ECONOMISTS: Nobel and Competent

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John Maynard Keynes wrote that economists should try to be regarded as "humble, competent people, on a level with dentists." Simon Kuznets, who was awarded the $90,000 tax-free Nobel Prize for economics last week, is notable both for his competence and for his humility. Russian-born Kuznets, 70, who retired from a Harvard professorship last July, coined the term "gross national product" and did much to develop it as a gauge of economic performance. His strength has always been in insisting on collection of data, rather than in the construction of abstract theories. John Kenneth Galbraith thinks that Kuznets' work paralleled that of Keynes, "rivaling it in importance, though not in fame." Economist Solomon Fabricant adds: "We all live in the age of Keynes and Kuznets."

Ironically, Kuznets won the Nobel Prize at a time when many younger economists argue that the G.N.P. misleads because it fails to include some "nonmarket" activities, such as home-produced food and housewives' labor, and does not account for pollution and environmental damage—the "bads" that are produced along with the "goods." But Kuznets has long warned against regarding the G.N.P. as infallible or objective. Next month he will attend a conference at Princeton that will discuss improved ways of measuring the G.N.P., and methods of accounting for pollution.