Zoltan Acs
Hungarian economist
Zoltan J. Acs (born 1947) is an American economist. He is Professor of Management at The London School of Economics (LSE), and a professor at George Mason University, where he teaches in the Schar School of Policy and Government and is the Director of the Center for Entrepreneurship and Public Policy. He is also a visiting professor at Imperial College Business School in London and affiliated with the University of Pecs in Hungary. He is co-editor and founder of Small Business Economics.
Acs was previously Research Scholar at the Entrepreneurship Growth and Public Policy Group at the Max Planck Institute for Economics in Jena, Germany. He has also served as Chief Economist at the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA); Research Fellow at the U.S. Bureau of the Census; associate director of the Center for International Business Education and Research; Research Associate at the Institute on Western Europe at Columbia University; and Scholar-in-Residence at the Kauffman Foundation.
He is the founder and President of The GEDI Institute, a global think tank based in Washington, D.C. Together with Laszlo Szerb, Acs created the Global Entrepreneurship and Development Index (GEDI).
His most recent book, Why Philanthropy Matters: How the Wealthy Give, and What it Means for our Economic Well-Being (2013), was a finalist for the Academy of Management George R Baker Prize for the best book in management in 2014.
Early life
In 1947, Acs was born in a refugee camp in Austria after his Hungarian parents escaped their home country following World War II.
Research
Acs's primary contributions to his field have been in the areas of Innovation, Regional Knowledge Spillover, Incentives and Entrepreneurship, and Entrepreneurship and Technology.
Awards and Recognition
Acs received the Global Award for Entrepreneurship Research in 2001, awarded by the Swedish Entrepreneurship Forum.
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The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 16, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q8073604. VIAF identifies the subject as 56670617. The Library of Congress control number is n84005249. 4 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 1 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1947, 2013, 2014 and 2001.
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