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Staff Economists

Amit Basole




Amit Basole is a PhD candidate in the Department of Economics at the University of Massachusetts (Amherst). His interests include radical critiques of development models, neo-liberal economic policies, ecological economics, alternative economic practices and history of thought.

Andres Carbacho-Burgos




Andres Carbacho-Burgos obtained his Ph.D. from UMass in February, 2000 and is currently an Assistant Professor at Southwest Texas State University. His research focuses on the development and international aspects of the Latin American economies and on the effect that free-market policies have had in Latin America over the past decades. He also does research on general policy alternatives to free-market policies in and outside Latin America, and in their political feasibility.

Andy Barenberg


Anita Dancs




Anita Dancs is Research Director for the National Priorities Project. She researches and writes on the impact of federal budget policies for grassroots activists and the general public. Recently, she was a contributor to the Security Policy Working Group's publication Security After 9/11, and co-wrote and edited its companion booklet A Safer America, dealing with more practical and peaceful approaches to security issues. Anita has a PhD in economics and previously taught and researched at universities in Hungary, the UK and the US. Her past research focused on the transition from state socialism to capitalism in Eastern Europe. She has been a staff economist at the Center for Popular Economic for over ten years.

Ann Werboff


Arjun Jayadev




Arjun Jayadev is a graduate student in the economics department at the University of Massachussetts at Amherst. He is interested in developing countries and the effect of neo-liberal policies on them. He has also done research in health economics and financial economics. Arjun is particularly interested in the potential for alternative healthier educational systems for children around the world.

Barry Shelley




Barry Shelley is a Ph.D. candidate in economics at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. His dissertation research analyzes the potential for natural asset-building strategies for addressing both poverty and environmental concerns in Salvadoran peasant communities. As he completes his degree, Barry also works as a consultant to the Natural Assets Project of the Political Economy Research Institute in its efforts to organize a Mesoamerican rural development collaborative; teaches political economy of the environment at Wheaton College in Norton, Massachusetts; and serves as a speaker and workshop leader on issues of economic literacy, and of theology, ethics and economics. He is the co-editor with James K. Boyce of the book Natural Assets: Democratizing Environmental Ownership (2003). Between 1988 and 1994 Barry lived in El Salvador where he coordinated the programs of a faith-based organization that collaborated with Salvadoran partners in promoting human rights, health, education and economic development. Before 1988 he worked with faith-based domestic social-change programs. Barry has a B.A. degree in public policy studies from Duke University and an M.Div. from Harvard Divinity School.

Brenda Wyss




Brenda Wyss has taught at Wheaton College in Norton, Mass. since 1992. She earned her doctorate in economics at UMASS Amherst, with a research focus in gender and development. Much of her research has centered around the gendered economies of child rearing in Jamaica. She recently coauthored The Effects of Trade Liberalization on Jamaica's Poor with Marceline White of the Women's Edge Coalition in Washington, D.C. and is conducting research with her colleague, Hyun Sook Kim, on the experiences of Caribbean teachers recruited to teach in New York City's public schools.

Celeste Simmons


Curtis Haynes




Curtis Haynes Jr. is an Associate Professor at Buffalo Sate College. He received his bachelor's, master's, and doctorate degrees in Economics at the University of Massachusetts. Immediately prior to his 1993 arrival at Buffalo State College, he was the "Distinguished Visiting Scholar," at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York. Recently, he returned to Skidmore College as a Visiting Associate Professor (2001-2002). He has given numerous presentations on cooperative economics, community economic development, black political economy, urban economic development and industrial organization. His current interests are in the areas of corporate and personal finance. He has published in several books and journals. Haynes is also a co-founder of the Resurgent City Center for Cooperative Community Development (RCC) - a HUD funded Community Outreach Partnership Center (COPC) dedicated to community revitalization through cooperative economics and participatory and applied research. Haynes partnered the relationship between RCC and the OUR Market Community Supermarket Project.

David Kotz




David Kotz is Professor of Economics at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and Research Associate at the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. He received his B.A. from Harvard College in 1965, M.A. from Yale University in 1966, and Ph.D. from U.C. Berkeley in 1975. He has been at the University of Massachusetts since 1978. He is a founding member of the Center for Popular Economics. His specialties include the Russian economy, comparative economic systems, macroeconomic theory and policy, and U.S. economic history. He is the coauthor, with Fred Weir, of Revolution from Above: The Demise of the Soviet System, Routledge, 1997.

David Kristjanson-Gural




David Kristjanson-Gural received his doctorate in economics from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He is presently teaching economics and political economy at Umass and Hampshire College. His research interests include the effects of class and gender relations in the workplace and household, the role of advertising and media in market economies, building workplace democracy, and theories of value and prices. He has been active in opposing free trade and assisting to organize graduate employees at Umass.

Dean E. Robinson




Dean E. Robinson is an Assistant Professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts. Last year, Robinson was awarded a two-year, $100,000 fellowship from the Center for Advancement of Health and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation to study health disparities at the Harvard University Center for Society and Health. Robinson will conduct research on health care access and its implications for the health of minority populations while at Harvard. He was active in recent statewide efforts to win approval of health care ballot measures in Massachusetts, so this opportunity to take a deeper look at this subject is timely. "The Kellogg fellowship gives me this opportunity to match my activist interests to my research agenda," he says.

Diane Flaherty




Diane Flaherty, Professor of Economics at University of Massachusetts, holds a Ph.D. in economics from New York University. Diane's teaching and research interests focus on comparative economic systems, the economies of Eastern European nations, the organization of labor and technological change, and the political economy of health care. Diane is currently doing research on the South African economic structure, including the prospects for participatory socialism and economic reform.

Elaine McCrate




Elaine McCrate is Associate Professor of Economics and Women's Studies at the University of Vermont. She teaches courses on women in the U.S. economy, African Americans in the U.S. economy, and labor-management relations. She has been with CPE since 1980. Most of her research concerns low-income women.

Elissa Braunstein




Elissa Braunstein staff economist and former program director at CPE, is an Assistant Professor of Economics at Colorado State University in Fort Collins. Elissa got her Ph.D. in economics from UMASS Amherst, and has a Master's of Pacific International Affairs from the University of California. Her research interests include the role of gender in international economics and gender and development.

Ellen Russell




Ellen Russell is a graduate of the Ph.D. program at UMass Amherst. Her recent book "New Banking reform and Keynesian Welfare State Capitalism" discusses the finalcial regulatory reform that responded to the banking crisis of the early 1930s. She had worked extensively with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives in Canada, and had held popular economics workshops for unions. Her columns are available at rabble.ca and thismagazine.ca.

Fiona Tregenna




Fiona Tregenna is a South African Ph.D. student in the Department of Economics at UMass Amherst. Before coming to UMass she worked for about six years for the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) in economic policy and political work. She has also been in the liberation movement/mass democratic movement there for over ten years. She is particularly interested both in economic theory and in developing progressive alternative macroeconomic policies.

Geert Dhondt




Geert Dhondt is graduate Student in Economics at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. His main research interests are in Political Economy and Economic History. His main political interests are in fighting white supremacy. He is an active member of Bring The Ruckus and the Valley Anarchist Organization.

Gerald Epstein




Gerald Epstein received his Ph.D. in economics from Princeton University and is now Professor of Economics and co-director of the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He has also taught at Williams College and at The New School For Social Research. Jerry's most recent research interests include the political economy of international credit, multinational corporations and the global economy, and the political economy of central banking. Recently, Jerry has been a consultant to the developing country Group of 24 on the issue of capital controls and made presentations to the South African government on monetary policy issues. Jerry is a co-editor of the CPE publication Creating a New World Economy (Temple University Press, 1993), as well as Capital Flight and Capital Controls in Developing Countries (El. Elgar, 2005) and Financialization and the World Economy (E. Elgar Press, 2005)

Gerald Friedman


Professor of Economics at the University of Massachusetts, Gerald Friedman was born in New York City in 1955 to parents who believed that anyone who said they lived elsewhere was “only kidding.” (He still buys food mail-order from Zebars.) After graduation from Columbia College in 1977 he worked on the research staff of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union. He moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts to be closer to Steve’s Ice Cream (and Fenway Park) and to attend graduate school at Harvard where he earned a Ph.D. in economics. In addition to his 1998 book, State-Making and Labor Movements. The United States and France, 1876-1914, Professor Friedman is the author of numerous articles on topics in the labor history of the United States and Europe, as well as the evolution of economic thought and the history of slavery in the Americas. His teaching and research interests focus on economic history, labor history, labor economics, and the history of economic thought. His most recent book, Reigniting the Labor Movement: Restoring means to ends in a democratic labor movement (2008) assesses the decline of the labor movement in advanced capitalist democracies. He is currently working on an intellectual biography of Richard Ely, an early American economist, as part of a larger study of the decline of institutionalism in American economics. Of late, he has also been a regular correspondent on the international financial crisis on Al-Jazeera television and other media outlets and a consultant to labor unions and to the legislature of the state of Vermont and to the campaign for single-payer health insurance in Massachusetts. Professor Friedman lives in Amherst with his wife and his dog, Beowulf. He also has two college-age daughters.
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Gül Unal




Gül Unal is currently teaching economics at Bard College at Simon’s Rock. Her area of interest is development economics, particularly gender, inequality, and agriculture. She holds an M.A in economics from Portland State University, OR, and a Ph.D from Umass, Amherst. She has taught economics at UMass, and Bucknell University. Before deciding to pursue her Ph.D., she worked as a stock exchange broker and financial dealer in Istanbul Stock Exchange for four years. After completing her masters, Gül also worked for an economic consultancy company for a year on the West Coast.

Hasan Comert


Hector Saez




Hector Saez is teaching and conducting research at the Environmental Studies Program at the University of Vermont in Burlington, after spending a year at the Center for Sustainable Development Studies in Costa Rica. Hector has a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Massachusetts. His research focuses on environmental issues and policies in Latin America and on the environmental effects of globalization. He has also taught at Wagner College, at the University of Puerto Rico, and in the Social Thought and Political Economy Program (STPEC) at UMass.

Heidi Garrett-Peltier




Heidi Garrett-Peltier is a Staff Economist for Center for Popular Economics as well as a Research Fellow at the Political Economy Research Institute. She 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, including "Green Prosperity: How Clean Energy Policies Can Fight Poverty and Raise Living Standards in the United States," and "The Economic Benefits of Investing in Clean Energy," both available at www.peri.umass.edu. She has also written about the employment effects of defense spending with co-author Robert Pollin, and regularly consults with the U.S. Department of Energy on federal energy programs.

Helen Scharber




Helen Scharber is a graduate student in economics at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Before coming to UMass, she completed an MA in Environmental Politics and worked at an environmental organization in Washington, D.C. In addition to environmental issues, Helen is interested in health care policy, living wage policies, and economic alternatives.

Ian J. Seda-Irizarry




Ian J. Seda-Irizarry has a B.A. in marketing (2002) and master's studies in economics from the University of Puerto Rico. He is currently a graduate student in economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He is specifically interested in the effects that capitalism has on cultural manifestations such as music. He is the co-editor of www.herencialatina.com, a site dedicated to the sociological phenomena of SALSA that began in NY during the decade of the 60's (with roots in the great emigration waves of the beginning of the century). His other interests include: Political Economy, Development, Marxian Economic Theory, History of Economic Thought, Macroeconomics and Economic History.

James Heintz




James Heintz is an Assistant Research Professor at the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts. 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 with the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) in Johannesburg. He has taught economics in the prisons of New York as part of the former Inmate Higher Education Program (IHEP). His research areas include unemployment and egalitarian strategies for job creation, the expansion of informal and precarious employment, and the possibility of improving welfare through employment-centered development. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

James Henninger-Voss




James Henninger-Voss researches issues of compensation, benefits and accountability for the Pennsylvania State Education Association as an Assistant Director of Research. He is a doctoral candidate in economics at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. James's doctoral research incorporates a gender analysis of education. Previously, he taught at UMass Amherst, Ryder University, and Princeton University. James has been active in the labor movement for over thirteen years. He served as the president of UAW Local 2322 after helping to organize and lead striking workers in their successful effort to gain recognition for the UAW-affiliated Graduate Employees Organization at UMass Amherst.

Jeannette Wicks-Lim




Jeannette Wicks-Lim is currently working on her Ph.D. in economics at UMass and doing research for the Political Economy Research Institute on the Living Wage. Her activism began during the feminist movement, particularly around the issues of abortion rights and homelessness. Her general interests include labor economics, the determination of wages, and the political economy of racism. She has worked for the Economic Policy Institute on new work organizations and interned with Labor Notes where she wrote their Solidarity Network column. She currently volunteers as a speaker on the Stonewall Center's Speakers Bureau to educate the local community about the issues that face gay, lesbian, and transgender people.

Jim Crotty




James Crotty has taught at the UMASS Economics Department since 1974. His main areas of research are macro economic theory and policy, Marxian theory, Keynesian theory, globalization and the East Asia economic model, with a special interest in Korea. Over the years Jim has worked worked with activists in unions, in welfare rights, in Christian peace and social justice movements, and in the anti-globalization campaign. In recent years he has also worked with militant, democratic unions in Korea.

Jing Wu




Jing Wu, MA in Economics, University of Massachusetts, is Administrative Analyst for George Mark Children's Fund, Oakland, California. Academic interests as well as practices include labor rights and working environment evaluation, non-profit economics and non-profit organization/management research. Long term goal is to establish grassroots non-profit organizations to provide social/legal services partly as educational or consulting tools to the underprivileged people in China. Worked on labor rights and workplace compliance in China, as well as the training/educational tools for labor and workplace compliance principles and practices, in the past three years. Currently working on comprehensive non-profit operations, including financials, business, accounting/auditing, human resources, and charity database management.

John Fitzgerald




John Fitzgerald received a Master's Degree in Teaching (History) from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst in 1978. He recently retired from teaching history at Longmeadow High School, Longmeadow, Massachusetts, where he had worked since 1971. He is a decorated Vietnam infantry veteran, and worked as an organizer for Vietnam Veterans Against the War. His current interests are in promotion of American education about the Vietnam War, including clearance of minefields and restoration of the war ravaged environment. He has been speaking on the analogies between the Vietnam War and the current Iraq War. He continues to be an active opponent of the death penalty and a vigorous supporter of public schools and public education. His book, The Vietnam War: A History in Documents was published by Oxford in 2002. His work on a web site on the Vietnam War at UMass-Boston is viewable at: http://vietnamwar.lib.umb.edu/ He is currently a member the Longmeadow School Committee in Longmeadow, Massachusetts, and a member of the Board of Trustees of the Holyoke Soldiers' Home in Holyoke, Massachusetts.

Joo Yeoun Suh


Judy Robinson




Judy Robinson holds her Ph.D. in economics from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She is an associate professor of economics at Castleton State College in Castleton, Vermont. Her teaching and research interests include general political economy, along with particular interest in the intersections of gender and race as they manifest in housing issues. She is also interested in the political economy of environmental and energy issues. She is the co-ordinator for the Environmental Studies and Economics programs at Castleton State. She has been active in creating a new interdisciplinary major in Global Studies.

June Lapidus




June Lapidus began her political activism at the age of five when she went around telling people not to vote for Mayor Wagner (New York City) because of the milk strike. She was actively involved in anti-war activities while in high-school. Most of her activism since then has been in the women's movement as a founding member of the Buffalo Women's Liberation Union and the Reproductive Rights National Network. While living in the Pioneer Valley of MA she was involved with Gay and Lesbian Activists and its auxiliary, the Red Scare softball team. She is Associate Professor in Economics at Roosevelt University in Chicago. Her research interests are labor, political economy and women.

Kade Finnoff




Kade Finnoff is Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of Massachusetts Boston. She is a development economist whose work focuses on countries emerging from violent conflict. In particular, her work looks at the way in which the reconstitution of society is exclusionary or inclusive of particularly vulnerable and marginalized groups such as, female headed households, children and people with disabilities. She has spent a number of years working on issues of inequality and violence, in particular sexual violence, in countries in Central Africa. Kade has also been a technical consultant for UNDP and UNIFEM on a range of issues from pro-poor macroeconomic policy to gender budgeting of post-conflict development assistance.

Kiaran Honderich




Kiaran Honderich is an AIDS activist and lecturer in social studies at Harvard University. She has taught economics and women's studies at Williams College, Mount Holyoke College, and the University of Massachusetts, and worked from 1999-2000 as an economist with the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) in Johannesburg. She received her Ph.D from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Her current work is on African women fighting AIDS, and on the impact of the US prison system on women and children.

Lisa Saunders




Lisa Saunders is an Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. She received her graduate degree at the University of California, Berkeley. She has recently published articles on transportation access to work and the economics of discrimination. Lisa frequently participates in abortion rights, anti-poverty, and anti-racism political activities.

Luis Roser


Lynn Hatch




Lynn Hatch received her Master's Degree in Economics from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and is currently working on her Ph.D. Her research interests include the economics of child care and general economic literacy. She has worked for the Urban Institute, Massachusetts Institute for Social and Economic Research (MISER) and with the Graduate Employee Organization, Local 2322 UAW. Previously she was involved in research on children's out-of-school time and worked as a rape and battered women's counselor.

Maliha Safri


Manuel Pastor




Manuel Pastor is Professor of Latin American and Latino Studies and Director of the Center for Justice, Tolerance, and Community at the University of California, Santa Cruz. An undergraduate at UCSC between 1973 and 1978, Pastor holds an economics Ph.D. from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and has received fellowships from the Danforth, Guggenheim, and Kellogg foundations and grants from the Irvine Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the Social Science Research Council, the MacArthur Foundation, California Council for the Humanities, the U.S. Institute of Peace, the North-South Center, and many others.

Mark Brenner




Mark Brenner is currently the Co-Director of Labor Notes magazine and a long-time activist for peace and social justice. In addition to his work with Labor Notes and CPE, Mark is also a staff economist for the Real Cost of Prisons Project, specializing on the link between drug policy and mass incarceration. Prior to joining the Labor Notes staff Mark worked as a research professor at the University of Massachusetts, focusing on U.S. and global living wage issues. Mark was a leader in the faculty union at UMass and as a graduate student he was a founding member of CASE/UAW, the academic student employee union at UC-Riverside.

Mathieu Dufour




Mathieu Dufour hales from Québec City, Canada. While he's been a staff economist with the Center for Popular Economics for only a year, he is not new to efforts at empowerment through education. His past experience includes teaching adult literacy in Québec, and social science education in Nicaragua. His travels in North and Central America, combined with his experience in the Québécois student movement have made him become more aware of class and ethnicity, and solidified his commitment to his own education in economics as well as working within social movements. Mathieu has an MA in economics from the University of British Columbia and is currently pursuing a Ph.D. at the University of Massachusetts where he also teaches. His current research includes the impact of globalization on South America.

Matt Riddle




Matt Riddle is a graduate student in economics at UMass-Amherst, and a new member of CPE in 2004. His interests include energy policy, sustainable communities, advertising and consumer theory, alternative microeconomic models, and evolutionary economics.

Mehrene Larudee




Is a Fulbright Visiting Senior Scholar at Birzeit University, in the West Bank, for 2010-2011. She received her Ph.D. from UMass in 1995 and has taught at several liberal arts colleges and the University of Kansas. Much of her research has been on the effect of economic integration on income inequality and economic growth, especially in developing countries, focusing on the effect of NAFTA on Mexico and the U.S. She is a long-time activist with experience in the labor and women's movements and the movement for peace and justice, especially in the Middle East. She spent two years teaching machine shop in rural Nicaragua in the 1980s, and has taught CPE's International Institute and a number of workshops on the international economy for activists.

Michael Ash




Thanks in part to his upbringing in Chicago, home of Haymarket and Mayday, and in part to red-diaper roots, Michael Ash developed a lifelong attachment to the labor movement, the peace movement, and other progressive causes. Michael has also worked in local and national policy--in Trenton, NJ, for Mayor Douglas Palmer and for the Council of Economic Advisers during the Clinton administration. His current interests are environmental justice and health care workers and their patients.

Mike Meeropol




Michael Meeropol is the author of the book Surrender: How the Clinton Administration Completed the Reagan Revolution (University of Michigan Press, 1998). He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin. He has taught economics for twenty years at Western New England College in Springfield, MA. He has been a member of the Union of Radical Political Economists since its inception. Mike's current interests include the economics of the new right and how to fight its mythology.

Mohammad R. Moeini


Nancy Folbre




Nancy Folbre, Professor of Economics at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, is also a staff economist with the Center for Popular Economics. Her academic research explores the interface between feminist theory and political economy. In addition to numerous articles published in academic journals, she is the author of Saving State U: Why We Must Save Public Higher Education (New Press, 2011), Greed, Lust, and Gender: A History of Economic Ideas (Oxford, 2010), Valuing Children: Rethinking the Economics of the Family (Harvard, 2009), and Who Pays for the Kids? Gender and the Structures of Constraint (Routledge, 1994). Books she has co-authored for a wider audience include The Ultimate Field Guide to the U.S. Economy, and The Invisible Heart: Economics and Family Values (New Press, 2001).

Radhika Balakrishnan




Radhika Balakrishnan has a Ph.D. in Economics from Rutgers University and is Professor of Economics at Marymount Manhattan College and the Coordinator of the International Studies Program. She has worked at the Ford Foundation as a program officer in the Asia Regional Program. She was the Chair of the Board of the Religious Consultation for Reproductive Health, Population and Ethics. She was on the Board of the International Association of Feminist Economics. She is currently on the Board of Women{s Edge and the Chair of the Coordinating Committee of the US Human Rights Network. She is an activist involved in policy work at the United Nations and the World Trade Organization and has worked with non-governmental organizations around the world. She has published in the field of gender and development. A Selected listing of her publications are: A book she edited entitled The Hidden Assembly Line: Gender Dynamics of Subcontracted Work in a Global Economy, Kumarian Press 2001; co-edited book with Patricia Jung and Mary Hunt called Good Sex: Feminist Perspectives from the Worlds Religions, Rutgers University Press 2000; "Population" in the Elgar Companion to Feminist Economics edited by Janice Peterson and Margaret Lewis.

Rajesh Bhattacharya


Rob Fetter




Rob Fetter is interested in how economic issues affect people in their everyday lives, and especially in environmental justice and labor conditions. His current focus in CPE is on the environmental justice aspects of food systems - from labor conditions in food growing and processing to unequal access to affordable, fresh and ethnically appropriate food. Fetter graduated from the University of Massachusetts with a Master's in Resource Economics in January 2002, and wrote a thesis on unequal exposure to toxic air pollution in the U.S. He is currently a consultant in environmental economics, primarily working on water quality economics for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. He lives in Boulder, Colorado.

Russell Williams




Russell Williams is a member of the Economics faculty at Wheaton College in Norton, MA, where he specializes in Urban Economics, Macroeconomics, the Economics of Race, and the Economics of Education. He has a long history in public-policy related economic research, including his current position as Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Urban and Regional Policy, and previous employment at the William Monroe Trotter Institute, Abt Associates, and other research institutes. His extensive range of volunteer activities has included work on voting rights, civil rights, other struggles against racism, political empowerment, community development, and education.

Ryan Isakson




Ryan Isakson is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Economics at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. His principal research interests are development, economic anthropology, and ecological economics. Currently, Ryan is investigating the impact of different forms of market integration upon "traditional" agricultural systems in the Guatemalan highlands. He has also worked as a consultant with Programa Salvadoreño de Investigación Sobre Desarrollo y Medio Ambiente (or, if you would prefer a crude translation into English, "the El Salvadoran Program for Research on Development and the Environment") (PRISMA), and studying the socio-economic impact of New York City's watershed management plan on farmers in the Catskill Mountains.

Satya Gabriel




Satya Gabriel is currently associate professor of economics at Mount Holyoke College and academic coordinator of the Rural Development Leadership Network, former director of education of the Urban League of Greater Portland, Oregon, former editorial director of Food First Publications, former coordinator of the Volunteers in Probation Program in Multnomah County, Oregon, one of those who helped to establish the Lakota Fund on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, and formerly the UNDP consultant for Belize who helped to establish women's cooperatives throughout that Central American nation. Dr. Gabriel has taught at Nanjing University in China and National Economics University in Ha Noi, Viet Nam. His forthcoming book, Chinese Capitalism and the Modernist Vision, will be published by Routledge.

Seeraj Mohammed




Seeraj Mohamed is a PhD candidate at the University of Massachusetts. He was active in community organizations during the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa. He was involved in policy-making during the transition to democracy in South Africa and worked with trade unions and community organizations to develop their inputs for policy. He worked for the Industrial Strategy Project at the University of Cape Town in 1992 and the Macroeconomic Research Group at the University of the Witwatersrand (Johannesburg) in 1993. After the 1994 democratic elections he worked for the Minerals and Energy Policy Centre on energy policy from 1994-8, and was involved in drafting the Green Paper on energy policy. During this period he was part of initiatives to help rural and urban poor communities develop their inputs for the energy policy. He worked for the South African government's Department of Trade and Industry on trade finance from 1998-2000. He was awarded the Mandela Economics Scholarship to do a PhD in the US in 1999 and started the UMass program in September 2000.

Sirisha Naidu




Sirisha Naidu is a graduate student in the Resource Economics department at University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Her principal interests are in ecological economics and natural resource management issues. Her current research is on community based solutions to the problems of allocation and distribution of natural resources.

Stan Malinowitz




Teaches economics at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia in Bogotá, Colombia. He has a PhD from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. He has worked on community development projects and popular education programs in Mexico and the United States, and has done research in Cuba on decentralization, municipal services, and popular participation. His current research interests concern financialization, crisis, and reform in North and South America and economic conglomeration in Latin America.

Stephanie Luce




Stephanie Luce is an Assistant Professor at the Labor Center, University of Massachusetts-Amherst. She received her doctorate in sociology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1999. Her research focuses on low-wage labor markets, and living wages in particular. Luce is co-author of The Living Wage: Building a Fair Economy.

Sue Holmberg




Sur Holmberg is a PhD economist who specializes in popular communications on economic issues. She's worked with the Center for Popular Economics, Common Cause, and Econ4, helping them hone education programs and messaging for non-economists about issues facing the American people.

Tami Ohler




Tami Ohler is a graduate student in the economics department at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. She is interested in how federal tax and spending policies promote an unequal division of financial responsibility for the care of children and the elderly. She has worked as a research assistant for the Joint Economic Committee of the United States Congress and the Congressional Budget Office in Washington, DC.

Thomas Masterson


Thomas Masterson is a research scholar at the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College, working primarily on the Levy Institute Measure of Economic Well-Being (LIMEW) within the Distribution of Income and Wealth program. The LIMEW is an alternative, household-based measure that reflects the resources that the household can command for facilitating current consumption or acquiring physical or financial assets. His research interests include the distribution of land, income, and wealth. He received a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and is the co-editor of Solidarity Economy I: Building Alternatives for People and Planet—Papers and Reports from the 2009 U.S. Forum on the Solidarity Economy, 2010.
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Tom Hertz




Tom Hertz is a doctoral candidate in economics at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst; he also has a master's degree in urban and environmental policy. He has worked in Boston on AIDS epidemiology and in South Africa on labor policy. His research interests include the relationship between education and inequality, and race and gender discrimination in the labor market.

Vamsichar Vakulabharanam