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.  

Recent publications 

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.

Recent 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

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

Assistant Research Professor
Heidi Garrett-Peltier holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Her research focuses on the employment impacts of public and private investments, particularly in the realm of clean-energy programs. Heidi has written and contributed to a number of reports on the clean energy economy (see Recent publications, below). She has also written about the employment effects of defense spending with co-author Robert Pollin, consulted with the U.S. Department of Energy on federal energy programs and is an active member of the Center for Popular Economics. 

Recent publications

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 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, the distributive consequences of macroeconomic policies, and human rights. He has worked on collaborative projects with numerous United Nations agencies, including the International Labour Organization, the U.N. Research Institute for Social Development, the Economic Commission for Africa, the United Nations Development Programme, and UNIFEM. His policy work has focused on the U.S. as well as developing countries, primarily in sub-Saharan Africa, including Ghana, Kenya, Liberia, the Gambia, Madagascar, and South Africa. He is co-author of several books including, with Nancy Folbre, 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 employment policy and poverty outcomes; economic policy choices and human rights; informal and atypical employment; macroeconomic policies for sub-Saharan Africa; and the links between economic policies and distributive outcomes, including race and gender dimensions.

Recent publications

Curriculum vitae

Contact: jheintz@econs.umass.edu

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

Director, African Development Policy Program
Andrew Glyn Professor of Economics
Léonce Ndikumana has served as Director of Operational Policies and Director of Research at the African Development Bank, Chief of Macroeconomic Analysis at the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA), and visiting Professor at the University of Cape Town. He is also an Honorary Professor of economics at the University of Stellenbosch, South Africa. He has contributed to various areas of research and policy analysis on African countries, including the issues of external debt and capital flight, financial markets and growth, macroeconomic policies for growth and employment, and the economics of conflict and civil wars in Africa. He is co-author of Africa’s Odious Debt: How Foreign Loans and Capital Flight Bled a Continent, in addition to dozens of academic articles and book chapters on African development and Macroeconomics. He is a graduate of the University of Burundi and received his doctorate from Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri.

Recent publications 

Curriculum vitae

Contact: 

Léonce Ndikumana
Department of Economics
Thompson Hall 910
University of Massachusetts
Amherst, MA 01003
413-545-1340

Graduate courses:
Econ 797X-ST: African Economic Development

Co-director and Professor of Economics
Robert Pollin's 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 Back to Full Employment (2012); 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 studies “Green Recovery” (September 2008), “The Economic Benefits of Investing in Clean Energy” (June 2009), and “Green Prosperity” (June 2009) exploring the broader economic benefits of large-scale investments in building a clean-energy economy in the United States.

Professor Pollin has worked recently as a consultant for the U.S. Department of Energy, the International Labour Organization and numerous non-governmental organizations on various aspects of building high-employment green economies, and is currently directing a project with the United Nations Industrial Development Organization on this topic. He has also directed projects on employment creation and poverty reduction in sub-Saharan Africa for the United Nations Development Program, and has been a member of the United States Competitive Policy Council. He is presently a member of the Scientific Advisory Committee of the European Commission project on Financialization, Economy, Society, and Sustainable Development.

Recent 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
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.

Recent publications

Curriculum vitae

Contact: wickslim@peri.umass.edu

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