Google Alerts today highlights the public impact of research by two UMass Economists:
Lee BadgettPapers by UMass Economist Lee Badgett with law faculty co-authors R. Bradley Sears (UCLA) and Suzanne Goldberg (Rutgers) form the basis of the answers to “Questions about Same-Sex Marriage” on the GayBoomers (news for the middleaged queer and more) blog.
Deepankar Basu A working paper by Deepankar Basu, the newest addition to the UMass Economics Department, provides an “Analysis of Classes in India: A Preliminary Note on the Industrial Bourgeoisie and Middle Class.” An excerpt appears on the influential blog Sanhati: Fighting Neoliberalism in Bengal and Beyond. The paper also earns favorable mention on the Epoliticus blog.
Sick of being trampled by the big boys ridin’ their bulls and bears? SAFER was founded by UMass Econ Chair Gerald Epstein and Jane D’Arista to bring sanity and safety to the financial system.Fun at a rodeo; not so great for the economy
Economists’ Committee for Stable, Accountable, Fair and Efficient Financial Reform (SAFER)
The Economists’ Committee for Stable, Accountable, Fair and Efficient Financial Reform (SAFER) is a focal point, clearinghouse and coordinating mechanism for progressive economists and analysts to gather and present their views on financial re-regulation and reform; to reach, to the degree possible, a consensus on the key issues relating to regulation and reform; and to help incorporate this work into the public debate over these issues that will ensue over the coming six to nine months or so. By bringing these analysts together to speak in a concerted voice, we will be able to broaden the perspective on financial regulation and reform, and enhance our impact on this public debate.
James Garang has overcome extraordinary challenges to study economics at UMass Amherst. A recent news article described his ongoing odyssey and an upcoming event to support him.
Garang is a former “Lost Boy” of Sudan and has been in the United States since being resettled here as a refugee in 2001.
He married his wife on a visit back to Sudan in June 2007, and their son was born after his return to Amherst, where he is a graduate student in economics at the University of Massachusetts.
UMass Economics Professor Nancy Folbre In her most recent New York Times Economix Blog, UMass Economics Professor Nancy Folbre examines the implications of the Stupack-Pitts amendment, which would prohibit companies from offering policies covering abortions in subsidized health insurance exchanges.
[excerpt]
With sex (as with food and exercise) Americans don’t seem, on average, to be very good at planning. Almost one-half of all pregnancies — and about one-third of births — are described as “unintended.”
UMass Economics Professor Nancy Folbre has published two new entries on possibilities for cooperative businesses in her regular Economix blog at the New York Times.
November 23, 2009, 7:45 am The Case for Worker Co-ops
By NANCY FOLBRE
Worker-owned and -managed businesses combine the romance of entrepreneurship with a commitment to community, an economist writes. But are they better than traditional companies?
November 16, 2009, 6:32 am Workers of the World, Incorporate
By NANCY FOLBRE A move toward establishment of manufacturing cooperatives represents a new direction for the American labor movement, an economist writes.
In a three-part series entitled “Energy Efficiency Now, Paul Jay, senior editor of theREALnews Network interviewed UMass Economics Professor Robert Pollin about prospects for green transformation of the U.S. and World economies.theREALnews Network
A highlight from the first interview:
The main thing that needs to be done right now is to make these short-term investments in energy efficiency, massive ones, such as building retrofits, such as public transportation, making the electrical grid more efficient. So those things need to be done immediately and can be. And then, on top of that, we have to make renewable energy cost competitive with fossil fuels, with oil, coal, and natural gas. And if there is a big enough investment market for that, I think that we can be successful, say, within a decade.
In the second interview, Pollin argues that domestic investments in green energy will create more jobs then foreign investments on oil and other fossil fuels.
Green growth. Okay. So let’s start with the simplest basic numerical exercise, which is if we compare spending money on fossil fuels in the US economy today versus a combination of clean-energy investments today, to spend $1 million you will generate about five jobs per million dollars of spending in fossil fuels, and you’ll generate about 17 jobs per million dollars of spending in the clean-energy economy.
Why? Two basic factors that actually also have nothing particularly to do with whether it’s green or not. The first factor is what we economists call labor intensity, which means, when you spend money on a project, how much goes to hiring people versus buying machines, versus spending on buildings, and versus transportation, long-distance transportation. So if we compare, say, retrofitting a building, making a building more energy-efficient, versus importing oil from Saudi Arabia, we can see in our heads that the number of people that are going to show up at the building is a lot more than the people that are going to get jobs in the US from buying the oil from Saudi Arabia. So that’s the biggest driver. And the second and related one is domestic versus import spending. So if we concentrate a given million dollars of spending and a higher proportion is spent within the US economy, that also will create more jobs. So it’s those two factors. It’s relative labor intensity versus other purchases, and domestic spending versus foreign spending. And those are the factors.
In the third segment, Pollin argues that developing countries won’t necessarily slow down their growth by investing in the green economy.
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.
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.
CPPA Director and Professor of Economics Lee Badgett was recently named a recipient for an Albatross Fund Award of $78,723 for a feasibility assessment of a Community-University Research and Outreach Center. Econ Prof M.V. Lee Badgett
UMass Amherst Research Access – October Grants & Contracts Snapshot
Each month ACCESS includes a selection of grants and contracts awarded to faculty from across campus to provide a sense of what’s going on in research at UMass Amherst. These listings reflect only a small fraction of the total sponsored activity for any given month. Since this is just a snapshot in time and grant/contract terms vary, actual award totals may be higher than the amounts listed.
M. Lee Badgett
Economics
Sponsor: Albatross Fund
Title: Community-University Research and Outreach Center – Feasibility Assessment
Total Award: $78,723
Professor James K. BoyceCap and Dividend: A State-by-State Analysis, a PERI Working paper by UMass Econ Professor James K. Boyce and Ph.D. student Matthew Riddle, is in play this month in Washington in the debate over how best to price carbon and distribute the proceeds. Boyce and Riddle point out that auctioning 100 percent of carbon permits and returning most of the auction revenue to citizens on a per capita basis would provide significant net benefits to the majority of citizens, even in carbon-intensive states.
A coalition of local and regional environmental groups is citing an unpublished analysis from researchers at the University of Massachusetts to argue that an emissions trading scheme that auctions all carbon permits and returns the revenue directly to citizens through rebates or tax cuts—a policy known as cap-and-dividend—is better suited to easing the impacts of greenhouse gas restrictions on areas of the country most dependent on fossil fuels…
… [A] new paper by George Abar, a former legislative director for Kerry and currently a consultant to the Rockefeller Family Fund,… cites a previously unpublished analysis from the University of Massachusetts’ Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) indicating that a modest set-aside for “transition assistance” to the most carbon-intensive regions of the country—based on a formula that weighs the number of manufacturing and coal-mining employees a state has and the carbon-intensity of its electricity—would more than compensate those areas likely to most adversely affected by greenhouse gas restrictions…
The scenario analyzed by PERI would also leave an additional $30 billion for other uses, “such as clean energy investments, compensating local, state and national governments for higher energy costs, or addressing regional variability,” according to the paper.
“A policy that caps carbon, auctions pollution permits, and returns the revenue directly to the American people will meet our environmental and economic goals,” Abar concludes. “It will limit carbon emissions and send a powerful price signal, spurring investment, innovation and job creation in clean energy techologies. It will provide a knowable, timely and direct benefit to American households, and it will leave lower- and middle-class families better off or unharmed.”
Professor Emeritus Samuel Bowles, whose continued close ties with the department include teaching his graduate course on competition, coordination, cooperation and conflict, has recently published an important article in the journal Science. “Did Warfare Among Ancestral Hunter-Gatherers Affect the Evolution of Human Social Behaviors?” asks whether between-group conflict between tribes of early humans may have rewarded substantial within-group cooperation.
Much of the coverage included a riff on “War, What’s It Good For?” Here’s a more serious excerpt from the Wired report,
According to his analysis of archaeological evidence from Stone Age sites and and ethnographic studies of remaining tribes, combat between groups accounted for about 14 percent of all deaths in hunter-gatherer societies. Composed of a few dozen people with no social institutions, such groups were the dominant community form for most of human history.
“These were not modern societies. As with chimpanzees going out on patrol, there was no leadership. You could stay home if you wanted,” said Bowles.
After estimating the rate that altruism would reduce an individual’s chances of reproducing, Bowles plugged the numbers into a model of intergroup competition where an individual’s altruism would also improve a group’s chances of combat triumph. Groups with selfless individuals eventually predominated, and altruism predominated within those groups.
In addition to Emeritus status at UMass, Sam Bowles is Professor at the Santa Fe Institute and the University of Siena.
Professor Emeritus Samuel Bowles, whose continued close ties with the department include teaching his graduate course on competition, coordination, cooperation and conflict, has recently published an important article in the journal Science.