And which ones? I’m curious about the extent to which normal people have heard about figures in the field, past and present. My guess is that most people can name three, and could name four if they really thought about it.
Readers?
How Many Economists Are Household Names?
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Living, dead or both?
Both!
Keynes, Krugman, Galbraith
Let’s see…. Adam smith…. Karl marx….levitt & dubner? Malcolm gladwell doesn’t count, does he?
The conclusion I’m being led to is that there are basically two ways an economist can be a household name. One way is to be a popular topical writer, like Galbraith, Krugman, Levitt, and Milton Friedman (and Keynes, in his day). However, these people are basically celebrities, and their fame must be fleeting. Decades ago, many people probably thought of Paul Samuelson as a household name, since he had a regular column in one of the weekly magazines (I think it was Time). But nowadays he’s fairly obscure outside of econ circles. The other way is to be a world-historical figure, symbolic of some general idea that people will always glom onto, cited positively and negatively by people who have never read you: this is the lot of Smith, Marx, and Keynes. I think that Keynes’s name recognition has gone from fairly low to fairly high in the last three years, as it has become part of the mainstream political debate. Marx has always had near-universal name recognition, but I suspect that most people don’t think of him primarily as an economist.
Anyhow, thanks for the feedback.