PERI's research on finance, jobs and macroeconomics looks at financial institutions, markets, macroeconomic activity, and policy, and considers how these affect employment, inequality, economic instability and living standards in the U.S. and globally. Our focus is on advancing policies that will promote financial stability, full employment, and improvements in living standards for working people and the poor, and facilitate the transition to an environmentally sustainable economy.

PERI's research on labor markets, wages & poverty explores conditions for working people and the poor in the U.S. and globally. We focus on policies that will promote an abundance of decent employment throughout the U .S. and globally. These include living wage policies, employment-targeted macroeconomic policies, and measures to support the rights of workers to organize into unions. We also examine the impact of social welfare policies, such as employment and food subsidies, on overall economic well-being. 

PERI's research on environmental & energy economics explores how to integrate the goals of environmental protection and improved economic well-being for working people. Topics include the employment impacts of the transition to clean energy; the distributional implications of alternative climate policies; corporate responsibility for industrial pollution; and policies to safeguard natural assets as the common heritage of humankind.

PERI's research on state and local economies examines the policy and budgetary choices that face each of the six New England states and the region as a whole, and seeks approaches that can maximize fairness, decent living standards, and stability over the long time.

PERI's research on economics for the developing world explores how we might advance the mutually supportive goals of sustainable livelihood security, the consolidation of peace in war-torn societies, and democratization of economic power at the local, national and international levels.

PERI’s African Development Policy program combines applied research and capacity building to help understand the challenges and opportunities for accelerated economic development in Africa. In collaboration with selected African universities and research networks, PERI’s African Policy Summer Institute (APSI) provides training for African policy makers on structural and emerging issues in African development.

PERI's research on political economy is broadly gauged, including explorations in economic theory, history, philosophy, and policy that are tied to the overall PERI project of creating, as Robert Heilbroner put it, “a workable science of morality” within the discipline of economics.