Most Influential Economists
Name↕ | Nationality↕ | Born↕ | Died↕ | School↕ | Key Idea↕ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Adam Smith | Scottish | 1,723 | 1,790 | Classical | The Wealth of Nations (1776), invisible hand, division of labor |
Karl Marx | German | 1,818 | 1,883 | Marxist | Das Kapital, labor theory of value, critique of capitalism |
John Maynard Keynes | British | 1,883 | 1,946 | Keynesian | General Theory (1936), government spending in recessions |
Friedrich Hayek | Austrian-British | 1,899 | 1,992 | Austrian | The Road to Serfdom, price signals, Nobel 1974 |
Milton Friedman | American | 1,912 | 2,006 | Chicago / Monetarist | Monetarism, free markets, Capitalism and Freedom, Nobel 1976 |
David Ricardo | British | 1,772 | 1,823 | Classical | Comparative advantage, theory of rent |
Thomas Malthus | British | 1,766 | 1,834 | Classical | Population grows geometrically while food grows arithmetically |
Alfred Marshall | British | 1,842 | 1,924 | Neoclassical | Principles of Economics (1890), supply and demand scissors |
Joseph Schumpeter | Austrian-American | 1,883 | 1,950 | Austrian / Evolutionary | Creative destruction, entrepreneurship as engine of growth |
Paul Samuelson | American | 1,915 | 2,009 | Neo-Keynesian | First American Nobel in economics (1970), dominant textbook for decades |
John Kenneth Galbraith | Canadian-American | 1,908 | 2,006 | Institutionalist | The Affluent Society, countervailing power |
Amartya Sen | Indian | 1,933 | 0 | Welfare economics | Development as Freedom, capability approach, Nobel 1998 |
Gary Becker | American | 1,930 | 2,014 | Chicago | Human capital, economics of discrimination, Nobel 1992 |
Paul Krugman | American | 1,953 | 0 | Neo-Keynesian | New trade theory, economic geography, Nobel 2008, NYT columnist |
Thomas Piketty | French | 1,971 | 0 | Inequality | Capital in the Twenty-First Century (2013), r > g |
Joseph Stiglitz | American | 1,943 | 0 | Neo-Keynesian | Information asymmetry, Nobel 2001, globalization critic |
Irving Fisher | American | 1,867 | 1,947 | Neoclassical / Monetary | Quantity theory of money, debt deflation theory |
Elinor Ostrom | American | 1,933 | 2,012 | Institutional | Governing the Commons, first woman Nobel economics 2009 |
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