Limit search to available items
Book Cover
E-book
Author Fogel, Robert William.

Title Political arithmetic : Simon Kuznets and the empirical tradition in economics / Robert William Fogel, Enid M. Fogel, Mark Guglielmo, and Nathaniel Grotte
Published Chicago : The University of Chicago Press, 2013

Copies

Description 1 online resource (xiii, 148 pages)
Series NBER series on long-term factors in economic development
NBER series on long-term factors in economic development.
Contents Introduction: the amazing twentieth century -- The rise of academic economists before World War I -- The early history of the NBER -- The emergence of national income accounting as a tool of economic policy -- The use of national income accounting to study comparative economic growth -- The scientific methods of Simon Kuznets -- Further aspects of the legacy of Simon Kuznets -- The quarter century since the death of Simon Kuznets
Summary "We take for granted today that the assessments, measurements, and forecasts of economists are crucial to the decision-making of governments and businesses alike. But less than a century ago that wasn't the case -- economists simply didn't have the necessary information or statistical tools to understand the ever more complicated modern economy. With Political Arithmetic, Nobel Prize-winning economist Robert Fogel and his collaborators tell the story of economist Simon Kuznets, the founding of the National Bureau of Economic Research, and the creation of the concept of GNP, which for the first time enabled us to measure the performance of entire economies. The book weaves together the many strands of political and economic thought and historical pressures that together created the demand for more detailed economic thinking -- Progressive-era hopes for activist government, the production demands of World War I, Herbert Hoover's interest in business cycles as President Harding's commerce secretary, and the catastrophic economic failures of the Great Depression -- and shows how, through trial and error, measurement and analysis, economists such as Kuznets rose to the occasion and in the process built a discipline whose knowledge could be put to practical use in everyday decision-making. The product of a lifetime of studying the workings of economies and skillfully employing the tools of economics, Political Arithmetic is simultaneously a history of a key period of economic thought and a testament to the power of applied ideas."--Provided by publisher
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index
Notes Print version record
Subject Kuznets, Simon, 1901-1985 -- Influence
SUBJECT Kuznets, Simon, 1901-1985 fast
Subject National Bureau of Economic Research.
SUBJECT National Bureau of Economic Research fast
Subject Economics -- Research -- United States
National income -- United States -- Accounting -- History -- 20th century
BUSINESS & ECONOMICS -- Economics -- Macroeconomics.
POLITICAL SCIENCE -- Economic Conditions.
Economics -- Research
Influence (Literary, artistic, etc.)
National income -- Accounting
Empirische Wirtschaftsforschung
United States
Genre/Form Electronic books
History
Form Electronic book
Author Fogel, Enid M.
Guglielmo, Mark.
Grotte, Nathaniel.
ISBN 022602072X
9780226020723
9781299533028
1299533027