Robert Pollin

Professor Pollin's "main areas of research are financial macroeconomics and political economy. Recent work in these areas include the book, Contours of Descent: U.S. Economic Fractures and the Landscape of the Global Austerity, (2002) as well as the edited volumes The Macroeconomics of Saving, Finance and Investment (1997), and Globalization and Progressive Economic Policy (co-edited with Dean Baker and Gerald Epstein, 1998). He is also researching the relationship between class power, income distribution and macroeconomic analysis, as these issues are embedded, for example, in debates over the so-called "natural rate of unemployment," and the "reserve army of unemployed." He is actively engaged in economic policy work, serving as a consultant on living wage proposals in various U.S. cities. Some of that work is presented in The Living Wage: Building a Fair Economy (co-authored with Stephanie Luce, 1998). Other work in the areas of economic policy include serving as a consultant to the United Nations Development Program in Bolivia, as a member of the U.S. Government's Capital Formation Subcouncil of the Competitiveness Policy Council, and as Economic Spokesperson to the 1992 Presidential campaign of Gov. Jerry Brown. With Professor Gerald Epstein, Professor Pollin is founding co-director of the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) at UMass. PERI promotes policy-relevant research in the areas of macroeconomics, labor economics, development, and, more broadly, the analysis of globalization."


 * Director, Center for Economic and Policy Research
 * Founder/Advisor, Campaign for America's Future