The Most Influential People Across History
Find the most influential people in 24 academic disciplines and numerous subdisciplines
Find famous and important people related to your research. This is an excellent tool for research papers, topic papers, and building a bibliography. Using our influence-based algorithm, our rankings synthesize data from Wikipedia, Wikidata, Semantic Scholar, and CrossRef.
Students and researchers now have a fast and reliable way to find influential thinkers from 24 disciplines and 300 sub-disciplines (and growing). If you want to find history’s most influential philsosophers, or the world’s most influential mathematicians currently, now you can.
We also provide custom rankings of people by discipline as well as interviews with influential academics who are currently active.
To use this tool, select the discipline (and optional subdiscipline) relevant to your research, and specify influential academics by history, world, or US. Even results that are counterintuitive are often enlightening (our algorithm always picks up a signal).
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List of the most influential female people in Economics,
#51
Oriana Bandiera
#14100
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (53 years)
Oriana Bandiera, FBA is an Italian economist and academic, specialising in development economics. She has been Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics since 2009. She is currently the Sir Anthony Atkinson Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics, and co-editor of Econometrica. Her area of study primarily concerns organizations and labor markets, and their relationship with the process of economic development.
Go to Profile#52
Julia Cagé
#10122
Overall Influence
1984 - Present (40 years)
Julia Cagé is a French economist specializing in development economics, political economy, and economic history. Early life Julia Cagé has a twin sister, Agathe Cagé, who is a technocrat and an advisor to Najat Vallaud-Belkacem.
Go to Profile#53
Nancy Folbre
#11137
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (72 years)
#54
Nancy Qian
#12160
Overall Influence
Nancy Qian is a Chinese American economist and currently serves as the James J. O'Connor Professor in the Kellogg School of Management Managerial Economics and Decision Sciences and a Professor by Courtesy at the Department of Economics at Northwestern University. Her research interests include development economics, political economy and economic history. She is a leading development economist and an expert of autocracies and the Chinese economy.
Go to Profile#55
Rachel McCleary
#22580
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
Rachel M. McCleary is a lecturer in the Economics Department at Harvard University and a non-resident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. Biography McCleary has a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Chicago, a Master of Theological Studies from Emory University and a B.A. from Indiana University. Her work is interdisciplinary with theoretical grounding in the fields of political science, sociology and economics. Within these disciplines, she conducts research on the political economy of religion. Her research focuses on how religion interacts with economic performance and the political and social behavior of individuals and institutions across societies.
Go to Profile#56
Beatrice Weder di Mauro
#12910
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (59 years)
Beatrice Weder di Mauro is a Swiss economist who is currently Professor of economics at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, Research Professor and Distinguished Fellow-in-residence at the Emerging Markets Institute of INSEAD Singapore, and senior fellow at the Asian Bureau of Finance and Economic Research . Since 2018, she also serves as President of the Centre for Economic Policy Research .
Go to Profile#57
Jennifer Doleac
#11997
Overall Influence
Jennifer Doleac is an American economist and is the vice president of criminal justice at Arnold Ventures. She was previously an associate professor at Texas A&M, where she directed the Justice Tech Lab, was a research affiliate of the University of Chicago Crime Lab, and is on the board of editors of the Journal of Economic Literature. She also hosts the Probable Causation podcast. In October 2022, Vox named her to their "Future Perfect 50," a list of "scientists, thinkers, scholars, writers, and activists building a more perfect future," writing, "Doleac looks at criminal justice policy thro...
Go to Profile#58
Padma Desai
#15024
Overall Influence
1931 - 2023 (92 years)
Padma Desai was an Indian-American development economist who was the Gladys and Roland Harriman Professor Emerita of comparative economic systems and director of the Center for Transition Economies at Columbia University. Known for her scholarship on Soviet and Indian industrial policy, she was awarded the Padma Bhushan in 2009.
Go to Profile#59
Emily Oster
#12245
Overall Influence
1980 - Present (44 years)
Emily Fair Oster is an American economist and author. She is currently the JJE Goldman Sachs University Professor of Economics and International and Public Affairs at Brown University, where she has taught since 2015. Her research interests span from development economics and health economics to research design and experimental methodology. Her research has received exposure among non-economists through The Wall Street Journal, the book SuperFreakonomics, and her 2007 TED Talk.
Go to Profile#60
Andrea Repetto
#13617
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (55 years)
Andrea Isabel Repetto Lisboa is a Chilean economist. She currently has a teaching position at the Adolfo Ibáñez University in Santiago. She holds a PhD in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a master's degree in economics from the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile and an undergraduate degree in commercial engineering from the same university.
Go to Profile#61
Marina von Neumann Whitman
#7609
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (89 years)
Marina von Neumann Whitman is an American economist, writer and former automobile executive. She is a professor of business administration and public policy at the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business as well as The Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy.
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Margunn Bjørnholt
#11658
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (66 years)
Margunn Bjørnholt is a Norwegian sociologist and economist. She is a research professor at the Norwegian Centre for Violence and Traumatic Stress Studies and a professor of sociology at the University of Bergen. Her research has focused on financial institutions, management and working life and later on gender equality, migration and violence. She has also worked as a consultant, a civil servant, served as an expert to the European Commission and been president of the Norwegian Association for Women's Rights.
Go to Profile#63
Diane Coyle
#10470
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (63 years)
Dame Diane Coyle is a British economist, academic and writer. Since March 2018, she has been the Bennett Professor of Public Policy at the University of Cambridge, co-directing the Bennett Institute.
Go to Profile#64
Bronwyn Hall
#22129
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (79 years)
Bronwyn Hughes Hall is the Emerita Professor of Economics at the University of California at Berkeley. Education Hall received a B.A. in Physics from Wellesley College in 1966 and a Ph.D. in economics from Stanford University in 1988.
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Rosabeth Moss Kanter
#4391
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (81 years)
Rosabeth Moss Kanter holds the Ernest L. Arbuckle professor of business at Harvard Business School. She co-founded the Harvard University Advanced Leadership Initiative and served as Director and Founding Chair from 2008-2018. She was the top-ranking woman—No. 11 overall—in a 2002 study of Top Business Intellectuals by citation in several sources. She was named one of the "50 most powerful women in Boston" by Boston Magazine and one of the "125 women who changed our world" over the past 125 years by Good Housekeeping magazine in May 2010.
Go to Profile#66
Alice Rivlin
#5828
Overall Influence
1931 - 2019 (88 years)
Alice Mitchell Rivlin was an American economist and budget official. She served as the 16th vice chair of the Federal Reserve from 1996 to 1999. Before her appointment to the Federal Reserve, Rivlin was named director of the Office of Management and Budget in the Clinton administration from 1994 to 1996. Prior to that, she was instrumental in the establishment of the Congressional Budget Office and became its founding director from 1975 to 1983. A member of the Democratic Party, Rivlin was the first woman to hold either of those posts.
Go to Profile#67
Linda C. Babcock
#10601
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (63 years)
Linda C. Babcock is an American academic. She is the James M. Walton Professor of Economics and former dean at Carnegie Mellon University's Heinz College, and is the former head of the Social and Decision Sciences department. She is also the founder and faculty director of the Program for Research and Outreach on Gender Equity in Society .
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Stefanie Stantcheva
#25663
Overall Influence
1986 - Present (38 years)
Stéfanie Stantcheva is a Bulgarian-born French economist who is the Nathaniel Ropes Professor of Political Economy at Harvard University. She is a member of the French Council of Economic Analysis. Her research focuses on public finance—in particular questions of optimal taxation. In 2018, she was selected by The Economist as one of the 8 best young economists of the decade. In 2020, she was awarded the Elaine Bennett Research Prize. In 2021, she received the Prix Maurice Allais.
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Martha Olney
#22610
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (68 years)
Martha Louise Olney is a teaching professor of economics at the University of California, Berkeley. She is a winner of local and national teaching awards, and has authored several leading undergraduate economics textbooks.
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Claudia Kemfert
#19345
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (56 years)
Claudia Kemfert is a German economics expert in the areas of energy research and environmental protection. She is a Professor of Energy Economics and Sustainability at the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin. She heads the Energy, Transportation, and Environment department at the German Institute for Economic Research .
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Francine D. Blau
#30795
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (78 years)
Francine Dee Blau is an American economist and professor of economics as well as Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell University. In 2010, Blau was the first woman to receive the IZA Prize in Labor Economics for her "seminal contributions to the economic analysis of labor market inequality." She was awarded the 2017 Jacob Mincer Award by the Society of Labor Economists in recognition of lifetime of contributions to the field of labor economics.
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Tatyana Zaslavskaya
#5563
Overall Influence
1927 - 2013 (86 years)
Tatyana Ivanovna Zaslavskaya was a Russian economic sociologist and a theoretician of perestroika. She was the prime author of the Novosibirsk Report and several books on the economy of the Soviet Union and in sociology of the countryside. She was a member of the Consulting Committee to the President of Russia from 1991 to 1992 and also a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Zaslavskaya was the founder of RPORC and also its director in the years from 1987 to 1992. In 2000 she was the Laureate of the Demidov Prize and the honorary president of the Levada Center.
Go to Profile#73
Christina Paxson
#7930
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (64 years)
Christina Hull Paxson is an American economist and public health expert serving as the 19th president of Brown University. Previously, she was the Hughes Rogers Professor of Economics & Public Affairs at Princeton University as well as the dean of Princeton School of Public and International Affairs.
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Claudia Sahm
#25723
Overall Influence
Claudia Rae Sahm is an American economist, leading the Macroeconomic Research initiative of the Jain Family Institute. She was formerly director of macroeconomic policy at the Washington Center for Equitable Growth, and a Section Chief at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, where she worked in various capacities from 2007 to 2019. Sahm specializes in macroeconomics and household finance. She is best known for the development of the Sahm Rule, a Federal Reserve Economic Data indicator for identifying recessions in real-time.
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Heather Boushey
#22153
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (54 years)
Heather Marie Boushey is an American economist. Boushey currently serves as a member of President Joe Biden's Council of Economic Advisers. She also serves as the Chief Economist for the Invest in America Cabinet at the White House. She previously was the president and CEO of the Washington Center for Equitable Growth. She has also worked as an economist at the Center for American Progress and the United States Congress Joint Economic Committee.
Go to Profile#76
Kathleen M. Eisenhardt
#30264
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (77 years)
Kathleen Marie Eisenhardt is the Stanford W. Ascherman, M.D. Professor and co-director of the Stanford Technology Ventures Program at Stanford University. She is also a corresponding fellow of the British Academy, having been elected in 2016. In 2012 she was the recipient of the Global Award for Entrepreneurship Research.
Go to Profile#78
Diane Elson
#11198
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (78 years)
Diane Rosemary Elson is a British economist, sociologist and gender and development social scientist. She is Professor Emerita of sociology at the University of Essex and a former professor of development studies at the University of Manchester.
Go to Profile#79
Frances Stewart
#15619
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (84 years)
Frances Julia Stewart is professor emeritus of development economics and director of the Centre for Research on Inequality, Human Security and Ethnicity , University of Oxford. A pre-eminent development economist, she was named one of fifty outstanding technological leaders for 2003 by Scientific American. She was president of the Human Development and Capability Association from 2008 to 2010.
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Wendy Carlin
#24205
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (67 years)
Wendy Joan Carlin, is a professor of economics at University College London, expert advisor to the Office for Budget Responsibility, and research fellow at the Centre for Economic Policy Research. Her research focuses on macroeconomics, institutions and economic performance, and the economics of transition.
Go to Profile#81
Lael Brainard
#8221
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (62 years)
Lael Brainard is an American economist serving as the 14th director of the National Economic Council since February 21, 2023. She previously served as the 22nd vice chair of the Federal Reserve between May 2022 and February 2023. Prior to her term as vice chair, Brainard served as a member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, taking office in 2014. Before her appointment to the Federal Reserve, she served as the under secretary of the treasury for international affairs from 2010 to 2013.
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Kari Polanyi Levitt
#15163
Overall Influence
1923 - Present (101 years)
Kari Polanyi Levitt is a Canadian economist, currently Emerita Professor of Economics at McGill University, Montreal. She is known for her work on economic development and economic sovereignty, and in particular for her 1970 book Silent Surrender: The Multinational Corporation in Canada. She is also the literary executor of her father, the economic historian Karl Polanyi.
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Silvana Tenreyro
#24382
Overall Influence
1976 - Present (48 years)
María Silvana Tenreyro is a British-Argentine economist who is professor of Economics at the London School of Economics and an external member of the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee since July 2017. She served as the president of the European Economic Association for 2021.
Go to Profile#84
Clara Ponsatí
#13139
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (67 years)
Clara Ponsatí i Obiols is a Catalan economist and politician from Spain. She was appointed Minister of Education of the Government of Catalonia by President Carles Puigdemont on 14 July 2017, and was dismissed by the Spanish Government pursuant to Article 155 of the Spanish Constitution on 27 October 2017, due to the organisation of the 2017 Catalan independence referendum and the subsequent declaration of independence. On 30 October 2017, she went into exile in Brussels together with Carles Puigdemont and three other members of his government, Lluís Puig, Antoni Comín and Meritxell Serret. In May 2018, she returned to the University of St Andrews as a Professor.
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Fiorella Kostoris
#16051
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (79 years)
Fiorella Kostoris Padoa-Schioppa is an Italian economist who is Professor at the University of Rome . She is also a professor at the College of Europe in Bruges. She has published approximately a hundred articles and twenty books in various languages on topics concerning macroeconomics, labor, public finance, unemployment, pension reform and other topics. She was president of ISAE, the Italian independent but government-funded economic think tank until March 2003. She is working on a book on European economic policies and institutions.
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Catherine L. Mann
#23040
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Catherine L. Mann is a member of the Monetary Policy Committee of the Bank of England. Before her appointment, she was the global chief economist at Citi from 2018 until 2021. She was also the chief economist at the OECD.
Go to Profile#87
Caroline Hoxby
#12561
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (58 years)
Caroline Minter Hoxby is an American economist whose research focuses on issues in education and public economics. She is currently the Scott and Donya Bommer Professor in Economics at Stanford University and program director of the Economics of Education Program for the National Bureau of Economic Research. Hoxby is a John and Lydia Pearce Mitchell University Fellow in Undergraduate Education. She is also a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research.
Go to Profile#88
Barbara J. Spencer
#35740
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (79 years)
Barbara J. Spencer is an Australian-Canadian economist. Spencer received her Bachelor of Economics in 1967 at Australian National University, her Masters of Economics in 1970 at Monash University, and her Ph.D. in 1979 at Carnegie Mellon University. Since 1985 she has been a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research and, since 1988, she has been the Asia Pacific Professor in Trade Policy at the University of British Columbia. Her research interests include international trade theory and policy, industrial organization, international business, business and government, as we...
Go to Profile#89
Marianne Bertrand
#19956
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (54 years)
Marianne Bertrand is a Belgian economist who currently works as Chris P. Dialynas Distinguished Service Professor of Economics and Willard Graham Faculty Scholar at the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business. Bertrand belongs to the world's most prominent labour economists in terms of research, and has been awarded the 2004 Elaine Bennett Research Prize and the 2012 Sherwin Rosen Prize for Outstanding Contributions in the Field of Labor Economics. She is a research fellow of the National Bureau of Economic Research, and the IZA Institute of Labor Economics.
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Rohini Pande
#19080
Overall Influence
Rohini Pande is an economist who is currently the Henry J. Heinz II Professor of Economics and Director of the Economic Growth Center at Yale University. She was previously the Rafik Hariri Professor of International Political Economy and Mohammed Kamal Professor of Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School. Pande was the Co-Director of Center for International Development at Harvard University's Evidence for Policy Design research program and serves on the board of directors of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab, MIT. She also serves on the board of the Bureau for Research and Economic...
Go to Profile#91
Cecilia Rouse
#19084
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (61 years)
Cecilia Elena Rouse is an American economist who was named as President of the Brookings Institution with an effective date of January 2024. She served as the 30th Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers between 2021 and 2023. She is the first Black American to hold this position. Prior to this, she served as the dean of the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University. Joe Biden nominated Rouse to be Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers in November 2020. Rouse was overwhelmingly confirmed by the Senate on March 2, 2021, by a vote of 95–4. She resigned on March 31, 2023 to return to teaching.
Go to Profile#92
Julianne Malveaux
#8526
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
Julianne Marie Malveaux is an American economist, author, social and political commentator, and businesswoman. After five years as the 15th president of Bennett College in Greensboro, North Carolina, she resigned on May 6, 2012.
Go to Profile#93
Katarina Juselius
#35207
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (81 years)
Katarina Juselius is professor Emeritus of econometrics and empirical economics at the University of Copenhagen. Her work has been on empirical macro models and associated issues. She obtained her Lic.Econ.Sc. and PhD from the Swedish School of Economics and Business Administration in Helsinki.
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Alev Alatlı
#11684
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (80 years)
Alev Alatlı is a Turkish columnist and bestselling novelist. Early years She was born 1944 in the town of Menemen in western Turkey to an officer's family. She spent her childhood in Japan, where her father was appointed as the Military attaché in the Embassy of Turkey and also as the Liaison officer of the Turkish Brigade in Korea to the United Nations.
Go to Profile#95
Barbara Bergmann
#31510
Overall Influence
1927 - 2015 (88 years)
Barbara Rose Bergmann was a feminist economist. Her work covers many topics from childcare and gender issues to poverty and Social Security. Bergmann was a co-founder and president of the International Association for Feminist Economics, a trustee of the Economists for Peace and Security, and Professor Emerita of Economics at the University of Maryland and American University.
Go to Profile#96
Naila Kabeer
#11336
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Naila Kabeer is an Indian-born British Bangladeshi social economist, research fellow , writer and Professor at the London School of Economics. She was also president of the International Association for Feminist Economics from 2018 to 2019. She is on the editorial committee of journals such as Feminist Economist, Development and Change, Gender and Development, Third World Quarterly and the Canadian Journal of Development Studies. She works primarily on poverty, gender and social policy issues. Her research interests include gender, poverty, social exclusion, labour markets and livelihoods, s...
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Lucrezia Reichlin
#26061
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
Lucrezia Reichlin is an Italian economist who has been a professor at London Business School since 2008. Reichlin's research focuses on forecasting, business cycle analysis and monetary policy. She pioneered now-casting in economics by developing econometrics methods capable of reading the real time data flow through the lenses of a formal econometric model. These methods are now widely used by central banks and private investors around the world.
Go to Profile#98
Janet Currie
#24083
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (64 years)
Janet Currie is a Canadian-American economist and the Henry Putnam Professor of Economics and Public Affairs at Princeton University's School of Public and International Affairs, where she is Co-Director of the Center for Health and Wellbeing. She served as the Chair of the Department of Economics at Princeton from 2014–2018. She also served as the first female Chair of the Department of Economics at Columbia University from 2006–2009. Before Columbia, she taught at the University of California, Los Angeles and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She was named one of the top 10 women in economics by the World Economic Forum in July 2015.
Go to Profile#99
Ekaterina Zhuravskaya
#24920
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (52 years)
Ekaterina Zhuravskaya is a Professor of Economics at the Paris School of Economics and EHESS and a Research Fellow of the Centre for Economic Policy Research in the Public Policy and Development Economics programs. She was formerly the academic director of the Center for Economic and Financial Research at the New Economic School in Moscow. She was the 2018 recipient of the Birgit Grodal At New Economic School she held various professorships. She was given a biennial award as a "a European-based female economist who has made a significant contribution to the Economics profession." In 2021 she ...
Go to Profile#100
Esther Dweck
#41347
Overall Influence
1977 - Present (47 years)
Esther Dweck is a Brazilian economist, professor and writer. She is currently a professor at the Institute of Economics of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. In December 2022, she was nominated the Minister of Management and Innovation in Public Services by the president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
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