About Simon Kuznets
Simon Smith Kuznets ( KUZ-nets; Russian: Семён Абра́мович Кузне́ц, romanized: Semyon Abramovich Kuznets, IPA: [sʲɪˈmʲɵn ɐˈbraməvʲɪtɕ kʊzʲˈnʲets]; April 30, 1901 – July 8, 1985) was a Russian-born American economist and statistician. He 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 empirical science and to the formation of quantitative economic history. Kuznets pioneered the concept of gross domestic product, which seeks to capture all economic production in a state by a single measure. == Biography == === Early life === Simon Kuznets was born on April 30, 1901, in Pinsk, the capital of Pinsky Uyezd in Minsk Governorate of the Russian Empire (present-day Belarus), to a Jewish family. He had two brothers, Solomon and George. He completed his schooling, first at the Realschule in Rovno and then Kharkov (present-day Ukraine). In 1918, Kuznets entered the Kharkov Institute of Commerce, where he studied economic sciences, statistics, history and mathematics under the guidance of professors P. Fomin (political economy), A. Antsiferov (statistics), V. Levitsky (economic history and economic thought), S. Bernstein (probability theory), V. Davats (mathematics), and others. Basic academic courses at the Institute helped him to acquire "exceptional" erudition in economics, as well as in history, demography, statistics and natural sciences. According to the institute's curriculum, development of national economies had to be analyzed in the wider context of changes in "connected spheres" and with the involvement of proper methods and empirical data. There, he began to study economics, and became exposed to Joseph Schumpeter's theory of innovation and the business cycle.
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