Category: Pollin

In a recent study published by PERI, UMass Economics Professor Robert Pollin, Jeannette Wicks-Lim (UMass Ph.D., 2005) and Heidi Garrett-Peltier (UMass Ph.D. student) outline the greatest challenge now facing the United States: transitioning from a fossil fuel driven economy to a cleaner, greener economy.

Green Prosperity: How Clean-Energy Policies Can Fight Poverty and Raise Living Standards in the United States

The United States today faces a formidable generation-long challenge: to transform the economy from being driven primarily by fossil fuel sources of energy, which are the major cause of global climate change, to becoming an economy that can function effectively through renewable energy sources and by achieving high levels of energy efficiency.

The project of building a clean-energy economy will become a powerful engine of expanding employment opportunities throughout the U.S. economy. According to a study that PERI recently completed with the Center for American Progress, clean-energy investments at the level of about $150 billion per year—i.e. around one percent of U.S. GDP—can generate about 1.7 million net new jobs throughout the U.S. economy.

Read more on this study.

Here’s the CSBS publicity for the 2009 Gamble Lecture delivered by UMass Econ Professor Robert N. Pollin.

http://www.umass.edu/sbs/news_events/news_stories/gamble_2009.htm

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.

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.

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).

The Philip Gamble Memorial Lectureship Endowment was established by Israel Rogosa ’42 and other family and friends in memory of Philip Gamble, a member of the economics faculty from 1935-71 and chair of the department from 1942-65. The fund supports an annual lecture series featuring a prominent economist. Previous speakers in this series have included John Kenneth Galbraith, Joseph Stiglitz, John Nash, James Tobin, Kenneth Arrow, Robert Solow, Barbara Bergmann, Lani Guinier, Robert Reich, Robert Shiller, Dani Rodrik, and Marianne Ferber.

October 1, 2009