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 …
See additional learning tools, study tips, features on campus life and much more at our Student Resources Headquarters.
List of the most influential people in Economics,
#2001
Andrzej Sławiński
#64569
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
Andrzej Sławiński is a Polish economist and Professor of Economics at the Warsaw School of Economics. He is a member of the Council of Monetary Policies since 2004 and a fellow of Collegium Invisibile.
Go to Profile#2002
Alexandre Mas
#73507
Overall Influence
1977 - Present (47 years)
Alexandre Mas is William S. Tod Professor of Economics and Public Affairs at Princeton University, Director of the Industrial Relations Section at Princeton University, and Director of the Labor Studies program of the National Bureau of Economic Research. He is a former Chief Economist of the United States Department of Labor and Associate Director for Economic Policy at the Office of Management and Budget.
Go to Profile#2003
Michael Bruno
#23624
Overall Influence
1932 - 1996 (64 years)
Michael Peter Bruno was an Israeli economist. He was governor of the Bank of Israel and a former World Bank Chief Economist. Biography Michael Peter Bruno was married to Ofra Hanoch , with whom he had three children, daughter Yael and sons Ido and Asa. He died of cancer at home in Jerusalem.He is survived by his second wife Netta .
Go to Profile#2004
Theodore Burczak
#53913
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (60 years)
#2005
Alicia Munnell
#47251
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (82 years)
Alicia Haydock Munnell is an American economist who is the Peter F. Drucker Professor of Management Sciences at Boston College's Carroll School of Management. Educated at Wellesley College, Boston University, and Harvard University, Munnell spent 20 years as an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, where she researched wealth, savings, and retirement among American workers. She served in the Bill Clinton administration as Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and as a member of the Council of Economic Advisers. Since 1997 she has been a professor at Boston College...
Go to Profile#2006
Salih Neftçi
#15542
Overall Influence
1947 - 2009 (62 years)
Salih Nur Neftçi was a leading expert in the fields of financial markets and financial engineering. He served many advisory roles in national and international financial institutions, and was an active researcher in the fields of finance and financial engineering. Neftçi was an avid and highly regarded educator in mathematical finance who was well known for a lucid and accessible approach towards the field.
Go to Profile#2007
Roni Michaely
#62369
Overall Influence
Roni Michaely is an Israeli academic specializing in Economics and Finance. Michaely is Professor of Finance at the University of Hong Kong, School of Business and Economics. He was also appointed to a director of the Israel Securities Authority in January 1998 and also serves as an associate editor for the Review of Financial Studies.
Go to Profile#2008
Reinhilde Veugelers
#78963
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (61 years)
Reinhilde Veugelers is a Belgian economist and Professor of Managerial Economics, Strategy and Innovation at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven from Belgium, known for her research on science and innovation. She is also a scholar at Bruegel in Brussels and at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington D.C.
Go to Profile#2009
David Easley
#56361
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
David Alan Easley is an American economist. Easley is the Henry Scarborough Professor of Social Science and is a professor of information science at Cornell University. He was previously an overseas fellow of Churchill College at Cambridge University. His research is in the field of economics, finance and decision theory. In economics, he focuses on learning, wealth dynamics and natural selection in markets. In finance, his work focuses on market microstructure and asset pricing. In decision theory, he works on modeling decision making in complex environments. In networks, he works on network...
Go to Profile#2010
Geoff Raby
#25480
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
Geoffrey William "Geoff" Raby is an Australian economist and diplomat. He served as the Australian Ambassador to the People's Republic of China from February 2007 until August 2011. He is now the chairman and CEO of Geoff Raby and Associates, a Beijing-based business advisory firm. Raby currently sits on the board of an Australian subsidiary of Chinese state-run Yanzhou Coal Mining Company.
Go to Profile#2011
Mthuli Ncube
#22235
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (61 years)
Mthuli Ncube , is the Finance Minister in the Zimbabwe cabinet appointed by president Emmerson Mnangagwa and past chief economist and Vice President of the African Development Bank. He holds a PhD in Mathematical Finance from Cambridge University. On 7 September 2018, President Emmerson Mnangagwa announced Zimbabwe's new cabinet where he named Professor Mthuli Ncube as the Finance Minister.
Go to Profile#2012
Yannis M. Ioannides
#87142
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (79 years)
Yannis Menelaos Ioannides is a Greek-American economist, who received his Ph.D. from Stanford University, 1974. Having studied electrical engineering as an undergraduate at the National Technical University, Athens, Greece, he pursued graduate studies at Stanford, where he was advised by Robert C. Lind, James L. Sweeney and Hayne E. Leland. He joined the Tufts University faculty in September 1995 as the Max and Herta Neubauer Chair and Professor in Economics. Previously he taught at the University of California , Brown University, Boston University, and Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, where he also served as Department Head from 1989-1995.
Go to Profile#2013
James N. Morgan
#43667
Overall Influence
1918 - 2018 (100 years)
James Newton Morgan was an American economist. Morgan was born near Corydon, Indiana, on March 1, 1918. He obtained a bachelor's degree in economics from Northwestern University in 1939. He then worked for the North Appalachian Experimental Watershed of the Soil Conservation Service before returning to school, receiving a master's and doctoral degree in economics from Harvard University. Upon completing his doctorate, Morgan was named an assistant professor at Brown University. In 1949, Morgan began post doctoral work at the University of Michigan. He became an associate professor in 1953, and was named a full professor five years later.
Go to Profile#2014
Lorin Hitt
#67604
Overall Influence
Lorin M. Hitt is an American economist, currently the Zhang Jingdong Professor of Operations, Information and Decisions at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Bibliography
Go to Profile#2015
Douglas Fitzgerald Dowd
#59551
Overall Influence
1919 - 2017 (98 years)
Douglas Fitzgerald Dowd was an American political economist, economic historian and political activist. Academic career From the late 1940s to the late 1990s, Dowd taught at Cornell University, the University of California, Berkeley and other universities. He has authored books that criticize capitalism in general, and US capitalism in particular.
Go to Profile#2016
Lung�?fei Lee
#98490
Overall Influence
#2017
Shyam Sunder
#67149
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (80 years)
Shyam Sunder is an accounting theorist and experimental economist. He is the James L. Frank Professor of accounting, economics, and finance at the Yale School of Management; a professor in Yale University’s Department of Economics; and a Fellow of the Whitney Humanities Center.
Go to Profile#2018
Andrea Sironi
#36532
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (60 years)
Andrea Sironi is an Italian academic. He is a Professor of Banking and Finance at Bocconi University, where he was the Rector from 2012 to 2016, and has been the President since 2022. He also serves as chairman of Assicurazioni Generali and Fondazione AIRC per la Ricerca sul Cancro.
Go to Profile#2019
Frank Chaloupka
#97779
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (64 years)
Frank J. Chaloupka is an American professor of economics at the University of Illinois at Chicago and an affiliate of the National Bureau of Economic Research. He is an expert in the economic analysis of substance use disorders and on the effect of prices and substance control policies in affecting the demands for tobacco, alcohol, and illicit drugs. Chaloupka has authored over a hundred articles and several book chapters on topics within this area. He also works as a researcher on a Cancer Prevention And Control program.
Go to Profile#2020
David Berri
#62701
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (55 years)
David J. Berri is a sports economist and professor of economics at Southern Utah University, known for his sometimes-controversial analysis of NBA basketball. He is a past president of the North American Association of Sports Economists, and a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Sports Economics and The International Journal of Sport Finance.
Go to Profile#2021
Eugene Smolensky
#56291
Overall Influence
1932 - Present (92 years)
Eugene Smolensky is an economist and emeritus professor at the Goldman School of Public Policy, University of California, Berkeley, where he served as Dean from 1988 to 1997. He is Vice President of the International Institute of Public Finance and Vice-Chair of the Board of Trustees of the Russell Sage Foundation. As an economist, Smolensky “studies welfare policy and the impact of economic and demographic changes on the distribution of income among various social groups.”. He was also a professor and chair of the Economics Department at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and an Associate Professor at the University of Chicago.
Go to Profile#2022
Lawrence J. White
#44269
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (82 years)
Lawrence J. White is Robert Kavesh Professor of Economics at New York University's Leonard N. Stern School of Business. During 1986–1989 he was on leave to serve as board member, Federal Home Loan Bank Board, in which capacity he also served as board member for Freddie Mac; and during 1982–1983 he was on leave to serve as Director of the Economic Policy Office, Antitrust Division, US Department of Justice. He is the General Editor of The Review of Industrial Organization and formerly Secretary-Treasurer of the Western Economic Association International.
Go to Profile#2023
Ronald MacDonald
#79562
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (69 years)
Ronald MacDonald OBE was born in the West End of Glasgow in 1955, to Duncan and Effie MacDonald and spent his formative years in Glasgow, Fort William and Falkirk. He attended Tinto Road Primary School, Glasgow, Corpach Primary School, Fort William, Comely Bank Primary School, Falkirk, and Falkirk High School, with a gap year in Portree primary and High School, before progressing to his university education. He is a Scottish economist with interests in a wide range of topics in International Finance and Macroeconomics and a considerable amount of his research focuses on the economics of exchange rates and currency regime choice.
Go to Profile#2024
Laurent-Emmanuel Calvet
#45320
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (55 years)
Laurent-Emmanuel Calvet is a French economist and a professor of finance. He is Vice President Elect of the European Finance Association. Calvet is a Professor of Finance at SKEMA Business School. He previously held faculty positions at Harvard University, HEC Paris, and Imperial College London, and EDHEC Business School.
Go to Profile#2025
Andrew Brimmer
#37527
Overall Influence
1926 - 2012 (86 years)
Andrew Felton Brimmer was an American economist and business leader who served as a member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors from 1966 to 1974. A member of the Democratic Party, Brimmer was the first African American to sit on the Board.
Go to Profile#2026
John Blundell
#50780
Overall Influence
1952 - 2014 (62 years)
John Blundell was a British economist who served as Director General and the Ralph Harris Fellow at the Institute of Economic Affairs. Blundell had been involved in the creation and development of numerous free-market think tanks.
Go to Profile#2027
Timothy A. Mcallister
#98883
Overall Influence
#2028
Daniel P. Kessler
#33959
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (58 years)
Daniel P. Kessler is an American academic whose work focuses on health policy and health care finance. He is currently a professor in management at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and a professor of law at Stanford Law School. Additionally, he is professor of health research and policy at the Stanford University School of Medicine.
Go to Profile#2029
Douglas Breeden
#77850
Overall Influence
Douglas T. Breeden is the William W. Priest Professor of Finance and former Dean of the Fuqua School of Business, Duke University. He is best known for establishing the use of state prices in financial economics, and for his work on the Consumption CAPM. He was the International Association for Quantitative Finance “Financial Engineer of the Year 2013”, and was Founding Editor of the Journal of Fixed Income. He holds a Ph.D. in Finance from Stanford and an S.B. in Management Science from M.I.T.
Go to Profile#2030
Margaret A. Meyer
#79546
Overall Influence
Margaret Ann Meyer is an American economist whose research interests include microeconomics, organizational economics, and contract theory. She works in England as an Official Fellow in economics in Nuffield College, Oxford.
Go to Profile#2031
Vito Luigi Tanzi
#99037
Overall Influence
#2032
Raymond Fisman
#95379
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (53 years)
Raymond John Fisman is a Canadian-American economist who is the Slater Family Professor in Behavioral Economics at Boston University. External links Faculty page
Go to Profile#2033
Martin Anderson
#24611
Overall Influence
1936 - 2015 (79 years)
Martin Anderson was an American academic, economist, author, policy analyst, and adviser to US politicians and presidents, including Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon. Under the Nixon administration, Anderson was credited with helping to end the military draft and creating the all-volunteer armed forces. Under Reagan, Anderson helped draft the administration’s original economic program that became known as “Reaganomics.” A political conservative and a strong proponent of free-market capitalism, he was influenced by libertarianism and opposed government regulations that limited individual freedo...
Go to Profile#2034
Robert Reischauer
#38612
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (83 years)
Robert Danton Reischauer is an economist and was one of the two public trustees of the Medicare and Social Security Trust Fund. He is a nationally known expert on the federal budget, health reform, Medicare, and Social Security. Most recently he served as president of the Urban Institute, a think tank based in Washington, D.C. He is the son of Japan scholar Edwin O. Reischauer.
Go to Profile#2035
Rosa Matzkin
#90283
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (65 years)
Rosa Matzkin is an economist who is the Charles E. Davidson Professor of Economics at the University of California, Los Angeles. In 2018 Matzkin was awarded membership to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She works in the fields of econometrics and microeconomic theory, including panel data models and the study of economic decision-making.
Go to Profile#2036
Doron Kliger
#43700
Overall Influence
Doron Kliger is a Professor of Behavioral Economics and Finance as well as head of the Department of Economics at the University of Haifa. Kliger holds a PhD Tel-Aviv University and is Associate Editor of the Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics.
Go to Profile#2037
Timothy Geithner
#19463
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (63 years)
Timothy Franz Geithner is an American former central banker who served as the 75th United States Secretary of the Treasury under President Barack Obama from 2009 to 2013. He was the President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York from 2003 to 2009, following service in the Clinton administration. Since March 2014, he has served as president and managing director of Warburg Pincus, a private equity firm headquartered in New York City.
Go to Profile#2038
Şemsa Özar
#77119
Overall Influence
Şemsa Özar is a professor in the Department of Economics at Boğaziçi University, Turkey and past president of the International Association for Feminist Economics , her tenure was 2015 to 2016. Education Özar gained her degree and masters from Boğaziçi University in Turkey in 1977 and 1978 respectively. Her post-graduate degree came from the Institute for Advanced Studies and Scientific Research, Vienna in 1988 and her PhD came from the Wirtschaftsuniversität Wien Austria in 1990. Her PhD thesis title was: The Effects of the IMF-Supported Programs on Income Distribution: Turkey as a Case.
Go to Profile#2039
Sandra Black
#59578
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (55 years)
Sandra Eilene Black is a Professor of Economics and International and Public Affairs at Columbia University. She received her B.A. from UC Berkeley and her Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University. Since that time, she worked as an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and as an assistant, associate, and ultimately full professor in the Department of Economics at UCLA before arriving at the University of Texas at Austin in 2010. She is currently a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research , a research affiliate at IZA Institute of Labor Economics, and a nonresident senior fellow at Brookings Institution.
Go to Profile#2040
Hayne Leland
#52309
Overall Influence
Hayne Leland is an economist and professor emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley. Prior to becoming emeritus, he was the Arno Rayner Professor of Finance at the Haas School of Business. Before joining Berkeley, Leland was an assistant professor in economics at Stanford University, and he has held visiting professorships at the University of California, Los Angeles and the University of Cambridge. He received his A.B. from Harvard College, followed by an M.Sc. at the London School of Economics and a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard. He received an honorary doctorate degree from ...
Go to Profile#2041
Muhammad Ali Shahbaz
#99306
Overall Influence
#2042
Jonah Rockoff
#61579
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (24 years)
Jonah E. Rockoff is an American education economist and currently works as Professor of Finance and Economics at the Columbia Graduate School of Business. Rockoff's research interests include the economics of education and public finance. His research on the management of public schools has been awarded the 2016 George S. Eccles Research Award in Finance and Economics by Columbia Business School.
Go to Profile#2043
E. K. Hunt
#64673
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (87 years)
Emery Kay Hunt , better known as E. K. Hunt or Kay Hunt, is an Emeritus Professor of Economics at the University of Utah. Life and academic contribution He was born in Blanding, Utah, the son of Emery Rulond Hunt and Minerva Kartchner . He has one brother and four sisters. Hunt has two children, Jeff Hunt and Andrew Hunt. Andrew is a professor of history at the University of Waterloo.
Go to Profile#2044
Paul Wonnacott
#52764
Overall Influence
1933 - Present (91 years)
Gordon Paul Wonnacott was the coauthor of Free Trade Between The United States And Canada: The Potential Economic Effects , a study that helped to revive the Canadian debate over free trade and set the background for the Canada-United States Free Trade Agreement of 1988. This agreement was the major issue in the 1988 Canadian federal election, and came into effect after the Conservative victory in that election. Paul Wonnacott was also the author of two textbooks, and served as a member of the Council of Economic Advisers under President George H.W. Bush from 1991 until January of 1993.
Go to Profile#2045
Gerard J. van den Berg
#83109
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (62 years)
Gerhardus Johannes "Gerard" van den Berg is a Dutch econometrician. He is professor of Economics at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and the University of Bristol. He was awarded the 2009 Alexander von Humboldt Professorship at the University of Mannheim. His research lies in the fields of health economics and labour markets.
Go to Profile#2046
Otto Steiger
#60236
Overall Influence
1938 - 2008 (70 years)
Otto Steiger was a German economist and professor at the University of Bremen. Biography Steiger was born on 12 December 1938 in Dresden, Germany. He spent his childhood on his parents' farming estate in Döschütz , office captaincy of Döbeln, Saxony, which was expropriated immediately after the war.
Go to Profile#2047
Nobuo Ikeda
#39198
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
Nobuo Ikeda is a Japanese economist originally from Kyoto Prefecture. He used to be a professor at Jobu University until 2012. His current appointments are a visiting professor at SBI Graduate School in Yokohama, Kanagawa, a lecturer at Aoyama Gakuin University, and the Chief Executive Officer of Agora Institute.
Go to Profile#2048
Lawrence A. Cunningham
#14044
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (62 years)
Lawrence A. Cunningham is a corporate director and advisor, author, professor and lawyer. He is the founder and managing partner of the Quality Shareholders Group and special counsel with Mayer Brown LLP, the international law firm. Cunningham is best known as an expert on corporate governance. He is also known for his knowledge of the history and corporate culture of Berkshire Hathaway and Warren Buffett. He has served on the board of directors of many companies, including Constellation Software, Kelly Group Partners, and Markel Group.
Go to Profile#2049
Robin M. Hogarth
#83179
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (82 years)
Robin Miles Hogarth is a British-American psychologist and emeritus professor in the Department of Economics and Business at Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona, Spain. He has served as president of both the Society for Judgment and Decision Making and the European Association for Decision Making. His previous positions include ICREA Research Professor at Universitat Pompeu Fabra and Wallace W. Booth Professor of Behavioral Science at the University of Chicago.
Go to Profile#2050
Lawrence B. Krause
#61726
Overall Influence
1929 - Present (95 years)
Lawrence Berle Krause is an American economist. Krause received his B.A. from the University of Michigan in 1951, his M.A. in Economics from the University of Michigan in 1952, and his Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard University in 1958. His Ph.D. thesis is titled Current balance of payments problems of industrial countries: an empirical study.
Go to Profile