11.21.03

Robert Pollin Biography

 Noted economist Robert Pollin is the author, most recently, of CONTOURS OF DESCENT: U.S. ECONOMIC FRACTURES AND THE LANDSCAPE OF GLOBAL AUSTERITY (Verso). His discussion on "A Question of Fairness" is drawn primarily from this new book. Pollin, who has worked with the Joint Economic Committee of the US Congress, walks viewers through the complicated issues leading up to and facing a troubled US economy.

Robert Pollin is the Political Economy Research Institute's founding Co-Director and Professor of Economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Professor Pollin's main areas of research are financial macroeconomics and political economy. Recent work in these areas include the edited volumes THE MACROECONOMICS OF SAVING, FINANCE, AND INVESTMENT (1997), and GLOBALIZATION AND PROGRESSIVE ECONOMIC POLICY (co-edited with Dean Baker and Gerald Epstein 1998).

He is currently examining the sources of economic growth under the Clinton presidency, including the link between wage stagnation and the stock market boom. He is also researching the feasibility of implementing securities transaction taxes within the United States, as a measure to promote both financial market stability and a more equitable burden of taxation.

Professor Pollin is actively engaged in economic policy work, serving as a consultant on living wage proposals in a number of U.S. cities. Some of that work is presented in THE LIVING WAGE: BUILDING A FAIR ECONOMY (co-authored with Stephanie Luce, paperback edition 2000), and in the two studies included in the PERI Web site, for the cities of New Orleans and Santa Monica, California.

Other work in the area of economic policy includes serving as a consultant to the United Nations Development Program in Bolivia and as a member of the U.S. Government's Capital Formation Subcouncil of the Competitiveness Policy Council.

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