Clara E. Mattei is an Assistant Professor in the Economics Department of The New School for Social Research, and was a 2018-2019 member of the School of Social Sciences at the Institute for Advanced Studies. Her research contributes to the history of capitalism, exploring the critical relation between economic ideas and technocratic policy making.

She is currently working on her book project entitled Economic Crisis and Technocratic Repression: On the Origins and Rationality of Austerity, which investigates austerity as a powerful tool of reaction against the unprecedented crisis of capitalism after World War I, the mobilization of the working classes, and the proposals for post-capitalist reconstruction.

Degrees Held

PhD (jointly), Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies (SSSUP) and Université de Strasbourg, Ecole Doctorale Augustine Cournot in Strasbourg
MA in Philosophy, Pavia
BA in Philosophy, Cambridge

Recent Publications

Going Up and Down: Rethinking the Empirics of Growth in the Developing and Newly Industrialized World. Journal of Evolutionary Economics, 28(4), 749-784, 2018. With Franceso Lamperti.

“Early Women Economists at Columbia University Contributions in the Struggle for Labor Protection in the Lochner Era”, chapter in Routledge Handbook of the Women’s History of Economic Thought, Kirsten K Madden and Robert K Diamond Editors, Routledge, 2018.

Hawtrey, Austerity and The ‘Treasury View, 1918-25,” Journal of the History of Economic Thought, 40(4), 2018.

Treasury view and post-WWI British austerity: Basil Blackett, Otto Niemeyer and Ralph Hawtrey,” Cambridge Journal of Economics, Volume 42, Issue 4, 14 July 2018, Pages 1123–1144

“Austerity and Repressive Politics: Italian Economists in the Early Years of the Fascist Government 1922-1925”, European Journal of the History of Economic Thought (EJHET), Vol. 24:5, 2017.

The Guardians of Capitalism. International Consensus and Fascist Technocratic Implementation of Austerity”, Journal of Law and Society (JLS), Vol. 4:1, 2017

Forthcoming

“A Decade After: a New Orography of Growth Patterns”, LEM Working Paper, forthcoming on The Journal of Evolutionary Economics, co-authored with Francesco Lamperti.

Research Interests

Post-WWI monetary and fiscal policies, history of economic thought and methodology

Awards And Honors

Young Scholar Award of the History of Economics Society (June 2015) for the working paper presented at the annual conference: “The Guardians of Capitalism. International Consensus and Fascist Technocratic Implementation of Austerity”

Young Scholar Award off the European Society for the History of Economic Thought (May 2015) for the working paper presented at the annual conference: “Austerity and Repressive Politics: Italian Economists in the EarlyYears of the Fascist Government 1922-1925’

Featuring this expert

The Capital Order

Video | Oct 12, 2022

How Economists Invented Austerity & Paved the Way to Fascism