Dr. William “Sandy” Darity, a wealth inequality expert and one of the leading economists in the U.S., ranks No. 35 on a list of top economic influencers with 26,948 followers.

Not all economics influencers have blogs, but many share their thoughts on Twitter about finance, monetary policy and politics in 240-character tweets.Focus Economics, a Barcelona-based provider of economic analysis and forecasts for 130 countries, ranked 75 top economics influencers by Twitter followers that you can follow online.

Listen to GHOGH with Jamarlin Martin | Episode 48: Diishan Imira
Part 2: Jamarlin continues his interview with Diishan Imira, founder of hair-care platform Mayvenn. They discuss how Diishan was mentored to think like a boss and “ask for the check,” and how much it meant to him to have investor Richelieu Dennis in his cap table. They also discuss New York progressives bangin’ back against Amazon and the growing negative sentiment against big tech.

If you’ve read a news report about reparations lately, chances are Darity’s name is mentioned. Darity’s research found that unequal wealth distribution is a racial issue. He’s the Samuel DuBois Cook Professor of Public Policy, African and African American Studies and Economics at Duke University. His research includes schooling and the racial achievement gap, the Atlantic slave trade, stratification economics and the history of economics.

Along with Darrick Hamilton of The New School in New York City,
Darity published a 2010 paper in The Review of Black Political Economy, where they proposed Baby Bonds — “a bold progressive child development account type program that could go a long way toward eliminating the racial wealth gap.”

They are not reparations and were never intended to be reparations, however, they can close the racial wealth gap at the “median” over time, which, is in fact the nomenclature by which we typically refer to the racial wealth gap

— Darrick Hamilton (@DarrickHamilton) March 14, 2019

Baby bonds are part of Sen. Cory Booker‘s (D-NJ) 2020 presidential campaign platform. Booker is preparing to introduce a baby bonds bill designed to narrow the persistent Black-white wealth gap in the U.S.

Booker’s proposal involves granting every newborn American child $1,000 at birth that would grow with the child, based on the family’s income, and could be used at age 18 to launch young adults on the road to economic success.

Darity and a team of scholars have produced a series of reports on wealth disparity and the implications for U.S. economic health, equity and social justice called the National Assets Scorecard for Communities of Color. The survey was developed to fill a void in existing national data.

The most recent report is on race and wealth in Miami, Florida.