Search People Result | Academic Influence

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).

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Person Name

School

Gender

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Discipline

Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential people in Economics,

#3801

William R. Eadington

#138310

Overall Influence

1946 - 2013 (67 years)

William R. Eadington was an American economist and the founder of Gambling Studies. He served as the Philip J. Satre chair in Gaming Studies in the Department of Economics and the director of the Institute for the Study of Gambling and Commercial Gaming at the University of Nevada, Reno.

#3802

Timothy Light

#36560

Overall Influence

1938 - Present (88 years)

Timothy Light is an American sinologist who took a Chinese name "黎天睦" . He was the fourteenth president of Middlebury College, 1990–1991. A native of Kalamazoo, Michigan, Light is a scholar in East Asian languages and literature. He served as provost of Kalamazoo College prior to his time at Middlebury, and later became a professor of religion and provost at Western Michigan University.

#3803

Elshan Hajizadeh

Elshan Hajizadeh

#101975

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (65 years)

Elshan Mahmud oglu Hajizadeh is an Azerbaijani professor, doctor of economic sciences Academician of International Academy of Sciences, Academician of International Academy of Management, an Academician of International Transport Academy, foreign Member of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences, Member of the International Union of Economists.

#3804

Joan Costa-i-Font

#122719

Overall Influence

1974 - Present (52 years)

Joan Costa-i-Font is a Spanish-born British economist, specialised in Health economics. He has made important contributions to the behavioral economics and the political economy of health and health care. His work examines the origins and economic consequences of health and economic disadvantage, especially at old age.

#3805

Christoph Lütge

#53973

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (57 years)

Christoph Lütge is a German philosopher and economist notable for his work on business ethics, AI ethics, experimental ethics and political philosophy. He is full professor of business ethics at the Technical University of Munich and director of its Institute for Ethics in Artificial Intelligence.

#3806

Chung Un-chan

#91426

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (80 years)

Chung Un-chan is a South Korean politician who was the Prime Minister of South Korea . He was a professor of Seoul National University from 1978 to 2009, serving as the president of the university from July 2002 to July 2006 until he was designated to the Prime Minister. He is the current commissioner of the Korea Baseball Organization.

#3807

Gisela Mashayekhi-Beer

#99948

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Gisela Mashayekhi-Beer is an Austrian flautist and professor at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna as well as lecturer at the . Life Mashayekhi-Beer was born in Passau. She studied from 1983 at the Mozarteum University Salzburg with Helmut Zangerle, who was the solo flautist of the Mozarteum Orchestra Salzburg. During her time in Salzburg, she also took part in the master classes of the Summer school with Peter-Lukas Graf.

#3808

Lisa M. Lynch

#121110

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (62 years)

Lisa M. Lynch is an American economist working as Maurice B. Hexter Professor of Social and Economic Policy at Brandeis University’s Heller School for Social Policy and Management and Director of the Institute for Economic and Racial Equity. She was previously Provost and Interim President of Brandeis University and Dean of the Heller School, a faculty member at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Ohio State University, and University of Bristol, and a co-editor of the Journal of Labor Economics. She is a past chief economist of the United States Department of Labor, chair of the board of d...

#3809

Heather Joshi

#89691

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (80 years)

Heather Evelyn Joshi, is a British academic, economist, and demographer. She is Emeritus Professor of Economic and Developmental Demography at the University of London. She was Director of the Centre for Longitudinal Studies from 2003 to 2010.

#3810

Alfred E. Osborne

#108715

Overall Influence

Alfred E. Osborne Jr is an American economist who is senior associate dean, Professor of Global Economics, Management and Entrepreneurship, and founder and faculty director of The Harold and Pauline Price Center for Entrepreneurial Studies at UCLA Anderson School of Management. He is also chair of the Board of Trustees of Fidelity Charitable, and is a former president of the National Economic Association.

#3811

Mike Young

#103377

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (74 years)

Michael "Mike" Denis Young is an Australian economist and water policy expert. He is best known for his work informing the management of the water resources of the Murray-Darling Basin. In 2006 he was listed by The Canberra Times as one of the ten most influential people in water policy reform. In 2009 Young became the inaugural director of the Environment Institute at the University of Adelaide. He holds a Research Chair in Water Economics and Management there and has been a member of the Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists since 2002. In 2013-14, Young held the Gough Whitlam and Malcolm...

#3812

Piotr Dominiak

#124705

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (78 years)

Piotr Jan Dominiak is a Polish economist, full professor of Gdańsk University of Technology. Vice-rector since 2016. Career Piotr Dominiak graduated in Economy at the University of Warsaw , where he also obtained his doctorate and habilitation . He received the title of Professor in 2005. He has been working at Gdańsk University of Technology since 1971. 1991-1993 director of the Institute of Economic Sciences and Humanities at Gdańsk University of Technology . Dean of the Faculty of Management and Economics at GUT 1993-1999 and 2005–2012, Head of the Department of Economic Sciences at GUT 1999-2000 and 2014–2016.

#3813

Susan St John

#140583

Overall Influence

Susan Margaret St John is an economist from New Zealand. She is a lecturer at the University of Auckland and spokesperson for the Child Poverty Action Group. St John graduated with a Master of Arts in Economics from the University of Auckland in 1979. She has been a member of the university's teaching staff since 1981, initially in economics, and since 2012 in public policy. Her research has focused on the Accident Compensation Corporation, public sector and retirement policy. In 1994 she became a founding member of the Child Poverty Action Group, and has edited and authored a large number of...

#3814

Prue Hyman

#121746

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (83 years)

Prudence Janet Hyman is a New Zealand anti-trans activist and former cricketer. She was associate professor of economics and gender and women's studies at Victoria University of Wellington until controversial restructuring between 2008 and 2010 abolished Gender and Women's Studies. During the 2023 New Zealand general election, Hyman stood as a candidate for the Women's Rights Party's.

#3815

Giacomo Calzolari

#154304

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (57 years)

Giacomo Calzolari is an economist and Professor of Economics at the European University Institute. His research focuses on competition policy, artificial intelligence, economics of regulation, industrial organization, banking regulation and supervision and the economics of incentives.

#3816

Franz Gehrels

#162407

Overall Influence

1922 - 2018 (96 years)

Franz Gehrels was a German-American economist and university teacher. In his scientific work he devoted himself in particular to the further development of the theory of international trade relations. In the 1970s he became an internationally recognized pioneer of advanced theory of international trade, among others by providing cutting-edge research on the optimal structure of trade and capital taxes.

#3817

Raghbendra Jha

#166980

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

Raghbendra Jha was an Indian economist and an academic who was a professor emeritus in the Arndt-Corden Department of Economics at the Crawford School of Public Policy at Australian National University. Jha's research focused on public economics, macroeconomics, development economics, and the economy of India. He has authored and edited numerous books, including Macroeconomics for Developing Countries, Modern Public Economics, Facets of India’s Economy and Her Society, Environmental Sustainability: A Consumption Approach, and Macroeconomics for Development: Prognosis and Prospects and several...

#3818

Yung-Ping Chen

#120201

Overall Influence

1930 - 2022 (92 years)

Yung-Ping Chen was an American economist and gerontologist of Chinese origin. He pioneered the concept of home equity conversion in the United States and developed innovative approaches to the funding of Social Security benefits and long-term care. His scholarship contributed to a better understanding of the economic, political, and social implications and challenges created by the "mass aging" phenomenon—the ongoing and unprecedented shift to an increasingly elder-populated society.

#3819

David McClain

#75685

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (80 years)

David McClain is president emeritus of the University of Hawai‘i and a professor at the Shidler College of Business at the University of Hawai‘i's Mānoa campus. McClain led the 10-campus University of Hawai‘i System from 2004-2009 and served as vice president of academic affairs from 2003-2004. He also served as a dean of the UH Manoa College of Business from 2000-2003. He has been a tenured member of the UH Mānoa faculty since 1991.

#3820

Fred Gruen

#99965

Overall Influence

1921 - 1997 (76 years)

Fred Henry George Gruen was an Australian economist, an early and influential voice in favour of free trade and tariff reductions in the 1960s and 1970s. Early life and education Grün was born in Vienna, Austria, and known as 'Heinzie' during his boyhood. He left Vienna in 1936 on the £200 legacy of an uncle to receive an English education at Herne Bay College. It was a good time for someone of Jewish descent to be leaving Austria. His father Willy, a heavy smoker, died of lung cancer while he was at school in England and his mother Marianne was engulfed in The Holocaust being taken first t...

#3821

Matthew Shum

#144050

Overall Influence

Matthew Shou-Chung Shum is an American economist. He is the William D. Hacker Professor of Economics at the California Institute of Technology since 2023. He is married and has four children. Early life Shum was born on February 21, 1970, in Houston, Texas.

#3822

Michael Stoll

#64820

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Michael A. Stoll is an American economist and professor of public policy in the Luskin School of Public Affairs at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is also a fellow at the American Institutes for Research, the Brookings Institution, the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and the National Poverty Center at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He is known for his research on incarceration in the United States, including the 2013 book Why Are So Many Americans in Prison?, co-authored with Steven Raphael. The book argues, among other things, th...

#3823

Désirée H. Ladwig

#84334

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (62 years)

Désirée H. Ladwig is a German economist. Early life Désirée Ladwig attended high school Harksheide in Norderstedt . She studied Business Administration and Economics at the University of Hamburg and graduated in Business Administration and Economics . From 1990 to 1995 Désirée Ladwig was scientific assistant at the Institute of Human Resources and International Management at the Helmut Schmidt University Hamburg. In 1995 she obtained her doctorate with a dissertation called "research and development cooperation in small and medium-sized enterprises - an empirical and conceptual contribution ...

#3824

Leung Chun-ying

#29726

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

Leung Chun-ying , also known as CY Leung, is a Chinese politician from Hong Kong and a chartered surveyor, who has served as vice-chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference since March 2017. He was previously the third Chief Executive of Hong Kong between 2012 and 2017.

#3825

Jan Hoogervorst

#71486

Overall Influence

Johannes Adrianus Petrus Hoogervorst is a Dutch organizational theorist, business executive, management consultant, and Professor Enterprise Governance and Enterprise Engineering at the University of Antwerp, known for his work in the field of enterprise engineering.

#3826

Edwin Leuven

#168938

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (56 years)

Edwin Leuven is a Dutch economist and Professor of Economics at the University of Oslo. He is one of the leading European education economists, with a focus on the economics of training. Biography A native of the Netherlands, Edwin Leuven obtained a M.A. in econometrics and a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Amsterdam in 1994 and 2001, respectively. During his studies, Leuven worked as consultant for the OECD, where he performed research on e.g. the financing of lifelong learning. After his Ph.D., Leuven continued working at the University of Amsterdam, first as associate professor and later as associate professor .

#3827

Leon Petrosyan

#67227

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (86 years)

Leon Petrosjan is a professor of Applied Mathematics and the Head of the Department of Mathematical Game theory and Statistical Decision Theory at the St. Petersburg University, Russia. Fields of research The research interests of Leon Petrosjan lie mostly in the fields of operations research, game theory, differential games, and control theory.

#3828

Rolph van der Hoeven

#138363

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (78 years)

Rolph Eric van der Hoeven is emeritus professor on employment and development economics at the International Institute of Social Studies in The Hague and was appointed in 2009 as a member of the Committee on Development Cooperation of the International Advisory Council to the Dutch Government. Dr. van der Hoeven is a member of the Board of Trustees of the KNCV Tuberculosis Fund.

#3829

McKinley Blackburn

#169468

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (66 years)

McKinley L. Blackburn is a U.S.-American economist and currently the James A. Morris Professor of Economics at the University of South Carolina. His research interests include labour economics, econometrics, and economic demography.

#3830

Matjaž Mulej

#156858

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (85 years)

Matjaž Mulej is a Slovenian academic. Personal life He has a B.A. in economic analysis, a M.A. in Development Economics, as well as Doctorates in Economics/Systems Theory, and in Management/Innovation Management.

#3831

Khin Maung Kyi

#84804

Overall Influence

1926 - 2013 (87 years)

Khin Maung Kyi was a Burmese economist and scholar. He also served as a government consultant to several of Burma's ministries. Early life and education Khin Maung Kyi was born in Phyu, a small town in central Burma. He earned a bachelor's degree in commerce at the University of Rangoon. Thereafter, he received a scholarship to attend Harvard University, where he earned a master's degree in business administration. He went on to earn a doctorate in management at Cornell University.

#3832

Eva Ferreira

#99835

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (63 years)

María Eva Ferreira García is the Rector of the University of the Basque Country . She graduated from the University of the Basque Country with a degree in Mathematics. She obtained a master's degree in Probability and Statistics from the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences and a PhD in Economics from the University of the Basque Country. Since 2005, she has held a full professorship in Applied Economics. On 25 January 2021, she was named Rector of the University of the Basque Country .

#3833

Gillian Leng

#44353

Overall Influence

Gillian Catherine Leng, Lady Cosford CBE is a British health administrator, academic, visiting professor at King's College London and the former Chief Executive of the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence , where she was responsible for several programmes and guidelines including the guidelines on COVID-19. In 2023 she was elected president-elect of the Royal Society of Medicine .

#3834

Gary Smith

#54563

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (81 years)

Gary Nance Smith is the Fletcher Jones Professor of Economics at Pomona College. His research on financial markets statistical reasoning, and artificial intelligence, often involves stock market anomalies, statistical fallacies, and the misuse of data have been widely cited.

#3835

Kosali Simon

#105723

Overall Influence

Kosali Ilayperuma Simon is the Herman B Wells Endowed Professor in health economics at School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University which she joined in 2010. Academic career She graduated with a bachelor's in economics and German Literature from Hamilton College in 1994. After a year studying in Europe as a Watson Fellow, she obtained a doctorate degree in economics from University of Maryland, College Park in 1999.

#3836

Donald R. Davis

#154471

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (70 years)

Donald R. Davis is an American economist. He is the Ragnar Nurkse Professor of Economics at Columbia University. Biography Davis received his B.A. from the University of California, Berkeley and Ph.D. from Columbia University. He taught at Harvard University before joining Columbia's faculty in 1999, and was appointed chair of the economics department in 2001.

#3837

René Cabral Torres

#162090

Overall Influence

René Cabral Torres is a Mexican economist who works as a professor and researcher with the Escuela de Graduados en Administración Pública y Políticas Públicas , of the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Studies . His work has been recognized by the Mexican government with Level II membership in the Sistema Nacional de Investigadores.

#3838

Eleanor Hadley

#48926

Overall Influence

1916 - 2007 (91 years)

Eleanor Martha Hadley was an American economist and policymaker. Because of her relatively rare research specialization in Japanese economics, during World War II Hadley was recruited first into OSS and then the State Department to support the United States' war effort while she was a doctoral candidate in economics at Radcliffe College. Hadley helped draft the United States' plans for dissolving zaibatsu business conglomerates as part of a planned effort to democratize Japan after the war, and she participated in implementing this economic deconcentration program when the postwar occupation...

#3839

Richard Scotton

#118002

Overall Influence

1930 - 2019 (89 years)

Richard "Dick" Bailey Scotton AO was an Australian health economist, best known as one of the original key policy advisers who designed the Australian Medibank program—Australia's first and current system of publicly funded universal health care, now known as Medicare.

#3840

V. Bhaskar

#165959

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (57 years)

Venkataraman Bhaskar is an Indian economist and Sue Killam Professor of Economics at the University of Texas at Austin. Career Bhaskar received his BA from Madras University and his MA from Jawaharlal Nehru University and completed his doctoral studies at Oxford University.

#3841

Liran Einav

#172088

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (56 years)

Liran Einav is an American–Israeli economist and currently professor of economics at Stanford University. His research focuses on industrial organization, health and regulation. Early life and education From 1988 to 1996, Einav served as a captain in the intelligence unit of the Israeli Defense Forces.

#3842

Donna Ginther

#98480

Overall Influence

Donna Ginther is a Roy A. Roberts and Regents Distinguished Professor of economics and the director of the Institute for Policy and Social Research at the University of Kansas. She is also a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. She is known for her expertise on scientific labor markets, wage inequality, and gender differences in employment outcomes.

#3843

Irving A. Spaulding

#146471

Overall Influence

1917 - 2010 (93 years)

Irving Andrus Spaulding was an American sociologist and pioneering researcher in natural resource economics, spending most of his professional career at the University of Rhode Island in Kingston. He was best known for his research to characterize economic behavior among recreational fishers, economics of coastal communities, and consumer behavior.

#3844

Sang Bin Lee

#110344

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (74 years)

#3845

Thierry Mayer

#165653

Overall Influence

1971 - Present (55 years)

Thierry Mayer is a French economist and Professor of Economics at Sciences Po. He belongs to the most frequently-cited economists in the field of international trade. In 2006, Mayer and Etienne Wasmer were awarded the Best Young Economist of France Award by Cercle des économistes and Le Monde.

#3846

Evgeny Vinokurov

Evgeny Vinokurov

#62886

Overall Influence

1975 - Present (51 years)

Vinokurov, Evgeny is a Russian economist, currently serving as the Chief Economist at Eurasian Development Bank. His research is in macro- and microeconomics, regional integration, global financial and economic architecture and international organizations.

#3847

José Antonio Alonso Rodríguez

#171872

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

José Antonio Alonso Rodríguez is a Spanish economist and a professor at Complutense University of Madrid. In addition to his academic work, he has played a number of policy roles. He is a member of the United Nations Committee for Development Policy and an expert of the Spanish Council for Development Cooperation. He has been an adjunct professor at Columbia University and the Economic Development Director of the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation.

#3848

Eva Lang

#118129

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (79 years)

Eva Lang is a German economist. Before her retirement, she was full professor at Bundeswehr University Munich for economic policy in special consideration of political economy. Vita Lang studied economics and political science and obtained her doctorate and habilitation on the topics of infrastructure, business cycle theory and public finance. After an assistantship at University of Würzburg, she was appointed to a professorship at Fachhochschule Westküste in Heide, Germany. Starting in 1996, she was professor at Bundeswehr University Munich. She is founder member and since 2014 anew presiden...

#3849

Gareth Myles

#173469

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (65 years)

Gareth Myles is a British academic economist. He was born in Manchester and educated at the University of Warwick, the London School of Economics and Nuffield College, Oxford.

#3850

Joanna M. Shepherd

#78313

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (26 years)

Joanna Mehlhop Shepherd-Bailey is an American legal scholar and economist. Shepherd earned a Bachelor of Business Administration at Baylor University in 1997, and completed a juris doctor degree in law and a PhD in economics at Emory University in 2002. She began teaching at Clemson University, returning to Emory as a faculty member in 2005. A 2016 analysis by Gregory Sisk considered Shepherd a highly cited legal scholar. In December 2019, Shepherd was named the Thomas Simmons Professor of Law.

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