The White House · Public domain

Won the 2008 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences alone, for models explaining why trade happens between similar countries producing similar goods — not classical comparative advantage, but economies of scale and consumers' taste for variety. He taught at MIT and Princeton before moving to CUNY, and for nearly a quarter-century wrote a New York Times column that made him one of the most widely read economists alive, arguing most vocally for expansionary policy through the 2008 financial crisis and its aftermath.