Dr. Thorstein Bunde Veblen (born Tosten Bunde Veblen 30 July 1857 – 3 August 1929) was a Norwegian-American sociologist and economist and a founder, along with John R. Commons, of the Institutional economics movement. He was an impassioned critic of the performance of the American economy, and is most famous for his book The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899).