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Nobel Prize in Economics: the 30 most written-about laureates

Milton Friedman, Friedrich Hayek, Amartya Sen and 27 more, ranked by how much of the world has written about each one.

Entries
30
Photographed
30
Fetched
2026-09-25
Milton Friedman
Milton Friedman · American economist and statistician (1912–2006) · Bachrach Studios, Public domain

Economic Sciences, ranked

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

  1. Milton Friedman 1

    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

  3. Amartya Sen 3

    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

  4. John Forbes Nash Jr. 4

    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

  5. Paul Samuelson 5

    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

  6. Elinor Ostrom 6

    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

  7. Paul Krugman 7

    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

  8. Joseph Stiglitz 8

    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

  9. Gunnar Myrdal 9

    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

  10. Daniel Kahneman 10

    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

  11. Ben Bernanke 11

    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

  12. Kenneth Arrow 12

    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

  13. Ragnar Frisch 13

    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

  14. Jan Tinbergen 14

    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

  15. Herbert A. Simon 15

    Herbert A. Simon

    American academic and Nobel Laureate (1916–2001)

    Herbert Alexander Simon, an American scholar whose work influenced cognitive psychology, economics and computer science. His main research interest was decision-making inside organisations, and his best-known theories are those of "bounded rationality" and "satisficing".

    Wikidata · Photo: Rochester Institute of Technology, Public domain

  16. Esther Duflo 16

    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

  19. Wassily Leontief 19

    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

  20. Gary Becker 20

    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

  21. Simon Kuznets 21

    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

  23. James M. Buchanan 23

    James M. Buchanan

    American economist and Nobel Laureate (1919–2013)

    James McGill Buchanan Jr., an American economist known for public choice theory, first set out in his best-known book, The Calculus of Consent, written with Gordon Tullock in 1962. He went on developing the theory, and in 1986 received the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences.

    Wikidata · Photo: Atlas Network Official website, CC BY-SA 3.0

  24. Leonid Hurwicz 24

    Leonid Hurwicz

    Polish–American economist and mathematician (1917–2008)

    A Polish–American mathematician and economist known for work on mechanism design and game theory. He came up with the idea of incentive compatibility, and showed how mechanisms designed to be incentive compatible can bring about the outcomes wanted.

    Wikidata · Photo: Dong Oh (square by Juan Pablo Arancibia Medina ), CC BY 3.0

  26. Robert Solow 26

    Robert Solow

    American economist and Nobel Laureate (1924–2023)

    Robert Merton Solow, GCIH, an American economist known for studying economic growth and for developing the Solow–Swan model, which won him the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for 1987.

    Wikidata · Photo: Olaf Storbeck from Düsseldorf, Deutschland, CC BY-SA 2.0

  27. Thomas Schelling 27

    Thomas Schelling

    American economist (1921–2016)

    Thomas Crombie Schelling, an American economist and professor of arms control, nuclear strategy, national security and foreign policy at the University of Maryland, College Park's School of Public Policy. He also taught at the New England Complex Systems Institute.

    Wikidata · Photo: Alvaro conde, CC BY-SA 4.0

  28. Robert Aumann 28

    Robert Aumann

    Israeli-American mathematician (born 1930)

    An Israeli-American mathematician who belongs to the United States National Academy of Sciences and teaches at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, as a professor in its Center for the Study of Rationality.

    Wikidata · Photo: DMY, Attribution

  29. Claudia Goldin 29

    Claudia Goldin

    American economist (born 1946)

    Claudia Dale Goldin, an American labour economist and economic historian, who holds the Henry Lee Professorship of Economics at Harvard University.

    Wikidata · Photo: Editing1088, CC BY-SA 4.0

  30. Bertil Ohlin 30

    Bertil Ohlin

    Swedish economist, politician, and Nobel Laureate (1899–1979)

    Bertil Gotthard Ohlin, a Swedish politician and economist who from 1929 to 1965 taught economics as a professor at the Stockholm School of Economics.

    Wikidata · Photo: Gunnar Lantz, Public domain

How this list was made

Every Wikidata item that has been awarded the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, the prize usually called the Nobel Prize in Economics, 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 30 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.

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