Isabella Weber Named One of Germany's 100 Women of the Year by Focus Magazine

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Adding to the growing list of accolades she has received over the past year, UMass Amherst economist Isabella Weber has been named one of Germany’s “100 Women of the Year” by FOCUS, one of the country’s largest news magazines.

An assistant professor of economics, Weber burst onto the international scene in late 2021 when she authored an op-ed for The Guardian explaining how price caps could help alleviate the economic crisis Germany faced from the COVID-19 pandemic. The suggestion sharply divided economic experts and led to a campaign of online harassment against the young economist, including a highly-critical tweet from Nobel laureate Paul Krugman, a well-known economist and columnist for The New York Times. The online harassment slowed after other renowned economists stepped into the conversation to defend Weber and Krugman apologized for his initial tweet. Ultimately, in an effort to slow inflation, German authorities did decide to implement energy price cap measures suggested by Weber.

“The world of economics is sometimes seen as stubborn and conservative,” FOCUS writes of Weber, translated from its original German. “Above all, [it] is male. Isabella Weber has always been an exception: the professor at the University of Massachusetts is young and unconventional. Some mocked the German for her ideas. Until the hour of the gas price cap, which Weber helped to invent, came this year. From the ridiculed to the shooting star – it can go that fast.”

“It has been an extraordinary year for me,” Weber, who is also a research associate and research leader in China studies with the UMass Amherst Political Economy Research Institute, recently said. “I was sharply criticized on New Year’s Day for arguing in an op-ed that our times of overlapping emergencies might make it necessary for economists to revisit targeted price controls as an emergency stabilization tool. Following the war on Ukraine, most European countries now have implemented some form of direct price stabilization for natural gas and electricity. This fall I have served on the German government’s expert commission in charge of gas price caps.”

Last month, Weber was named one of Bloomberg Businessweek’s “Ones to Watch,” and in November she was named one of German business magazine Capital’s “Top 40 Under 40.”  She was profiled by the German news magazine Der Spiegel in September, and her 2021 book “How China Escaped Shock Therapy: The Market Reform Debate” continued to gather honors, receiving the Best Book in Interdisciplinary Studies Award from the International Studies Association in April.

This article first appeared in UMass Amherst News & Events.