About
Clara E. Mattei, Ph.D., is a professor of economics and director of the Center for Heterodox Economics at The University of Tulsa. She was previously associate professor at The New School for Social Research Economics Department and has been a fellow of the Institute for Advanced Studies, Princeton.
Mattei’s research contributes to the history of capitalism, exploring the critical relation between economic ideas and technocratic policy making. She recently published her first book, “The Capital Order: How Economists Invented Austerity and Paved the Way to Fascism” (University of Chicago Press 2022). The book was praised in the Financial Times as one of the ten best economics books of 2022, is now being translated in more than 10 languages, and won the 2023 Herbert Adams Baxter Prize from the American Historical Association.
In November 2023, Mattei published her first book written directly in Italian, “L’economia è politica: Tutto quello che non vediamo dell’economia e che nessuno racconta” (Fuori Scena publisher 2023). The book will be released soon in English under the title “Escape from Capitalism,” with Simon & Schuster and Allen Lane (Penguin).
Her current book project critically reassesses the Golden Age of Capitalism (1945-1975) and its Keynesianism through the lens of austerity capitalism. Her writings have appeared in The Guardian, Jacobin, The Nation, and Il Fatto Quotidiano – an Italian national newspaper that she contributes to regularly. She also writes a monthly column for the Swedish national paper Dagens Etc.
Awards and Honors
- Distinguished Teaching Award, New School, Finalist, August 2024
- Moynihan Public Scholar, CUNY, June 2024
- Falling Walls Foundation, Science Summit Finalist, October 2023
- Herbert Baxter Adams Prize Award Winner from the American Historical Association, March 2023
- Federico Caffé Prize for the Italian Translation of The Capital Order, December 2022
- A Best Book in Economics in 2022 from the Financial Times, New York, USA – 2021/2022
- Institute for Advanced Studies, School of Social Sciences, Member and Fellow, Princeton, USA – 2018/2019
Education
- Ph.D., Economics, Sant’Anna School for Advanced Studies, Italy
- Master in Philosophy, University of Pavia, Italy
- B.A., Philosophy, University of Pavia, Italy, and Cambridge University, UK
Research interests and areas of expertise
- Political economy
- History of economic thought
- History of capitalism
- Methodology