Robert Pollin
Professor of Economics and Co-director of Political Economy Research Institute (PERI), University Of Mass-Amherst

Robert Pollin is Distinguished University Professor of Economics and Co-Director of the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst.  He is also the founder and President of PEAR (Pollin Energy and Retrofits), an Amherst-based, nationwide green energy company. His books include The Living Wage: Building a Fair Economy(co-authored 1998); Contours of Descent: U.S. Economic Fractures and the Landscape of Global Austerity (2003); An Employment-Targeted Economic Program for South Africa (co-authored 2007); A Measure of Fairness: The Economics of Living Wages and Minimum Wages in the United States (co-authored 2008), Back to Full Employment (2012), Green Growth (2014), Global Green Growth (2015) and Greening the Global Economy (2015). 

Pollin has worked as a consultant on building high-employment green economies for the U.S. Department of Energy, International Labour Organization, United Nations Industrial Development Organization and numerous NGOs in several countries and in U.S. states and municipalities. He has also directed projects on creating employment and reducing poverty in sub-Saharan Africa for the United Nations Development Program. Pollin has worked with many U.S. non-governmental organizations on creating living wage statutes at both the statewide and municipal levels, on financial regulatory policies, and on the economics of single-payer health care in the United States. In November 2018, he co-authored Economic Analysis of Medicare for All.   Between 2011 and 2016, he was a member of the Scientific Advisory Committee of the European Commission project on Financialization, Economy, Society, and Sustainable Development (FESSUD).  He was selected by Foreign Policy magazine as one of the “100 Leading Global Thinkers for 2013.”