Anwar M. Shaikh (born 1945) is a Pakistani American heterodox economist in the tradition of classical political economy.

He is Professor of Economics in the Graduate Faculty of Social and Political Science at The New School for Social Research in New York City, where he has taught since 1972.

Carrying on teaching and research that originated in the context of New Left social movements, Shaikh's political economy has focused on the laws of motion and empirical patterns of industrialized capitalism, based on a theory of competition independent of neoclassical economics.

In specific fields, he has written on the labor theory of value, production functions, international trade, neoliberalism, the welfare state, economic growth, inflation, the falling rate of profit, long waves, inequality on the world scale, and past and current global economic crises.

He graduated from Stuyvesant High School in New York City in 1961, received a B.S.E from Princeton University in 1965, worked for two years in Kuwait, and then returned to the United States to study at Columbia University, from which he received his Ph.D. in Economics in 1973. In 1972 he joined the Economics Department at the Graduate Faculty of the New School for Social Research.