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Simon Kuznets
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1901-1985


The Russian-raised Simon Kuznets was a student of W.C. Mitchell's at Columbia and subsequently a researcher at Mitchell's NBER. It was no surprise, then, that Kuznets took his master's creed to heart: that the painstaking collection of 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 parallelling that of Richard Stone in Great Britain. Kuznets work fit hand in glove with two other developments at the time: the emergence of econometrics and the Keynesian revolution. Kuznets, however, was neither a Keynesian nor an econometrician - he took his cues from Mitchell's Institutionalism -- as exemplified in his 1930 methodological pieces. As a result, his initial work was on the empirical analysis business cycles (1930) - a 15-20 year cycle he identified was later attached to his name, 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.

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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); he 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 Prize in 1971.

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.
  • "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.
  • 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.
  • "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.
  • Population, Capital and Growth: Selected essays, 1979.