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 people in Economics,
#1951
Seppo Honkapohja
#69546
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
Seppo Mikko Sakari Honkapohja is a Finnish economist. He is a board member of the Bank of Finland and former Professor of International Macroeconomics of the University of Cambridge. Career After receiving his International Baccalaureate at the United World College of the Atlantic in Wales, Seppo Honkapohja went to the University of Helsinki to get a M.Soc.Sc., the Licentiate of Soc.Sc. and in 1979 a D.Soc.Sc.
Go to Profile#1952
Linda Tesar
#70304
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (63 years)
Linda L. Tesar is a professor of economics and director of graduate studies at the University of Michigan College of Literature, Science, and the Arts , the liberal arts and sciences school of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. She is also a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and the Editor-in-Chief of the IMF Economic Review. She has been a visitor in the Research Departments of the International Monetary Fund, the Federal Reserve Board of Governors and the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. In the past, she has also served on the academic advisory council to the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.
Go to Profile#1953
Ussif Rashid Sumaila
#28583
Overall Influence
Ussif Rashid Sumaila is a professor of ocean and fisheries economics at the University of British Columbia, Canada, and the Director of the Fisheries Economics Research Unit at the UBC Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries . He is also appointed with the UBC School of Public Policy and Global Affairs. He specializes in bioeconomics, marine ecosystem valuation and the analysis of global issues such as fisheries subsidies, IUU fishing and the economics of high and deep seas fisheries. Sumaila has experience working in fisheries and natural resource projects in Norway, Canada and the North Atla...
Go to Profile#1954
Dirk Ehnts
#74128
Overall Influence
1977 - Present (47 years)
Dirk H. Ehnts is a German heterodox economist. He is one of the leading proponents of Modern Monetary Theory in Europe. Early life and studies Ehnts was born on 11 April 1977 in Bremen, Germany and finished high school there. He studied Economics from 1997 to 2002 at the University of Göttingen and graduated with a diploma. He was research assistant at the University of Oldenburg between 2006 and 2012, from which, in 2008 he was awarded his Economics Ph.D. cum laude.
Go to Profile#1955
Anne van Aaken
#40050
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (55 years)
Anne Sophia-Marie van Aaken is a German lawyer and economist, who is a full professor of law and economics, legal theory, public international law and European law at the University of Hamburg. Life Van Aaken completed her Abitur in Bonn. From 1987 to 1992 she studied economics with the degree of Lic. pole. and communication sciences with the degree dipl. journ. at the University of Friborg and then from 1992 to 1997 law at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. There she graduated in 1997 with a first state examination First Juristische Staatsexamen. Van Aaken was a visiting scholar at the University of California, Berkeley, and Yale University in 1997 and 1998.
Go to Profile#1956
Thomas Kane
#44645
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (63 years)
Thomas Joseph Kane is an American education economist who currently holds the position of Walter H. Gale Professor of Education and Economics at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. He has performed research on education policy, labour economics and econometrics. During Bill Clinton's first term as U.S. President, Kane served on the Council of Economic Advisers.
Go to Profile#1957
Jeffrey Currie
#87717
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (58 years)
Jeff Currie is an economist and the former Global Head of Commodities Research in the Global Investment Research Division at Goldman Sachs. He rose to prominence during the 2000s by forecasting the commodity super-cycle and oil spiking above $100 a barrel. He has been labelled a "maverick" for making bold calls that 'pack a punch'. During the 2010s he was known for forecasting oil prices to stay 'lower for longer' to end the shale supply glut, whilst in more recent times his stance has shifted from bearish to considerably bullish, calling for a new commodities "supercycle" in late 2020 driven ...
Go to Profile#1958
Mark Patrick Taylor
#96427
Overall Influence
#1959
Clifford W. Jr. Smith
#96547
Overall Influence
#1960
Vladimir Stipetić
#94420
Overall Influence
1928 - 2017 (89 years)
Vladimir Stipetić was a Croatian economist, academician, former university professor and rector of the University of Zagreb. Stipetić was born in Zagreb. He graduated from the University of Zagreb Faculty of Economics in 1951 and earned a doctorate at the same institution in 1956. Between 1951 and 1960 he worked at Radio Zagreb, the Zagreb Institute of Economics and the Federal Institute for Economic Planning . Between 1970 and 1971 he served as dean of the Faculty of Economy and then as rector of the University of Zagreb for three years from 1986 to 1989.
Go to Profile#1961
Michael Kumhof
#59986
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (62 years)
Michael Kumhof is a German researcher and economist. He is the senior research advisor in the Bank of England's research hub. He is most known for his research into the financial system, income inequalities and the oil supply.
Go to Profile#1962
Tony Thirlwall
#85778
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (83 years)
Anthony Philip Thirlwall was a British economist who was Professor of Applied Economics at the University of Kent. He made major contributions to regional economics; the analysis of unemployment and inflation; balance of payments theory, and to growth and development economics with particular reference to developing countries. He was the author of the bestselling textbook of Development: Theory and Evidence now in its ninth edition. He was also the biographer and literary executor of the famous Cambridge economist Nicholas Kaldor. Perhaps his most notable contribution was to show that if lon...
Go to Profile#1963
Andreas Papandreou
#12007
Overall Influence
1919 - 1996 (77 years)
Andreas Georgiou Papandreou was a Greek economist, politician, and a dominant figure in Greek politics, known for founding the political party PASOK, which he led from 1974 to 1996. He served three terms as the 3rd and 8th prime minister of Greece.
Go to Profile#1964
Edward J. Green
#75941
Overall Influence
1947 - 2019 (72 years)
Edward James Green was an American economist best known for his contributions to the theory of dynamic contracts. Green received his Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon University in 1977. His dissertation won him the Alexander Henderson Award for excellence in economics. He taught at Princeton University and worked at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, and the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, and was Professor of Economics at Pennsylvania State University.
Go to Profile#1965
Farshid Jamshidian
#44909
Overall Influence
Farshid Jamshidian is a finance researcher, academic and practitioner. His experience covers both fixed-income and equity research and trading. Dr. Jamshidian has made important contributions to the theory of derivatives pricing, and has published extensively, especially on interest rate modelling, amongst other contributions, developing the use of the forward measure, and "Jamshidian's trick", widely applied in the pricing of bond options.
Go to Profile#1966
Henry B. Hansmann
#38836
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (79 years)
Henry B. Hansmann is an American scholar of law and economics; he is the Oscar M. Ruebhausen Professor Emeritus of Law at Yale Law School. Hansmann is noted for his scholarship on the economics of organizational ownership and design and is credited with founding the modern study of nonprofit organizations. He is known for his 1980 article "The Role of Nonprofit Enterprise" which has had a "seminal influence on analyses of the law and economics of the nonprofit sector."
Go to Profile#1967
Roman L. Weil
#25145
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (84 years)
Roman Lee Weil Jr. was an American economist, accountant, consultant, and Emeritus faculty member of Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago, especially known for his work on bond duration.
Go to Profile#1968
Stephen J. Machin
#96813
Overall Influence
#1969
Werner Meißner
#75429
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (87 years)
Werner Meißner is a German economist who served as president of the Goethe University Frankfurt from 1994 to 2000. Career He studied business administration and economics at the University of Cologne and Stanford University, and earned a PhD in economics at the Free University of Berlin in 1964. He as a research assistant at the Department of development economics at the German Institute for Economic Research in Berlin from 1964 to 1965. He then continued his research in econometrics and statistics at Uppsala University, and earned a habilitation in 1969. In 1971 he became professor of economics at the Goethe University.
Go to Profile#1970
Kemal Derviş
#44048
Overall Influence
1949 - 2023 (74 years)
Kemal Derviş was a Turkish economist and politician who was head of the United Nations Development Programme. He was honored by the government of Japan for having "contributed to mainstreaming Japan's development assistance policy through the United Nations". In 2005, he was ranked 67th in the Top 100 Public Intellectuals Poll conducted by Prospect and Foreign Policy magazines. He was vice president and director of the global economy and development program at the Brookings Institution and part-time professor of international economics at the Graduate Institute of International and Developmen...
Go to Profile#1971
Richard Denniss
#25765
Overall Influence
Richard Denniss is the Executive Director of The Australia Institute. He is a prominent Australian economist, author and public policy commentator, and a former Associate Professor in the Crawford School of Public Policy at the Australian National University in Canberra, Australia. Denniss was described by Mark Kenny in the Sydney Morning Herald as "a constant thorn in the side of politicians on both sides due to his habit of skewering dodgy economic justifications for policy". In October 2018, The Australian Financial Review listed Denniss and Ben Oquist of The Australia Institute as equal te...
Go to Profile#1972
Jonathan Eaton
#83861
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Jonathan Eaton is a leading international economist, as of 2017 a distinguished professor at Pennsylvania State University. He graduated from Harvard College in 1972. He earned his M.A. in Economics from Yale University in 1973 and his Ph.D. from Yale in 1976. Awards he has received include The Frisch Medal , awarded 2004, The Ohlin Lecture, 2013, and The Onassis Prize in International Trade , 2018.
Go to Profile#1973
Gustavo Piga
#36580
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (60 years)
Gustavo Piga , is an Italian economist. He is professor of Political economy at University of Rome Tor Vergata. In 1996 attained the PhD in Economics at Columbia University. In 1997-98 taught Accounting and Finance at the Department of Economics of Columbia University. He wrote the contentious Derivatives in Pulicc Debt Management in 2001. He edited Revisiting Keynes" with Lorenzo Pecchi for MIT Press and the "handbook of Procurement" with Nicola Dimitri and Giancarlo Spagnolo for Cambridge University Press. In 2002-2005 he was the president of Consip. He is currently member of the Scientific...
Go to Profile#1974
John M. Quigley
#97008
Overall Influence
#1975
Masao Ogaki
#31155
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (66 years)
is a Japanese economist. He is a professor at Keio University. Career He received a B.A. from Osaka University in 1982 and a Ph.D. from University of Chicago in 1988. Bibliography Books Journal articles
Go to Profile#1976
Price V. Fishback
#29856
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (69 years)
Price V. Fishback is an economic historian. He is a professor of economics at the University of Arizona and a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. His research on American economic history has included employment and labor in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries especially in the coal industry, and government programs of the New Deal. His work has been recognised by the Cliometric Society via their awarding him a Clio Can in recognition of his "exceptional support of cliometrics". Prior to arriving to the University of Arizona, Fishback was an Assistant and...
Go to Profile#1977
Oliver Linton
#75384
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (64 years)
Oliver Bruce Linton is a professor of Political Economy and Econometrics at Cambridge University and a Fellow of Trinity College. He is a Fellow of the British Academy, a Fellow of the Econometric Society, and a Fellow of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics.
Go to Profile#1978
Hugo Keuzenkamp
#90562
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (63 years)
Hugo Albert Keuzenkamp is a Dutch economist, administrator, and Professor of Insurance Studies at Faculty of Economics and Business of the University of Amsterdam. Biography Born in Rijswijk, Keuzenkamp received his Doctoral in Economics at the University of Amsterdam in 1986, his MA in Economics at the London School of Economics in 1987. He started his PhD research at Duke University in 1987, which he completed at the Tilburg University in 1994, received his PhD with a thesis entitled "Probability, econometrics and truth: a treatise on the foundations of econometric inference".
Go to Profile#1979
Ian Harper
#57152
Overall Influence
Ian Ross Harper AO FASSA FAICD is an Australian economist, economics professor and current dean of the Melbourne Business School. Harper has a Bachelor of Economics with honours from the University of Queensland and a Master of Economics and Doctor of Philosophy from the Australian National University. Before becoming the dean, he was Professor emeritus at the Melbourne Business School, a graduate school of the University of Melbourne.
Go to Profile#1980
Stephen A. Zeff
#18075
Overall Influence
1933 - Present (91 years)
Stephen Addam Zeff is an American accounting historian, and Herbert S. Autrey Professor of Accounting at the Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Business, Rice University, Houston, Texas, United States. He was inducted into the Accounting Hall of Fame in 2002.
Go to Profile#1981
Brian Jacob
#34735
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (24 years)
Brian Aaron Jacob is an American economist and a professor of public policy, economics and education at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy of the University of Michigan. There, he also currently serves as co-director of the Education Policy Initiative and of the Youth Policy Lab. In 2008, Jacob's research on education policy was awarded the David N. Kershaw Award, which is given by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management and honours persons who have made a distinguished contribution to the field of public policy analysis and management before the age of 40. His doctor...
Go to Profile#1982
Andreas Suchanek
#38387
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (63 years)
Andreas Suchanek is a German economy and business ethicist and one of the best-known students of Karl Homann, an expert in business ethics. He is an economist as well as an expert in business and economy ethics. As academic disciple of Karl Homann he contributed substantially to Homanns teaching regarding the approach of institutional economics toward business ethics, which not only plays an important part at Universities and international business schools but also in the economy, politics and the society.
Go to Profile#1983
Jennifer Roback Morse
#32883
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
Jennifer Roback Morse is an economist, a writer and a Catholic social conservative. She is the president and founder of the Ruth Institute, which was formed as an affiliated of the same-sex marriage opposition group National Organization for Marriage.
Go to Profile#1984
Alan Carlin
#77421
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (87 years)
Alan Carlin , is an American economist specializing in cost-benefit analysis and the economics of global climate change control. Education Carlin earned a Ph.D. in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a B.S. in physics from the California Institute of Technology.
Go to Profile#1985
Gary Charness
#87604
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Gary Charness is Professor of Economics and the Director of the Experimental and Behavioral Economics Laboratory in the Department of Economics at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Charness is an economist and social scientist, specializing in experimental and behavioral work; he is currently ranked 3rd in the world by RePEc in the field of experimental economics and has published nearly 80 academic articles. Charness is a contributor to several areas of economic research, including social preferences, identity and group membership, communication and beliefs, behavioral interventions, group decision-making, social networks, gender, and individual decision-making.
Go to Profile#1986
Olivier Pastré
#60241
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Olivier Pastré is a French banker and economist. He serves as Chairman of IM Bank and as a professor of economics at Paris 8 University. Biography Early life Olivier Pastré was born on 15 December 1950 in Neuilly-sur-Seine near Paris in France. He received a Master of Arts degree in economics from the University of Rhode Island. He went on to receive a PhD in economics from the University of Paris, followed by the Agrégation in economics.
Go to Profile#1987
Gilles Carbonnier
#50563
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (59 years)
Gilles Carbonnier is the vice-president of the International Committee of the Red Cross and professor of development economics at Geneva’s Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies .
Go to Profile#1988
Andreas Freytag
#97328
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (62 years)
Andreas Freytag is a German economist. He currently holds the chair for political economics at the University of Jena. Freytag earned his Diplom in economics from the University of Kiel in 1990, where he studied under Herbert Giersch. In 1994, he completed his doctoral degree in economics under supervision of Juergen B. Donges at the University of Cologne.
Go to Profile#1989
Ashwani Mahajan
#35685
Overall Influence
Dr Ashwani Mahajan is the National Co-Convener of Swadeshi Jagaran Manch , an Indian political and cultural organisation. SJM is affiliated with the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh. Biography Mahajan worked as an author and columnist. He is Professor at PGDAV College, Delhi. Mahajan is Chief Editor of Journal of Contemporary Indian Polity and Economy since 2011. Mahajan is also a visiting professor and research guide at Pacific University, Udaipur and Mewar University. He works as a researcher and activist on World Trade Organization and other international trade agreements, he has attended four ...
Go to Profile#1990
Mohammad Kabir Hassan
#78396
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (61 years)
Mohammad Kabir Hassan is a Bangladeshi-American economist who serves as Professor of Finance at University of New Orleans. He has been providing consultancy to International Monetary Fund, World Bank, Transparency International Bangladesh, African Development Bank , Islamic Development Bank and Government of Turkey.
Go to Profile#1991
Jan Brueckner
#69090
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Jan K. Brueckner is an American economist, academic, author and researcher. He is a Distinguished Professor of Economics at the University of California, Irvine. Brueckner has published over 150 papers. His research interests fall into areas encompassing urban economics, public economics, and real estate finance. He has also worked extensively in the field of industrial organization, focusing particularly on the economics of the airline industry. He is also the author of a textbook entitled Lectures on Urban Economics.
Go to Profile#1992
Kent Smetters
#47638
Overall Influence
Kent Smetters is an academic, entrepreneur, and former government official. Early years Smetters was raised in Ohio. He received his bachelor's degrees in economics and computer science from the Ohio State University in 1990, and master's and PhD degrees in economics from Harvard University in 1992 and 1995 respectively.
Go to Profile#1993
Ruth Towse
#72144
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (81 years)
Ruth Towse FRSA is a British economist and Professor of Economics of Creative Industries at Bournemouth University and Professor Emerita at Erasmus University, Rotterdam. A leading authority in cultural economics with a particular emphasis on the economics of media and copyright, she has taught in UK, the Netherlands, Italy and Thailand universities. She was married to Mark Blaug.
Go to Profile#1994
Alan Garber
#46503
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (69 years)
Alan Michael Garber is an American physician, health economist, and academic administrator. He is the Provost of Harvard University. Early life and education Garber was born in 1955. He graduated from Harvard College in 1976 with an AB in economics and stayed at Harvard to earn an AM and a PhD in economics. While pursuing his PhD, he enrolled simultaneously at Stanford University, where he received an MD degree in 1983.
Go to Profile#1995
Alinaghi Alikhani
#24161
Overall Influence
1929 - 2019 (90 years)
Alinaghi Alikhani was an Iranian economist who held government posts in the 1960s and was the first minister of economy of Iran. He also served as the chancellor of Tehran University. Early life and education Alikhani was born in Khamseh, near Abhar, Zanjan Province, on 21 January 1929. His father, Abedin Khan, was a Kazakh petty officer, who later began to serve as the administrator of the lands in Khamseh and nearby areas owned by Reza Shah. The family moved to a village, Varamin, near Tehran where Alikhani was raised.
Go to Profile#1996
Laura Veldkamp
#71356
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (49 years)
Laura Veldkamp is an American economist teaching as a professor of finance at Columbia University's Graduate School of Business and also serves as a co-editor of the Journal of Economic Theory. Education Veldkamp graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Math and Economics from Northwestern University in 1996. She then received her Ph.D. in Economic Analysis and Policy from the Stanford Graduate School of Business in 2001.
Go to Profile#1997
Kshama Sawant
#17612
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (51 years)
Kshama Sawant is an Indian-American politician and economist who has served on the Seattle City Council since 2014. She is a member of Socialist Alternative, the first and only member of the party to date to be elected to public office.
Go to Profile#1998
Tommaso Valletti
#33955
Overall Influence
Tommaso M. Valletti is Professor of Economics at Imperial College Business School, and also Professor of Economics at the University of Rome Tor Vergata . He is a Fellow of CEPR. He is a Non-Executive Director to the board of the UK's Payment Systems Regulator.
Go to Profile#1999
Alan Michael Rugman
#97667
Overall Influence
#2000
Jules N. Pretty
#97694
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (66 years)
