UMass Amherst Economist Isabella Weber Nominated for Prospect Magazine’s 2024 ‘Top Thinker’ Award

Isabella Weber, associate professor of economics, who has become a leading expert on policy responses to inflation, has been nominated as a finalist for “World’s Top Thinker 2024” by Prospect, Britain’s leading monthly current affairs magazine. The publication’s editorial team and regular contributors have composed a list of 25 nominees from disciplines ranging from economics and climate to geopolitics and technology whose ideas are shaping world events. Readers will select the “Top Thinker” through online voting.

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The promotional ad for Isabella Weber’s Prospect Top Thinker nomination
“Her ideas were called ‘perverse,’ ‘certainly wrong’ and — by a Nobel Prize-winner — ‘truly stupid.’ But economist Isabella Weber … can make a good claim to being one of the more influential economists of the past few years, and certainly one of the most prescient,” a Prospect profile states. “Her willingness to challenge economic orthodoxies with robust, historically informed analysis justifies her inclusion on this list.”

Weber is in the company of four other economists on the “Top Thinkers” list, who represent MIT, Columbia, Harvard and Oxford.

“In economics, our thinkers look beyond money and markets to address some of the biggest global trends and transformations,” Prospect notes.

Over the past two years, Weber has advised policymakers in the U.S. and Germany and accumulated a raft of accolades and honors.

In addition to her appointment in the Department of Economics, Weber is a research associate and research leader in China studies with the UMass Amherst Political Economy Research Institute and an associate in research at the Fairbank Center at Harvard University.

Voting for “World’s Top Thinker” runs through Jan. 7. Results will be announced at the end of January.