Simon (Smith) Kuznets - His work and its impact on Economics

Economist and statistician, born in Kharkov, E Ukraine. He emigrated to the USA in 1922, studied at Columbia, and investigated business cycles for the National Bureau of Economic Research from 1927. He was professor of economics at Pennsylvania (1930–54), Johns Hopkins (1954–60), and Harvard (1960–71). In his work he combined a concern for facts and measurement with creative and original ideas on economic growth and social change, such as the 20-year Kuznets cycle of economic growth. His major publication was National Income and its Composition, 1919–1938 (2 vols, 1941). He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1971.

Simon Kuznets

Born	April 30, 1901 Pinsk
Died	July 8, 1985 Cambridge, Massachusetts
Residence	USA
Nationality	Russian
Field	Economics
Institution	NBER Harvard University (1960-1971) Johns Hopkins University (1954-1960)
Alma Mater	Columbia University
Doctoral Advisor	Wesley Clair Mitchell
Doctoral Students	Robert Fogel Milton Friedman
Known for	National income data Empirical business cycle research Characteristics of economic growth
Notable Prizes	Nobel Prize in Economics (1971)

Simon Smith Kuznets (April 30, 1901 – July 8, 1985) was an economist at Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania who won the 1971 Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel "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". in 1926.

From 1925 to 1926, Kuznets spent time studying economic patterns in prices as the Research Fellow at the Social Science Research Council.

His work and its impact on Economics

Kuznets is credited with revolutionising econometrics, and this work is credited with fueling the Keynesian Revolution.

There are two developments at Kuznets time: the emergence of econometrics and the Keynesian Revolution, both of which found in Kuznets's data an important resource for their advancement. Whereas Mitchell devoted his life to the study of business cycles, Kuznets turned to other fluctuations –seasonal ones and secular movements –then to national income estimation, and later to studies of economic growth.

Kuznets's life work was the collection and organization of the national income accounts of the United States (1934, 1941, and 1946). Kuznets was interested in statistical fact finding focusing specifically on seasonal fluctuations, secular movements, national income estimation, and economic growth.

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, and 1979).