The Most Famous
ECONOMISTS from Australia
This page contains a list of the greatest Australian Economists. The pantheon dataset contains 414 Economists, 1 of which were born in Australia. This makes Australia the birth place of the 48th most number of Economists behind New Zealand, and Nigeria.
Top 2
The following people are considered by Pantheon to be the most legendary Australian Economists of all time. This list of famous Australian Economists is sorted by HPI (Historical Popularity Index), a metric that aggregates information on a biography’s online popularity.
1. James Wolfensohn (1933 - 2020)
With an HPI of 50.33, James Wolfensohn is the most famous Australian Economist. His biography has been translated into 24 different languages on wikipedia.
Sir James David Wolfensohn (1 December 1933 – 25 November 2020) was an Australian-American lawyer, investment banker, and economist who served as the ninth president of the World Bank Group (1995–2005). During his tenure at the World Bank, he is credited with the focus on poverty alleviation and a rethink on development financing, earning him recognition as a banker to the world's poor. In his other roles, he is credited with actions that brought Chrysler Corporation back from the brink of bankruptcy, and also improving the finances of major United States cultural institutions, including Carnegie Hall and the Kennedy Center. He served two terms as President of the World Bank on the nomination of U.S. President Bill Clinton, and thereafter held various positions with charitable organizations and policy think-tanks including the Brookings Institution. He was born in Sydney, Australia, and was a graduate of the University of Sydney and Harvard Business School; he was also an Olympic fencer. He worked for various companies in Britain and the United States before forming his own investment firm. Wolfensohn became an American citizen in 1980 and renounced his Australian citizenship, although he eventually regained it in 2010.
2. Steve Keen (b. 1953)
With an HPI of 37.61, Steve Keen is the 2nd most famous Australian Economist. His biography has been translated into 15 different languages.
Steve Keen (born 28 March 1953) is an Australian economist and author. He considers himself a post-Keynesian, criticising neoclassical economics as inconsistent, unscientific, and empirically unsupported. Keen was formerly an associate professor of economics at University of Western Sydney, until he applied for voluntary redundancy in 2013, due to the closure of the economics program at the university. In 2014, he became a professor and Head of the School of Economics, History and Politics at Kingston University in London. He has since taken retirement and is crowd source funded to undertake independent research as well as being a Distinguished Research Fellow at the Institute for Strategy Resilience & Security, University College London.
People
Pantheon has 2 people classified as Australian economists born between 1933 and 1953. Of these 2, 1 (50.00%) of them are still alive today. The most famous living Australian economists include Steve Keen. The most famous deceased Australian economists include James Wolfensohn. As of April 2024, 1 new Australian economists have been added to Pantheon including Steve Keen.
