The intellectual origin of the effort to estimate national income goes back even earlier than the origin of modern economics ( that is, to Sir William Petty ( 1623-87 ); see Studenski 1961, part One, 1).(4) But most recent spread of its uses and applications is ascribable to the influence of a number of modern economists, who advocated the importance of social accounting in the 1940s and on ( e.g. Hicks ( 1942 ), Meade and Stone ( 1948 ), and Kuznets ( 1956, 1959 ). Especially noteworthy in this respect are studies by Kuznets of the growth of nations. For this purpose he coined a new concept of "modern economic growth ( MEG )," by which he referred to a sustained and substantial rise in product per capita, accompanied by the conscious application of modern scientific knowledge and ( usually ) by a noticeable increase in population ( Kuznets 1966, ch. 1). The process of MEG has obviously implied, and in fact resulted in, "major structural changes and correspondingly large modifications in social and institutional conditions ( Kuznets 1959, p. 15 )."
The intellectual stimuli fused by these authors and others have since then yielded a series of valuable empirical studies including such titles as Feinstein ( 1972 ), Kendrick ( 1961 ), Kuznets ( assisted by Jenks 1961 ), Maddison ( 1995 ), Mukherjee ( 1969 ), and Ohkawa and Shinohara ( 1979 ), among others. Whereas these monographs concentrate on fact findings and are very cautious in their interpretations, one may make further, bolder use of their statistics in order to construct integrated historical interpretation, as attempted by ( for instance ) by Ohkawa and Rosovsky ( 1973 ), Nakamura ( 1983 ) and Minami ( 1986/94 ).
The systematic compilation of macro statistics ( as described above ) must have been prompted by the introduction and the general acceptance of Keynesian economics after the 1930s. The timing coincided with the surge of general interest among government circles in effective control of macro economic policies, obviously prompted and encouraged by the needs of wartime economies. Lively discussions among economists regarding the workability of a planned economy were probably another factor, while the influence of the 1917 Revolution and the establishment of the Soviet Union ( USSR ) was also evident. After WWII, the coming of the Employment Act of 1946 in the USA was another, significant factor that gave strong justification for the government to intervene in the market by way of controlling the effective demand. This tendency lingered through most of the 1960s.
The interest in compiling macro statistics continued on after WWII in conjunction ( either directly or indirectly ) with the efforts to implement effective macro economic policies by central governments, on the one hand, and the disparate need to ensure rapid economic recovery in Western Europe, on the other. Commonly held also was the notion that economic development must be consciously promoted to ensure the wider acceptance of democracy as a sound political institution. A new subject, "economic development," was introduced to the curriculum in many American universities.