Stefanie Stantcheva, an accomplished economist, has been named the Clark Medalist for 2025 for her significant contributions to the field of public economics. 

Stantcheva is a Professor of Political Economy at Harvard University, and an NBER Research Fellow.

Stantcheva was awarded the John Bates Clark Medal for her work on how tax policy influences innovation, uncovering that tax policies significantly impact innovators' behaviors. Her studies, such as "Taxation and Innovation in the 20th Century," conducted with co-authors, reveal high elasticities in innovation in response to changes in tax policies. Another key contribution is her work on optimal tax policy, as demonstrated in "Optimal Taxation and Human Capital Policies over the Life Cycle," where she proposes income-contingent education loans as a means to incentivize human capital investment. 

She has utilized a variety of tools to explore the interplay between government taxation and private behavior, including mechanism design to analyze optimal tax policy in dynamic scenarios, empirical studies on the impact of taxes and subsidies on innovators' decisions, and surveys and experiments to examine public perceptions of redistribution and tax policies. 

Moreover, Stantcheva has pioneered the use of surveys and experiments to gauge public understanding and preferences on various policy issues, including tax policy, redistribution, and climate change. Through her innovative methodologies, she has shed light on the factors influencing support for redistribution and views on tax policies. 

Stantcheva's comprehensive body of work has provided valuable insights for informing policy debates on tax system design, offering fresh perspectives on traditional public finance questions. Her groundbreaking research has not only advanced the understanding of optimal tax policies but has also deepened our knowledge of how individuals perceive key policy issues. 

The John Bates Clark Medal is awarded annually by the American Economic Association to an economist under the age of forty, employed at a US institution, who is judged to have made the most significant contribution to economic thought and knowledge. Stantcheva joins a prestigious group of previous winners, including many economists who have subsequently won the Nobel Prize such as Esther Duflo (Clark Medalist in 2010), David Card (1995), Paul Krugman (1991), Joseph Stiglitz (1979), and Milton Friedmann (1951). 

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_{^{Image Credit: American Economic Association}}