Search People Result | Academic Influence

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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Person Name

School

Gender

Country

Discipline

Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential people in Economics,

#1301

Paola Sapienza

#16000

Overall Influence

Paola Sapienza is an American and Italian economist. She is a member of the Kellogg School of Management faculty at Northwestern University. She is also a research associate at the NBER and CEPR. Her fields of interest include financial economics, cultural economics, and political economy.

#1302

Robert Litterman

#27199

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (73 years)

Robert Bruce Litterman is chairman of the Risk Committee and a founding partner of Kepos Capital in New York. Prior to Kepos Capital, Litterman spent 23 years at Goldman Sachs, where he was head of the Quantitative Resources Group in Goldman Sachs Asset Management for 11 years, starting in 1998. Prior to that position, Litterman headed the firm-wide risk department from 1994 to 1998, and prior to that he was the co-head of the model development group in the research department of Goldman Sachs' Fixed Income Division. Litterman received a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Minnesota in ...

#1303

Pravin Krishna

#43468

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (55 years)

Pravin Krishna is Chung Ju Yung Distinguished Professor of International Economics and Business at the School of Advanced International Studies and the Department of Economics in the Zanvyl Krieger School of Arts and Sciences at Johns Hopkins University. Krishna holds a Ph.D. in Economics from Columbia University and a B. Tech in Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay. He is a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and serves on the editorial board of the Journal of International Economics. Krishna was previously Professor of Economics at Brown U...

#1304

Takero Doi

#28611

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (54 years)

is a Japanese economist. Doi received his B.A. degree from Osaka University in 1993 and Ph.D. degree from the University of Tokyo in 1999. He is currently associate professor of economics at Keio University from 1999.

#1305

Martin Knapp

#50103

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (72 years)

Martin Richard John Knapp, is an economist and policy analyst whose research, teaching and consultancy activities are concentrated in the areas of health and social care. As well as being Director of the Personal Social Services Research Unit at the London School of Economics, he is Professor of Social Policy and Chair of LSE Health and Social Care. He also holds appointments as Professor of Health Economics and Director of the Centre for the Economics of Mental Health at the Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London, and has an honorary professorial positions in Hong Kong and the Czec...

#1306

Bertram Schefold

#58109

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (81 years)

Bertram Schefold is a Swiss economist and an Economics professor at the Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main specializing in economic theory with a particular focus on capital theory and the history of economic thought.

#1307

Carl W. Akerlof

#46581

Overall Influence

Carl William Akerlof is an American particle physicist and astrophysicist. A professor of physics at the University of Michigan, Akerlof initiated and led the Robotic Optical Transient Search Experiment , a ground-breaking effort to find fast astrophysical optical transients, particularly gamma-ray bursts. Akerlof has co-authored over 400 papers with 1500 collaborators, which have been cited over 6000 times. He was elected in 1993 a fellow of the American Physical Society .

#1308

Gary S. Fields

#61821

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (78 years)

Gary Sheldon Fields is an American economist, the John P. Windmuller Professor of International and Comparative Labor and Professor of Economics at Cornell University. Fields has performed extensive research in labor economics and development economics, in particular labor mobility, which was rewarded with the IZA Prize in Labor Economics in 2014.

#1309

Peter Egger

#60676

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (55 years)

Peter H. Egger is an Austrian economist who currently works as Professor of Applied Economics at the ETH Zurich. His research areas are industrial economics, innovation and international competition. In 2011, his contributions to economic research were awarded the Gossen Prize.

#1310

Sandra Pianalto

#18653

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (70 years)

Sandra Pianalto is an economist. She previously served as the tenth chief executive of the Fourth District Federal Reserve Bank, at Cleveland from 2003 to 2014. Early life and education Pianalto was born in Valli del Pasubio, Italy. She earned a bachelor's degree in economics from the University of Akron and a master's degree in economics from The George Washington University. She is a graduate of the Advanced Management Program at Duke University's Fuqua School of Business and holds honorary doctor of humane letters degrees from the University of Akron, Baldwin-Wallace College, Kent State University, and Ursuline College.

#1311

Robert A. Jarrow

#10510

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (72 years)

Robert Alan Jarrow is the Ronald P. and Susan E. Lynch Professor of Investment Management at the Johnson Graduate School of Management, Cornell University. Professor Jarrow is a co-creator of the Heath–Jarrow–Morton framework for pricing interest rate derivatives, a co-creator of the reduced form Jarrow–Turnbull credit risk models employed for pricing credit derivatives, and the creator of the forward price martingale measure. These tools and models are now the standards utilized for pricing and hedging in major investment and commercial banks.

#1312

Charlie Bean

#19615

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (71 years)

Sir Charles Richard Bean is a British economist and Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics. He was previously Deputy Governor for Monetary Policy at the Bank of England from 1 July 2008 until 30 June 2014. From 2000 to 2008, he served as Chief Economist at the Bank.

#1313

Gérard Roland

#28456

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (70 years)

Gérard Roland is a Belgian economist, and a professor of economics and political science at the University of California, Berkeley since 2001. He graduated from the Free University of Brussels in 1988 where he taught from 1991 to 2001.

#1314

Grzegorz Kołodko

#24179

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (75 years)

Grzegorz Witold Kołodko is a distinguished professor of economics. A key architect of Polish economic reforms. He is the author of New Pragmatism original paradigmatic and heterodox theory of economics. University lecturer, researcher, the author of numerous academic books and research papers. As Deputy Premier and Minister of Finance of Poland in 2002–2003 he played a leading role in achieving the entry of Poland into the European Union. Holding the same position in 1994–1997, Kolodko led Poland into the OECD.

#1315

Axel Dreher

#32754

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (52 years)

Axel Dreher is a German economist. He earned a master's degree from the University of Mannheim in 1999, and a Ph.D. in 2003. He is among the 500 top economists of the world according to the IDEAS/RePEc. According to research.com he is Germany's best Political Scientist and ranks second in Economics and Finance there.

#1316

Philip Hans Franses

#50598

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (61 years)

Philippus Henricus Benedictus Franciscus "Philip Hans" Franses is a Dutch economist and Professor of Applied Econometrics and Marketing Research at the Erasmus University Rotterdam, and dean of the Erasmus School of Economics, especially known for his 1998 work on "Nonlinear Time Series Models in Empirical Finance."

#1317

Thomas Naylor

#20081

Overall Influence

1936 - 2012 (76 years)

Thomas Herbert Naylor was an American economist and professor. From Jackson, Mississippi, he was a Professor Emeritus of Economics at Duke University, the author of thirty books, and a founder of the Second Vermont Republic . Naylor authored ten academic books and three books advocating secession.

#1318

Larry Samuelson

#37757

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (71 years)

Larry Samuelson is the A. Douglas Melamed Professor of Economics at Yale University and one of the faculty of the Cowles Foundation of Yale University. Samuelson earned his B.A. in economics/political science from the University of Illinois in 1974. He continued on with the University of Illinois for both his master's degree in 1977 and his PhD in 1978—both in economics.

#1319

Stanislav Menshikov

#22636

Overall Influence

1927 - 2014 (87 years)

Stanislav Mikhaĭlovich Menʹshikov , was a Russian economist and former Soviet diplomat. He is the author of numerous publications in Russian and English including The Anatomy of Russian Capitalism, and a chapter in Capitalism, Communism and Coexistence. He was a professor at the Central Economic Mathematical Institute at the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow. Menshikov was married to fellow economist Larissa Klimenko-Menshikova.

#1320

Nikolay Fedorenko

#31983

Overall Influence

1917 - 2006 (89 years)

Nikolay Prokofyevich Fedorenko was a Russian economist and chemist. He was the head of the Central Economic Mathematical Institute in Moscow from 1963 to 1985. Biography Fedorenko graduated from Moscow Institute of Fine Chemical Technologies.

#1321

Walt Rostow

#1820

Overall Influence

1916 - 2003 (87 years)

Walt Whitman Rostow was an American economist, professor and political theorist who served as national security advisor to president of the United States Lyndon B. Johnson from 1966 to 1969. Rostow worked in the Office of Strategic Services during World War II and later was a foreign policy adviser and speechwriter for presidential candidate and then President John F. Kennedy; he is often credited with writing Kennedy's famous "New Frontier" speech. Prominent for his role in shaping US foreign policy in Southeast Asia during the 1960s, he was a staunch anti-communist, noted for a belief in t...

#1322

Stavros Thomadakis

#21533

Overall Influence

Stavros Thomadakis is a Greek economist who served as chairman of the Hellenic Capital Market Commission, Professor of Finance at the University of Athens and chairman of the Public Interest Oversight Board.

#1323

Bruce M. Owen

#18383

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (81 years)

Bruce M. Owen is an economist and author. Owen is the Morris M. Doyle Professor in Public Policy, Emeritus, in the School of Humanities and Sciences at Stanford University, and the Gordon Cain Senior Fellow, Emeritus, in Stanford's Institute for Economic Policy Research.

#1324

Bo Becker

#47507

Overall Influence

1971 - Present (53 years)

Bo Becker is a Swedish economist, and Professor of Financial Economics at the Stockholm School of Economics, known for his work on rating, reputation and competition. Life and work Becker obtained his MSc in economics from the Stockholm School of Economics in 1995, and his PhD in finance at the University of Chicago in 2005 with the thesis, entitled "Geographical Segmentation of US Capital Markets," under Luigi Zingales.

#1325

Bent Nielsen

#69503

Overall Influence

Bent Nielsen is a professorial fellow in economics at Nuffield College, University of Oxford. Nielsen has research interests in econometrics and financial economics: time series, outlier detection, and cohort analysis. Nielsen completed his Ph.D. at the University of Copenhagen.

#1326

Barbara Rossi

#69056

Overall Influence

1971 - Present (53 years)

Barbara Rossi is an ICREA professor of economics at Universitat Pompeu Fabra, a Barcelona GSE Research Professor, a CREI affiliated professor and a CEPR Fellow. She is a founding fellow of the International Association of Applied Econometrics, a fellow of the Econometric Society and a director of the International Association of Applied Econometrics.

#1327

Lisa D. Cook

#11836

Overall Influence

Lisa DeNell Cook is an American economist who has served as a member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors since May 23, 2022. She is the first African American woman and first woman of color to sit on the Board. Before her appointment to the Federal Reserve, she was elected to the board of directors of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.

#1328

Eliana La Ferrara

#36748

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (56 years)

Eliana La Ferrara is an Italian economist and Professor of Public Policy at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. Before receiving tenure at Harvard in 2022, she held the Fondazione Romeo ed Enrica Invernizzi Chair in Development Economics at Bocconi University, where she also acted as Scientific Director of the Laboratory for Effective Anti-poverty Programs . Previously, she was also the president of the Bureau for Research and Economic Analysis of Development as well as the president of the European Economic Association. In terms of research, her fields of interest include deve...

#1329

Ray J. Ball

#21240

Overall Influence

Raymond J. Ball is a researcher and educator in accounting and financial economics. He is the Sidney Davidson Distinguished Service Professor of Accounting in the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business. He has published foundational research on the economics of financial reporting and financial markets.

#1330

Zoltan Acs

#42496

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (77 years)

Zoltan J. Acs is an American economist. He is Professor of Management at The London School of Economics , and a professor at George Mason University, where he teaches in the Schar School of Policy and Government and is the Director of the Center for Entrepreneurship and Public Policy. He is also a visiting professor at Imperial College Business School in London and affiliated with the University of Pecs in Hungary. He is co-editor and founder of Small Business Economics.

#1331

Umer Chapra

#18007

Overall Influence

1933 - Present (91 years)

Muhammad Umer Chapra is a Pakistani-Saudi economist. he serves as Advisor at the Islamic Research and Training Institute of the Islamic Development Bank in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Prior to this position, he worked at the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency , Riyadh, for nearly 35 years, as Economic Advisor and then Senior Economic Advisor.

#1332

Anthony Saunders

#32381

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (75 years)

Anthony Saunders is the John M. Schiff Professor of Finance at New York University Stern School of Business and is currently on the Executive Committee of the Salomon Center of the Study of Financial Institutions.

#1333

Gavin Wright

#21760

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (81 years)

Gavin Wright is an economic historian and the William Robertson Coe Professor of American economic history at Stanford University. He received his B.A from Swarthmore College and his Ph.D. with distinction from Yale University. He has taught at that institution, the University of Michigan, the University of California at Berkeley, the University of Cambridge, and Oxford University.

#1334

Claude Le Pen

#36310

Overall Influence

1948 - 2020 (72 years)

Claude Le Pen was a French economist. He specialized in health economics. Biography Le Pen earned a doctorate in economics in 1980. He was a professor first at University of Rennes from 1981 to 1984, then at the Paris Dauphine University.

#1335

Luc Sels

#12789

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (57 years)

Luc Sels is a Belgian sociologist. From August 2017 on he is the rector of the KU Leuven. Sels won the elections for new rector in the first round on Tuesday 9 May 2017 by beating Rik Torfs with 51.12% to 48.88%. Before becoming rector, he was dean of the Faculty of Economics and Business from 2009 till 2017. On 11 May 2021 Sels got reelected as rector with 64% of the votes against 33% for his challenger, toxicologist Jan Tytgat.

#1336

Carolyn Heinrich

#39895

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (57 years)

Carolyn J. Heinrich is the Patricia and Rodes Hart Professor of Public Policy, Education and Economics at Vanderbilt University. Career Prior to her appointment at Vanderbilt University, she was the Sid Richardson Professor of Public Affairs, affiliated Professor of Economics, and Director of the Center for Health and Social Policy at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, University of Texas at Austin. She continues as a Research Professor at the University of Texas at Austin. She has also held professorships at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she served as the Director of the La Follette School of Public Affairs, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

#1337

Daniel Treisman

#11703

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (60 years)

#1338

Wouter den Haan

#57232

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (62 years)

Wouter J. den Haan is a professor of economics at the London School of Economics, research fellow and programme director of the CEPR, and co-director of the Centre for Macroeconomics. Currently, his main areas of interest are business cycles, frictions in financial and labor markets, and numerical methods to solve models with a large number of heterogeneous agents.

#1339

Melvin Stephens Jr.

#42409

Overall Influence

Melvin "Mel" Stephens Jr. is an American economist and professor of economics and public policy in the economics department and the Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan. He is also a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, and a member of the Academic Research Council of the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. His research is in the areas of displaced workers, household consumption, and retirement decisions. He has been nominated as an officer of the American Economic Association.

#1340

James P. Quirk

#46470

Overall Influence

1926 - 2020 (94 years)

James Patrick Quirk was a Caltech professor of economics. Quirk attended Marquette University in 1944-1945 towards a degree in civil engineering, he changed to economics 1946 while attending University of Minnesota going on to obtain a BBA in in 1948, a MA 1949 and a Ph.D. in 1959 from University of Minnesota. Between 1944 and 1946 he served in the U.S. Navy. He taught at St. Mary’s University, San Antonio, Texas , then worked as an economist for the US government

#1341

Jürgen von Hagen

#53544

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (69 years)

Jürgen von Hagen is a German economist and professor at the University of Bonn, where he currently also serves as director of the Institute for International Economic Policy. He was awarded the Gossen Prize in 1997.

#1342

Vladimir Aleksandrovich Mau

Vladimir Aleksandrovich Mau

#22498

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (65 years)

Vladimir Aleksandrovich Mau is a Russian economist, scientist, and teacher. Since 2010 to 2023 he has served as the rector of the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration . During his career, he was a member of many advisory and scientific councils and commissions. Currently, he is a member of the Presidium of the Economic Council under the President of the Russian Federation. He has the federal state civilian service rank of 1st class Active State Councillor of the Russian Federation.

#1343

Shenggen Fan

#26719

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (62 years)

Shenggen Fan was the Director General of the International Food Policy Research Institute between 2009 and 2019. He is known for his work on transition economies and rural development in China. His research has focused on analysis of the role of public and private investments in agriculture and public infrastructure in the fight against chronic poverty and hunger. In addition to his work on his home country, he has also worked extensively in other Asian countries, and East Africa.

#1344

Alberto Abadie

#31268

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (56 years)

Alberto Abadie is professor of the department of economics at MIT and associate director of the Institute for Data, Systems, and Society also at MIT. He was born in the Basque Country, Spain. He received his PhD in economics from MIT in 1999. Upon graduating, he joined the faculty at the Harvard Kennedy School, where he was promoted to full professor in 2005. He returned to MIT in 2016.

#1345

Shunsuke Managi

#63040

Overall Influence

1975 - Present (49 years)

Shunsuke Managi is the Distinguished Professor of Technology and Policy and the Director of the Urban Institute at Kyushu University, Japan. Career Managi has been awarded national research grants on urbanization, transportation, energy, climate change, sustainability, and population change. He is most well known as a director for Inclusive Wealth Report 2018 in relation to Natural capital accounting. He is an editor of Economics of Disasters and Climate Change, Environmental Economics and Policy Studies, and Resource and Energy Economics and a lead author for the Intergovernmental Panel on C...

#1346

Myrna Wooders

#22661

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Myrna Wooders is a Canadian economist who has made significant contributions to public economic theory, network theory and game theory. Specifically, her work has focused on coalition theory, public good theory and club theory. Myrna currently is a professor of economics at Vanderbilt University and the University of Warwick.

#1347

Phelim Boyle

#13419

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (83 years)

Phelim P. Boyle , is an Irish economist and distinguished professor and actuary, and a pioneer of quantitative finance. He is best known for initiating the use of Monte Carlo methods in option pricing.

#1348

Michael Ellman

#6492

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (82 years)

Michael John Ellman has been a professor of economics at the University of Amsterdam since 1978. He is now an emeritus professor. He has written on the economics of the Soviet Union, transition economics, Russia and comparative economic systems.

#1349

Gizem Saka

#40961

Overall Influence

1978 - Present (46 years)

Gizem Saka is a contemporary Turkish artist and an economist. She is a senior lecturer at the Wharton School of Business, University of Pennsylvania, and a visiting lecturer at Harvard University, teaching art markets.

#1350

Richard Rogerson

#59083

Overall Influence

Richard Donald Rogerson is an American economist who is currently the Charles and Marie Robertson Professor of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, where he is also the Director of the Louis A. Simpson Center for the Study of Macroeconomics.

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