Profile Major Works Resources

Simon Kuznets, 1901-1985.

Photo of S.Kuznets

The Russian-born Simon Kuznets left Soviet Russia in 1922, emigrating to New York.  He became a student of Wesley Mitchell at Columbia and subsequently a researcher at Mitchell's National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) in 1926.   It was no surprise, then, that Kuznets took his master's creed to heart: that the painstaking collection of empirical data was a priority.

Kuznets's life work was the collection and organisation of the national income accounts of the United States (1934, 1941, 1946), an accomplishment that inspired that of Richard Stone and James Meade  in Great Britain. Kuznets work fit hand in glove with two other developments at the time: the emergence of econometrics and the Keynesian Revolution, both of which found in Kuznets's data an important resource for their advancement.

Kuznets, however, was neither a Keynesian nor an econometrician.  Instead,  Kuznets took his methodological cues from Mitchell's Institutionalism, in particular the empirical analysis of business cycles.  Kuznets (1930) identified a 15-20 year cycle to which his name was later attached, the "Kuznets Cycle".

Kuznets was also one of the earliest workers on development economics, in particular collecting and analyzing the empirical characteristics of developing countries (1965, 1966, 1971, 1979). 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.

Among his several discoveries which sparked important theoretical research programs was his discovery of the inverted U-shaped relation between income inequality and economic growth (1955, 1963).  Kuznets also discovered the patterns in savings-income behavior which launched the Life-Cycle/Permanant-Income Hypothesis of Modigliani and Friedman.

For all his patient yet crucial work, Kuznets won the Nobel Memorial in 1971.  He was at Harvard at the time.

 

  

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Major works of Simon Kuznets

  • "Retardation of Industrial Growth", 1929, Journal of Economic and Business History.
  • Secular Movements in Production and Prices, 1930.
  • "Equilibrium Economics and Business Cycle Theory", 1930, QJE.
  • "Static and Dynamic Economics", 1930, AER.
  • National Income, 1929-32, 1934. [nber]
  • "Relation Between Capital Goods and Finished Products in the Business Cycle", 1934, in Economic Essays in Honor of W. C. Mitchell.
  • "Schumpeter's Business Cycles", 1940, AER.
  • National Income and Capital Formation, 1919-1935, 1941.
  • Income from Independent Professional Practice, with M. Friedman, 1945.
  • National Product Since 1869, 1946.
  • "Foreign Economic Relations of the United States and the Impact upon the Domestic Economy: Review of long term trends", 1948, Proceedings of American Philosophical Association.
  • "National Income and Economic Welfare", 1949, Boletin Banco Central de Venezuela.
  • "International Differences in Income Levels: Reflections on their causes", 1950, Boletin Banco Central de Venezuela.
  • "National Income and Industrial Structure", 1951, Proceedings of International Statistics Conf.
  • Economic Change: Selected essays in business cycles, national income and economic growth, 1953.
  • "Economic Growth and Income Inequality", 1955, AER. [pdf, pdf]
  • "Quantitative Aspects of the Economic Growth of Nations", 1963, Econ Dev & Cultural Change.
  • Modern Economic Growth: Rate, structure and spread, 1966.
  • Economic Growth and Structure: Selected essays, 1965.
  • Economic Growth of Nations: Total output and production structure, 1971.
  • "Modern Economic Growth: Findings and reflections", 1973, AER. [nobel]
  • Population, Capital and Growth: Selected essays, 1979.
  • Jewish Economies: Development and Migration in America and Beyond, (S. Lo and E.G. Weyl, editors)

 
HET

 
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Resources on Simon Kuznets

  • Autobiography of Kuznets at Nobel site.
  • Press release of Nobel award (1971).
  • Kuznets Page at Nobel Prize Internet Archive
  • Simon Kuznets papers at NBER
  • "Some Notes on the Scientific Methods of Simon Kuznets" by Robert W. Fogel, 1987, Economic Development, the Family and Income Distribution [nber]
  • "Simon S. Kuznets: April 30, 1901-July 9, 1985" by Robert W. Fogel, 2000 [nber]
  • "How Simon Kuznets codified modern economic growth" by Robert Fogel, 2013, ChicagoBooth [article]
  • Political Arithmetic: Simon Kuznets and the Empirical Tradition in Economics, 2013 (R.W Fogel, E M. Fogel, M. Guglielmo, and N.Grotte, editors) [nber]
    • "Ch. 3 - The Emergence of National Income Accounting as a Tool of Economic Policy" [nber]
    • "Ch. 4 - The Use of National Income Accounting to Study Comparative Economic Growth" [nber]
    • "Ch. 5 - The Scientific Method of Simon Kuznets", by R.W. Fogel et al, 2013, Political Arithmetic  [nber]
    • "Ch. 6 - Further Aspects of the Legacy of Simon Kuznets" [nber]
    • "Ch. 7 - The Quarter Century since the Death of Simon Kuznets" [nber]
  • Political Arithmetic review by Alan Heston at eh.net
  • “Introduction: Simon Kuznets, Cautious Empiricist of the Eastern European Jewish Diaspora,” by E. Glen Weyl, 2012, in Jewish Economies, v.1 [pdf, site]
  • Jewish Economies review on eh.net
  • "Kuznets and Modern Economic Growth, Fifty years later", by Moshe Syrquin, 2005 [pdf]
  • Kuznets obituary at NY Times, 1985
  • Kuznets remembered at Wharton Alumni Magazine
  • Simon Kuznets entry at Concise Encycl of Economics, at Liberty Fund
  • Kuznets entry at Jewish Virtual Library
  • Kuznets entry at Britannica
  • Wikipedia
  • Kuznets's Nobel medal on auction, NY Times, 2013

 

 
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