- Barry Eichengreen, National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) Research Associate, Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) Research Fellow
- David Frum, Chairman of Policy Exchange
- David Wessel, Director, Hutchins Center on Fiscal & Monetary Policy, Brookings institution
- Dean Baker, Co-director of CEPR
- Adam Posen, President of Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE)
- Donald Marron, Director of Economic Policy Initiatives & Institute Fellow at Urban Institute
- Douglas Holtz-Eakin, President of the American Action Forum (AAF)
- James Pethokoukis, Fellow at American Enterprise Institute (AEI)
- Jared Bernstein, Senior Fellow, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP)
- Justin Wolfers, Senior Fellow at PIIE and Research Associate at NBER
- Peter Orszag, Adjunct Senior Fellow at Council on Foreign Relations (CFR)
- Robert Reich, co-founder of the Economic Policy Institute (EPI)
- Simon Johnson, Senior Fellow at PIIE and Research Associate at NBER
- Strobe Talbott, President of Brookings Institution
- Tyler Cowen, Chairman and General Director of the Mercatus Center
- Tony Fratto, member of Partners Council at Center for Global Development (CGD)
- William Easterly, Research Associate at NBER, and Nonresident Senior Fellow at Brookings
- Will Wilkinson, former Managing Editor of Cato Institute's Cato Unbound
- Robert Shiller, Research Associate at NBER
- Paul Romer, Research Associate at NBER; previously worked for the Hoover Institution
- Mike Konczal, Fellow at the Roosevelt Institute
- Matthew Klein, previously a Research Associate at CFR
- Larry Summers, Distinguished Senior Fellow at Center for American Progress (CAP), and Board Chair at CGD
- Austan Goolsbee, Distinguished Senior Fellow at CAP; Research Associate at NBER
- Branko Milanovic, External Fellow at CGD, and previously a Senior Associate at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (CEIP)
- Cass Sunstein, Nonresident Senior Fellow at Brookings
Another list of top-ranked economists can be found at IDEAS, a Research Papers in Economics (RePEc) service hosted by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
Here is a previous Think Tank Watch post on the rankings of top economic think tanks.
In the most recent University of Pennsylvania think tank rankings, the top 10 domestic economic policy think tanks were:
- Brookings
- NBER
- Adam Smith Institute (ASI)
- PIIE
- Cato Institute
- Bruegel
- RAND Corporation
- German Institute for Economic Research
- Heritage Foundation
- CAP
- PIIE
- Brookings
- Bruegel
- NBER
- ASI
- RAND Corporation
- Chatham House
- Institute of World Economy and International Relations
- Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS)
- American Enterprise Institute
Update: The Economist has done its own ranking of economists (using Appinions, a startup that analyzes influence online) and has published its list of the 25 top economists, many of which are think tankers.