Stefanie Stantcheva, the Nathaniel Ropes Professor of Political Economy at Harvard University, is one of two U.S.-based social science researchers to win the 2023 A.SK Bright Mind Award. Granted by the Berlin Social Science Center for the first time this year, the prize recognizes younger academics who make important contributions to political and economic reforms. She will be honored at an award ceremony in Berlin on November 4.
“I am truly honored to be one of the two inaugural recipients of the Bright Minds Award,” Dr. Stantcheva said. “I am very happy that my work seeking to dive into people’s minds and better understand their perceptions, views, and beliefs is resonating with others.”
Professor Stantcheva, a Bulgarian-born French economist who joined the Harvard faculty in 2016, is known for her research on improving taxation systems for greater benefit to people and firms. To that end, she studies the long-term effects of tax policy on everything from education to innovation.
Additionally, Dr. Stantcheva founded the Social Economics Lab at Harvard in 2018, where she leads the development of large-scale surveys and experiments designed to assess public thinking on a range of economic issues.
Professor Stantcheva is a graduate of the University of Cambridge in England, where she majored in economics. She holds master’s degree in economics from the Ecole Polytechnique de Paris and the Paris School of Economics. Dr. Stantcheva earned a Ph.D. in economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.