Who do you think is the most important economist of all time?

please give your reasons if possible

Answer:
I disagree with a lot of what he had to say, but Milton Friedman would probably be my pick. He brought economics to the masses. Made is a household subject. While that isn't always a good thing (as you get idiots around here spouting anything they read on the inter-tron as cold hard econ fact), but he still did a lot for economics and American economics especially.

Adam Smith and Keynes are two other obvious picks. It really depends what you mean by "important" as different economists care about different things, and thus look up to different people.

Note: Updated to fix spelling mistake of "Friedman".. Very tired.
Alan Greenspan
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/alan_greens...
This is a very debate-able subject, but my choice would be Ludwig von Misis who has current day economists still supporting his views.

http://www.mises.org/

Although, in his time much of the worlds economy was not as complex as it is today..His legend lives on.

Ron Paul a current day brilliant economist... {{DON'T KNOCK HIM TILL YOU'VE READ HIS BOOKS!}}
.Was influenced by Misis.
******************************...
Lord John Maynard Keynes!

He had a major affect on the way that economics see the economy. Also, his ideas are the first you learn about in Macroeconomics (he developed it) because it provides the completeness that is needed to study the factors that occurs in an economy like inflation and unemployment.

And of course the second half of Marco is Milton Friedman who ideas about money supply and the monetarist view of economics, natural rate of unemployment, and PIH has been vital to economies in the last half of the 20th century.
Adam Smith.

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