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...