Henri (Hans) Theil (October 13, 1924 – August 20, 2000) was a Dutch econometrician and professor at the Netherlands School of Economics in Rotterdam, known for his contributions to the field of econometrics.

After the war he started to study economics at the Gemeente-Universiteit Amsterdam, where in 1951 he received his PhD under Pieter Hennipman.

[3] After graduation Theil started working as researcher for the Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis under Jan Tinbergen.

In 1966 he moved to the United States, where he was appointed Professor of Econometrics and director of the Center for Mathematical Studies in Business and Economics at the University of Chicago.

He is also known for the Theil index, a measure of entropy, which belongs to the class of Kolm-Indices and is used as an inequality indicator in econometrics.