Our friend and colleague Mark Skousen did a ChatGPT search on the top economists of all time.

According to ChatGPT:

The top 20 includes as #16 our Unleash Prosperity co-founder Arthur Laffer for the most famous curve in economics “The Laffer Curve.”

Still, it’s a very solid list – though we are frustrated that Paul Samuelson – one of the wrongest economists of modern times appears on the list.

1. 1. 1. Adam Smith (founder of modern economics)
      2. John Maynard Keynes (Keynesian economics)
      3. Karl Marx (Marxist economics)
      4. Milton Friedman (monetarism, Chicago School)
      5. David Ricardo (comparative advantage)
      6. Friedrich Hayek (Austrian School)
      7. Joseph Schumpeter (creative destruction)
      8. Paul Samuelson (modern macroeconomics)
      9. Amartya Sen (welfare economics)
      10. Thomas Piketty (economic inequality)
      11. Paul Krugman (trade and currency economics)
      12. Robert Solow (growth theory)
      13. Irving Fisher (quantitative theory of money)
      14. Gary Becker (economics of human behavior)
      15. James Buchanan (public choice theory)
      16. Arthur Laffer (Laffer Curve)
      17. Elinor Ostrom (commons governance)
      18. Kenneth Arrow (social choice theory)
      19. Robert Lucas (rational expectations)
      20. Jean-Baptiste Say (Say’s Law)

Congratulations to Dr. Laffer.