Burton Gordon Malkiel (born August 28, 1932) is an American economist and writer, most famous for his classic finance book A Random Walk Down Wall Street. He is a leading proponent of the efficient market hypothesis, which contends that prices of publicly traded assets reflect all publicly available information, although he has also pointed out that some markets are evidently inefficient, exhibiting signs of non-random walk.

Malkiel is a professor of economics at Princeton University, and is a two-time chairman of the economics department there. He served as a member of the Council of Economic Advisers (1975-1977), president of the American Finance Association (1978), and dean of the Yale School of Management (1981-1988). He received his bachelor’s degree (1953) and his MBA (1955) from Harvard University, and his doctorate (1964) from Princeton University. He married his first wife, Judith Atherton Malkiel, in 1954; they had one son, Jonathan. After Judith Malkiel’s death in 1987, Burton Malkiel married his second wife, Nancy Weiss in 1988. He served as a first lieutenant in the United States Army from 1955 to 1958. He also serves on the advisory panel of Robert D. Arnott’s investment management firm, Research Affiliates.