There’s a number of reasons, some expected, some due to, shall we say, ill-advised choices on CCP’s part. As for the economist, I believe Dr. Eyjo left for another position almost a decade ago.
First, inflation. ISK in EVE is created out of thin air by many ‘faucets’: NPC bounties, mission payouts, Incursions, etc. So ISK is constantly entering the economy and rarely leaving it. Player trades only shuffle it around, so it only “leaves” by things like taxes, skillbook fees, etc. With the way players farm, the supply of ISK grows faster than the supply of goods (which actually do get consumed/destroyed/removed). So you get price inflation, this is expected.
Second, CCP has done a whole cycle of economic manipulations since you left, and these have led more directly to the increase in prices you’re experiencing. Back in 2020, some devs at EVE decided that players were too wealthy, had too much ISK and too many ships and resources, and basically started nuking the economy left and right.
The story started with this blog:
and things got pretty grim for the next two and a half years or so, as CCP started literally feeding player assets to the wolves and changing the way the economy worked. There was massive pushback against it and player numbers dropped to their lowest since like 2006, but CCP just ignored all that and kept relentlessly pounding the economy into the dust.
You can follow all the blogs and updates after the link above, or you can check player posts on the topic like the one I had here:
You are correct, “CCP has the power and the tools at their disposal”… and they used them to hammer the economy flat.
Eventually somebody at CCP figured out they were just crushing the game, and they shifted gears away from creating economic depressions and have moved on to adding actual game content, which has lead to an increase in player numbers again. Who woulda thunk it, crushed economy = less players, more game content = more players. What a totally unexpected surprise!
One thing to be aware of is that with certain activities like Abyssals, Pochven, some of the new Faction Warfare content etc., it’s also possible for players to earn ISK faster than they may have before. So if you’re feeling the ISK crunch just keep poking around until you find your own way to supply it, and the increased prices won’t seem such a roadblock.