Stefanie Stantcheva (born 1986 in Bulgaria[2]) is a French economist who has served as the Nathaniel Ropes Professor of Political Economy at Harvard University since 2021.[5] She has been a member of the Conseil d’Analyse Économique since 2018.[5] In 2018, she was described by The Economist as one of the best young economists of the decade.[6]
At Harvard, Stantcheva founded the Social Economics Lab, which surveys several countries in order to understand how their people think, and their attitudes and actions towards new social and economic policy.[10] This data is extremely important to understand "invisible" data, like behaviors, attitudes, and beliefs.[10] Some notable surveys conducted involve perceived and actual numbers of immigrants and unemployment amongst them, shortcomings of the US tax system, and social mobility across US states.[10] The lab’s most recent research focuses on how people reason with US tax policy, which mainly revolves around fairness, distribution, and government efficiency of taxes.[10] Another critical point of research is how people from different countries react to policy changes that seem to impede on civil liberties during COVID-19.[10]
Research
Stantcheva's research concerns public finance—in particular, the question of how tax and transfer systems can better raise revenues, reduce inequality, and foster the productivity of firms and individuals.[11] She focuses on three aspects of optimal taxation: 1) the dynamic effects of taxation, 2) the corrective role of taxation in the presence of asymmetric information and other market failures, and 3) social preferences and perceptions to understand the determinants of tax policy, combining theoretical and empirical work.[11]
In the Social Economics Lab she founded, she developed the use of large-scale, cross-country Social Economic Surveys and experiments to study how people form views about policies, and their social attitudes. She particularly focuses on perceptions of intergenerational mobility,[12]immigration,[13] and inequality[14] and their link to support for redistribution. These Social Economics Surveys are rigorous research tools that can shed light on what is invisible in order datasets: perceptions, beliefs, reasoning, attitudes, views, and detailed individual economic circumstances.
Stantcheva studied the interplay between taxation and innovation,[17] examining the effects of personal and corporate income taxation on innovation and thinking about how to better design the tax system and R&D policies to foster innovation.[18] In "Taxation and Innovation in the 20th Century"[19][20] she analyzes the impacts of individual and corporate income taxes on individual inventors, firms that do R&D, and on innovation at the state level in the U.S. throughout the 20th century. She also shows that top personal tax rates affect the international location choices of superstar inventors.[21]
Media
Stantcheva has made numerous appearances in the media both as an author and a speaker. Stantcheva has written articles for French newspapers of record Le Monde and Le Figaro and, appeared in video essays by Vox, including in one titled "Where does Innovation come from?".[22] Stantcheva has also given many lectures and talks, some of which are filmed.
Intergenerational mobility and preferences for redistribution. (with A. Alesina & E. Teso). American Economic Review. Vol. 108, No. 2, pp. 521–54, February 2018.