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).
Methodology: How and Why We Rank by Influence …
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List of the most influential female people in Economics,
#301
Jane Waldfogel
#56649
Overall Influence
Jane Waldfogel FBA is an American social economist and the Compton Foundation Centennial Professor of Social Work for the Prevention of Children's and Youth Problems at Columbia University. Her research focuses on work-family policies, improving the measurement of poverty, and understanding social mobility across countries and child welfare. She has published studies about the impact of public policies on child and family well-being.
Go to Profile#302
Lorraine Eden
#80650
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (76 years)
Lorraine Eden is Professor Emerita of Management in the Mays Business School of Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas. She also holds a joint appointment as a research professor in the Texas A&M School of Law. Dr. Eden is an expert in the field of International Transfer Pricing, which is the pricing of products that move between subunits of Multinational Enterprises .
Go to Profile#303
Susan M. Wachter
#83044
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (81 years)
Susan M. Wachter is the Albert Sussman Professor of Real Estate, and Professor of Finance at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, the Director for the Wharton GeoSpatial Initiative and Lab, and the co-director of the Penn Institute for Urban Research. She also co-directs the Spatial Integration Laboratory for Urban Systems at the University of Pennsylvania. As an economist, she is frequently sought for comment on real estate market trends in well known media outlets—a recent interview with the International Monetary Fund summarizes her views and research.
Go to Profile#304
Kimberly Clausing
#93122
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (54 years)
Kimberly Clausing is an liberal American economist. She is the Eric M. Zolt Chair in Tax Law and Policy at UCLA School of Law, and a nonresident senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. From 2021 to 2022, she was the deputy assistant secretary for tax analysis at the United States Department of the Treasury. Clausing is known for her work on international trade and tax policy, particularly the taxation of multinational corporations.
Go to Profile#305
Jennifer Clapp
#80349
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (61 years)
Jennifer Ann Clapp is a Canadian political economist. She is a Professor and Canada Research Chair in Global Food Security and Sustainability at the University of Waterloo. Education Clapp earned her Bachelor of Arts in Economics from the University of Michigan and her master's degree and PhD in International Political Economy from the London School of Economics.
Go to Profile#306
Sue Owen
#59863
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (69 years)
Dame Susan Jane Owen is a former British civil servant, economist and former academic. She served as the Permanent Secretary for the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport from October 2013 until her retirement in March 2019.
Go to Profile#307
Barbara Sianesi
#81097
Overall Influence
Barbara Sianesi is an Italian economist currently a senior research economist at the Institute for Fiscal Studies in London. She obtained her PhD from University College London and a BA in economics from Bocconi University.
Go to Profile#308
Maureen Cropper
#91701
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (75 years)
Maureen Cropper is an economist who serves as Distinguished University Professor and Chair of the Economics Department at the University of Maryland. She is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences.
Go to Profile#309
Herminia Ibarra
#25815
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (54 years)
Herminia Ibarra is a scholar in the fields of organizational behaviour, leadership, and career development. She is the Charles Handy Professor of Organisational Behaviour at London Business School.
Go to Profile#310
Lisa B. Kahn
#70230
Overall Influence
Lisa Blau Kahn is a professor of economics at the University of Rochester. Her research focuses on labor economics with interests in organization, education, and contract theory. From 2014 to 2018, she served as an associate professor of economics at Yale School of Management and as an assistant professor of economics at Yale School of Management from 2008 to 2014. From 2010 to 2011, Kahn served as the senior economist for labor and education policy on President Obama's Council of Economic Advisers.
Go to Profile#311
Caroline Freund
#79367
Overall Influence
Caroline L. Freund is an American economist who is currently the dean of University of California San Diego’s School of Global Policy and Strategy . She was Director of Trade, Regional Integration and Investment Climate at the World Bank and a Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics since 2013, a position from which she is on leave.
Go to Profile#312
Diana Furchtgott-Roth
#28827
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (66 years)
Diana Furchtgott-Roth is an American economist who is adjunct professor of economics at George Washington University and a columnist. She served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Research and Technology at the United States Department of Transportation during the Trump administration. She previously served as Acting Assistant Secretary for Economic Policy at the U.S. Department of the Treasury.
Go to Profile#313
Faye Duchin
#68873
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (80 years)
Faye Duchin is an American Computer Scientist and Professor Emeritus of Economics at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute , where she was the Dean of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences from 1996 to 2002. She worked in the fields of ecological economics and industrial ecology and employs Input-Output Analysis in her work. Her faculty page at RPI stated that she was "concerned with ways of achieving economic development while avoiding environmental disasters."
Go to Profile#314
Waltraud Falk
#108062
Overall Influence
1930 - 2015 (85 years)
Waltraud Falk was born in Berlin as Waltraud Tessen and became an economist. After completing her baccalaureate in 1948 in Berlin, Waltraud Falk enrolled to study medicine at the Humboldt University of Berlin. Her focus changed to economics and she eventually completed her degree in economics in 1952. She completed her PhD in economics and took up a position as a lecturer at the Humboldt University of Berlin. She became a professor and then dean at the faculty of social sciences and remained in that post until 1990. She was one of a small number of female academics who obtained a top post at a leading university in East Germany.
Go to Profile#315
Anna Bogomolnaia
#89715
Overall Influence
Anna Vladimirovna Bogomolnaia is a Russian economist specializing in microeconomics and game theory. She is a professor in economics at the Adam Smith Business School of the University of Glasgow,, and was until 2022 chief research fellow of the International Laboratory for Game Theory and Decision Making at the Higher School of Economics in Russia.
Go to Profile#316
Kate Ho
#97728
Overall Influence
Kate Ho is an economics professor at Princeton University. Since July 2018, Professor Ho has worked in partnership with Janet Currie, as a co-director of Princeton's Center for Health and Wellbeing. Ho specializes in the medical care market and its industrial organization with an emphasis on health insurers and hospitals. Ho studies how price effects and the conditions of care provided by hospitals. She has received several awards for her academic research. Professor Ho is a frequent keynote speaker at conferences across the United States of America.
Go to Profile#317
Cecilia Conrad
#57208
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (69 years)
Cecilia Ann Conrad is the CEO of Lever for Change, emeritus professor of economics at Pomona College, and a senior advisor to the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. She formerly served as the Associate Dean of Academic Affairs at Pomona College and previously oversaw the foundation's MacArthur Fellows and 100&Change programs as managing director. Her research focuses on the effects of race and gender on economic status.
Go to Profile#318
Martine Quinzii
#107472
Overall Influence
Martine Quinzii was a French mathematical economist known for her work in financial markets, incomplete markets, macroeconomics, and general equilibrium theory. Education and career Quinzii studied mathematics at the University of Paris VI, earning a master's degree in 1970, an agrégation in mathematics in 1971, and a Master of Advanced Studies in 1972. She completed a Ph.D. at the University of Paris II Panthéon-Assas in 1986. Her dissertation, Rendements croissants et équilibre général, was supervised by Jean Fericelli.
Go to Profile#319
Laura Carvalho
#121158
Overall Influence
1984 - Present (40 years)
Laura Barbosa de Carvalho is a Brazilian economist, associate professor at the Faculty of Economics and Administration at the University of São Paulo. Carvalho has a master's degree from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro and a doctorate from the New School. Her research area is macroeconomics, focusing on economic development and income redistribution.
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Krishna Bharadwaj
#97450
Overall Influence
1935 - 1992 (57 years)
Krishna Bharadwaj was an Indian Neo-Ricardian economist mainly known for her contributions to the economic development theory and the revival of the ideas of classical economics. She believed that economic theory should be based on concepts which can be observed and be amenable to measurement in reality.
Go to Profile#321
Kamalini Ramdas
#24640
Overall Influence
Kamalini Ramdas is a Professor of Management Science and Operations and Deloitte Chair in Innovation & Entrepreneurship at London Business School, with expertise in the areas of innovation, entrepreneurship, and operations management. Ramdas' research examines innovative approaches, including service innovation, operational innovation, and business model innovation, to accelerate value creation in various service and manufacturing industries.
Go to Profile#322
Jill Rubery
#90646
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
Jill Rubery is a Professor of Comparative Employment Systems at Alliance Manchester Business School at the University of Manchester. Her research focuses on comparative analyses of employment systems with a specialisation in gender and labour market structure. She was made a fellow of the British Academy in 2006.
Go to Profile#323
Yana van der Meulen Rodgers
#109220
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (58 years)
Yana van der Meulen Rodgers is a professor in the Department of Labor Studies and Employment Relations in the School of Management and Labor Relations at Rutgers University,. She also serves as Faculty Director of the Center for Women and Work at Rutgers.
Go to Profile#324
Helen Ladd
#105612
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (79 years)
Helen F. Ladd is an education economist who currently works as the Susan B. King Professor Emeritus of Public Policy and Economics at Duke University's Sanford School of Public Policy. In recognition of her research on the economics of education, she has been elected to the National Academy for Education and the National Academy of Sciences.
Go to Profile#325
Carolyn Shaw Bell
#78562
Overall Influence
1920 - 2006 (86 years)
Carolyn Shaw Bell was the Katharine Coman professor in economics at Wellesley College known for her mentorship of her own students' careers, as well as mentorship of female economists more broadly, through the efforts of the Committee on the Status of Women in the Economics Profession, of which she was founding chair.
Go to Profile#326
María Ángeles Durán
#21814
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (82 years)
María Ángeles Durán Heras is a Spanish sociologist best known for being a pioneer in research on unpaid work, the social situation of women and their social and work environment, health economics, and inequality in the use of time. She was the first woman to attain a chair of sociology in Spain, in 1982. She was one of the first researchers in her field who carried out works with a feminist perspective in the Spanish academic world. In 1979, she was the founder and director of the of the Autonomous University of Madrid, the first university institute for women's studies created in Spain. In 2002 she received the in Economic and Legal Sciences.
Go to Profile#327
Agnes Quisumbing
#56046
Overall Influence
Agnes Quisumbing is an economist and a senior research fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute. She holds a PhD from the University of the Philippines and a bachelor's degree from De La Salle University.
Go to Profile#328
Antoaneta Vassileva
#59664
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (64 years)
Antoaneta Vassileva is a Bulgarian economist and Professor of Global Economics and International Economic Relations at the International Economic Relations and Business Department at the University of National and World Economy . She was Dean of the International Economics and Politics Faculty of the UNWE from 2011 until 2014.
Go to Profile#329
Allyson Pollock
#30629
Overall Influence
Allyson Pollock is a consultant in public health medicine and was the Director of the Institute of Health and Society, Newcastle University. She is an academic who is known for her research into, and opposition to, part privatisation of the UK National Health Service via the Private Finance Initiative and other mechanisms.
Go to Profile#330
María Beatriz Nofal
#66733
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (72 years)
María Beatriz Nofal is an Argentine economist and civil servant from Mendoza. She has been president of Argentina's National Agency for Investment Development , part of the Ministry of Economy, since October 2006. She earlier served, from January 1986 until January 1989, as Under-Secretary of Industrial Development in the office of the Secretary of Industry and Foreign Trade.
Go to Profile#331
Nicole Fortin
#49906
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
Nicole M. Fortin is a Professor in the Vancouver School of Economics at University of British Columbia, where she obtained her Ph.D. in Economics. Before moving to Vancouver, B.C. in 1999, Fortin taught at Université de Montréal for ten years in her hometown. She was the President of the Canadian Women Economic Network in 2013–2014. Her research focus is placed on three main themes, including the linkage between labour market institutions and wage inequality, issues related to the economic progress of gender equality, as well as contributions to decomposition methods. Notably, Fortin contri...
Go to Profile#332
Rajshree Agarwal
#43146
Overall Influence
Rajshree Agarwal is a professor of economics, the Rudolph Lamone Chair of Entrepreneurship and Strategy, and the Director of the Ed Snider Center for Enterprise and Markets at the University of Maryland. She "studies the evolution of industries, firms and individual careers, as fostered by the twin engines of innovation and enterprise."
Go to Profile#333
Andrea Weber
#75727
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (59 years)
Andrea Weber is an applied labor economist and currently a professor at the Central European University. She is a co-editor of the Journal of Public Economics. She is a research fellow at the Institute of Labor Economics and a fellow at the CEPR.
Go to Profile#334
Alison Evans
#76291
Overall Influence
Alison Evans is a British economist. She is director general of Independent Evaluation Group at the World Bank Group since January 2019. Before her current role, Evans was the Chief Commissioner of the UK’s Independent Commission for Aid Impact based in London, England, where she led the evolution of that organization's scrutiny mandate. Prior to joining ICAI, she was executive director of the Overseas Development Institute in the United Kingdom.
Go to Profile#335
Ebonya Washington
#88645
Overall Influence
Ebonya L. Washington is the Laurans A. and Arlene Mendelson Professor of Economics at Columbia University and a professor of public and international affairs. She is also a National Bureau of Economic Research Faculty Research Fellow in the Programs on Political Economy and the Economics of Children. She was elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 2021.
Go to Profile#336
Victoria Curzon-Price
#54348
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (82 years)
Victoria Curzon-Price is a professor of economics. Education She holds a PhD from the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva. Career She became a professor of economics at the University of Geneva in 1982, and was director of the university's now-defunct Institut universitaire d'études européennes from 1994 to 1998. Her academic work has encompassed international trade, economic integration, institutional competition and political economy. She has been involved with organizations that defend classical liberalism, namely as president of the Mont Pelerin Society from 2004 to 2006...
Go to Profile#337
Mira Wilkins
#19767
Overall Influence
1931 - Present (93 years)
Mira Wilkins is an American economic and business historian and a world authority on the history of American business and foreign direct investment. She is Professor Emerita at the Department of Economics, Florida International University.
Go to Profile#338
Renata Mansini
#50065
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (56 years)
Renata Mansini is an Italian applied mathematician, economist, and operations researcher known for her research on problems in mathematical optimization including portfolio optimization and vehicle routing. She is a professor of operations research at the University of Brescia.
Go to Profile#339
Anke Hoeffler
#86235
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Anke Hoeffler is a German economist and political scientist who is known for her work on social causes of morbidity and mortality. Life Hoeffler studied in Würzburg and London and received her PhD from Oxford University . Following her Ph.D., she was a research officer at the Centre for the Study of African Economies at St Antony's College, Oxford. In 2018, she was awarded a Humboldt Professorship at the University of Konstanz, where she has established the Chair of Development Research at the department of Political Science and Public Administration.
Go to Profile#340
Jessica Gordon Nembhard
#67501
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (68 years)
Jessica Gordon Nembhard is an American political economist. She has published books and articles in major economics journals. She is currently Professor of Community Justice and Social Economic Development in the Department of Africana Studies at John Jay College, City University of NY.
Go to Profile#341
Julia Steinberger
#67140
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (50 years)
Julia K. Steinberger is Professor of Ecological Economics at the University of Lausanne. She studies the relationships between the use of resources and performance of societies. She is an author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 6th Assessment Report, contributing to the report's discussion of climate change mitigation pathways.
Go to Profile#342
Xin Meng
#117433
Overall Influence
Xin Meng is a Chinese economist and professor at the Research School of Economics, College of Business and Economics , Australian National University . She is also a member of the Association for Comparative Economic Studies, the American Economic Association, the Society of Labor Economics and Royal Economic Society. Her main research interests include Labour Economics, Development Economics, Applied Microeconomics and Economics of Education. She focuses on researching issues about the Chinese labour market during transition, the influence of corporations and gender discrimination, the economic assimilation of immigrants and the economic implications of major catastrophes.
Go to Profile#343
Yu-Chin Chen
#91311
Overall Influence
Yu-Chin Chen is an economist and researcher at the University of Washington. Her research fields include international finance, macroeconomics, open economy macroeconomics, trade and development, and applied economics. She has served as a staff economist for the Clinton administration and is currently an economics professor at the University of Washington. Classes she teaches include Macroeconomic Analysis, International Financial Monetary Economics, and Computational Finance and Financial Econometrics.
Go to Profile#344
Catherine Wolfram
#106339
Overall Influence
Catherine D. Wolfram is an American micro-economist, academic and researcher. Catherine Wolfram was named in March 2021 as the United States Department of the Treasury Deputy Assistant Secretary for Climate and Energy Economics She is the Cora Jane Flood Professor of Business Administration and associate dean for academic affairs at the Haas School of Business at University of California, Berkeley where she also serves as a faculty director of The E2e Project and as scientific director for energy and the environment at Center for Effective Global Action. She also directs the National Bureau ...
Go to Profile#345
Ann Bartel
#112461
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (75 years)
Ann Pelcovits Bartel is the Merrill Lynch Professor of Workforce Transformation at the Columbia University Graduate School of Business and a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research. She graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1970, and completed her PhD in economics at Columbia University in 1974.
Go to Profile#346
Alison Booth
#112684
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (24 years)
Alison L. Booth is an Australian labour economist and novelist who is professor of economics at the Australian National University. She is the author of six novels. These are Stillwater Creek , The Indigo Sky , A Distant Land , A Perfect Marriage , The Philosopher's Daughters and The Painting .
Go to Profile#347
Michèle Tertilt
#34870
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (52 years)
Michèle Tertilt is a German professor of economics at the University of Mannheim. Before, Tertilt was an assistant professor at Stanford University. She also spent a year at the University of Pennsylvania and one year as a research fellow at the Hoover Institution. She is currently a director of the Review of Economic Studies and associate editor of the Journal of Development Economics. In 2017 she received the Yrjö Jahnsson Award – a biennial award by the European Economic Association and the Yrjö Jahnsson Foundation to a European economist no older than 45 years, who has made a contribution in theoretical and applied research that is significant to economics in Europe.
Go to Profile#348
Meral Akşener
#36373
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (68 years)
Meral Akşener is a Turkish politician, teacher, historian and academic who is the founder and current leader of the Good Party . Akşener first entered parliament as a deputy of the True Path Party in the 1995 and 1999 general election, and served as the interior minister in the coalition government established by Necmettin Erbakan between 1996 and 1997. Distrustful of her coalition partner, she played a key role in the downfall of her own government in the 1997 military memorandum.
Go to Profile#349
Denise Konan
#33168
Overall Influence
Denise Eby Konan is the Dean of the College of Social Sciences at the University of Hawaii at Mānoa. She served as the Interim Chancellor of the University from 2005–2007. Konan is a Professor in the Department of Economics at the University of Hawaii at Mānoa and prior to her appointment as Interim Chancellor, she was the department chair. She has been a member of the university faculty since 1993. Her research interests include international trade, computational economics, regional integration, multinationals, and services liberalization.
Go to Profile#350
Mariarosa Dalla Costa
#24955
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (81 years)
Mariarosa Dalla Costa is an Italian autonomist feminist and co-author of the classic The Power of Women and the Subversion of the Community, with Selma James. This text launched the "domestic labour debate" by re-defining housework as reproductive labor necessary to the functioning of capital, rendered invisible by its removal from the wage-relation.
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