Isabella M. Weber
Isabella M. Weber is an Assistant Professor of Economics and the Research Leader for China at the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Her first book How China Escaped Shock Therapy: The Market Reform Debate is the winner of the Joan Robinson Prize 2021 and the International Studies Association Best Interdisciplinary Book Award and has been recommended on best book of 2021 lists by the Financial Times, Foreign Policy, Project Syndicate, ProMarket and Folha de S.Paulo among others. For her work on the rise of economics in China’s recent history she has won the International Convention of Asia Scholars’ Ground-breaking Subject Matter Accolade and the Warren Samuels Prize for Interdisciplinary Research in History of Economic Thought and Methodology. Previously she was a Lecturer at Goldsmiths, University of London, and has been the principal investigator of the ESRC-funded Rebuilding Macroeconomics project What Drives Specialization? A Century of Global Export Patterns. Isabella holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the New School for Social Research, New York, and a Ph.D. in Development Studies from the University of Cambridge and was a visiting researcher at Tsinghua University. German born, she studied at the Free University of Berlin and Peking University for her B.A.
Economic History
How China Became a Global Economic Powerhouse Through an Idiosyncratic Approach to Market Capitalism
Chinese reformers after the death of Mao Zedong in 1976 agreed that it was necessary for China to move towards marketization, but...
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Commentary
How Financial Contracting Could Help the Police Force Manage Its Aims More Effectively
Hamid Mehran proposes funded deferred pay, an incentive structure to mitigate the risk and costs of police misconduct.
Event Notes
Event Notes: “China’s Political Economy” in Review
The Stigler Center's "China Political Economy" webinar series returns Thursday, February 9. Here's a reminder of what we covered in our first...
Economic History
To Build an Equitable Economy, We Must Understand Capitalism’s Racist Heritage
American capitalism was built on racial exploitation, from the enslavement of Black people to institutionalized discrimination and its structural impact on our...
Industrial Policy
How To Ensure Industrial Policy Promotes Public Over Private Gain
Industrial policy was once so out of fashion that it was jokingly called “the policy that shall not be named.” Now it’s...
Fiscal Policy
More than Economics, Ideology Determines US Voters’ Preferences for Redistribution
The US stands out among developed economies for its comparatively low level of redistribution as a percentage of GDP. Gustavo de Souza...
Research
Stakeholder Motivations for “Private Sanctions” Against Russia
As the war in Ukraine enters its second year, a new study measures stakeholders’ desire to see their firms exit Russia and...
Big Tech
The Wicked Problem Embodied by The Twitter Files
In response to a recent ProMarket post about the Twitter Files, professor Tom Ginsburg points out that the toughest question lies in...
