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,
#2051
Alexander Cairncross
#39282
Overall Influence
1911 - 1998 (87 years)
Sir Alexander Kirkland Cairncross , known as Sir Alec Cairncross, was a British economist. He was the brother of the spy John Cairncross and father of journalist Frances Cairncross and public health engineer and epidemiologist Sandy Cairncross.
Go to Profile#2052
Aušra Maldeikienė
#44018
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (66 years)
Aušra Seibutytė-Maldeikienė is a Lithuanian political economist, politician, lecturer, teacher, publicist and book author. In 2019 she was elected to the European Parliament, having previously sat as a member of the Seimas since 2016 and Vilnius City Council .
Go to Profile#2053
Jan-Emmanuel De Neve
#20330
Overall Influence
1979 - Present (45 years)
Jan-Emmanuel De Neve is a Belgian economist and professor at the University of Oxford where he directs the Wellbeing Research Centre. De Neve is also the KSI Fellow and Vice-Principal of Harris Manchester College. He is best known for his research on the economics of wellbeing which has led to new insights into the relationship between wellbeing and income, productivity, firm performance, and economic growth. De Neve is also an editor of the World Happiness Report and co-founder of the World Wellbeing Movement.
Go to Profile#2054
Marilda Sotomayor
#42513
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (80 years)
Marilda A. Oliveira Sotomayor is a Brazilian mathematician and economist known for her research on auction theory and stable matchings. She is a member of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences, Brazilian Society of Econometrics, and Brazilian Society of Mathematics. She was elected fellow of the Econometric Society in 2003 and international honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2020.
Go to Profile#2055
Wei Xiong
#51555
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (49 years)
Wei Xiong Education In 1993, Xiong received his B.S. in physics from the University of Science and Technology of China. He then received his M.A. in physics from Columbia University in 1995 and his Ph.D. in finance from Duke University in 2001.
Go to Profile#2056
Fabio Fortuna
#30579
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (64 years)
Fabio Fortuna is an Italian rector and economist. Life Fortuna was born in Rome. From October 2013 he is rector of the Università degli Studi Niccolò Cusano. He was vice Rector and Dean of the Faculty of Economics of Niccolò Cusano University of Rome, where he teaches Accounting and Financial Reporting; he was also teaches "Auditing" at Luiss University of Rome and he is member of the Advisory Board of the "Accademia Italiana di Economia Aziendale" . Fortuna is member of the Advisory Board of the "Dean Conference of the Economics and Statistics Faculties" and he is member of several Editorial Boards and Scientific Committees.
Go to Profile#2057
Bruno Amable
#57966
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (63 years)
Bruno Amable is a French economist and Professor at the University of Geneva. Amable's research interests include political economy, comparative analysis of capitalism, and institutional economics. His research was awarded the first Best Young French Economist Award in 2000 .
Go to Profile#2058
Stephen G. Hall
#81798
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
Stephen George Frederick Hall is a British economist and academic. He is currently a professor and head of the economics department at the University of Leicester, where he is a deputy pro vice chancellor.
Go to Profile#2059
Petra Todd
#60926
Overall Influence
Petra Elisabeth Todd is an American economist whose research interests include labor economics, development economics, microeconomics, and econometrics. She is the Edward J. and Louise W. Kahn Term Professor of Economics at the University of Pennsylvania, and is also affiliated with the University of Pennsylvania Population Studies Center, the Human Capital and Equal Opportunity Global Working Group , the IZA Institute of Labor Economics and the National Bureau of Economic Research.
Go to Profile#2060
W. H. Locke Anderson
#72480
Overall Influence
1933 - 2002 (69 years)
William Henry Locke Anderson was an American economist and professor at the University of Michigan. During the first half of his career, he did research on macroeconomics; during the second half, he focused on Marxist economics and became an editor of Monthly Review, a Marxist journal.
Go to Profile#2061
Keith Griffin
#37023
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (86 years)
Keith B. Griffin is an economist, whose specialty is the economics of poverty reduction . From 1979 to 1988 he was President of Magdalen College, Oxford, and he remains an honorary fellow there. During his presidency of Magdalen College, he and Senior Bursar R. W. Johnson worked to rescue the finances and buildings of the college, an effort described in Johnson's 2015 book Look Back in Laughter: Oxford's Postwar Golden Age. Griffin was the second American to ever serve as President of an Oxford college, and the youngest since World War II.
Go to Profile#2062
Morris Kleiner
#55297
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (76 years)
Morris M. Kleiner is an American academic. Kleiner received his M.A. in Labor and Industrial Relations, and Ph.D. in economics from the University of Illinois and his undergraduate degree in economics from Bradley University. He is a professor and the inaugural AFL-CIO chair in labor policy at the Hubert H. Humphrey School of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. From 1974 to 1987 he was an assistant and later full professor at the School of Business at the University of Kansas.
Go to Profile#2063
Axel Kicillof
#50514
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (53 years)
Axel Kicillof is an Argentine Peronist economist and politician who has been Governor of Buenos Aires Province since 2019. Kicillof also served as Argentina's Minister of Economy from 2013 to 2015 under the presidency of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. Described by his biographer as "the economic guru who captivated Cristina Kirchner", Kicillof was instrumental in the 2012 renationalization of the energy firm YPF. It was on his advice that Fernández de Kirchner decided not to meet holdout bondholder demands to be repaid what they were owed in 2014. The decision was supported by among others t...
Go to Profile#2064
Tibor Palánkai
#45974
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (86 years)
Tibor Palánkai is a Hungarian economist, university teacher and member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. He has been awarded the Jean Monnet prize and multiple Hungarian awards. He was the vice-rector of the Karl Marx University of Economics between 1977 and 1983 and the rector of Budapest University of Economic Sciences between 1997 and 2000. He is an emeritus professor since 2008.
Go to Profile#2065
John Moore
#50942
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
John Halstead Hardman Moore CBE FBA FRSE is an economic theorist. He was appointed George Watson's and Daniel Stewart's Chair of Political Economy at the University of Edinburgh School of Economics in 2000. In 2018 he was appointed the David Hume University Professor at the University of Edinburgh. Previously, in 1983, he was appointed to the London School of Economics, where in 1990 he became Professor of Economic Theory, a position he still holds.
Go to Profile#2066
Uwe Cantner
#86888
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (64 years)
Uwe Cantner is a German economist. Current positions Since 2000 Uwe Cantner has been full professor of economics at the University of Jena, and heads the chair of Economics and Microeconomics. Economics of innovation, evolutionary economics, industrial economics, and productivity and efficiency measurement are his major fields of research.
Go to Profile#2067
Nicholas Apergis
#100221
Overall Influence
#2068
Michael Szenberg
#54248
Overall Influence
1934 - Present (90 years)
Michael Szenberg is a professor emeritus and a former Chairman of the Finance and Economics department at Lubin School of Business in Pace University, New York. He is the author and editor of 22 books on economics, and was the editor of The American Economist published by Omicron Delta Epsilon.
Go to Profile#2069
David Wyss
#78106
Overall Influence
David Wyss is an American economist. As New York-based Standard & Poor's chief economist, Wyss was responsible for S & P's economic forecasts and publications. He also coauthored the monthly Equity Insight and the weekly Financial Notes. He was on the board of the National Association for Business Economics, Washington, D.C.
Go to Profile#2070
Stephen DeCanio
#78690
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (82 years)
Stephen DeCanio is a Professor of economics, emeritus, at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His current research deals with the impact of artificial intelligence on society, the economy, and culture. His recent research has also addressed the consequences of computational limits for economics and social theory more generally. He has published books and articles in the fields of global environmental protection and energy economics, the theory of the firm, and economic history. He studied mathematics as an undergraduate at the University of California, Berkeley and received his Ph.D in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1972.
Go to Profile#2071
Nicholas Kiefer
#100293
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
Nicholas M. Kiefer is an Economics professor at Cornell University. He received a fellowship award from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation in 1986 for his "past achievements and ... promise of future accomplishments".
Go to Profile#2072
C. Brice Ratchford
#88100
Overall Influence
1920 - 1997 (77 years)
Charles Brice Ratchford was the 15th president of the University of Missouri System from 1970 to 1976. Early life Ratchford was raised in Gastonia, North Carolina. He attended junior college at Brevard College. He received a bachelor's and master's in agricultural economics from North Carolina State University in 1942 and 1947 respectively. He also received a doctorate in economics from Duke University in 1951.
Go to Profile#2073
Eric Bond
#93430
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
Eric W. Bond is an American economist. He specializes in international economics and economic theory. Bond is a professor of economics at Vanderbilt University since 2003. After graduating from Lehigh University in 1974, Bond earned his Master's and Ph.D. from the University of Rochester.
Go to Profile#2074
Eliana Cardoso
#80602
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (80 years)
Eliana Anastasia Cardoso is a professor of economics at the São Paulo School of Economics. She worked at both the World Bank and the IMF. She holds a PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a master from the Universidade de Brasília.
Go to Profile#2075
Yegor Gaidar
#27082
Overall Influence
1956 - 2009 (53 years)
Yegor Timurovich Gaidar was a Soviet and Russian economist, politician, and author, and was the Acting Prime Minister of Russia from 15 June 1992 to 14 December 1992. He was the architect of the controversial shock therapy reforms administered in Russia after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, which brought him both praise and harsh criticism. He participated in the preparation of the Belovezh Accords. Many Russians held him responsible for the economic hardships that plagued the country in the 1990s that resulted in mass poverty and hyperinflation among other things, although liberals praised him as a man who did what had to be done to save the country from complete collapse.
Go to Profile#2076
Karl Widerquist
#26419
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (59 years)
Karl Widerquist is an American political philosopher and economist at Georgetown University in their campus in Qatar. He is best known as an advocate of basic income, but is also an interdisciplinary academic writer who has published in journals in fields as diverse as economics, politics, philosophy, and anthropology. He is a consistent critic of propertarianism, right-libertarianism, social contract theory, and the belief that modern societies fulfill the Lockean proviso.
Go to Profile#2077
Andrés Rodríguez-Pose
#84789
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (58 years)
Andrés Rodríguez-Pose is a professor of economic geography at the London School of Economics and Political Science and former head of its Department of Geography and Environment . Biography He was president of the Regional Science Association International .
Go to Profile#2078
Timothy P. Roth
#46184
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (81 years)
Timothy Peter Roth is the A.B. Templeton Professor and Chairman of the Department of Economics & Finance at the University of Texas at El Paso. He is a recipient of the University’s 2005 Distinguished Achievement Award for Research Excellence. He served as a Consultant to President Ronald Reagan’s Cabinet Council on Economic Policy, as Executive Director of President Reagan’s Steel Advisory Committee, and as Senior Economic Adviser in the Office of Secretary of Commerce Malcolm Baldrige. Previously he served as Senior Economist for the U.S. Congress Joint Economic Committee. Roth served two t...
Go to Profile#2079
Pankaj Ghemawat
#28269
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (65 years)
Pankaj Ghemawat is an Indian-American economist, professor, global strategist, speaker and author known for his work in the study of globalization. He created the DHL Global Connectedness Index and the CAGE Distance Framework.
Go to Profile#2080
Ian Macfarlane
#19262
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (78 years)
Ian John Macfarlane is an Australian economist, and central banker. After an early career as an economist in Melbourne, Sydney, Oxford and Paris, he joined the Reserve Bank of Australia in 1979 and rose to become Governor from 1996 to 2006. After retiring from the Reserve Bank, he became a company director, economic consultant and author of two books.
Go to Profile#2081
Gerold Blümle
#77819
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (87 years)
Gerold Blümle is a German economist. Life Blümle was born on 30 January 1937 in Lörrach, Württemberg and, from 1972 to 2002, he was the Professor of Mathematical Economics at the University of Freiburg and a leading German exponent of the theory of income distribution and external trade theory.
Go to Profile#2082
Katharine Abraham
#54944
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
Katharine G. Abraham is an American economist who is the director of the Maryland Center for Economics and Policy, and a professor of survey methodology and economics at the University of Maryland. She was commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics from 1993–2001 and a member of the Council of Economic Advisers from 2011–2013. She was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 2022.
Go to Profile#2083
Tony Lancaster
#88007
Overall Influence
1938 - 2022 (84 years)
Anthony Lancaster was a British-American Bayesian econometrician. He was the Herbert H. Goldberger Professor Emeritus at Brown University and a fellow of the Econometric Society from 1991 until his death.
Go to Profile#2084
Robert C. Hancké
#44100
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (62 years)
Robert C. Hancké is a Belgian economist specializing in European economies and in particular labour relations. Hancké was born in Antwerp, Belgium. He holds a doctoral degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is currently a Reader in European Political Economy at the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Go to Profile#2085
John Morgan
#59035
Overall Influence
1967 - 2021 (54 years)
John Morgan was the Oliver E. Williamson and Dolores J. Williamson Chair in the Economics of Organizations at the University of California, Berkeley. He was the founding director of the U.C. Berkeley Experimental Social Sciences Laboratory . He was a member of the editorial board of the California Management Review since 2003. He was the faculty leader of the Center for Executive Education at UC Berkeley.
Go to Profile#2086
David E. Spencer
#77690
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (60 years)
David E. Spencer is a retired professor of economics at Brigham Young University. He taught and did research in macroeconomics, econometrics, and monetary theory. He is the author of eighteen peer-reviewed publications, including Econometrica, the American Economic Review, the Review of Economics and Statistics and the Journal of Money, Credit and Banking. Spencer is a founding member of the BYU Macroeconomics and Computational Lab. In addition to teaching various economics classes, Spencer also taught American Heritage at BYU for several years.
Go to Profile#2087
Yves Zenou
#75371
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (63 years)
Yves Zenou is a French-Swedish economist. He is a professor at Monash University and holds the Richard Snape Chair in Business and Economics. Zenou's main research focus is in the field of network economics. He has applied his research to crime, labor, development and other issues in economics. He is the author of ‘Urban Labor Economics’ and ‘Economic Analyses of Social Networks’ and has published various research articles.
Go to Profile#2088
James Gordon Mackinnon
#100815
Overall Influence
#2089
Jock R. Anderson
#54829
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (83 years)
Jock Robert Anderson is an Australian agricultural economist, specialising in agricultural development economics, risk and decision theory, and international rural development policy. Born in Monto, Queensland, he studied at the University of Queensland, attaining bachelor's and master's degrees in agricultural science. After graduation, Anderson joined the Faculty of Agricultural Economics at the University of New England. At New England, he focused on research in farm management, risk, and uncertainty and received a doctor of philosophy in economics in 1970. In 1977, Anderson co-authore...
Go to Profile#2090
John McMillan
#59434
Overall Influence
1951 - 2007 (56 years)
John McMillan was the Jonathan B. Lovelace professor of economics in Stanford University's Graduate School of Business, and one of the world's leading economic theorists and applied microeconomists. His career was initially marked by important contributions to auction theory and mechanism design. In the 1980s, he worked on the use of incentives in state owned enterprises in China and policies for emerging economies. His recent work has examined entrepreneurship in those economies, as well as the institutional structure for economic development.
Go to Profile#2091
Ian Bateman
#81659
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (63 years)
Ian Bateman OBE US-NAS FBA FEAERE FRSA FRSB is a professor of environmental economics at the Land, Environment, Economics and Policy Institute at the University of Exeter. He is chief editor of the journal "Environmental and Resource Economics". He was formerly a member of the Natural Capital Committee, a member of the Defra Science Advisory Council, and director of the Centre for Social and Economic Research on the Global Environment .
Go to Profile#2092
Rati Ram
#85641
Overall Influence
Rati Ram is a distinguished professor of economics at Illinois State University, Normal, Illinois, specializing in the economics of education. Ram got his M.A. in philosophy and economics at Delhi University, and his M.A. and Ph.D. in economics at University of Chicago in 1977. Since 1986 he is Distinguished Professor at Illinois State University.
Go to Profile#2093
Asim Ijaz Khwaja
#41393
Overall Influence
Asim Ijaz Khwaja is a Pakistani-American economist who serves as Sumitomo-FASID Professor of International Finance and Development at Harvard Kennedy School, and director of Center for International Development at Harvard University since July 1, 2019. He is co-founder of the Center for Economic Research in Pakistan and also serves as co-Director of Harvard Evidence for Policy Design. He is the first Pakistani hired by Harvard as professor.
Go to Profile#2094
Marshall Van Alstyne
#22837
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (62 years)
Marshall W. Van Alstyne is the Questrom Professor in Management at Boston University and a research associate at the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy. He co-developed the theory of two-sided markets with Geoffrey G Parker. His work focuses on the economics of information. This includes a sustained interest in information markets and in how information and technology affect productivity with a new emphasis on “platforms” as an extension of the work on two-sided markets.
Go to Profile#2095
Franz Palm
#92184
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (76 years)
Franz Christian Palm is a Belgian economist. He is a Professor of Econometrics at Maastricht University. He was also appointed Academy Professor in Econometrics by Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2005. He became a foreign member of the KNAW in 2000.
Go to Profile#2096
Richard E. Just
#98343
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (76 years)
Richard Eugene Just is an economist at the University of Maryland. He received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1972 with specialization in quantitative policy analysis where he served on the faculty until 1985. In 2007 he commenced consecutive terms as President-Elect, President, and Past President of the American Agricultural Economics Association , renamed the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association. He is the author or co-author of over 150 publications including a number of books, most notably ‘’The Welfare Economics of Public Policy’’. The quality of his r...
Go to Profile#2097
Robert B. Stobaugh
#21115
Overall Influence
1927 - 2017 (90 years)
Robert Blair Stobaugh was an American educator noted for his research into energy economics and corporate governance. He earned a degree in chemical engineering from Louisiana State University, and went to work as an engineer at companies such as Esso, Caltex and Monsanto Chemical Company. After leaving Monsanto, he earned a doctorate degree in business administration from Harvard University. He spent 29 years as a professor at the Harvard Business School . He served as director of the HBS Energy Project from 1972 to 1983. According to Harvard Business School, Stobaugh focused his research interests in three areas: corporate governance, energy and international business.
Go to Profile#2098
Richard Burkhauser
#30924
Overall Influence
Richard Valentine Burkhauser is a Professor Emeritus of Policy Analysis at Cornell University and was a member of the Council of Economic Advisers for President Trump. Burkhauser's research often focuses on how public policies affect the economic well-being of vulnerable populations, such as the elderly, the disabled, and those living in low-income households. As a member of the CEA, Burkhauser was working alongside fellow economists Tomas Philipson and Kevin Hassett.
Go to Profile#2099
Andreas Hackethal
#38702
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (53 years)
Andreas Hackethal is a Professor of Finance and the Dean of the Goethe Business School at the Goethe University Frankfurt. Life Andreas Hackethal earned his degrees in Business Administration from Goethe University Frankfurt and the University of Iowa. He finished his doctoral studies at Goethe University in 1999 and received his postdoctoral lecture qualification from Goethe University in 2005. Parallel to his academic career he spent two years in banking and eight years in strategy consulting. From 2005 to 2007 he held a position as Finance Professor and was head of Finance Department at Eu...
Go to Profile#2100
Atiur Rahman
#19688
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
Atiur Rahman is a Bangladeshi development economist, writer and banker. He served as the 10th Governor of Bangladesh Bank, which is the central bank of Bangladesh. He has also been called "the banker of the poor" for his contributions in developing the economy of Bangladesh. Atiur Rahman is credited for instituting changes in the banking industry of Bangladesh that greatly increased the foreign exchange reserves of the country and brought massive automation and digitization in the banking sector of Bangladesh. Achievements during his tenure include the creation of the National Payment Switch ...
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