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,
#3051
Christian Catalini
#40451
Overall Influence
Christian Catalini is a co-creator of Diem , the Chief Economist of the Diem Association, and the Theodore T. Miller Professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management. Catalini is known for his research on the economics of cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology, and for the economical design of Diem. His past research focused on the economics of crowdfunding, early stage capital formation, the economics of science and technology.
Go to Profile#3052
György Farkas
#140336
Overall Influence
#3053
Yiu Kuen. Tse
#140426
Overall Influence
#3054
Marc Goergen
#61575
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Marc Goergen, originally from Luxembourg, is a professor of finance at IE Business School in Madrid. He specialises in corporate governance and corporate finance. Marc Goergen is the author of academic articles, book chapters and several books on corporate governance.
Go to Profile#3055
Marie-Anne Frison-Roche
#70759
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Marie-Anne Frison-Roche is a professor of Economic Law at the Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris. She is a specialist in Regulatory Law, whose doctrine she founded in France. Studies Her studies notably consisted of a Bachelor's degree in Philosophy at the Université de la Sorbonne in 1987, a Master of Advanced Studies in Private Law at Université Pantheon Sorbonne in 1984, a Master of Advanced Studies in Procedural Law at Panthéon-Assas University in 1983, and a State Doctorate in Private Law, which she obtained after defending a thesis entitled Generalities on the Adversarial Principle at Panthéon-Assas University in 1988.
Go to Profile#3056
Don Paarlberg
#96064
Overall Influence
1911 - 2006 (95 years)
Donald Paarlberg was a farmer, author, professor of agricultural economics, and a coordinator of the Food for Peace program. Education Paarlberg was born in Oak Glen, Illinois. He received his bachelor of science degree from Purdue University in 1940, his master of science degree from Cornell University in 1942, and his Ph.D. from Cornell University in 1947. He was a professor of agricultural economics at Purdue University from 1946-1952, and from 1961-1969.
Go to Profile#3057
William Ratliff
#19357
Overall Influence
1937 - 2014 (77 years)
William Ratliff was a research fellow and curator of Americas Collection at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, specializing in Latin America, China and U.S. foreign policy. He was also a research fellow of the Independent Institute and wrote on the economic and political development in East/Southeast Asia and Latin America. For over 20 years he was the editor for the Yearbook on International Communist Affairs and the Journal of Interamerican Studies. He testified before the U.S. Congress on his work monitoring elections around Latin America.
Go to Profile#3058
Keith Hylton
#78906
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Keith N. Hylton is an American law professor, focusing in antitrust law, economics & law, employment law, intellectual property and torts, currently the William Fairfield Warren Distinguished Professor of Boston University at Boston University. A prolific scholar widely recognized for his work across a broad spectrum of topics in law and economics, Hylton has published five books and more than 100 articles in numerous law and economics journals. Currently, he serves as President of the American Law and Economics Association.
Go to Profile#3059
Georgy Toloraya
#97794
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Georgy Toloraya , is a Russian diplomat, Expert, Panel of Experts, UN Security Council Committee established pursuant to SC Resolution 1718 , Executive Director of Russian National Committee on BRICS research, Honorary Director, Center of Russian Strategy in Asia, Institute of Economics Russian Academy of Sciences, Visiting professor at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations .
Go to Profile#3060
Kim Border
#140709
Overall Influence
1952 - 2020 (68 years)
Kim C. Border was an American behavioral economist and professor of economics at the California Institute of Technology. Career Border received a bachelor's degree in economics from Caltech in 1974. Shortly after completing his Ph.D. in economics at the University of Minnesota in 1979, he returned to Caltech as a faculty member, where he remained for over forty years.
Go to Profile#3061
Rajesh Chandra
#22483
Overall Influence
Rajesh Chandra was a Fijian academic. In February 2005 he was appointed the first Vice-Chancellor of the newly founded University of Fiji. He served as Vice-Chancellor and President of The University of the South Pacific ending his term in December 2018.
Go to Profile#3062
George Andrew Karolyi
#140800
Overall Influence
#3063
Yu In-chon
#14875
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Yu In-chon is a South Korean actor and the current Minister of Culture, Sports and Tourism under president Yoon Suk Yeol, the position which he previously held under president Lee Myung-bak. He was formerly the Special Presidential Adviser on Culture and Sports.
Go to Profile#3064
Rosamond L. Naylor
#106686
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Rosamond Lee Naylor is an American economist focused on global food security and sustainable agriculture. She is the William Wrigley Professor of the Stanford University School of Earth System Science, and the founding Director of the Center on Food Security and the Environment at Stanford University. Her academic career has centered on environmental science and policy related to global food systems and food security. She is the President of the Board of Directors of the Aspen Global Change Institute, a Fellow of the Ecological Society of America, and a member of the Forest Protection Adviso...
Go to Profile#3065
Leslie Hannah
#72899
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Leslie Hannah, is a British economic historian and academic, specialising in business history. During his academic career, he was most closely associated with the London School of Economics. His work focuses on the development of corporations, pensions and banking.
Go to Profile#3066
Marshall Slemrod
#140926
Overall Influence
#3067
Andrzej Kurnicki
#140937
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Andrzej Kurnicki is a Polish economist. Between 2017 and 2022 Kurnicki served as Polish ambassador to Canada. Kurnicki holds a Ph.D. in economics.
Go to Profile#3068
Eckhard Janeba
#119463
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Eckhard Janeba is a German economist and professor at the University of Mannheim. He is also a member of the Board of Academic Advisors to the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy. Education Janeba studied economics at the University of Kiel and Bonn. He obtained a Diploma degree in 1990 and received his Ph.D. in 1994, both from the University of Bonn.
Go to Profile#3069
John Grahl
#61115
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
John Grahl is a Scottish academic and professor. Life Grahl was brought-up in Burntisland, Fife, and was educated at Kirkcaldy High School between 1957 and 1964. He gained a master's degree in economics from the University of Edinburgh before moving to London where he gained a second masters in economics from Queen Mary, University of London.
Go to Profile#3070
Nathaniel H. Leff
#141161
Overall Influence
#3071
Roberto Perotti
#141162
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
#3072
Atish R. Ghosh
#118750
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Atish Rex Ghosh is an international economist, who is currently the Historian of the International Monetary Fund. His recent work has focused on issues related to the stability of the international monetary system, including exchange rate regimes, external balance dynamics, capital flows and capital controls, monetary and foreign exchange intervention policies, fiscal space and debt sustainability, and international policy coordination. His work on the management of cross-border capital flows, notably the role of capital controls, has played an important role in influencing the IMF's institutional position on the use of capital controls.
Go to Profile#3073
Gerald L. Gordon
#93306
Overall Influence
Gerald L. Gordon is an American economist and author, who is the president and chief executive officer of the Fairfax County Economic Development Authority in Fairfax County, Virginia, a position he has held since late 1983. In 2016, Virginia Business magazine named Gordon one of its "50 most influential Virginians." He was named to the same list in 2013, 2014 and 2015. In 2015, Dr. Gordon was honored by International Economic Development Council with the Jeffrey A. Finkle Organizational Leadership Award for a “lasting commitment to the field of economic development.”
Go to Profile#3074
Donald Lamberton
#101992
Overall Influence
1927 - 2014 (87 years)
Donald McLean Lamberton was an Australian economist. His work focused on information economics. Early life and career Lamberton grew up in New South Wales. Homeschooled until the age of eleven, he went to work at the Bank of New South Wales in May 1942, aged just fourteen years. He earned a degree in economics from the University of Sydney in 1949. He then worked for the Sydney Morning Herald as a financial journalist and the Sydney Stock Exchange in research and statistics.
Go to Profile#3075
Stephen Matteo Miller
#141348
Overall Influence
#3076
Oldrich Alfonso Vasicek
#141365
Overall Influence
#3077
Carliss Y. Baldwin
#141410
Overall Influence
#3078
Suzi Kerr
#115533
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Suzi Clare Kerr is a New Zealand economist. She joined Environmental Defense Fund in 2019 as its chief economist. Biography After completing a BSc at Canterbury University and a PhD at Harvard University, she started Wellington-based non-profit economic and public policy research institute, 'Motu Economic and Public Policy Research'. The New Zealand Emissions Trading Scheme work has been a strong focus.
Go to Profile#3079
Woo Wing Thye
#111743
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Woo Wing Thye is a Malaysian-American economist. He is currently Vice President for Asia of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network; Distinguished Fellow of the Penang Institute in George Town, Malaysia; National Distinguished Fellow in the Thousand Talents Program of China; Changjiang Professor in China; and Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Economics at University of California, Davis. He is also Director of the East Asia Program within the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University and a member of the International Advisory Council at the Center for Social and Eco...
Go to Profile#3080
Theodore E. Simos
#141517
Overall Influence
#3081
Patrick Chovanec
#45359
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
Patrick Robert Chovanec is an American chief strategist at Silvercrest Asset Management, and an adjunct professor at the School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University. A former professor at Tsinghua University's School of Business and Management in Beijing, China, and a former political aide to senior Republican Party leaders in the U.S., he is a frequent commentator on the Chinese and global economies. His blog was named by the Wall Street Journal as one of "The Best Economics Blogs" for 2010. In 2014, Business Insider named him one of "The 102 Finance People You Have To Fo...
Go to Profile#3082
Kathleen M. McGarry
#108757
Overall Influence
Kathleen M. McGarry is a professor of economics at the University of California, Los Angeles and a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research. She is also a co-investigator of the Health and Retirement Survey. From 2007 to 2009, she was Joel Z. and Susan Hyatt ‘72 Professor in the Department of Economics at Dartmouth College. She has served on the Editorial Boards of the American Economic Journal: Public Policy, the American Journal of Health Economics, and the Journal of Pension Economics.
Go to Profile#3083
Panos Mourdoukoutas
#97146
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Panos Mourdoukoutas is an American economist and Professor and Chair of the Department of Economics at LIU Post in New York. He also is a professor at Columbia University where he teaches graduate courses in security analysis and global emerging markets.
Go to Profile#3084
Roberta Capello
#141632
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
#3085
John Bryan Davis
#141675
Overall Influence
#3086
Tahir R. Andrabi
#105199
Overall Influence
Tahir Raza Shah Andrabi is an economist who is the Stedman-Sumner Professor of Economics at Pomona College in Claremont, California. Early life and education Andrabi attended Swarthmore College, receiving a BA in 1984. He then received a doctorate in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1990. His thesis title was "Essays in International Trade and the Debt Crisis"; his supervisor was Paul Krugman. From 1992 to 1993 he was a visiting scholar at MIT and a postdoctoral research associate at the Harvard/MIT Research Training Group in Positive Political Economy.
Go to Profile#3087
Frederick E. Emery
#141680
Overall Influence
#3088
Jerome L. Stein
#141700
Overall Influence
#3089
Ayelet Gneezy
#105812
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Ayelet Gneezy is an associate professor of marketing at the Rady School of Management, UC San Diego. Education and career Gneezy obtained her MBA at the University of Teesside joint with The Hague University of Applied Sciences. She went on to manage the strategic planning department in DataPro Proximity in Israel, before receiving her PhD in marketing at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business in 2007.
Go to Profile#3090
Don Brash
#38915
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Donald Thomas Brash is a former New Zealand politician who was Leader of the Opposition and leader of the New Zealand National Party from October 2003 to November 2006, and leader of the ACT New Zealand party for seven months from April to November 2011.
Go to Profile#3091
Paul Taubman
#132746
Overall Influence
1939 - 1995 (56 years)
Paul James Taubman was an American economist who taught at the University of Pennsylvania. He conducted a prominent twin study on the heritability of income, which was published in 1976. This study has been cited as a pioneering one in the field of genoeconomics. Subsequently, Arthur Goldberger published a paper critiquing Taubman's study, noting that heritability estimates were highly sensitive to assumptions about the degree of overlap between genetic and environmental variables. During the 1970s, Taubman also researched the effect of schooling on individual earnings among World War II vete...
Go to Profile#3092
José Antonio Ocampo
#141818
Overall Influence
#3093
Tullio Jappelli
#141849
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
#3094
Severin Borenstein
#141964
Overall Influence
#3095
Carmen Diana Deere
#68379
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Carmen Diana Deere is an American feminist economist who is an expert on land policy and agrarian reform, rural social movements, and gender in Latin American development. She has conducted extensive research on access to land, economic autonomy of rural women, and property rights in Latin America. Deere's research and work, often carried out with Magdalena León de Leal, have contributed to promoting the changes that have taken place since 1980 in the vast majority of countries in Latin America with respect to the reform of land laws, civil codes, and family matters, as well as the approval o...
Go to Profile#3096
Scott H. Irwin
#142109
Overall Influence
#3097
Shu-Heng Chen
#97929
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Shu-Heng Chen is a Taiwanese economist and currently a professor at the Department of Economics at National Chengchi University. He is also the founder and director of the AI-ECON Research Center at the National Chengchi University.
Go to Profile#3098
Kai Andreas Konrad
#142158
Overall Influence
#3099
Rafał Weron
#142235
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
#3100
Arseniy Yatsenyuk
#29602
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (52 years)
Arseniy Petrovych Yatsenyuk is a Ukrainian politician, economist and lawyer who served as Prime Minister of Ukraine twice – from 27 February 2014 to 27 November 2014 and from 27 November 2014 to 14 April 2016.
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