Isabella Weber

Isabella M. Weber (born 1987 in Nuremberg, Germany^[1]) is a German economist. She is an associate professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.^[2]

Isabella Weber
Professor Isabella Weber in 2024 at UNCTAD conference
Born	1987 Nuremberg, Germany
Education	The New School (PhD), University of Cambridge (PhD), Freie Universität Berlin (BA)
Occupations	Economist professor
Known for	Sellers' inflation

Weber became more widely known for having taken a position in favor of a price control policy. Her op-ed published in The Guardian in December 2021^[3] caused an uproar among economists,^[4] including Paul Krugman, who later apologized for his tone. Weber's thoughts around focusing more on what she calls "sellers' inflation" (instead of focusing on increased demand) have become more popular and mainstream by 2023, especially in Europe.^[5] In additional to price caps and strict anti-price gouging legislation to combat inflation, she also supports windfall profit taxes.^[5]

Career

Weber completed her undergraduate studies in political science and economics at the Freie Universität Berlin. Weber received a PhD in Development Studies from the University of Cambridge in 2018. Her thesis was titled China's Escape from the 'Big-Bang': The 1980s Price Reform Debate in Historical Perspective and advised by Peter Nolan.^[6] She received a second PhD, in Economics, from the New School for Social Research in 2019.^[7]

From 2017 to 2019, Weber was a lecturer in Economics at Goldsmiths, University of London.^[8] In 2019, she became assistant professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.^[9]

In December 2021, an op-ed she published in The Guardian which argued that strategic price controls could help control inflation in bottleneck situations was heavily criticized by economists. Writing in The New Yorker, journalist Zachary Carter said this made her into "the most hated woman in economics".^[4] Paul Krugman strongly criticized the op-ed but apologized for his tone during the peak of the fracas.^[10] He later stated that there were "some historical examples" of price caps and they were not "wrong in principle", although he maintained that "nothing like that is going to happen in major economies in the foreseeable future".^[11] The British magazine Prospect called Weber "prescient", praising her "willingness to challenge economic orthodoxies with robust, historically informed analysis".^[12]

In 2022–23, Weber was a fellow in the Future of Capitalism program at the Berggruen Institute.^[13][14]

In 2022, Weber was a member of the German government's gas price commission, an expert advisory group of the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action.^[15]

In 2025, the government of Chancellor Friedrich Merz appointed Weber as member of an expert commission to advise Minister of Finance Lars Klingbeil on reforming Germany's rules on public debt, co-chaired by Stephan Weil, Eckhardt Rehberg and Stephan Müller.^[16]

Awards and honors

• In 2019, Weber was also awarded the Warren Samuels Prize for Interdisciplinary Research in History of Economic Thought and Methodology from the Association for Social Economics (ASE)^[17][14]
• In 2019, Weber was awarded the Joan Robinson Prize from the European Association for Evolutionary Political Economy for her book “How China Escaped Shock Therapy: The Market Reform Debate”^[17][14]
• In 2022, Weber was named one of Bloomberg's "50 people who defined global business in 2022"^[18]
• In 2023, Weber was recognized on Time Magazine's Time 100 Next list which recognizes rising leaders across multiple fields^[19]

Works

• How China Escaped Shock Therapy: The Market Reform Debate. Routledge (2021). ISBN 9781032008493

See also

• 2021-2022 inflation spike