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Our Staff

James K. Boyce, Professor of Economics
Gerald Epstein, Co-Director and Professor of Economics
Judy Fogg, Administrative Director
James Heintz, Associate Director and Associate Research Professor
Robert Pollin, Co-director and Professor of Economics
Jeannette Wicks-Lim, Assistant Research Professor
Debbie Zeidenberg, Communications Director


James K. Boyce

James K. Boyce

Director, Program on Development, Peacebuilding, and the Environment and Professor of Economics
James K. Boyce received his Ph.D. in economics from Oxford University. He is the author of Investing in Peace: Aid and Conditionality After Civil Wars (Oxford University Press 2002), The Political Economy of the Environment (Edward Elgar 2002), The Philippines: The Political Economy of Growth and Impoverishment in the Marcos Era (Macmillan 1993), and Agrarian Impasse in Bengal: Institutional Constraints to Technological Change (Oxford University Press 1987), and co-author of A Quiet Violence: View From a Bangladesh Village (with Betsy Hartmann, Zed Press 1983). He is the co-editor of Natural Assets: Democratizing Environmental Ownership (with Barry Shelley, Island Press 2003) and editor of Economic Policy for Building Peace: The Lessons of El Salvador (Lynne Rienner 1996). Professor Boyce's current work focuses on strategies for combining poverty reduction with environmental protection, and on the relationship between economic policies and issues of war and peace.

Selected publications

Curriculum vitae

Contact: boyce@econs.umass.edu

James K. Boyce
Gordon Hall
418 N. Pleasant St., Suite A
Amherst, MA 01002
413-577-0816

Graduate courses:
Economics 765: Economic Development
Economics 797E: The Political Economy of the Environment


Gerald Epstein

Gerald Epstein

Co-director and Professor of Economics
Gerald Epstein received his Ph.D. in economics from Princeton University. He has published widely on a variety of progressive economic policy issues, especially in the areas of central banking and international finance, and is the editor or co-editor of six volumes, including Financialization and the World Economy (Edward Elgar Press 2004); Capital Flight and Capital Controls in Developing Countries (Edward Elgar Press 2004); Globalization and Progressive Economic Policy: (with Dean Baker and Robert Pollin, Cambridge University Press 1998); Macroeconomic Policy After the Conservative Era: Studies in Investment, Saving and Finance (with Herbert Gintis, Cambridge University Press 1995); and Transforming the U.S. Financial System: An Equitable and Efficient Structure for the 21st Century (with Gary Dymski and Robert Pollin, M.E. Sharpe 1993). Professor Epstein's current work focuses on developing macroeconomic policies to promote just and sustainable improvements in living standards. He is also a long-time member of the Center for Popular Economics.

Selected publications

Curriculum vitae

Contact: gepstein@econs.umass.edu

Gerald Epstein
Gordon Hall
418 N. Pleasant St., Suite A
Amherst, MA 01002
413-577-0822

Graduate Courses
Economics 721 International Finance and Open Economy Macroeconomics I
Economics 797 International Finance and Open Economy Macroeconomics II

Related websites
Department of Economics University of Massachusetts
Center for Popular Economics
Econotrocities


Judy Fogg

Judy Fogg

Administrative Director
Judy Fogg earned her bachelor's degree as an Ada Comstock Scholar at Smith College with a major in sociology and a minor in political economy. Over the last 20 years she has been an administrator in a variety of environments, including higher education (admissions, development), publishing, and human services. 

Contact: fogg@peri.umass.edu

Judy Fogg
Gordon Hall
418 N. Pleasant St., Suite A
Amherst, MA 01002
413-577-1099


James Heintz

James Heintz

Associate Director and Associate Research Professor
James Heintz holds a Ph.D. from the University of Massachusetts and a master's degree from the University of Minnesota. He has written on a wide range of economic policy issues, including job creation, global labor standards, egalitarian macroeconomic strategies, and investment behavior. He has worked as an international consultant on projects in Ghana and South Africa, sponsored by the International Labor Organization and the United Nations Development Program, that focus on employment-oriented development policy. He is co-author, with Nancy Folbre, of The Ultimate Field Guide to the U.S. Economy. From 1996 to 1998, he worked as an economist at the National Labour and Economic Development Institute in Johannesburg , a policy think tank affiliated with the South African labor movement. His current work focuses on global labor standards, employment income, and poverty; employment policies for low- and middle-income countries; and the links between macroeconomic policies and distributive outcomes.

Selected publications

Curriculum vitae

Contact: jheintz@econs.umass.edu

James Heintz
Gordon Hall
418 N. Pleasant St., Suite A
Amherst, MA 01002
413-577-0228


Robert Pollin

Robert Pollin

Co-director and Professor of Economics
Robert Pollin is co-director of the Political Economy Research Institute at UMass Amherst. He received a Ph.D. in economics from the New School for Social Research in New York City in 1982. His research centers on macroeconomics, conditions for low-wage workers in the U.S. and globally, and the analysis of financial markets. His recent books include Contours of Descent: U.S. Economic Fractures and the Landscape of Global Austerity (Verso 2003); The Living Wage: Building a Fair Economy (with Stephanie Luce, The New Press 1998); and the edited volumes Globalization and Progressive Economic Policy (with Dean Baker and Gerald Epstein, Cambridge 1998), The Macroeconomics of Saving, Finance, and Investment (University of Michigan Press 1997), and Transforming the U.S. Financial System (with Gary Dymski and Gerald Epstein, M.E. Sharpe 1993). In the area of labor market policies, Professor Pollin has written extensively on the viability of “living wage” policies, including those as proposed by policy makers in Los Angeles and Santa Monica, Calif.; New Orleans, La.; and Santa Fe, N.M. He is currently completing a manuscript, co-written with Professor James Heintz of PERI, on the economics of global sweatshops. In separate areas of policy work, he is currently co-directing a project on employment-targeted macroeconomic policies for South Africa, under the auspices of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP). He has worked previously with the UNDP in Bolivia, and has worked with the Joint Economic Committee of the U.S. Congress and as a member of the Capital Formation Subcouncil of the U.S. Competitiveness Policy Council.

Selected publications

Curriculum vitae

Contact: pollin@econs.umass.edu

Robert Pollin
Gordon Hall
418 N. Pleasant St., Suite A
Amherst, MA 01002
413-577-0819


Jeannette Wicks-Lim

Jeannette Wicks-Lim

Associate Research Professor
Jeannette Wicks-Lim completed her Ph.D. in economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 2005. Wicks-Lim specializes in labor economics with an emphasis on the low-wage labor market and has an overlapping interest in the political economy of race. Her dissertation, Mandated wage floors and the wage structure: Analyzing the ripple effects of minimum and prevailing wage laws, is a study of the overall impact of mandated wage floors on wages. Specifically, she provides empirical estimates of the extent to which mandated wage floors cause wage changes beyond those required by law, either through wage effects that ripple across the wage distribution or spillover to workers that are not covered by mandated wage floors. Other recent research includes economic impact studies of minimum wage and living wage proposals. Her current research interest includes the interaction between minimum wage laws and the Earned Income Tax Credit and the dynamics of the low-wage labor market. Prior to coming to PERI, Wicks-Lim was a visiting professor at Marlboro College, in Marlboro, Vermont. She has also worked as a research assistant for the Economic Policy Institute and a research associate for Monitoring the Future at the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

Selected publications

Curriculum vitae (pdf)

Contact: wickslim@peri.umass.edu

Jeannette Wicks-Lim
Gordon Hall
418 N. Pleasant St., Suite A
Amherst, MA 01002
413-577-0820


Debbie Zeidenberg

Communications Director
Debbie Zeidenberg joined PERI in January, 2006, after six years as a welfare policy analyst in Olympia, Washington, where she co-authored "Going It Alone: Why Eligible Families Choose Not to Receive Public Benefits" and was a member of Governor Gregoire's Government Management Accountability and Performance Team. She has also evaluated social service programs in Iowa and served on numerous electoral campaigns in Washington State. Debbie has a B.A. from Harvard College and an M.P.A. from the University of Washington.

Contact: dzeiden@peri.umass.edu 

Debbie Zeidenberg
Gordon Hall
418 N. Pleasant St., Suite A
Amherst, MA 01002
413-577-3147

 

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