The Most Famous
ECONOMISTS from Hungary
This page contains a list of the greatest Hungarian Economists. The pantheon dataset contains 315 Economists, 4 of which were born in Hungary. This makes Hungary the birth place of the 17th most number of Economists behind Belgium and Norway.
Top 4
The following people are considered by Pantheon to be the most legendary Hungarian Economists of all time. This list of famous Hungarian Economists is sorted by HPI (Historical Popularity Index), a metric that aggregates information on a biography’s online popularity.
1. János Kornai (1928 - 2021)
With an HPI of 60.61, János Kornai is the most famous Hungarian Economist. His biography has been translated into 19 different languages on wikipedia.
János Kornai (21 January 1928 – 18 October 2021) was a Hungarian economist noted for his analysis and criticism of the command economies of Eastern European communist states. He also covered macroeconomic aspects in countries undergoing post-Soviet transition. He was emeritus professor at both Harvard University and Corvinus University of Budapest. Kornai was known to have coined the term shortage economy to reflect perpetual shortages of goods in the centrally-planned command economies of the Eastern Bloc.
2. John Harsanyi (1920 - 2000)
With an HPI of 60.07, John Harsanyi is the 2nd most famous Hungarian Economist. His biography has been translated into 45 different languages.
John Charles Harsanyi (Hungarian: Harsányi János Károly; May 29, 1920 – August 9, 2000) was a Hungarian-American economist who spent most of his career at the University of California, Berkeley. He was the recipient of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1994. Harsanyi is best known for his contributions to the study of game theory and its application to economics, specifically for his developing the highly innovative analysis of games of incomplete information, so-called Bayesian games. He also made important contributions to the use of game theory and economic reasoning in political and moral philosophy (specifically utilitarian ethics) as well as contributing to the study of equilibrium selection. For his work, he was a co-recipient along with John Nash and Reinhard Selten of the 1994 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. He moved to the United States in 1956, and spent most of his life there. According to György Marx, he was one of The Martians.
3. Nicholas Kaldor (1908 - 1986)
With an HPI of 55.59, Nicholas Kaldor is the 3rd most famous Hungarian Economist. His biography has been translated into 27 different languages.
Nicholas Kaldor, Baron Kaldor (12 May 1908 – 30 September 1986), born Káldor Miklós, was a Hungarian economist. He developed the "compensation" criteria called Kaldor–Hicks efficiency for welfare comparisons (1939), derived the cobweb model, and argued for certain regularities observable in economic growth, which are called Kaldor's growth laws. Kaldor worked alongside Gunnar Myrdal to develop the key concept Circular Cumulative Causation, a multicausal approach where the core variables and their linkages are delineated.
4. Eugen Varga (1879 - 1964)
With an HPI of 50.77, Eugen Varga is the 4th most famous Hungarian Economist. His biography has been translated into 17 different languages.
Eugen Samuilovich "Jenő" Varga (born as Eugen Weisz, November 6, 1879 – October 7, 1964) was a Soviet economist of Hungarian origin.
Pantheon has 4 people classified as economists born between 1879 and 1928. Of these 4, none of them are still alive today. The most famous deceased economists include János Kornai, John Harsanyi, and Nicholas Kaldor. As of April 2022, 1 new economists have been added to Pantheon including Eugen Varga.
Deceased Economists
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János Kornai
1928 - 2021
HPI: 60.61
John Harsanyi
1920 - 2000
HPI: 60.07
Nicholas Kaldor
1908 - 1986
HPI: 55.59
Eugen Varga
1879 - 1964
HPI: 50.77
Newly Added Economists (2022)
Go to all RankingsWhich Economists were alive at the same time? This visualization shows the lifespans of the 4 most globally memorable Economists since 1700.
