Isabella Weber

Independent activity 1987–

German economist who explained the post-COVID inflation as "sellers' inflation" and argued for price controls

Weber studied political science and economics at the Free University of Berlin, took a PhD in development studies at Cambridge with a thesis on China's price reform debate of the 1980s and a second PhD in economics at the New School. Her book How China Escaped Shock Therapy won the Joan Robinson Prize in 2019. She is a professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Her op-ed in The Guardian in December 2021, arguing that strategic price controls could help control inflation in bottleneck situations, was heavily criticised by economists. With Evan Wasner she published the 2023 paper on "sellers' inflation", a view that later gained some mainstream acceptance, especially in Europe. She also supports windfall profit taxes.

Also known as: Isabella M. Weber