Each month, the Social Science Research Network (SSRN) updates its rankings of the most influential authors in business research.

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The latest edition, released in December 2025, ranks scholars by total citations – a straightforward metric that captures how often their work has been referenced by other researchers.

This ranking offers a transparent, data-driven glimpse into the academic voices currently shaping the field.

The SSRN Top 100 Business Authors list includes only individuals who have made at least one publicly accessible full‑text paper available on the platform. Abstracts, paywalled articles, or privately shared drafts are not counted for the ranking. Each author’s position is determined by the total number of citations their SSRN‑hosted papers have accumulated, updated on a rolling monthly basis. Alongside citations, the list also provides figures for new downloads, total downloads, number of papers, and per‑paper download averages, giving a fuller picture of both scholarly impact and readership reach.

Michael C. Jensen, the late Harvard Business School professor, remains at the top with an extraordinary 20,173 citations—a testament to the enduring influence of his work on agency theory and corporate governance.

Rounding out the top five are Robert W. Vishny, Rafael La Porta, Florencio Lopez‑de‑Silanes, and Campbell R. Harvey, all of whom command over 10,000 citations each.

The list continues with a who’s who of business academia: Eugene Fama, René Stulz, Raghuram Rajan, Lasse Heje Pedersen, and many others whose ideas have profoundly shaped finance, economics, management, and accounting.

The 100th spot is held by Amir Yaron with 2,862 citations – still a remarkable figure that underscores the depth of impact across the entire list. Between the extremes, the ranking highlights a wide distribution of productivity and influence: some authors have fewer than 50 papers but enormous per‑paper citation counts (e.g., Kenneth R. French with 44 papers and 11,482 downloads per paper), while others, like P. S. Aithal with 731 papers, demonstrate a different kind of prolificacy.

The SSRN Top 100 can guide reading lists, identify potential collaborators, or simply satisfy curiosity about who is moving the needle in academic business research right now. The inclusion of download data adds a layer of immediacy – showing not only which papers have been historically important, but which ones are being actively read and discussed today.

The full ranking of over 12,000 authors, along with detailed methodology notes, can be found on the official SSRN Top Business Authors page (select “Top Authors” under the “Rankings” tab). The list is refreshed monthly, so the positions and numbers you see here will continue to evolve as new citations and downloads accumulate.