Kuznets, Simon (k

znĕts`, kŭz`nĕts), 1901–85, American economist, b. Kharkiv, Russia (now in Ukraine), grad. Columbia (B.S., 1923; M.A., 1924; Ph.D., 1926). He emigrated to the United States in 1922. After serving as a fellow on the Social Science Research Council (1925–27), he worked for the National Bureau of Economic Research (1927–63), where he became involved in the study of business cycles. Kuznets taught at the Univ. of Pennsylvania (1930–54) and Johns Hopkins Univ. (1954–60); he joined the faculty of Harvard in 1960. Generally credited with having developed the Gross National Product as a measure of economic output, Kuznets was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1971. His National Income and Its Composition, 1919 to 1938 (1941) is considered his major work. A prolific writer, Kuznets has also written National Income and Capital Formation (1938), National Product Since 1869 (1946), Economic Growth of Nations (1971), and numerous other books and scholarly articles.

Kuznets, Simon (Smith)

(born April 30, 1901, Kharkov, Ukraine, Russian Empire—died July 8, 1985, Cambridge, Mass., U.S.) Russian-U.S. economist and statistician. He immigrated to the U.S. in 1922 and joined the National Bureau of Economic Research in 1927; he later taught at the University of Pennsylvania (1930–54), Johns Hopkins University (1954–60), and Harvard University (1960–71). His work emphasized the complexity of underlying data in the construction of economic models, stressing the need for information on population structure, technology, labour quality, government structure, trade, and markets. He also described the existence of cyclical variations in growth rates (now called “Kuznets cycles”) and their links with underlying factors such as population. In 1971 he received the Nobel Prize.

Kuznets, Simon (1901–85) economist; born in Kharkov, Ukraine. In 1922 he emigrated to the U.S.A. and was educated at Columbia University. He worked at the National Bureau of Economic Research (1927–61) and taught at the University of Pennsylvania (1930–54), Johns Hopkins (1954–60), and Harvard (1960–71). His major contributions include developing national income accounts and performing the historical research necessary to reconstruct that data for the U.S.A. back to 1869. His work advanced the acceptance of Keynesian economics during and after World War II. His major publication was National Income and Its Composition, 1919–1938 (1941). In 1971 he received the Nobel Prize in economics.