Notable development economists[edit]
Daron Acemoglu, professor of economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and
2005 Clark Medalwinner.
Philippe Aghion, professor of economics at Harvard University, co-authored textbook in
economic growth, forwarded Schumpeterian growth, and established creative
destruction theories mathematically with Peter Howitt.
Abhijit Banerjee, professor of economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and
Director of Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab.
Pranab Bardhan, professor of economics at the University of California, Berkeley, author of texts
in both trade and development economics, and editor of the Journal of Development
Economics from 1985–2003.
Kaushik Basu, professor of economics at Cornell University and author of Analytical
Development Economics.
Peter Thomas Bauer, professor of economics at the London School of Economics, author
of Dissent on Development.
Jagdish Bhagwati, a frequent commentator on international trade and noted supporter of free
trade
David E. Bloom, professor of economics and demography at the Harvard School of Public
Health.
Ha-Joon Chang, author of Kicking Away the Ladder and Bad Samaritans; Rich Nations, Poor
Policies and the Threat to the Developing World which use historical evidence to critique
neoliberal development economics.
Paul Collier, author of The Bottom Billion which attempts to tie together a series of traps to
explain the self-fulfilling nature of poverty at the lower end of the development scale.
Esther Duflo, Director of Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab, professor of Economics at
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2009 MacArthur Fellow, 2010 Clark Medal winner,
advocate for field experiments.
William Easterly, author of The Elusive Quest for Growth: Economists' Adventures and
Misadventures in the Tropics[43][44] and White Man's Burden: How the West's Efforts to Aid the
Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good.[45]
Celso Furtado, Brazilian structuralist economist.
Oded Galor, Israeli-American economist at Brown University; editor-in-chief of the Journal of
Economic Growth, the principal journal in economic growth. Developer of the unified growth
theory, the newest alternative to theories of endogenous growth.
Peter Howitt, Canadian economist at Brown University; past president of the Canadian
Economics Association, introduced the concept of Schumpeterian growth and
established creative destruction theory mathematically with Philippe Aghion.
Dean Karlan, American economist at Northwestern University; co-director of the Global Poverty
Research Lab at the Buffett Institute for Global Studies; founded Innovations for Poverty
Action (IPA), a New Haven, Connecticut, based research outfit dedicated to creating and
evaluating solutions to social and international development problems.
Justin Yifu Lin, Chinese economist at Peking University; former chief economist of World Bank,
one of the most important Chinese economists.
W. Arthur Lewis, with T. W. Schultz, winner of the 1979 Nobel Prize in Economics for work in
development economics.
Dambisa Moyo, a Zambian-born economist who analyzes the macroeconomy, foreign aid
impact, and global affairs. Author of Dead Aid: Why Aid is Not Working and How There is a
Better Way For Africa.
Raúl Prebisch, founding Secretary General of the United Nations Conference on Trade and
Development and influential dependency theorist.
Lant Pritchett, professor at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, and has held
several prominent research positions at the World Bank.
Dani Rodrik, professor at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, has written
extensively on globalization.
Mark Rosenzweig, a professor at Yale University and director of Economic Growth Center at
Yale
Walt Whitman Rostow, modernization theorist, author of The Stages of Economic Growth: A
Non-communist Manifesto.
Jeffrey Sachs, author of The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities of Our Time (preview)
and Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet.
Amartya Sen, Indian economist, Nobel Prize winner, author of Development as Freedom.
Hans Singer, who dealt with how unequal terms of trade disproportionately affect producers of
primary products. His thesis, combined with the work of Raúl Prebisch, form the basis
for dependency theory.
Hernando de Soto Polar, proponent of property rights in the developing world, author of The
Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else.
Frances Stewart, current president of the Human Development and Capability Association.
Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel Prize winner and former chief economist at the World Bank.
Finn Tarp, Danish Professor of Development Economics at the University of Copenhagen and
Director of UNU-WIDER, Helsinki, Finland.
Erik Thorbecke, a co-originator of Foster–Greer–Thorbecke poverty measure who also played a
significant role in the development and popularization of social accounting matrix.
Michael Todaro, known for the Todaro and Harris–Todaro models of migration and urbanization;
Economic Development.
Robert M. Townsend, professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology known for his Thai
Project, a model for many other applied and theoretical projects in economic development.
Mahbub ul Haq, Pakistani economist, creator of the Human Development Report.
Muhammad Yunus, Nobel Prize winner and founder of the Grameen Bank.
