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 people in Economics,
#901
Glenn Loury
#3877
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (76 years)
Glenn Cartman Loury, is an American economist, academic, and author. He is the Merton P. Stoltz Professor of the Social Sciences and Professor of Economics at Brown University, where he has taught since 2005. At the age of 33, Loury became the first African American professor of economics at Harvard University to gain tenure.
Go to Profile#902
Stephen Nickell
#24080
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (80 years)
Sir Stephen John Nickell, is a British economist and former warden of Nuffield College, Oxford, noted for his work in labour economics with Richard Layard and Richard Jackman. Nickell and Layard hypothesised that the tendency for reduced unemployment to lead to inflation resulted from its effect on competitive bargaining in the labour market He is currently a member of the Office for Budget Responsibility's Budget Responsibility Committee.
Go to Profile#903
Henrik Enderlein
#21800
Overall Influence
1974 - 2021 (47 years)
Henrik Enderlein was a German economist and political scientist. He was president and professor of political economy at the Hertie School in Berlin and founding director of the Jacques Delors Centre at the Hertie School. He held degrees from Sciences Po, Columbia University and earned his PhD at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies. From 2001 to 2003, he worked as an economist at the European Central Bank. He held visiting professorships at Harvard Kennedy School and at Duke University .
Go to Profile#904
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.
Go to Profile#905
Richard H. Steckel
#20680
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (80 years)
Richard Hall Steckel is an American heterodox economist with a focus on economic history. Steckel is the SBS Distinguished Professor of Economics, Anthropology and History at Ohio State University and a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research . He is well known for his work on health and well-being, in which he is a major contributor to anthropometric history along with John Komlos. Their work was highlighted in a 1996 Time magazine front page article. Between 2004 and 2005 he served as president of the Social Science History Association.
Go to Profile#906
David Pearce
#29885
Overall Influence
1941 - 2005 (64 years)
David William Pearce OBE was Emeritus Professor at the Department of Economics at University College London . He specialised in, and was a pioneer of, environmental economics, having published over fifty books and over 300 academic articles on the subject, including his 'Blueprint for a Green Economy' series.
Go to Profile#907
Myron J. Gordon
#11012
Overall Influence
1920 - 2010 (90 years)
Myron Jules Gordon, was an American economist. He was Professor Emeritus of Finance at the Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto. In 1956, Gordon along with Eli Shapiro, published a method for valuing a stock or business, now known as the Gordon growth model.
Go to Profile#908
Edwin M. Truman
#23926
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (83 years)
Edwin M. Truman is an American economist specializing in international financial institutions, especially the International Monetary Fund and sovereign wealth funds. He has been a Senior Fellow with the Peterson Institute for International Economics since 2001. Truman has worked quietly over the years on international financial crises issues. Nobel laureate Paul Krugman described Truman as the "George Smiley of international economics".
Go to Profile#909
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.
Go to Profile#910
Asaf Savaş Akat
#15244
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (81 years)
Professor Asaf Savaş Akat is a Turkish economist and academic. He served as Rector of Istanbul Bilgi University from 1996 to 1998, where he remains a Professor. Early life and education In 1954 he attended Levent İlkokulu, Istanbul . In 1961 he attended Redondo Union H.S., Redondo Beach CA, USA. In 1962 he attended Galatasaray Lisesi, Istanbul . During his time at the high school, he played a saxophone in Kafadarlar band created by Barış Manço. He was educated at Istanbul University and the University of East Anglia . He also spent time as a research student at the London School of Economics...
Go to Profile#911
Per Krusell
#35722
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (65 years)
Per Lennart Krusell, born 1959, is a Swedish macroeconomic theorist who is currently the Torsten and Ragnar Soderberg Chair in Economics and the Institute for International Economic Studies, Stockholm University, as well as Centennial Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics.
Go to Profile#912
James Durbin
#9443
Overall Influence
1923 - 2012 (89 years)
James Durbin FBA was a British statistician and econometrician, known particularly for his work on time series analysis and serial correlation. Education The son of a greengrocer, Durbin was born in Widnes, where he attended the Wade Deacon Grammar School. He studied mathematics at St John's College, Cambridge, where his contemporaries included David Cox and Denis Sargan. After wartime service in the Army Operational Research Group, he worked as a statistician for two years with the British Boot, Shoe and Allied Trades Research Association and took a postgraduate diploma in mathematical stat...
Go to Profile#913
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#914
Bruce Yandle
#12791
Overall Influence
1933 - Present (91 years)
Bruce Yandle is Dean Emeritus of Clemson University's College of Business and Behavioral Science and Alumni Distinguished Professor of Economics Emeritus at Clemson. He is a Distinguished Adjunct Professor of Economics at the Mercatus Center, a faculty member with George Mason University's Capitol Hill Campus, and a Senior Fellow with the Property and Environment Research Center . He has served as executive director of the Federal Trade Commission in Washington, D.C., and served as senior economist on the President's Council on Wage and Price Stability from 1976 to 1978.
Go to Profile#915
Harold Tafler Shapiro
#5075
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (89 years)
Harold Tafler Shapiro is an economist and university administrator. He is currently a professor of economics and public affairs at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University. Shapiro served as the president of University of Michigan from 1980 to 1988 and as the president of Princeton University from 1988 to 2001.
Go to Profile#916
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#917
Victor Ginsburgh
#17140
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (85 years)
Victor Alexandre Ginsburgh is a Belgian economist. Biography Ginsburgh was born in 1939 into an expatriate family: "My father was only a white Russian, and my mother an Austrian Jew". Victor Ginsburgh studied at the Free University of Brussels and mastered in econometrics. He earned an economics PhD in 1972. He has been an Economics professor at Université Libre de Bruxelles since 1975.
Go to Profile#918
Brian Wesbury
#26625
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (66 years)
Brian S. Wesbury is an American economist focusing on macroeconomics and economic forecasting. He is the economics editor and a monthly contributor for The American Spectator, in addition to appearing on television stations such as CNBC, Fox Business, Fox News, and Bloomberg TV frequently. He is a member of the Academic Advisory Council of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, and for five years served as an adjunct professor of economics at Wheaton College in Wheaton, Illinois.
Go to Profile#919
Stephen Cameron
#15093
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (24 years)
Stephen Cameron is an American financial analyst, economist and author. He is currently Adjunct Associate Professor and was for many years an Associate Professor of Economics at Columbia University, and is currently serving as Director at Citi.
Go to Profile#920
Carl Christian von Weizsäcker
#42480
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (86 years)
Carl Christian von Weizsäcker is a German economist who currently works as a senior research fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods , having emerited from the University of Cologne in 2003. Throughout his career, von Weizsäcker has worked at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the universities of Heidelberg, Bielefeld, Bonn, Bern and Cologne. His research focuses on welfare economics, the theory of capital, the history of economics, the Eurozone crisis, climate policy, and the social market economy. Within his profession, he is notably a founding member and fellow of the European Economic Association.
Go to Profile#921
Richard Friberg
#18095
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (57 years)
Richard Friberg is a Swedish economist specializing in industrial organization, international trade, and risk management. He is the Jacob Wallenberg professor of economics at the Stockholm School of Economics.
Go to Profile#922
Tymofiy Mylovanov
#18442
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (49 years)
Tymofiy Mylovanov is a Ukrainian economist and former Minister of Economic Development, Trade and Agriculture of Ukraine in the government of Oleksiy Honcharuk. After his dismissal as government minister Mylovanov was appointed president of the Kyiv School of Economics
Go to Profile#923
Steven Radelet
#18275
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (67 years)
Steven Radelet is an American economist working within the field of International Development. He holds the Donald F. McHenry Chair in Global Human Development and is also the Director of the Global Human Development Program at Georgetown University, a program of the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service.
Go to Profile#924
George Selgin
#15025
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (67 years)
George Selgin is an American economist. He is Senior Fellow and Director Emeritus of the Cato Institute's Center for Monetary and Financial Alternatives, where he is editor-in-chief of the center's blog, Alt-M, Professor Emeritus of economics at the Terry College of Business at the University of Georgia, and an associate editor of Econ Journal Watch. Selgin formerly taught at George Mason University, the University of Hong Kong, and West Virginia University.
Go to Profile#925
Thomas Hazlett
#15707
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (72 years)
Thomas W. Hazlett is the Hugh H. Macaulay Endowed Professor of Economics in the John E. Walker Department of Economics at Clemson University where he also directs the Information Economy Project. Hazlett's essays have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, The Economist, The New Republic, The Weekly Standard, and Time. He was a New Technology Policy Forum columnist for the Financial Times, 2002–11, and wrote the "Selected Skirmishes" column for magazine . He is a founding partner of the consulting firm, Arlington Economics, with economists David Porter and Vernon L. Smith. He...
Go to Profile#926
Dennis Mueller
#31637
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (84 years)
Dennis Cary Mueller is emeritus professor of economics at the University of Vienna. His academic work focused on the principal–agent problem, corporate governance and political economy. Career He received a PhD in economics from Princeton University in 1966 under the supervision of Jesse W. Markham and Stephen Goldfeld for his dissertation "The Determinants of Industrial Research and Development". He held several academic positions in Canada, the US and in Germany and became professor at the University of Vienna in 1994. In 2008, he became professor emeritus.
Go to Profile#927
Anatoly Vishnevsky
#28891
Overall Influence
1935 - 2021 (86 years)
Anatoly Vishnevsky was a Russian demographer and economist. He also wrote novels. Biography Vishnevsky earned a doctorate in economics in 1983, which would later effectively make him a member of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences. He directed the Institute of Demography at the Higher School of Economics.
Go to Profile#928
Debraj Ray
#20584
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (67 years)
Debraj Ray is an Indian-American economist, who is currently teaching and working at New York University. His research interests focus on development economics and game theory. Ray served as Co-editor of the American Economic Review between 2012 and 2020.
Go to Profile#929
Douglas Irwin
#15699
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (62 years)
Douglas A. Irwin is the John French Professor of Economics in the Economics Department at Dartmouth College and the author of seven books. He is an expert on both past and present U.S. trade policy, especially policy during the Great Depression. He is frequently sought by media outlets such as The Economist and Wall Street Journal to provide comment and his opinion on current events. He also writes op-eds and articles about trade for mainstream media outlets like The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and Financial Times. He is also a nonresident senior fellow at the Peterson Institute f...
Go to Profile#930
Roman Inderst
#13322
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (54 years)
Roman Inderst is a German economist who holds the chair for finance and economics at the Goethe University Frankfurt. His research interests include corporate finance, banking, competition policy, and information economics. According to the Handelsblatt, Inderst is the most influential German-speaking economist.
Go to Profile#931
Horst Siebert
#25176
Overall Influence
1938 - 2009 (71 years)
Horst Siebert was a German economist. He was a member of the German Council of Economic Experts from 1990 to 2003. Siebert also served as a member of both the Group of Economic Analysis and the Group of Economic Policy Analysis , a number of "European economists who advise the European Commission’s president." From 2002 to 2004, as a member of GEA, he advised EU President Romano Prodi. From 2005 to 2007, as a member of GEPA, he advised EU President Jose Manuel Barroso Siebert spent most of his academic career at the University of Kiel, where he held the chair for economic theory from 1989 to...
Go to Profile#932
Mihir Rakshit
#13645
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (88 years)
Mihir Rakshit is an Indian economist, known for his work on fiscal, monetary and other policy, especially issues that concern developing economies. Originally from Chittagong, which is now in Bangladesh, he did his graduation from Presidency College, Calcutta and post-graduation from the University of Calcutta. He taught at the departments of Economics of The University of Calcutta, The University of Burdwan, Presidency College Calcutta, and Indian Statistical Institute Calcutta, as faculty. He also taught at Delhi School of Economics and Erasmus University Rotterdam, as visiting faculty. He served the Reserve Bank of India for two terms as a member of its central board of Directors.
Go to Profile#933
David Ellerman
#6083
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (81 years)
David Patterson Ellerman is a philosopher and author who works in the fields of economics and political economy, social theory and philosophy, quantum mechanics, and in mathematics. He has written extensively on workplace democracy based on a modern treatment of the labor theory of property and the theory of inalienable rights as rights based on de facto inalienable capacities.
Go to Profile#934
Rafael La Porta
#15529
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (24 years)
Rafael La Porta is the Robert J. and Nancy D. Carney University Professor of Economics at Brown University. La Porta received his A.B. in economics at Pontifical Catholic University of Argentina in Argentina and his A.M. and Ph.D. in economics at Harvard University in Cambridge, MA. La Porta served as a professor of economics at Harvard and the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College before accepting a position at Brown. His research is primarily in corporate governance and investor protections across the world. He is the coauthor of the influential article "Law and Finance," which appea...
Go to Profile#935
Don Lavoie
#26137
Overall Influence
1951 - 2001 (50 years)
Donald Charles Lavoie was an American economist of the Austrian School. He was influenced by Friedrich Hayek, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Michael Polanyi and Ludwig Lachmann. He wrote two books on the problem of economic calculation. His first book on this subject was Rivalry and Central Planning . This book stressed the importance of the process of competitive rivalry in markets. His second book was National Economic Planning: What Is Left? . This book dealt with the problem of non-comprehensive planning.
Go to Profile#936
Mark Richard Rosenzweig
#51992
Overall Influence
#937
Thomas Ulen
#17592
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (78 years)
Thomas Shahan Ulen is an American law and economics professor, currently serving as Swanlund Chair Emeritus at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign . Education Tom Ulen studied at Dartmouth College, obtaining a Bachelor of Arts in 1968. After serving in the Peace Corps for two years, he returned to school, receiving a postgraduate degree from Oxford University in 1972. In 1979 he obtained a Ph.D from Stanford University.
Go to Profile#938
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#939
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.
Go to Profile#940
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#941
Marc Fleurbaey
#30099
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (63 years)
Marc Fleurbaey is a French researcher specialized in normative economics and social choice theory. He has been researcher and professor in the United Kingdom, France and the United States since 1994. He is currently professor at the Paris School of Economics.
Go to Profile#942
Susumu Nishibe
#19617
Overall Influence
1939 - 2018 (79 years)
was a Japanese critic, conservative and economist. He was a professor of Socioeconomics at University of Tokyo. He criticized modern economics, progressivism, and rationalism, and advocated theories on mass society, conservatism, and the independence of Japan from the United States.
Go to Profile#943
Mathis Wackernagel
#7420
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (62 years)
Mathis Wackernagel is a Swiss-born sustainability advocate. He is President of Global Footprint Network, an international sustainability think tank with offices in Oakland, California, and Geneva, Switzerland. The think-tank is a non-profit that focuses on developing and promoting metrics for sustainability.
Go to Profile#944
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#945
Robert King
#40873
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
Robert Graham King is an American macroeconomist. He is currently professor at the Department of Economics at Boston University, editor of the Journal of Monetary Economics, research consultant to the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, and a member of the National Bureau of Economic Research.
Go to Profile#946
Justus Haucap
#29719
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (55 years)
Justus Haucap is a German economist who currently works as Professor of Economics at the University of Düsseldorf, where he directs the Düsseldorf Institute for Competition Economics . The focus of his research is on competition and antitrust as well as the regulation of network industries and the digital economy. In 2015, Haucap was awarded the Gustav Stolper Prize for his contributions to competition policy in Germany.
Go to Profile#947
Eduardo Engel
#21318
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (68 years)
Eduardo Engel is the former president and current board member of the think tank Espacio Público and professor at the Department of Economics of the University of Chile. From 2001 to 2012 he was Professor of Economics at the Yale University. He chaired the Presidential Advisory Council on Conflicts of Interest, Influence Peddling, and Corruption – also known as the Engel Commission – in 2015.
Go to Profile#948
Gar Alperovitz
#6989
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (88 years)
Gar Alperovitz is an American historian and political economist. Alperovitz served as a fellow of King's College, Cambridge; a founding fellow of the Harvard Institute of Politics; a founding Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies; a guest scholar at the Brookings Institution; and the Lionel R. Bauman Professor of Political Economy at the University of Maryland Department of Government and Politics from 1999 to 2015. He also served as a legislative director in the US House of Representatives and the US Senate and as a special assistant in the US Department of State. Alperovitz is a distin...
Go to Profile#949
Ravi Jagannathan
#8600
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (75 years)
Ravi Jagannathan is an American economist. He is a chaired professor at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. With the exception of the period 1989–1997 when he was a professor at the University of Minnesota, Jagannathan has been at Kellogg since graduate school.
Go to Profile#950
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.
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