Os economistas mais relevantes da decada - The Economist

Free exchange - Economics
Economics' most influential people
by R.A.
The Economist, February 1st 2011

WASHINGTON - AS THE world economy emerges from recession and great new questions and challenges appear, the economics profession has engaged in a little self-reflection. Economists are asking themselves what, in fact, they've learned from their recent work and what the profession ought to focus on moving forward. With this reflection has come some reassessment of the profession's leading lights; the economists that offered the best guidance in the 2000s might not be the ones leading the way this decade.

To get a sense of current economist opinion, we turned to the experts at Economics by invitation. We asked them which economists were most influential over the past decade. And we asked them to give their thoughts on which economists were doing most to shape post-crisis thinking.

Many of the respondents submitted detailed explanations with their answers. Click here to see their contributions. I was struck by a few common themes—the idea that humility and a generalist approach to economics have been rewarded, the continued influence of the profession's founding fathers, and the sense that post-crisis economics is a wide-open place. Do read all the contributions.

But we also tallied the nominations for most influential, and the results are interesting. Asked which economist was most influential over the past decade, the network resoundingly answered, with seven individual nominations: Ben Bernanke. John Maynard Keynes was next, with four. Jeff Sachs, Hyman Minsky, and Paul Krugman followed with three, and Adam Smith, Robert Lucas, Joseph Sitglitz, Friedrich Hayek, and Alan Greenspan each had two. There were 26 other economists with a single nomination each*.

We followed up that question with another—which economists have the most important ideas in a post-crisis world? With four nominations, the leader here was Raghuram Rajan. Robert Shiller and Kenneth Rogoff each had three votes, Barry Eichengreen and Nouriel Roubini had two, and there were 13 other economists nominated once**.

This obviously isn't a scientific poll of the profession, but it is interesting to get some sense of from where the profession sees its influence emanating.

*Richard Thaler, Robert Shiller, Andrei Schleifer, David Laibson, Daron Acemoglu, Barry Eichengreen, Ronald Coase, Ernst Fehr, Esther Duflo, Abhijit Banerjee, Manmohan Singh, Irving Fisher, John Taylor, Larry Summers, Kenneth Arrow, Robert Solow, George Akerlof, Martin Feldstein, Nouriel Roubini, Charles Goodhart, Ricardo Caballero, Amartya Sen, Tyler Cowen, Steven Levitt, Deidre McCloskey, and Milton Friedman.

**John Maynard Keynes, Paul Krugman, Friedrich Hayek, John Taylor, Kenneth Arrow, Viral Acharya, Carmen Reinhart, William White, Willem Buiter, Charles Calomiris, Gary Gorton, Olivier Blanchard, Douglas Diamond.

Click here to see their contributions