About

Clara E. Mattei is a Professor of Economics and Director of the CHE, Center for Heterodox Economics, of The University of Tulsa, Oklahoma, recently inaugurated in February 2025. She previously taught at The New School for Social Research Economics Department and has been a fellow of the Institute for Advanced Studies, Princeton.   

Her research contributes to the history of capitalism, exploring the critical relation between economic ideas and technocratic policy making. She recently published her first book titled Capital Order: How Economists Invented Austerity and Paved the Way to Fascism (University of Chicago Press, November 2022). It investigates the origins of austerity after the WWI crisis to understand its logic as a tool of reaction against any alternatives to capitalism. 

She is currently working on a book project which critically reassesses the Golden Age of Capitalism (1945-1975) and its Keynesianism through the lens of austerity capitalism.