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,
#2451
Kay-Yut Chen
#64706
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (24 years)
Kay-Yut Chen is an experimental economist best known for pioneering the application of behavioral economics to business management. The experimental economics lab he founded at HP Labs was the first such lab in any company. His work at HP Labs has been featured in Newsweek, the Wall Street Journal, and Scientific American.
Go to Profile#2452
Edward Barbier
#38230
Overall Influence
Edward Barbier is an environmental and resource economist. He holds the title of University Distinguished Professor, Department of Economics, Colorado State University. Barbier is known, since 1989, for the promotion valuation frameworks for valuing nature in economic terms. In 2009, He authored the United Nations’ Global Green New Deal, which connected environmentalism to an economic price. In 2010, he wrote A Global Green New Deal: Rethinking the Economic Recovery, which connected the environment to climate change to human energy and water security, and to human poverty.
Go to Profile#2453
Wu Shuqing
#33572
Overall Influence
1932 - 2020 (88 years)
Wu Shuqing was a Chinese economist and educator. He was president of Peking University from August 1989 to August 1996 and vice-president of Renmin University of China. Biography Wu was born in Jiangyin, Jiangsu, Republic of China on 3 January 1932. He attended Changshu Middle School and Shanghai High School. In August 1948, after the liberation of Tongxiang County, he was a staff member at the County Party Committee. In July 1952, he studied, then taught, at Renmin University of China, he served in several posts there, including instructor, professor, doctoral supervisor, and vice-president.
Go to Profile#2454
José Manuel González-Paramo
#72827
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (66 years)
José M. González-Páramo is a Spanish economist who served as a member of the Executive Board of the European Central Bank from 2004 to 2012. Early life and education González-Páramo holds a Ph.D., M.Phil. and M.A. in Economics from Columbia University, for which he was a Fulbright scholar,. He also has a Ph.D. from Universidad Complutense.
Go to Profile#2455
Tayfun Sönmez
#48023
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (55 years)
Tayfun Sönmez is a Turkish-American professor of economics at Boston College. He is a Fellow of the Econometric Society and the 2008 winner of the Social Choice and Welfare Prize, which honors scholars under the age of 40 for excellent accomplishment in the area of social choice theory and welfare economics. Sönmez has made significant contributions in the areas of microeconomic theory, mechanism/market design, and game theory. His work has been featured by the U.S. National Science Foundation for its practical relevance.
Go to Profile#2456
Nina Pavcnik
#104217
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (53 years)
Nina Pavcnik is the Niehaus Family Professor in International Studies for the Economics Department at Dartmouth College. Her primary research interests lie at the intersection of international trade, development, and industrial organization with specific focus on how agents respond to globalization. Pavcnik's diverse works analyze the effects of globalization on child laborers, households, workers, and firms. Her most recent work studies the effect of large-scale trade policy reforms on economic growth and inequality.
Go to Profile#2457
Galal Amin
#53581
Overall Influence
1935 - 2018 (83 years)
Galal Ahmad Amin was an award-winning professor of economics at the American University in Cairo and Egyptian economist and commentator. He was critical of the economic and cultural dependency of Egypt upon the West.
Go to Profile#2458
Sharyn O'Halloran
#61994
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (61 years)
Sharyn O’Halloran is the Strategic Academic Leadership Initiative Professor of Political Economy at Trinity College Dublin and Trinity Professorial Fellow. In 2006 she was named the George Blumenthal Professor of Political Economics and International and Public Affairs at Columbia University in New York City., where she served as the Senior Vice Dean and Chief Academic Officer at the School of Professional Studies at Columbia University in New York City.[1] A political scientist and economist by training, O’Halloran has written extensively on issues related to the political economy of internat...
Go to Profile#2459
Siobhan Austen
#88027
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (24 years)
Siobhan Austen is an Australian economist and was a Professor of Economics and discipline lead of Economics at Curtin University until December 2020. Academic career Austen obtained her Ph.D. in 2001 at the University of Melbourne. Her thesis, on the topic of the cultural aspects of labor markets, and was later published as a book by Edward Elgar Publishing. She has published more than 100 scholarly works.
Go to Profile#2460
David Greenaway
#22252
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (72 years)
Sir David Greenaway DL is a British economist. He is professor of economics and was previously the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Nottingham, having succeeded Sir Colin Campbell on 1 October 2008. In September 2016, he announced his decision to retire, and stepped down at the end of September 2017 with Shearer West succeeding Greenaway.
Go to Profile#2461
Tomáš Sedláček
#72170
Overall Influence
1977 - Present (47 years)
Tomas Sedlacek gained widespread international recognition for his book on philosophy and economy "Economics of Good and Evil" , which has been translated into 22 languages. Sedlacek has advised former Czech President Vaclav Havel, and has lectured at the World Economic Forum and around the world. For 16 years, he was a Chief Macroeconomic Strategist at the largest Czech bank, and has been a longstanding member of Czech National Economic Council. Tomáš Sedláček is also the author of the English-language podcast CzechMate.
Go to Profile#2462
Eckhard Platen
#114521
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (75 years)
#2463
Bertil Holmlund
#106008
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (77 years)
Bertil Holmlund is a Swedish economist, currently Professor of Economics at Uppsala University. He was a member of the prize committee for the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences from 1998 to 2001 and from 2005 to 2006 and is the chairman of the committee since 2008.
Go to Profile#2464
Rajneesh Narula
#67070
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (61 years)
Rajneesh Narula , is an economist and academic. He is Professor of International Business Regulation and Director of the John H. Dunning Center for International Business at Henley Business School, University of Reading in Reading, UK.
Go to Profile#2465
Guillermo Ortiz Martínez
#63367
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (76 years)
Guillermo Ortiz Martínez is the son of Gen. Leopoldo Ortiz Sevilla and Graciela Martínez Ostos. He received a B.A. in economics from the National Autonomous University of Mexico and an M.Sc. and Ph.D. in economics from Stanford University in the United States.
Go to Profile#2466
Amlan Datta
#71011
Overall Influence
1924 - 2010 (86 years)
Amlan Datta was an Indian economist and educationist. He was pro-vice chancellor of Calcutta University and vice chancellor of North Bengal and Visva Bharti universities. Biography Amlan Datta was born Amlan Kusum Dattagupta in a Baidya family in the Comilla district of Bengal Presidency . His parents were Ashwini Kumar Dattagupta and Sunitibala Devi. He finished his school at the Ishwar Pathshala at Comilla, took 1st class first in B.A in economics from the Presidency College, then affiliated with the University of Calcutta and earned a first-class fourth in MA from the same university, both with distinction.
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Catherine Tucker
#10927
Overall Influence
1977 - Present (47 years)
Catherine Tucker is the Sloan Distinguished Professor of Management at MIT Sloan, where she is also chair of the PhD program. She is known for her research into the consequences of digital data for electronic privacy, algorithmic bias, digital health, social media and online advertising. She is also a research associate at the NBER, cofounder of the Cryptoeconomics lab at MIT with Christian Catalini and coeditor at Quantitative Marketing Economics.
Go to Profile#2468
Ruey-shen Tsay
#114707
Overall Influence
#2469
Ali M. El-Agraa
#66923
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (83 years)
Ali M. El-Agraa is Emeritus Professor of International Economic Integration, Fukuoka University, Japan. He was invited to Fukuoka University in 1988 while he was a Visiting Professor with the International University of Japan , on leave from the University of Leeds , which he joined in 1971. He left Sudan in 1964 for England where he became a permanent resident and in 1977 was granted British citizenship. He is married to Diana Latham Moult and has a son and a daughter . He is now back in the UK, living in Greater London.
Go to Profile#2470
Harvey J. Levin
#57630
Overall Influence
1924 - 1992 (68 years)
Harvey Joshua Levin was an American economist. He was university research professor in the Department of Economics at Hofstra University , Augustus B. Weller Professor of Economics at Hofstra , and founder and director of its Public Policy Workshop . He had previously served as professor at Columbia University. He was also a senior research associate at the Center for Policy Research.
Go to Profile#2471
David Stuckler
#114805
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
#2472
John H. Makin
#75506
Overall Influence
1943 - 2015 (72 years)
John Holmes Makin was an American economist and resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. He was a consultant to the U.S. Treasury Department, the Congressional Budget Office, the International Monetary Fund, and the Bank of Japan. He specialized in international finance and financial markets, with special emphasis on both Japanese and European economies. Makin reported on the U.S. economy, writing on topics related to monetary policy, tax and budget issues, in monthly essays entitled "Economic Outlook", for the American Enterprise Institute . He was a principal at Caxton Associa...
Go to Profile#2473
Riccardo Rebonato
#28093
Overall Influence
Riccardo Rebonato is Professor of Finance at EDHEC Business School and EDHEC-Risk Institute, Scientific Director of the EDHEC Risk Climate Impact Institute , and author of journal articles and books on Mathematical Finance, covering derivatives pricing, risk management, asset allocation and climate change. Prior to this, he was Global Head of Rates and FX Analytics at PIMCO.
Go to Profile#2474
Joseph Haslag
#86011
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (63 years)
Joseph Haslag is the Kenneth Lay Chair in Economics for the department of economics at University of Missouri in Columbia, Missouri. In addition, he is the executive vice president of the Show-Me Institute, a free market research institute based in St. Louis, Missouri. He also is executive director of the Economic & Policy Analysis Research Center in Missouri, which prepares forecasts and analyses used by the Missouri General Assembly and administrative units of state government. He holds a bachelor's degree from the University of Missouri, and a Ph.D. in economics from Southern Methodist Un...
Go to Profile#2475
Jushan Bai
#112121
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (24 years)
Jushan Bai is a Chinese American economist. He is a professor of economics at Columbia University. Biography Bai received his B.A. from Nankai University in 1985, M.A. from Pennsylvania State University in 1988, and Ph.D. from University of California, Berkeley in 1992. He taught at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston College, and New York University before joining the Columbia faculty in 2008.
Go to Profile#2476
Abhinay Muthoo
#48492
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (61 years)
Abhinay Muthoo is an economist specializing in negotiations, game theory and public policy. Abhinay has 37 years of teaching and research experience, across several universities including Bristol, Cambridge, Essex, Warwick and the LSE. He has been the Head of the Departments of Economics at Essex and at Warwick, and the Dean of Warwick in London.
Go to Profile#2477
Eitan Berglas
#100454
Overall Influence
1934 - 1992 (58 years)
Eitan Berglas was an Israeli economist and banker. He was chairman of Bank Hapoalim from 1985 to 1992. Born in Tel Aviv, Berglas attended the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and then earned a master's and doctorate in economics from the University of Chicago.
Go to Profile#2478
Bernard Yeung
#75187
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
Bernard Yin Yeung is a Hong Kong-born American economist and academic. He was the dean of the NUS Business School from June 2008 to May 2019, where he is also the Stephen Riady Distinguished Professor.
Go to Profile#2479
AnnMari Jansson
#45389
Overall Influence
1934 - 2007 (73 years)
Eva AnnMari Jansson née Olausson was a Swedish scientist who specialized in systems ecology. She is remembered for studying the interaction between ecology and economics, contributing to early research into ecological economics. Together with her husband , she undertook research at the Askö Laboratory into the fauna of the Baltic Sea, especially in the Cladophora Belt. Increasingly, under the influence of the American researcher Howard T. Odum, she turned her attention to ecology, examining the interaction between different species and the environment. In 1988, she helped to establish the Int...
Go to Profile#2480
André Masson
#50576
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
André Masson is a French economist. His positions include director of research at CNRS and director of studies at School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences.
Go to Profile#2481
Shigeto Tsuru
#76259
Overall Influence
1912 - 2006 (94 years)
was a prominent Japanese politician and economist. He was widely honored for his scholarship, including the Presidency of the International Economic Association. He received several honorary degrees, including one of two that were ever given to a Japanese citizen by Harvard University.
Go to Profile#2482
H. Scott Bierman
#79729
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Harold Scott Bierman is an economist, author, and President of Beloit College in Beloit, Wisconsin. Bierman graduated from Bates College in Maine in 1977 with a B.A. in mathematics and economics and then received a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Virginia. While serving as a professor at Carleton College in Minnesota for 27 years, he also served as academic dean, chair of the economics department, and faculty president. Bierman has authored several books and written extensively on a wide range of topics, particularly Game Theory, public sector, experimental economics and industrial organization.
Go to Profile#2483
Nikolay Veduta
#82840
Overall Influence
1913 - 1998 (85 years)
Nikolay Ivanovich Veduta was a Soviet Belarusian cybernetic economist, macroeconomist, mechanical engineer and Marxist, Doctor of Economic Sciences , Full Professor , Corresponding Member of the NASB . He is the founder of the Scientific School of Strategic Planning. Author of over 100 scientific papers, including 5 monographs.
Go to Profile#2484
Darius Lakdawalla
#72848
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (50 years)
Darius Lakdawalla is an economist. He is the Quintiles Chair in Pharmaceutical Development and Regulatory Innovation at the School of Pharmacy at the Leonard D. Schaeffer Center for Health Policy and Economics at the University of Southern California and co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer of Precision Health Economics, a health care consulting firm. Dr. Lakdawalla also serves as the Executive Director of the "Innovation and Value Initiative" , a multi-stakeholder scientific initiative that aims to improve the way value is measured and rewarded in the healthcare marketplace.
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Peter Arcidiacono
#34693
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (54 years)
Peter Arcidiacono is an American economist and econometrician. He received his PhD from Wisconsin in 1999 and has taught at Duke University ever since. He became a fellow of the Econometric Society in 2018.
Go to Profile#2486
Andrew Caplin
#94528
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (68 years)
Andrew S. Caplin is a British economist, now living in the United States, where he received his Ph.D. from Yale University in 1983. He is a professor of economics at New York University, co-director of the Center for Experimental Social Science, and Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. Caplin's research focuses on six areas: . economics and psychology indivisibility and economic outcome, life cycle consumption and portfolio choice, real estate finance, and individual differences and outcomes in economics and policies.
Go to Profile#2487
Marco Pagano
#115448
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (68 years)
#2488
Charles T. Clotfelter
#81878
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (77 years)
Charles T. Clotfelter is an economist and the Z. Smith Reynolds Professor of Public Policy Studies and Professor of Economics and Law at the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, where he has taught since 1979. He is also director of the Center for the Study of Philanthropy and Voluntarism at Duke and is a research associate for the National Bureau of Economic Research. His primary research interests include the economics of education, the nonprofit sector, tax policy and public finance.
Go to Profile#2489
Paul Dolan
#115462
Overall Influence
#2490
Geraint Johnes
#90571
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (66 years)
Geraint Johnes FLSW is Professor of Economics at Lancaster University Management School. He was previously Lecturer, Senior Lecturer and Reader in Economics at Lancaster, and has spent periods as a visitor to institutions in the USA and Australia . He has served as honorary visiting professor at Beijing Normal University, and is an associate fellow of SKOPE at Oxford University and Cardiff University and of the Robert Owen Centre for Educational Change at the University of Glasgow. From 2014 to 2015, he was Director of the Work Foundation. He frequently provides media commentary on labour mar...
Go to Profile#2491
Robert G. Chambers
#115610
Overall Influence
#2492
Harm Bart
#54846
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (82 years)
Harm Bart is a Dutch mathematician, economist, and Professor of Mathematics at the Erasmus University Rotterdam, particularly known for his work on "factorization problems for matrix and operator functions."
Go to Profile#2493
Jikun Huang
#115950
Overall Influence
#2494
Julian Morris
#37329
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (24 years)
Julian Morris was formerly a Research Fellow and subsequently Director of the Environment and Technology Programme of the Institute of Economic Affairs. He is also a visiting professor of Economics at the University of Buckingham. Recently, he became co-editor with Indur M. Goklany of the Electronic Journal of Sustainable Development]. Morris serves on the editorial advisory board of the academic journal, Energy & Environment.
Go to Profile#2495
Lawrence Lau
#66879
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (80 years)
Lawrence Lau Juen-yee, GBS, JP is a Hong Kong economist and the former Vice-Chancellor of the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He was a non-official member of the Executive Council of Hong Kong from 2009 to 2012. Before joining CUHK he was an economics professor at Stanford University.
Go to Profile#2496
Karl Ove Moene
#108304
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (75 years)
Karl Ove Moene is a Norwegian economist. A professor at the University of Oslo, he has published extensively in scientific journals, as well as regularly contributing to public debate on economic issues.
Go to Profile#2497
Norton Dodge
#65930
Overall Influence
1927 - 2011 (84 years)
Norton Townshend Dodge was an American economist and educator who amassed one of the largest collections of Soviet-era art outside the Soviet Union. Education and teaching Dodge was a native Oklahoman—named for his great-grandfather, Norton Strange Townshend—and a graduate of Deep Springs College. Dodge first traveled to the USSR in 1955, ostensibly to study tractors as part of his research for a PhD from Harvard University. He completed his doctorate in 1960, with the thesis Trends in Labor Productivity in the Soviet Tractor Industry: a Case Study in Industrial Development. Johns Hopkins Un...
Go to Profile#2498
Narayana Kocherlakota
#106754
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (61 years)
Narayana Rao Kocherlakota is an American economist and the Lionel W. McKenzie Professor of Economics at the University of Rochester. Previously, he served as the 12th president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis until December 31, 2015. Appointed in 2009, he joined the Federal Open Markets Committee in 2011. In 2012, he was named one of the top 100 Global Thinkers by Foreign Policy magazine.
Go to Profile#2499
Mark Selden
#25637
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (86 years)
Mark Selden is a coordinator of the open-access journal The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, a senior research associate in the East Asia Program at Cornell University, and Bartle Professor of History and Sociology at Binghamton University. He graduated from Amherst College with a major in American Studies and completed a Ph.D. at Yale University in modern Chinese history. He was a founding member of the Committee of Concerned Asian Scholars in the 1960s and for more than thirty years served on the board of editors of The Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars . He is also the editor of book series at Rowman & Littlefield, Routledge, and M.E.
Go to Profile#2500
Conrad J. Wethmar
#30199
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (81 years)
Conrad Johannes Wethmar is a systematic theologian, reformed theologian and emeritus professor at the University of Pretoria in South Africa. He is guest editor of Verbum et Ecclesia. Biography He was born in Florida, Gauteng, west of Johannesburg, South Africa. He finished B.A. at the Stellenbosch University in 1964, received B.A. in Greek in 1966, B.A. in philosophy in 1968, B.Th. in 1968, M.A. in 1969, and Licentiate in Theology in 1969. Studying at Stellenbosch University he was influenced by Johan Heyns. In order to study Systematic Theology, he went to Netherlands in 1970 and received Doctoraal Examen Theologie in 1972 and Th.
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