to measure the potential for increased production and the resources from which it would come, and to identify the materials that were binding constraints on expansion.[13]
After the war, he worked as an advisor for the governments of China, Japan, India, Korea, Taiwan, and Israel in the establishment of their national systems of economic information. Kuznets cooperated with the Growth Center of Yale University, the Social Science Research Council (SSRC). He guided extensive research, holding a number of positions in research institutions, such as the Chairman of the Falk Project for Economic Research in Israel, 1953–1963; member of the board of trustees and honorary chairman, Maurice Falk Institute for Economic Research in Israel, from 1963; and chairman, Social Science Research Council Committee on the Economy of China, 1961–1970.
Kuznets was elected as the President of the American Economic Association (1954), President of the American Statistical Association (1949), an honorable member of the Association of Economic History, the Royal Statistical Society of England and a member of the
Simon Kuznets died on July 8, 1985, at the age of 84. In 2013 The Kharkiv National University of Economics, where he studied in 1918–1921 was named after him; Simon Kuznets Kharkiv National University of Economics.
Impact on economics
His name is associated with the formation of modern economic science as an empirical discipline, the development of statistical methods of research and the emergence of quantitative economic history. Kuznets is credited with revolutionising econometrics, and this work is credited[by whom?] with fueling the so-called Keynesian revolution.
Kuznets' views and scientific methodology were highly influenced by methodological settings received by him in
Historical series of economic dynamics and Kuznets cycles, or "long swings"
The first major research project in which Kuznets was involved was the study of long series of economic dynamics in the USA undertaken in the mid-1920s. The collected data covered the period from 1865 to 1925, and for some indices achieved 1770. Applying for the analysis of time series approximating
National income accounts
In 1931, at Mitchell's behest, Kuznets took charge of the NBER's work on U.S.
Kuznets had success to solve numerous problems ranging from lack of sources of information and bias assessments, to the development of the theoretical concept of national income. Kuznets achieved a high precision in calculations. His works allowed us to analyze the structure of the national income, and expose to detailed study a number of specific problems of the national economy. Improved methods for calculating the national income and related indicators have become classics and formed the basis of the modern system of national accounts. Having analyzed the distribution of income among different social groups, Kuznets put forward the hypothesis that in countries, which were on the early stages of economic development, income inequality increased first, but as far as national economy was growing, it tended to decrease. This assumption formed the basis of so-called "Kuznets curve" empirical conception.
Kuznets helped the
Exploring the formation of the national income, Kuznets studied proportions between output and income, consumption and savings, etc. After analyzing the long-term data sets of economic conditions for 20 countries, Kuznets revealed long-term trends in capital / output ratios, shares of net capital formation, net investment, and so on. Collected and systematized data allowed exposing to empirical testing a number of existing hypotheses. In particular, this concerned premises of the Keynes theory – Keynes' 1936 absolute income hypothesis.
The hypothesis gave birth to what would become the first formal
Economic growth
By the end of the Second World War Kuznets moved into a new research area, related to the tie between changes in income and growth. He proposed a research program that involved extensive empirical studies on the four key elements of economic growth. The elements were demographic growth, growth of knowledge, in-country adaptation to growth factors, and external economic relations between the countries. The general theory of economic growth should explain the development of advanced industrial countries, and the reasons that prevent the development of backward countries, include both market and planned economies, large and small, developed and developing countries, consider the impact on growth of foreign economic relations.
He collected and analyzed statistical indicators of economic performance of 14 countries in Europe, the U.S. and Japan for 60 years. Analysis of the materials led to the advancement of a number of hypotheses relating to various aspects of the mechanism of economic growth, concerning the level and variability of growth, structure of the GNP and distribution of labor, the distribution of income between households, the structure of foreign trade. Kuznets founded the historically grounded theory of economic growth. The central theme of these empirical studies is that the growth of the aggregated product of the country necessarily implies a profound transformation of the whole of its economic structure. This transformation affects many aspects of economic life – the structure of production, sectoral and occupational structure of employment, the division of occupations among family and market activities, the income structure, size, age structure and spatial distribution of the population, cross-country flows of goods, capital, labor and knowledge, the organization of industry and governmental regulation. Such changes, in his opinion, are essential for overall growth and, once started, shape, constrain or support the subsequent economic development of the country. Kuznets made a profound analysis of the impact on economic growth by demographic processes and characteristics.
His major thesis, which argued that underdeveloped countries of today possess characteristics different from those that industrialized countries faced before they developed, helped put an end to the simplistic view that all countries went through the same "linear stages" in their history and launched the separate field of development economics – which now focused on the analysis of modern underdeveloped countries' distinct experiences.
Kuznets curve
Among his several observations which sparked important theoretical research programs was the
Historical and economic works of the 1970s
In his historical and economic studies of the 1970s, Kuznets expressed the idea of an interaction between science and technology (innovations), and institutional shifts, as well as the role of factors external to the economy, such as those caused by the moral and political climate in society, and their impact on the progress and results of economic growth.
Selected publications
- "Secular Movements in Production and Prices: Their Nature and Their Bearing upon Cyclical Fluctuations". (New York and Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1930).
- "National Income and Capital Formation, 1919–1935". (1937)
- "National Income and Its Composition, 1919–1938". (1941) Assisted by Lillian Epstein and Elizabeth Jenks https://www.nber.org/chapters/c4224
- "Economic Growth and Income Inequality". American Economic Review 45 (March): 1–28. (1955)
- "Quantitative aspects of the economic growth of nations, VIII: The distribution of income by size", Economic Development and Cultural Change, 11, pp. 1–92. (1963)
- "Modern Economic Growth: Rate, Structure, and Spread". (1966)
- "Toward a Theory of Economic Growth, with Reflections on the Economic Growth of Modern Nations". (1968)
- "Economic Growth of Nations: Total Output and Production Structure". (1971)
- "Population, Capital and Growth". (1973)
See also
References
- doi:10.1017/S0022050700045642.. He has been called "one of the most important economists of the twentieth century" by Robert Whaples in a 2018 interview.
- ^ Nobel Prize Laureate Database
- ^ Moskovkin V. M. and Mikhailichenko D. Yu. (2013). "Саймон Кузнец и харьковская высшая экономическая школа начала ХХ ст." (PDF). In Ponomarenko, V. S. (ed.). Кузнец С. Экономическая система д-ра Шумпетера, излагаемая и критикуемая. Kharkiv: ИД «ИНЖЕК». pp. 7–34. Archived from the original (PDF) on November 11, 2013. Retrieved November 15, 2013.
- JSTOR 2121281.
- ^ a b Weyl, E. Glen (2007). "Simon Kuznets: Cautious Empiricist of the Eastern European Jewish Diaspora" (PDF). Harvard University Society of Fellows; Toulouse School of Economics. p. 8. Archived from the original (PDF) on October 17, 2013. Retrieved February 4, 2012.
- ^ Харківський національний університет імені В.Н. Каразіна. "Про університет. Історична довідка". Retrieved February 4, 2012.
- ISBN 978-3540422402.
- ISBN 978-0415366489.
Simon Kuznets university Kharkov.
- ISBN 978-1412842112.
- ^ Кузнец С. Денежная заработная плата рабочих и служащих фабрично-заводской промышленности г. Харькова в 1920 г. // Материалы по статистике труда на Украние. Под ред. Зав. отд. труда И. Н. Дубинской. – Вып. 2. – Июль 1921 г. – С. 53–64. (Репринтная публикация Бизнес Информ[permanent dead link]. – № 9 – 10. – 2002 г.)
- ^ "Alumni Award Recipients | School of General Studies". gs.columbia.edu. Retrieved January 29, 2022.
- ^ View/Search Fellows of the ASA, accessed 2016-07-23.
- ^ doi:10.3386/w7787.
- ^ Filatov, I. V. (2002). Теоретическое наследие С. Кузнеца и проблемы модернизации постсоциалистических стран // Социально-экономическая трансформация в России (PDF). Moscow. p. 80.
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- JSTOR 2552345.
- ^ Rowe, Jonathan (June 2008) Our Phony Economy. Harper's Magazine
- ^ Simon Kuznets, 1934. "National Income, 1929–1932". 73rd US Congress, 2d session, Senate document no. 124, page 7. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/title/national-income-1929-1932-971, 2022-02-13
Further reading
- Ben-Porath Y. Simon Kuznets in Person and in Writing // Economic Development and Cultural Change, Vol. 36, No. 3 (Apr., 1988), pp. 435–447.
- Fogel, Robert W. (2000). "Simon S. Kuznets: April 30, 1901 – July 9, 1985". NBER Working Paper No. W7787.
- Fogel, Robert William; Fogel, Enid M.; Guglielmo, Mark; Grotte, Nathaniel (2013). Political Arithmetic: Simon Kuznets and the Empirical Tradition in Economics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0-226-25661-0.
- Hoselitz B. F. Bibliography of Simon Kuznets // Economic Development and Cultural Change, Vol. 31, No. 2 (Jan., 1983), pp. 433–454.
- Kapuria-Foreman V., Perlman M. An Economic Historian's Economist: Remembering Simon Kuznets // The Economic Journal, 105 (November), 1995, p. 1524–1547.
- Lundberg, Erik (1971). "Simon Kuznets contributions to Economics". The Swedish Journal of Economics. 73 (4): 444–459. JSTOR 3439225.
- Street J. H. The Contribution of Simon S. Kuznets to Institutionalist Development Theory // Journal of Economic Issues, Vol. 22, No. 2 (Jun., 1988), pp. 499–509.
External links
- "Simon Kuznets (1901–1985)". Library of Economics and Liberty (2nd ed.). Liberty Fund. 2008.
- New School for Social Research. With partial bibliography and web links.
- Kuznets's Nobel Prize lecture.
- Fogel, Robert, 2000, "Simon S. Kuznets: 1901–1985," NBER Working Paper No. 7787.
- National Academy of Sciences Biographical Memoir
- Simon Kuznets on Nobelprize.org