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The State as a Unit in Study of Economic Growth*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 February 2011

Simon Kuznets
Simon Kuznets
Affiliation:
University of Pennsylvania
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Extract

Empirical study of a process of change requires a definition of characteristics of change to be measured, and of units for which the measurable characteristics are to be observed. The choice of characteristics was discussed in “Measurement of Economic Growth,” and in that discussion the state was assumed to be the unit of observation. The purpose here is to explore the implications of that assumption, thus in a sense providing a lengthy footnote to the earlier paper.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 11 , Issue 1 , Winter 1951 , pp. 25 - 41
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1951

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References

1 See The Tasks of Economic History (Supplemental Issue of The Journal of Economic History), VI (1946), 10–34Google Scholar.

2 See the more explicit discussion under VI below.

3 Population was used as an index of size because it was easily available. Were we to use area or some measure of economic magnitude like national income, the range would be as wide if not wider.

4 National income figures (in United States dollars) are from Point Four (U.S. Department of State, publication 3719, released January 1950); import and export figures from Network, of World Trade (League of Nations, Geneva, 1942, reprinted by United Nations in 1947). Throughout, the denominators of the ratios are national income plus imports, approximation to national income gross of the full debit side of current transactions on the international balance of payments. The reasons for using this gross total as denominator are: (a) to make the upper limit of the ratio 100 per cent; (b) to compare both imports and exports with the complete total to which they contributed or from which they could have been drawn.

5 In Section I, I stressed the availability of data, particularly quantitative. But the stock of quantitative data is a function of a society's economic and social organization and of the level of its technology as reflected through the latter. The rich and growing supply of statistics over the last two centuries is as much a correlate of the industrial system as is the increase in economic product or the secularization of social values. The close original connection between these data and the state is indicated by the very name of the discipline that deals with them.

6 On a somewhat different level, it is clearly illustrated in Toynbee's grand-scale attempt to interpret the history of human societies. His choice of the unit of “civilization,” which he discusses at length without properly defining the unit, and the way in which he resolves doubtful cases in a sense predetermine many of his conclusions.