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,

#1901

Klaus Brockhoff

#25743
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (85 years)
Klaus Brockhoff is a German economist, organizational theorist and Emeritus Professor at the University of Kiel. Biography Born in Koblenz Brockhoff studied economics at the University of Bonn, where he received his MA in 1962. In 1965 he received his PhD in economics with a thesis on corporate growth and product range changes. A year later, he obtained another MA in Business Administration at the University of Münster. From 1967 to 1968 he was granted a postdoctoral fellowship from the German Research Foundation to be Visiting Scholar at the University of California, Berkeley. Back in German...
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#1902

Dirk Bernard Joseph Schouten

Dirk Bernard Joseph Schouten
#46991
Overall Influence
1923 - 2018 (95 years)
Dirk Bernard Joseph Schouten was a Dutch economist, and Professor of General Economics and Economic History at Tilburg University, known for his work concerning macroeconomic modelling. Biography Schouten received his PhD from Tilburg University in 1950 with a thesis entitled "De overheidsfinanciën in de volkshuishouding : een macro-economische studie over de betekenis van de openbare financiën op lange termijn voor de omvang, de verdeling en de besteding van het nationaal inkomen", supervised by M.J.H. Smeets.
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#1903

Jeffrey M. Lacker

Jeffrey M. Lacker
#47812
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (69 years)
Jeffrey M. Lacker is an American economist and was president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond until April 4, 2017. He is now a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Economics at the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Business in Richmond, Virginia.
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#1904

Antonina Kravchuk

#52623
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (89 years)
Antonina Mykhailivna Kravchuk is a former First Lady of Ukraine. Biography Antonina Mykhailivna Mishura was born in the village of Vyry Bilopillia Raion, Sumy Oblast, Ukraine SSR on November 3, 1935. In 1958, she graduated from the Faculty of Economics of Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv. PhD in Economics.
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#1905

Roberta Romano

#26519
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (72 years)
Roberta Romano is Sterling Professor of Law at the Yale Law School. She is the first woman at Yale Law School to be named a Sterling Professor. Roberta Romano joined the Yale Law School faculty as a professor of law in 1985. She was named the Allen Duffy/Class of 1960 Professor of Law in 1991 and the Oscar M. Ruebhausen Professor of Law in 2005. She is Director of the Yale Law School Center for the Study of Corporate Law and Professor at the Yale School of Management.
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#1906

Luc E. Weber

#22111
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (83 years)
Luc E. Weber is the Rector Emeritus of the University of Geneva and the President of the Glion Colloquium. Biography Luc E. Weber received a PhD in Economics and Business from the University of Lausanne. From 1975 to 2008, he was Professor of Public Economics at the University of Geneva. He has also taught at his alma mater, the University of California, Los Angeles, and the University of Fribourg. From 1977 to 1980, he was a member of the Swiss Council of Economic Advisers. He has also served as Vice-Rector, then Rector of the university, and Chairman and Consul for international affairs of ...
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#1907

Toshihisa Toyoda

#68279
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (84 years)
Toshihisa Toyoda is a Japanese economist, with contribution in Econometrics and Development Economics. In general Toshihisa Toyoda was born in Okayama Prefecture, Japan, on August 6, 1940. He attended Okayama Asahi High School, in Okayama City.
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#1908

Augustin Landier

#48045
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (50 years)
Augustin Landier is a French economist who currently works at the Toulouse School of Economics. His research interests include corporate finance, corporate governance, asset management, organization science, and behavioural economics. In 2014, he was awarded the Prize of the Best Young Economist of France.
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#1909

John Hewson

#22322
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (78 years)
John Robert Hewson AM is an Australian former politician who served as leader of the Liberal Party from 1990 to 1994. He led the Liberal-National Coalition to defeat at the 1993 Australian federal election.
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#1910

Bertil Näslund

#36841
Overall Influence
1933 - 2016 (83 years)
Bertil Näslund was a Swedish economist and emeritus professor at Handelshögskolan i Stockholm . Näslund earned his PhD from Carnegie Mellon University where he was awarded the Alexander Henderson Award. His doctoral advisor was William W. Cooper. He was made a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences in 1977, of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1990, and was a member of the Committee for the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences.
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#1911

Gülnur Muradoğlu

#65440
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (63 years)
Gülnur Muradoğlu , is a Turkish, naturalised British professor of behavioural finance at Queen Mary University of London. Previously, director of Ph.D. programmes at Cass Business School . Muradoğlu has also worked for Manchester School of Accounting and Finance as the Director of the MSc. Finance Program and for Bilkent University as assistant and associate professor respectively. She has been at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania as a Fulbrighter and Warwick Business School as a visiting fellow.
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#1912

Esteban Rossi-Hansberg

#27126
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (51 years)
Esteban Rossi-Hansberg is a Mexican-American economist currently the Glen A. Lloyd Distinguished Service Professor in the Kenneth C. Griffin Department of Economics at the University of Chicago. Until June 2021, he was the Theodore A. Wells '29 Professor of Economics at Princeton University. He performs research in macroeconomics, international trade, and urban and regional economics. His research focuses on the internal structure of cities, the distribution of economic activity in space, economic growth and the size distribution of cities, the effect of offshoring on wage inequality, the rol...
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#1913

Carol Propper

#33642
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (68 years)
Dame Carol Propper is Professor of Economics at Imperial College Business School, Professor of Economics of Public Policy at Bristol University, and Professor of Health Economics at Monash University. She is also a senior research associate with the Nuffield Trust, and has served on the Economic and Social Research Council Research Grants Board.
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#1914

Jacques Sapir

#53071
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
Jacques Sapir is a French economist, born in 1954 in Puteaux. He is the son of psychoanalyst Michel Sapir. Career Since 1996, he has been the director of studies at École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris, and head of the Centre d'Étude des Modes d'Industrialisation . He is a theoretician of economic science noted for his heterodox positions on many issues.
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#1915

Victor Zarnowitz

#39371
Overall Influence
1919 - 2009 (90 years)
Victor Zarnowitz was a leading scholar on business cycles, indicators, and forecast evaluation. Zarnowitz was Senior Fellow and Economic Counselor to The Conference Board. He was Professor Emeritus of Economics and Finance, Graduate School of Business, The University of Chicago, and Research Associate, National Bureau of Economic Research .
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#1916

Mushfiq Mobarak

#77946
Overall Influence
1976 - Present (48 years)
Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak is a Bangladeshi economist and a professor of economics at Yale University. Moreover, he is a co-chair of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab's Urban Services Initiative and its Environment and Energy sector, as well as the lead academic for Bangladesh at the International Growth Centre . His research interests concentrate on environmental issues in developing countries.
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#1917

Nick Butler

#43503
Overall Influence
Nick Butler is a visiting professor at King's College London and the founding chairman of the Kings Policy Institute. He chairs Promus Associates, The Sure Chill Company. From 2007 to 2009 he was chairman of the Cambridge Centre for Energy Studies. He was a special adviser to the former British prime minister Gordon Brown from 2009 to 2010.
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#1918

Maarten Janssen

#81328
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (62 years)
Maarten Christiaan Wilhelmus Janssen is a Dutch economist and university professor of microeconomics at the University of Vienna. He is particularly known for his work on consumer search behavior and auction theory.
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#1919

Steven J. Davis

#94841
Overall Influence
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#1920

Tony Curzon Price

#64440
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (57 years)
Tony Curzon Price is an economist, editor, writer, and entrepreneur. Price read PPE at Lincoln College, Oxford, and received a PhD in economics from University College London. From 2007 to 2012, Price served as the editor-in-chief of the British political website openDemocracy. He was the online editor at Intelligence Squared and later worked at the Financial Conduct Authority. Price has written for sites including The Spectator, HuffPost, and the Analysis & Policy Observatory.
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#1921

Jon David Erickson

Jon David Erickson
#33293
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (55 years)
Jon D. Erickson is an American ecological economist, professor of sustainability science and policy at the Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources of the University of Vermont in Burlington, Vermont, United States, and fellow of the Gund Institute for Environment.
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#1922

Benjamin Jones

#28808
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (52 years)
Benjamin Felt Jones is an American economist and professor at the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University. Jones's research is mainly focused on innovation and economic development. He has worked as an economic advisor in the U.S. Treasury and the White House.
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#1923

Roland Gareis

#36233
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (76 years)
Roland Gareis is an Austrian economist, former Professor of Project Management at the Vienna University of Economics and Business, and consultant. He is known for his work on the theory and practice of project management, and is considered co-founder of the "Management by projects" approach.
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#1924

Greg Duncan

#39191
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (76 years)
Greg J. Duncan is an American economist who is a Distinguished Professor of Education at University of California, Irvine and an Elected Fellow of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. He was the 2013 winner of the Jacobs Research Prize for his research on the long-term effects of childhood poverty, primarily through his 23 years with the Panel Study of Income Dynamics as researcher and director.
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#1925

Frank Shostak

Frank Shostak
#89958
Overall Influence
Frank Shostak is an Austrian School economist. He is an adjunct scholar of the Mises Institute. His consulting firm, Applied Austrian School Economics, provides in-depth assessments and reports of financial markets and global economies.
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#1926

Mihály Simai

Mihály Simai
#85225
Overall Influence
1930 - Present (94 years)
Mihály Simai is a noted Hungarian economist, researcher at the Institute for World Economics, Research Centre for Economic and Regional Studies of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and professor at Corvinus University. His main area of specialization is world economics and the transformation of the world economic system. Previous posts include his directorship of the World Institute for Development Economics Research, Helsinki between 1993-1995, membership and presidency of the United Nations University Council between 1987-1993, directorship of the Institute for World Economics, Hungarian Ac...
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#1927

Philippe Michel

#55937
Overall Influence
1937 - 2004 (67 years)
Philippe Michel was a French mathematical economist. From mathematics to mathematical economics Philippe Michel earned a PhD in Mathematics from the University of Paris VI in 1972, and became a Professor of Mathematics in 1976 at the University of Paris I. In 1993, he joined the Faculty of Economics at the University of Aix-Marseille II at GREQAM. Philippe Michel first scientific contributions were in the field of mathematics, with a focus on optimal control theory. As the methods developed in this field are important tools used in economics, Philippe Michel progressively entered into this field.
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#1928

Dina Pomeranz

#75302
Overall Influence
1977 - Present (47 years)
Dina Deborah Pomeranz is a Swiss economist and assistant professor of applied economics at University of Zurich. Pomeranz is considered to be one of the most influential Swiss economists. Education Pomeranz grew up in Zürich, where she graduated from high school. She studied international relations at the University of Geneva and obtained her master's degree from the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva in 2004. In 2010 she received her PhD in economics from Harvard University with the dissertation Essays on Tax Evasion and Savings: Evidence from Three Randomi...
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#1929

Michael Intriligator

#77189
Overall Influence
1938 - 2014 (76 years)
Michael D. Intriligator was an American economist at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he was Professor of Economics, Political Science, and Policy Studies, and Co-Director of the Jacob Marschak Interdisciplinary Colloquium on Mathematics in the Behavioral Sciences. In addition, he was a Senior Fellow at the Milken Institute in Santa Monica, a Senior Fellow of the Gorbachev Foundation of North America in Boston, a Foreign Member of the Russian Academy of Science, and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He received his Ph.D. in Economics at MIT in 1963 and the same year joined the UCLA Department of Economics.
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#1930

Timothy Bresnahan

#83797
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
Timothy Francis Bresnahan is an American economist who researches industrial organization. He was a founding co-editor of the Annual Review of Economics, a fellow of the Econometric Society, and recipient of a BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in 2017.
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#1931

Christian Dustmann

#79938
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (64 years)
Christian Dustmann, FBA, is a German economist who currently serves as Professor of Economics at the Department of Economics of University College London. There, he also works as Director of the Centre for Research and Analysis of Migration , which he helped found. Dustmann belongs to the world's foremost labour economists and migration scholars.
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#1932

Stephen R. 著 Bond

#95313
Overall Influence
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#1933

Maximilian Auffhammer

#45609
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (51 years)
Maximilian Auffhammer is a UC-Berkeley based environmental economist who has produced some important forecasts of Chinese carbon dioxide releases. Auffhammer is an associate professor with a joint appointment in International Area Studies and Agricultural and Resource Economics. He received his Ph.D. in Economics from the University of California at San Diego. His research agenda focuses on forecasting Greenhouse Gas Emissions as well as studying the impacts of air pollution on agriculture. Geographically he is mainly interested in China and India as well as his chosen home—California.
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#1934

Takafusa Nakamura

#29902
Overall Influence
1925 - 2013 (88 years)
Takafusa Nakamura was a Japanese economist. After graduating from the Economics Department of Tokyo University, he worked as an assistant, lecturer, and assistant professor in the Education Department of the same university before becoming a professor in 1970. After retiring in 1986, he became a professor emeritus at his alma mater, and professor at Ochanomizu Women's University and Toyo Eiwa University.
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#1935

Paul Webley

#35964
Overall Influence
1953 - 2016 (63 years)
Paul Webley CBE was director and principal of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London from 2006 to 2015. From 2010 until his death in 2016, he was Deputy Vice-Chancellor of the University of London. He was a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Economic Psychology and a former president of the International Association for Research in Economic Psychology.
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#1936

Henry N. Butler

#58301
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
Henry Nodle Butler is an American professor of law, economics, and public policy and former executive director of the Law and Economics Center at the Antonin Scalia Law School in Arlington, Virginia.
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#1937

Walter Block

Walter Block
#63746
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (83 years)
Walter Edward Block is an American Austrian School economist and anarcho-capitalist theorist. He currently holds the Harold E. Wirth Eminent Scholar Endowed Chair in Economics at the School of Business at Loyola University New Orleans and is a senior fellow of the non-profit think-tank Ludwig von Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama.
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#1938

Michael H. Riordan

#64958
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
Michael H. Riordan is an American economics professor. He is known for contributions to microeconomics and industrial organization. Education Riordan received a B.S. in International Relations from Georgetown University in 1973, an M.A. in Economics from the University of Essex in 1975, and a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of California at Berkeley in 1981, working under the supervision of Richard J. Gilbert.
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#1939

Stan Zin

#79527
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (66 years)
Stanley Eugene Zin is a Canadian economist. He is the William R. Berkley Professor Economics and Business at the Leonard N. Stern School of Business, New York University. His research interests are in the areas of asset pricing and macroeconomics. He is well known for his work on Epstein–Zin preferences which provide a recursive specification of a utility function which separates the elasticity of intertemporal substitution from the coefficient of relative risk aversion. For this contribution he was awarded the Frisch Medal by the Econometric Society.
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#1940

Christopher Lovelock

#24959
Overall Influence
1940 - 2008 (68 years)
Christopher Lovelock was born in the town of Saltash, Cornwall in the United Kingdom. He was best known as a pioneer in the field of Services Marketing among other titles such as author, professor, and consultant. Lovelock was also known for his excellent case studies.
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#1941

Geoffrey J. D. Hewings

Geoffrey J. D. Hewings
#83326
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (81 years)
Geoffrey J.D. Hewings is Professor of Geography and Regional Science, of Economics, of Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, United States. He is also the Director of the Regional Economics Applications Laboratory.
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#1942

Daniel Gros

Daniel Gros
#40446
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (69 years)
Daniel Gros is a German economist who currently serves as the Director of the Centre for European Policy Studies , a European think tank. Gros worked for the CEPS from 1986 to 1988 and has worked there continuously since 1990. His current research primarily focuses on EU economic policy, specifically on the impact of the euro on capital and labour markets, as well as on the international role of the euro, especially in Central and Eastern Europe. He also monitors the transition towards market economies and the process of enlargement of the European Union towards the east.
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#1943

Jan-Benedict Steenkamp

Jan-Benedict Steenkamp
#40340
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (65 years)
Joannes Evangelista Benedictus Maria "Jan-Benedict" Steenkamp is a marketing professor and author. He is the Knox Massey Distinguished Professor of Marketing at Kenan-Flagler Business School, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is also the co-founder and executive director of AiMark, a global center studying key marketing strategy issues. Steenkamp is the author of Time to Lead, Retail Disruptors, Global Brand Strategy, Brand Breakout and Private Label Strategy. He is one of the most cited scholars in business and marketing.
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#1944

Kenneth Parsons

#87222
Overall Influence
1903 - 1998 (95 years)
Kenneth Herald Parsons was a professor of agricultural economics at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He joined the faculty in 1937, received his Ph.D in 1940, and retired in 1974 after a distinguished career of teaching and research. From 1931 to 1936, he worked in Washington DC with the Federal Farm Board, the Farm Credit Administration and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. From 1940 to 1970, Parsons worked with the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, the Marshall Plan, the Ford Foundation, and the U.S. Agency for International Development conducting research in Europe, A...
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#1945

Giovanni Peri

#18502
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (55 years)
Giovanni Peri is an Italian-born American economist who is Professor and Chair of the Department of Economics at the University of California, Davis, where he directs the Global Migration Center. He is also a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and the co-editor of the peer-reviewed Journal of the European Economic Association. He is known for his research on the economic impact of immigration to the United States. He has also researched the economic determinants of international migrations and the Economic impact of immigration in several European Countries. He has...
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#1946

Hugh Hambleton

#56309
Overall Influence
1922 - 1995 (73 years)
Hugh George Hambleton was a Canadian and British economist and a spy in the service of the Soviet Union. Biography Hambleton was born in Canada to an English father and he held dual citizenship, Canadian and British. He studied in the United Kingdom and in Canada, including Lisgar Collegiate Institute, in Ottawa, and also spent part of his childhood in France, where his father was a press correspondent.
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#1947

Morton Kamien

#71344
Overall Influence
1938 - 2011 (73 years)
Morton Isaac Kamien was an American economist notable for his contributions in industrial organization and mathematical economics. He was a professor of entrepreneurship at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management from 1970 to 2007.
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#1948

Anjan Virbhadra Thakor

#96082
Overall Influence
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#1949

Frank Moulaert

#13318
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
Frank Moulaert is Professor of Spatial Planning at the Department of Architecture, Urban Design and Regional Planning at Catholic University of Leuven. He is Director of the Urban and Regional Planning Research Group and chairs the Leuven Space and Society Research Centre at the University. He is also a Visiting Professor at the School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape, Newcastle University.
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#1950

Horst Steinmann

#35317
Overall Influence
1934 - Present (90 years)
Horst Steinmann is a German economist and professor emeritus of management economics and business administration at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg. His scholarly papers have been featured in the Social Science Research Network, and he has contributed to many books and journals, such as Working Across Cultures, the theme of the Ninth Annual Conference of the European Business Ethics Network, and Corporate Governance and Directors' Liabilities with his essay "The Enterprise as a Political System".
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