Over at Forbes, Nouriel Roubini recently listed the “The World’s 10 Most Powerful Economists”. With all due respect to the people on the list, it doesn’t make a lot of sense. Ben Bernanke, Larry Summers, Jeff Sachs, Paul Krugman… Nerds and academics, none of them looks like they could bench press their own body weight let alone qualify as “powerful”.

In contrast, my nominee for the World’s Most Powerful Economist is Lauren Cohen, economics professor at the Harvard Business School and champion powerlifter and strongman. Also known as “Dr. Chest”, he is among the top 20 powerlifters in the world in his weight class, and he was runner-up two years in a row for the best paper in the Journal of Finance. He can bench press 500 pounds and squat-lift 700 pounds. That’s what I call “powerful”.

Here’s Cohen in typical economist uniform:

And here is he is flipping an 800 pound tire.

Let’s see Krugman do that.

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