Economist Writing Every Day

I’m not sure exactly how many notable economists I expect to die in a year, but as of early July I feel like 2023 has already seen a year’s worth:

Robert Lucas, helped re-found macroeconomics with micro-foundations and a focus on growth, influential even as Nobel Prizewinners go

Paul David, economic historian and economics of technology

Stanley Engerman, economic historian, author of the much debated Time on the Cross

Herbert Gintis, game theorist and big picture thinker

Bennet McCallum, macroeconomist and pioneer of nominal GDP targeting and monetary rules

Barkley Rosser, eclectic thinker on chaos, complexity, catastrophe

Luigi Pasinetti, post-Keynesian

Victoria Chick, post-Keynesian

Li Yining, Chinese reformer, helped re-establish the Chinese stock market

Padma Desai, Indian reformer and scholar of planning

Rebecca Blank, labor economist, UW chancellor, acting US Secretary of Commerce

Harry Markowitz, won Nobel for “pioneering work in the theory of financial economics” (finding the risk-return optimal frontier for a portfolio)

Not all the biggest names, but all important enough that I knew of them despite not working in their subfields and, unfortunately, not having met them personally.

Let me know if I’m currently missing anyone, though let’s hope the list doesn’t get much longer by the end of 2023.