Curated playlist
21st-century American economists
- Kevin M. MurphyIn 2023, Google's expert witness Kevin M. Murphy said Apple gets 36% of its Safari default-search revenue.
- Emi NakamuraEmi Nakamura found that many recorded price changes were just temporary sales.
- Robert Lucas Jr.Robert Lucas's divorce deal gave his ex-wife half of any Nobel Prize awarded before October 31, 1995.
- Amy FinkelsteinOregon held a Medicaid lottery in 2008, and economist Amy Finkelstein turned it into an experiment.
- Joseph StiglitzJoseph Stiglitz explained why wages stay high in recessions even when workers are desperate for jobs.
- George AkerlofGeorge Akerlof showed why good used cars can vanish from a market.
- Milton FriedmanMilton Friedman argued the Federal Reserve let the money supply shrink by one-third between 1929 and 1933.
- Esther DufloEsther Duflo was 46 when she became the youngest Nobel economics winner ever. She shared it in 2019.
- Paul KrugmanPaul Krugman turned to economics because psychohistory was fiction. Asimov's novels inspired him.
- Paul SamuelsonPaul Samuelson said he was born as an economist at age sixteen. It happened in a 1932 Chicago lecture on Malthus.
- Janet YellenJanet Yellen is the only person to have led the Fed, the White House economic advisers and the Treasury.
- Alan GreenspanIn October 2008, Alan Greenspan told Congress his faith in free markets had a flaw.
- Angus DeatonIn 2024, Nobel economist Angus Deaton said he had changed his mind on much of mainstream economics.
- Larry SummersLarry Summers, born Lawrence Henry Summers, was 28 years old in 1983 when Harvard gave him tenure, making him one of the youngest tenured professors in the university's history. Soon afterward, doctors diagnosed him with late-stage…
- Daniel KahnemanDaniel Kahneman won the 2002 economics Nobel without ever taking an economics course.
- James M. BuchananEconomist James M. Buchanan argued that politicians act from self-interest like everyone else.
- Oliver Hart (economist)Economist Oliver Hart was called as a government expert witness in two tax cases.
- Tobias AdrianTobias Adrian helped create CoVaR, a way to measure how one failing bank can drag down others.
- Roger NollEconomist Roger Noll has testified against the NCAA in several court cases. One was O'Bannon v. NCAA.
- Gary BeckerEconomist Gary Becker argued that criminals are not irrational. He said they weigh the risks and rewards of a crime.
- Susan AtheyA summer job preparing computer sales bids set Susan Athey on the path to economics.
- James HeckmanAre people who join a program different from those who don't? James Heckman won a Nobel Prize for fixing that problem.
- Richard ThalerEconomist Richard Thaler played himself in the 2015 film The Big Short.
- Richard D. WolffRichard D. Wolff's father was a lawyer in Cologne, but his degree was worthless in America.
- Elinor OstromUCLA rejected Elinor Ostrom's economics application for lacking math. She later won a Nobel Prize in economics.
- Lawrence KleinLawrence Klein's model correctly predicted a postwar boom when many expected a depression.
- Claudia GoldinIn October 2023, the economist Claudia Goldin received the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences "for having advanced our understanding of women's labor market outcomes". Only two women had won the award before her. None had ever won…
- Melissa DellMelissa Dell compared Peruvian communities on either side of an old forced-labor boundary. Gaps lasted centuries.
- Robert J. ShillerRobert J. Shiller called the stock market a bubble in his 2000 book Irrational Exuberance. He shared a Nobel in 2013.
- Joel MokyrEconomist Joel Mokyr won half of the 2025 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. He argues ideas drive growth.
- William BaumolEconomist William Baumol explained why string quartets keep getting pricier.