Famous Canadian Economists

After his 13-year stint with Goldman Sachs, Mark Carney served as the governor of the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England. He was also part of the Canadian finance department. He is an ice-hockey lover and played the sport actively during the school and university days.

The son of Russian immigrants, Canadian economist and University of Ottawa professor Michel Chossudovsky also heads the Centre for Research on Globalization. Chossudovsky is best known for his conspiracy theories. He believes both 9/11 and COVID-19 were tools of population control, and has often been accused of playing to Russian interests.

Nobel Prize-winning Canadian-American economist Myron Scholes is best known for co-establishing the Black-Scholes options pricing model. He was associated with MIT Sloan and the University of Chicago Booth School of Business before moving to Stanford. He has served on the economic boards of companies such as Stamos Partners, too.

Robert Bourassa made headlines when, in 1970, he became the youngest premier of Quebec. After a crushing defeat 6 years later, following corruption scandals, he moved to Europe and the U.S., where he taught while in exile. In the mid-1980s, he reclaimed the Liberal Party leadership and became a premier again.

Nobel Prize-winning Canadian economist Robert Mundell is best remembered for his work on monetary dynamics and optimum currency, which also laid the foundation for the introduction of the euro. The LSE and MIT alumnus had also taught at institutes such as Columbia University and the University of Chicago.

Initially a herbalist’s apprentice, Simon Newcomb later deviated to mathematics and astronomy. Born to a schoolteacher, he had loved math since age 5 but wasn’t formally educated. He later joined Harvard University, taught math at the US Navy, detected locations of celestial bodies, and wrote a science-fiction novel, too.

Born into a farming community, Harold Innis was encouraged to be a Baptist minister but became a political economist and academic instead. The former University of Toronto professor is remembered for his work on the staple thesis. He had also fought on the front lines in World War I.

Canadian economist and Parti Québécois member Jacques Parizeau is remembered for his support for the Quiet Revolution and was a significant Quebec separatist. Born into a family of finance tycoons, he studied at LSE and later served as Quebec’s finance minister, before taking over as the premier of Quebec.

The author of the bestselling book Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything, Canadian writer and business strategist Don Tapscott specializes in innovation and the impact of technology on business policies. He has co-established the Blockchain Research Institute and taught at INSEAD. Thinkers50 named him the second most influential management thinker.

Born in Canada, Jacob Viner earned his PhD from Harvard before teaching at the University of Chicago. He later taught at Yale and Stanford, too, before moving to Princeton. Best remembered for his theories of international trade and cost, he had also been as advisor to Franklin Roosevelt’s government.

Canadian-born economist Harry Gordon Johnson was educated at prestigious institutes such as Cambridge and Harvard. He later taught at LSE and the University of Chicago. Known for his research on macroeconomics, international trade, and balance of payments, he brought together divergent economic schools of thought.

Canadian economist and civil-servant Robert Broughton Bryce, known for introducing Keynesian economics in the US, was made a Companion of the Order of Canada for his services to Canada while serving significant positions of public administration. He chaired the Royal Commission on Corporate Concentration and authored the book Maturing in Hard Times: Canada's Department of Finance Through the Great Depression.