Stephanie Kelton

Stephanie Kelton is a professor of economics at Stony Brook University and one of the leading advocates for Modern Monetary Theory (MMT). Her 2020 book "The Deficit Myth: Modern Monetary Theory and the Birth of the People's Economy" brought MMT to mainstream attention, arguing that for currency-issuing sovereign governments, budget deficits don't work the same way as household deficits, and that concerns about government debt are often misplaced. She was Chief Economist for the Democrats on the US Senate Budget Committee and served as economic adviser to Bernie Sanders. Her work has been influential in shifting the public debate about government spending and deficits, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic. Her public communication of MMT principles — emphasizing that the real constraint on sovereign spending is productive capacity and inflation rather than financing availability — reached a wide audience of policymakers, journalists, and citizens who had limited prior exposure to heterodox monetary theory.