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. Acs advocates the importance of entrepreneurship for economic development. 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). He has published more than 200 articles and 35 books. 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.