Stefanie Stantcheva was 11 years old in 1997 when annual inflation in Bulgaria, the country from which she and her family had emigrated, surpassed 2,000 percent. “The episode helped shape her eventual decision to study economics,” according to a profile in the International Monetary Fund’s Finance & Development magazine. Inflation and how people perceive it still fascinate Stantcheva, now a professor of political economy at Harvard and the founder and director of its Social Economics Lab. This year she released a pair of papers on the topic, the first about why people dislike inflation and the second, with a pair of co-authors, about how they understand it. Some people will take this as evidence that ordinary Americans are simply wrong.

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Persons: Stefanie Stantcheva, we’re, Tom Jensen Organizations: Monetary Fund’s Finance, Development, Harvard, Social, Econ, Public, Democratic Locations: Bulgaria