SI Super Intelligence curated directories

Economics · Curated list

Economists: the 40 most written about

Adam Smith, John Maynard Keynes, John Stuart Mill and 37 more, ranked by how much of the world has written about each one.

Entries
40
Photographed
40
Fetched
2026-09-25
Adam Smith
Adam Smith · Scottish economist and philosopher (1723–1790) · Etching created by Cadell and Davies (1811), John Horsburgh (1828) or R.C. Bell (1872)., Public domain

Economists, ranked

Most written-about first. Each description summarises the economist's Wikipedia article, which its name links to.

  1. Adam Smith 1

    Adam Smith

    Scottish economist and philosopher (1723–1790)

    A Scottish philosopher and economist who pioneered political economy and was a key figure of the Scottish Enlightenment. Called by many the "father of economics" or the "father of capitalism", he is known chiefly for two classic books: An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, published in 1776, and The Theory of Moral Sentiments, from 1759.

    Wikidata · Photo: Etching created by Cadell and Davies (1811), John Horsburgh (1828) or R.C. Bell (1872)., Public domain

  2. John Maynard Keynes 2

    John Maynard Keynes

    British economist (1883–1946)

    John Maynard Keynes, 1st Baron Keynes, an English economist whose writings are held to underlie Keynesian economics and its various offshoots. Trained first as a mathematician, he developed and sharpened earlier work on what causes business cycles.

    Wikidata · Photo: Unknown author, Public domain

  3. John Stuart Mill 3

    John Stuart Mill

    English politician and philosopher (1806–1873)

    An English politician, political economist and philosopher. A model philosopher of liberalism, he has been called "the most influential English-speaking philosopher of the nineteenth century" by the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

    Wikidata · Photo: London Stereoscopic Company, Public domain

  4. Milton Friedman 4

    Milton Friedman

    American economist and statistician (1912–2006)

    An American statistician and economist. His Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, awarded in 1976, recognised research on analysing consumption, on monetary history and theory, and on how complex stabilisation policy is. Together with George Stigler he was one of the Chicago school of economics' intellectual leaders: the neoclassical school linked with the University of Chicago's faculty, which rejected Keynesianism for monetarism and then, in the mid-1970s, turned its attention to new classical macroeconomics.

    Wikidata · Photo: Bachrach Studios, Public domain

  5. Manmohan Singh 5

    Manmohan Singh

    Prime Minister of India from 2004 to 2014

    An Indian statesman, economist, academic and civil servant, prime minister of India from 2004 to 2014. Only Narendra Modi, Indira Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru held the office longer.

    Wikidata · Photo: Prime Minister's Office, GODL-India

  7. Dani Rodrik 7

    Dani Rodrik

    Turkish economist

    A Turkish economist who holds Harvard University's Ford Foundation Professorship of International Political Economy at its John F. Kennedy School of Government. He previously held the Albert O. Hirschman chair in the Social Sciences at Princeton, New Jersey's Institute for Advanced Study.

    Wikidata · Photo: Andrzej Barabasz, CC BY-SA 3.0

  8. Amartya Sen 8

    Amartya Sen

    Indian economist and Nobel laureate (born 1933)

    Amartya Kumar Sen, an Indian philosopher and economist who has taught and worked in the United States and England since 1972.

    Wikidata · Photo: Fronteiras do Pensamento, CC BY-SA 2.0

  9. John Forbes Nash Jr. 9

    John Forbes Nash Jr.

    American mathematician and Nobel Laureate (1928–2015)

    An American mathematician, known and published as John Nash, whose work was fundamental to game theory, to partial differential equations, and to differential and real algebraic geometry. In 1994 he shared the Nobel Prize in Economics with Reinhard Selten and John Harsanyi, who were game theorists like him.

    Wikidata · Photo: Peter Badge / Typos1, CC BY-SA 3.0

  10. Thomas Robert Malthus 10

    Thomas Robert Malthus

    British political economist (1766–1834)

    An English cleric, scholar and economist whose ideas shaped political economy and demography.

    Wikidata · Photo: John Linnell, CC BY 4.0

  11. Romano Prodi 11

    Romano Prodi

    Italian politician (born 1939)

    An Italian politician who led the European Commission as its President from 1999 to 2004, and was twice Italy's Prime Minister, in 1996–1998 and 2006–2008. He is regarded as the founder of Italy's centre-left and as one of the leading figures of the Second Republic.

    Wikidata · Photo: Niccolò Caranti, CC BY-SA 4.0

  12. David Ricardo 12

    David Ricardo

    British economist and politician (1772–1823)

    A British politician and economist, ranked among the most influential classical economists, with the likes of James Mill, Adam Smith and Thomas Malthus.

    Wikidata · Photo: Thomas Phillips, Public domain

  13. Elinor Ostrom 13

    Elinor Ostrom

    American political economist (1933–2012)

    Elinor Claire "Lin" Ostrom, an American political economist and political scientist, whose work was linked with New Institutional Economics and with the revival of political economy. In 2009 she was the first woman to receive the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences; she shared it with Oliver E. Williamson, and it was given for her "analysis of economic governance, especially the commons".

    Wikidata · Photo: Holger Motzkau, CC BY-SA 3.0

  14. Paul Samuelson 14

    Paul Samuelson

    American economist and Nobel Laureate (1915–2009)

    Paul Anthony Samuelson, the first economist from the United States to be awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. Awarding it in 1970, the Swedish Royal Academies said he "has done more than any other contemporary economist to raise the level of scientific analysis in economic theory".

    Wikidata · Photo: Innovation & Business Architectures, Inc., CC BY 1.0

  15. Mario Draghi 15

    Mario Draghi

    Prime Minister of Italy from 2021 to 2022

    An Italian statesman, economist, banker, academic, civil servant and politician who was Italy's prime minister from 13 February 2021 to 22 October 2022. Before that, from 2011 to 2019, he was president of the European Central Bank (ECB).

    Wikidata · Photo: European Parliament, CC BY 2.0

  16. Javier Milei 16

    Javier Milei

    President of Argentina since 2023

    Javier Gerardo Milei, an Argentine economist and politician, president of Argentina since 2023. Before that he sat in the Chamber of Deputies, from 2021 to 2023.

    Wikidata · Photo: Quirinale, Attribution

  17. Paul Krugman 17

    Paul Krugman

    American economist (born 1953)

    Paul Robin Krugman, an American economist who holds a Distinguished Professorship of Economics in New York, at the City University's Graduate Center. From 2000 to 2024 he wrote a column for The New York Times.

    Wikidata · Photo: Prolineserver ( talk ), GFDL 1.2

  18. Mario Monti 18

    Mario Monti

    Italian economist and politician (born 1943)

    An Italian academic, economist and politician who, as Italy's prime minister from 2011 to 2013, headed a technocratic government after the Italian debt crisis.

    Wikidata · Photo: Senato della Repubblica, CC BY 3.0 it

  19. Joseph Stiglitz 19

    Joseph Stiglitz

    American economist and Nobel Laureate (born 1943)

    Joseph Eugene Stiglitz, an American economist of the New Keynesian school, a political activist, a public policy analyst and a professor at Columbia University. His honours include the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, in 2001, and the John Bates Clark Medal, in 1979.

    Wikidata · Photo: Jérémy Barande, CC BY-SA 2.0

  20. Vilfredo Pareto 20

    Vilfredo Pareto

    Italian polymath (1848–1923)

    Vilfredo Federico Damaso Pareto, an Italian polymath whose interests took in economics, sociology, political science, philosophy and civil engineering. He contributed importantly to economics, especially to the study of how income is distributed and of how individuals choose, and was one of the thinkers behind the Lausanne School of economics.

    Wikidata · Photo: Unknown author, Public domain

  21. Emily Greene Balch 21

    Emily Greene Balch

    American economist, academic, and Nobel Laureate

    An American pacifist, sociologist and economist. She joined an academic career at Wellesley College with a lasting concern for social problems such as immigration, child labour and poverty, and with settlement work to help poor immigrants and cut juvenile delinquency.

    Wikidata · Photo: Unknown author, Public domain

  22. Gunnar Myrdal 22

    Gunnar Myrdal

    Swedish economist, sociologist, and Nobel Laureate (1898–1987)

    Karl Gunnar Myrdal, a Swedish sociologist and economist. In 1974 he and Friedrich Hayek were jointly awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for "their pioneering work in the theory of money and economic fluctuations and for their penetrating analysis of the interdependence of economic, social and institutional phenomena."

    Wikidata · Photo: Uppsala-Bild / Upplandsmuseet, Public domain

  23. Ludwig von Mises 23

    Ludwig von Mises

    Austrian–American political economist (1881–1973)

    Ludwig Heinrich von Mises, an Austrian and American philosopher and political economist of the Austrian school. He wrote and lectured widely on what classical liberalism contributes to society, and on the central part consumers play in a market economy.

    Wikidata · Photo: Ludwig von Mises Institute, CC BY-SA 3.0

  24. Daniel Kahneman 24

    Daniel Kahneman

    Israeli-American psychologist and economist (1934–2024)

    An Israeli-American psychologist known above all for work on behavioural economics and on the psychology of decision-making and judgment, for which he and Vernon L. Smith shared the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for 2002. His published empirical findings question the assumption, dominant in modern economic theory, that humans are rational.

    Wikidata · Photo: nrkbeta, CC BY-SA 2.0

  25. Frédéric Passy 25

    Frédéric Passy

    French economist and pacifist (1822–1912)

    A French pacifist and economist who helped found several peace societies and the Inter-Parliamentary Union. He was also a writer and a politician, a member of the Chamber of Deputies from 1881 to 1889.

    Wikidata · Photo: Unknown, Public domain

  26. Ben Bernanke 26

    Ben Bernanke

    American economist (born 1953)

    Ben Shalom Bernanke, an American economist who chaired the Federal Reserve, the 14th to do so, from 2006 to 2014. After leaving the Fed he became a distinguished fellow of the Brookings Institution.

    Wikidata · Photo: United States Federal Reserve, Public domain

  28. Alfred Marshall 28

    Alfred Marshall

    British economist (1842–1924)

    An English economist, one of the most influential of his day. His Principles of Economics (1890) was England's leading economics textbook for many years; it drew supply and demand, marginal utility and production costs together into one coherent account, and popularised the modern neoclassical approach that still dominates microeconomics.

    Wikidata · Photo: Emery Walker, Public domain

  29. Joseph Schumpeter 29

    Joseph Schumpeter

    Austrian (later American) political economist (1883–1950)

    Joseph Alois Schumpeter, an Austrian political economist, briefly Austria's Finance Minister in 1919.

    Wikidata · Photo: Unknown, Public domain

  30. Kenneth Arrow 30

    Kenneth Arrow

    American economist (1921–2017)

    Kenneth Joseph Arrow, an American political theorist, mathematician and economist. In 1957 he was awarded the John Bates Clark Medal, and in 1972 the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, shared with John Hicks.

    Wikidata · Photo: Linda A. Cicero / Stanford News Service, CC BY 3.0

  31. Ragnar Frisch 31

    Ragnar Frisch

    Norwegian economist and Nobel Laureate (1895–1973)

    Ragnar Anton Kittil Frisch, an influential Norwegian econometrician and economist, one of the main figures in making economics a quantitative science grounded in statistics early in the 20th century. He coined the word econometrics in 1926, for describing economic systems with statistical methods, and in 1933 the words microeconomics and macroeconomics, for individual and aggregate economic systems.

    Wikidata · Photo: Borgens Atelier, Public domain

  32. Jan Tinbergen 32

    Jan Tinbergen

    Dutch economist and Nobel Laureate (1903–1994)

    A Dutch economist who in 1969, with Ragnar Frisch, won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences the first time it was given, for developing dynamic models to analyse economic processes and putting them to use. He is widely seen as one of the 20th century's most influential economists, and as a founder of econometrics.

    Wikidata · Photo: Anefo / Croes, R.C., CC0

  33. Esther Duflo 33

    Esther Duflo

    French-American economist (born 1972)

    Esther Caroline Duflo, FBA, a French-American economist at MIT, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she holds the Abdul Latif Jameel chair in Poverty Alleviation and Development Economics. In 2019 she shared the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences with Michael Kremer and her husband, Abhijit Banerjee, "for their experimental approach to alleviating global poverty".

    Wikidata · Photo: Kris Krüg, CC BY-SA 2.0

  34. Dominique Strauss-Kahn 34

    Dominique Strauss-Kahn

    French economist and politician (born 1949)

    Dominique Gaston André Strauss-Kahn, known as DSK, a French politician and economist, a member of the French Socialist Party, and the tenth managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). He became notorious for his part in several sex scandals.

    Wikidata · Photo: International Monetary Fund (photographer uncredited), Public domain

  36. Wassily Leontief 36

    Wassily Leontief

    Soviet-American economist and Nobel Laureate (1906–1999)

    Wassily Wassilyevich Leontief, a Russian-American economist known for research on input–output analysis, which studies how a change in one sector of an economy can affect the others.

    Wikidata · Photo: Keystone, Public domain

  38. Gary Becker 38

    Gary Becker

    American economist (1930–2014)

    Gary Stanley Becker, an American economist and a Nobel laureate in economic sciences, in 1992. As a professor at the University of Chicago he taught sociology and economics, and he was a leader of the Chicago school of economics in its third generation.

    Wikidata · Photo: MAR, Public domain

  39. Simon Kuznets 39

    Simon Kuznets

    American economist and statistician (1901–1985)

    Simon Smith Kuznets, an American economist and statistician born in Russia. He was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for 1971 "for his empirically founded interpretation of economic growth which has led to new and deepened insight into the economic and social structure and process of development."

    Wikidata · Photo: Unknown (Associated Press), Public domain

  40. Abolhassan Banisadr 40

    Abolhassan Banisadr

    President of Iran from 1980 to 1981

    An Iranian writer, politician and political dissident, the first president of Iran after the Iranian Revolution, in office from 1980 until he was impeached in 1981. Before that he had been minister of foreign affairs in Iran's Interim Government.

    Wikidata · Photo: User:Christoph Braun, CC0

How this list was made

Every Wikidata item that is a person whose occupation is economist, and whose one-line description on Wikidata names economics in its first clause, and that has its own English Wikipedia article, ranked by the number of Wikimedia sites with a page about it — Wikipedia's language editions, mostly, and sister projects such as Wikiquote. That counts how many communities independently thought it worth describing, and nobody can buy a place on it. The top 40 are shown.

Fetched from Wikidata on 2026-09-25. Each description is this site's summary of the entry's Wikipedia article, which its name links to: the wording is ours, the facts are Wikipedia's, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. To correct an entry, correct it there; the next refresh carries the change.

More in Economics

One practical note: staying online

If you are reading this on the way somewhere: Computatus eSIM sells prepaid data eSIMs for 190 countries, installed by QR code before you leave, so maps, tickets and messages work without a roaming bill.

See plans for the most visited destinations from $1.79
The destinations travellers ask about most, with the cheapest plan for each, as exported 2026-07-31.
Country Cheapest plan Price
United States 1GB per day $2.33 Get it →
France 2GB per day $2.15 Get it →
Italy 2GB per day $1.81 Get it →
United Kingdom 2GB per day $1.81 Get it →
Germany 2GB per day $1.81 Get it →
Canada 1GB per day $2.47 Get it →
India 1GB per day $3.26 Get it →
Australia 1GB per day $1.79 Get it →

See all Computatus eSIM plans →

A commission on plans bought through these links is what pays for this site. Nothing above depends on it: every entry is chosen and ranked before any price is looked up.