Gerald Epstein at Harvard Book Store

Gerald Epstein

Gerald Epstein is Professor of Economics and a Founding Codirector of the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He received his Ph.D. in economics from Princeton University.

He has published widely on a variety of progressive economic policy issues, especially in the areas of central banking and international finance. He is the author of The Political Economy of Central Banking: Contested Control and the Power of Finance (Edward Elgar Press, 2019) and What's Wrong with Modern Money Theory? A Policy Critique (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019). Epstein is also the editor or co-editor of many books, including The Political Economy of International Finance in an Age of Inequality: Soft Currencies, Hard Landings (Edward Elgar Press, 2018), The Handbook of the Political Economy of Financial Crises (with Martin H. Wolfson, Oxford University Press, 2013), and Financialization and the World Economy (Edward Elgar Press, 2004).

He is also a long-time member of the Center for Popular Economics.

Photo Credit: Stan Sherer

Juliet Schor

Juliet Schor is an economist and sociologist at Boston College. Schor’s research focuses on work, consumption, and climate change. A graduate of Wesleyan University, Schor received her Ph.D. in economics at the University of Massachusetts. Before joining Boston College, she taught at Harvard University for 17 years, in the Department of Economics and the Committee on Degrees in Women's Studies.  

Schor's most recent project is researching trials of companies who are implementing four day workweeks. Since the beginning of 2022 these trials, organized by the non-profit 4 Day Week Global have been ongoing. With colleagues, including Professor Wen Fan of the Sociology Department, the research team is collecting data on employee health and well-being, organizational outcomes, and carbon emissions. 

She also wrote the national best-seller The Overworked American: The Unexpected Decline of Leisure (Basic Books, 1992), The Overspent American: Upscaling, Downshifting, and the New Consumer (Basic Books, 1998), and Born to Buy: The Commercialized Child and the New Consumer Culture (Scribner, 2004). Schor is a co-founder of the Center for a New American Dream, a former Guggenheim Fellow, winner of the Herman Daly Prize, and a member of the MacArthur Connected Learning Research Network, for which she is studying connected consumption.