Kurt Rothschild Award 2023: Main prize awarded to Isabella Weber and Sebastian Dullien

The Kurt-Rothschild-Award was founded in 2016 by the Karl-Renner-Institut, together with the Social Democratic Parliamentary Group. The award strengthens research and science communication that achieves relevant results by placing economic issues in a broad context, rather than simply reproducing neoclassical beliefs. The awardees are also distinguished by the fact that they aim to shape politics and society and therefore get involved in the public debate.

Main Award

The main award 2023 goes to Isabella Weber and Sebastian Dullien for their proposal to dampen inflation and cushion the social consequences of the energy price shock with a gas price cap. Isabella Weber is Professor of Economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst; Sebastian Dullien is Scientific Director of the Macroeconomic Policy Institute (IMK) at the Hans Böckler Foundation in Germany.

"The idea of the gas price cap is clearly in line with the thought tradition of Rothschild: When if the market results are socially, societally or economically undesirable, the state should intervene in markets in a regulating and controlling way. There should be no ideological blinders, such as the idea that prices should not be touched under any circumstances."
Sebastian Dullien

"Kurt Rothschild pioneered a theory of prices that starts from given institutional realities rather than metaphysical theories. Rothschild wrote that prices have always been one of the central problems - if not the main problem - in the theory of the capitalist market economy. It is a great honour to be awarded this prize in his name for our work on gas price stabilisation."
Isabella Weber

Additional Awards

In addition, four further prizes will be awarded to outstanding scientists. These go to Felix Dorn (University of Vienna) for his work on geographies of decarbonisation; to Franklin Obeng-Odoom (University of Helsinki) for his insights on institutions, insecurity and oligopoly; to Emma Dowling (University of Vienna) for her study on the crisis of care; and to Giorgos Gouzoulis, Panagiotis Iliopoulos and Giorgos Galanis (Universities of Bristol, Leuven and Queen Mary London) for their work on financialisation and the future of workers.