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Home / About Us / PERI Staff
James K. Boyce, Professor of Economics Gerald Epstein, Co-Director and Professor of Economics Judy Fogg, Administrative Director Heidi Garrett-Peltier, Research Fellow James Heintz, Associate Director and Associate Research Professor Robert Pollin, Co-director and Professor of Economics Jeffrey Thompson, Assistant Research Professor Jeannette Wicks-Lim, Assistant Research Professor Debbie Zeidenberg, Communications Director

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
Reclaiming Nature: Environmental Justice and Ecological Restoration (editor, with Sunita Narain and Elizabeth A. Stanton). London: Anthem Press, 2007.
Peace and the Public Purse: Economic Policies for Postwar Statebuilding (editor, with Madalene O’Donnell). Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2007.
"Is Inequality Bad for the Environment?" Research in Social Problems and Public Policy, Vol. 15, 2008.
Curriculum vitae Contact: 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

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
- Epstein, Gerald, "Alternatives to Inflation Targeting Monetary Policy for Stable and Egalitarian Growth: A Brief Research Summary," 2003, Working Paper Number 62.
- Epstein, Gerald, Ilene Grabel, and Jomo, K.S., "Capital Management Techniques in Developing Countries: An Assessment of Experiences From the 1990s and Lessons for the Future," 2003, Working Paper Number 56.
- Braunstein, Elissa, and Gerald Epstein, "Bargaining Power and Foreign Direct Investment in China: Can 1.3 Billion Consumers Tame the Multinationals?" 2002, Working Paper Number 45.
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
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
Research Fellow Heidi Garrett-Peltier is completing her Ph.D. in Economics at the University of Massachusetts, where she earned her Master’s Degree in 2006. Her dissertation includes a nation-wide survey of firms in the renewable energy and energy efficiency industries, which will significantly enhance our understanding of the structure of a clean-energy economy. Over the past few years, Heidi has become a national expert in this area; she is a co-author of “Green Recovery: A Program to Create Good Jobs and Start Building a Low-Carbon Economy” as well as a number of other recent and forthcoming studies in PERI’s green economics program.
Curriculum vitae
Contact: hpeltier@econs.umass.edu Heidi Garrett-Peltier Gordon Hall 418 N. Pleasant St., Suite A Amherst, MA 01002 413-577-0818

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

Co-director and Professor of Economics
Robert Pollin is Professor of Economics and founding Co-Director of the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. His research centers on macroeconomics, conditions for low-wage workers in the U.S. and globally, the analysis of financial markets, and the economics of building a clean-energy economy in the U.S. His books include A Measure of Fairness: The Economics of Living Wages and Minimum Wages in the United States (co-authored, 2008); An Employment-Targeted Economic Program for Kenya (co-authored, 2008); An Employment-Targeted Economic Program for South Africa (co-authored, 2007); Contours of Descent: U.S. Economic Fractures and the Landscape of Global Austerity (2003); and The Living Wage: Building A Fair Economy (co-authored, 1998); and the edited volumes Human Development in the Era of Globalization (co-edited, 2006); Globalization and Progressive Economic Policy (co-edited, 1998); The Macroeconomics of Saving, Finance, and Investment (1997); and Transforming the U.S. Financial System (co-edited, 1993). Most recently, he co-authored the reports “Job Opportunities for the Green Economy” (June 2008) and “Green Recovery” (September 2008), exploring the broader economic benefits of large-scale investments in a clean-energy economy in the U.S. He has worked with the United Nations Development Programme and the United Nations Economic Commission on Africa on policies to promote to promote decent employment expansion and poverty reduction in Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa. He has also worked with the Joint Economic Committee of the U.S. Congress and as a member of the Capital Formation Subcouncil of the U.S. Competiveness 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
Assistant Research Professor Jeff Thompson focuses primarily on domestic economic policy, with particular emphasis on the New England region and public finance at the state and local government levels. Jeff comes to PERI from Syracuse University, where he recently completed his Ph.D. in economics with a dissertation on how migration influences the ability of states to use their tax codes to redistribute income. Prior to his Ph.D. work, Jeff was a labor analyst at the Oregon Center for Public Policy for six years and received his Master's degree from the New School for Social Research.
Curriculum vitae (pdf)
Contact: jthompson@peri.umass.edu Jeff Thompson Gordon Hall 418 N. Pleasant St., Suite A Amherst, MA 01002 413-577-0241

Assistant 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
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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