Clara Mattei

Clara Mattei is Professor of Economics at the The University of Tulsa and President of Forum for Real Economic Emancipation (FREE), where she also hosts the weekly FREE Podcast. FREE builds upon the work she previously led through the Center for Heterodox Economics.

Prior to joining Tulsa, Mattei was Associate Professor of Economics at the The New School for Social Research and a Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. Her scholarship advances the historical and theoretical analysis of capitalism, with particular attention to the relationship between economic ideas and technocratic policymaking.

Mattei is the author of Capital Order: How Economists Invented Austerity and Paved the Way to Fascism, translated into more than a dozen languages. The book was named one of the Financial Times’ Ten Best Economics Books of 2022 and received the 2023 Baxter Adams Prize from the American Historical Association, as well as the 2026 Hans Matthöfer Prize. The work traces the emergence of austerity policies in the aftermath of the First World War, analysing their function as instruments deployed to safeguard capitalist social relations against transformative alternatives. Her most recent book, Escape from Capitalism examines contemporary pathways beyond capitalist political economy and is forthcoming in multiple languages, including French, German, and Italian. She is currently completing a new project reassessing the so-called Golden Age of Capitalism (1945–1975) and its Keynesian framework through the lens of austerity capitalism.

Mattei’s essays and commentary have appeared in outlets such as The Guardian, Jacobin, The Nation, and Il Fatto Quotidiano, to which she is a regular contributor.

Mattei earned her B.A. in Philosophy from the University of Cambridge and an M.A. in Philosophy from the University of Pavia. She completed her joint Ph.D. in Economics at the Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies and the University of Strasbourg (École Doctorale Augustine Cournot).