Robert Pollin
Biographic Data
| ID | 936485 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Robert Pollin |
| GIVEN NAMES | Robert |
| FAMILY NAME | Pollin |
| SIGNATURE | POLLIN R |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Massachusetts Amherst |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 48 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 28 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 47 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1980 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2023 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
RRPE ’s Memorial Symposium on Professor Jim Crotty* Some Reflections on Jim Crotty: His Life and Contributions to Economics
Jim Crotty was a beloved teacher and mentor and a treasured colleague at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. In this short essay, we try to convey Jim’s enormous contributions to his students, colleagues, and friends, and to the development and reproduction of heterodox macroeconomic theory and practice. JEL Classification: B4, B5, E
Introduction to special issue of the Japanese Political Economy: The political economy of climate change
For at least a generation, climate scientists have been warning that we, the human race, will face increasingly severe consequences as long as rising levels of greenhouse gas emissions continue to heat the planet.By 2023, these consequences are before us everywhere, in all regions of the globe.As of July 2023-i.e.only midway through the year-a report from Global Citizen conveys this reality starkly. 1 Some highlights of the report include the fol…
The political economy of saving the planet
This paper advances a broad program to move the global economy onto a viable climate stabilization path—a trajectory that is consistent with the CO2 emissions reduction targets established by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The overarching project is straightforward: to achieve the IPCC emissions reduction targets, and to accomplish this in a way that also expands decent job opportunities and raises mass living standards for…
Fossil Fuel Industry Phase-Out and Just Transition: Designing Policies to Protect Workers’ Living Standards
This paper focuses on transition policies targeted at supporting workers now employed in the fossil fuel industries and ancillary sectors within high-income economies. As a general normative principle, I argue that the overarching aim of such policies should be to protect workers against major losses in their living standards resulting through the fossil fuel industry phase-out. The impacted workers should be provided with guarantees to accomplis…
Economics and climate justice activism: Assessing the financial impact of the fossil fuel divestment movement
Since 2011, climate activists have advanced divestment campaigns against private fossil fuel corporations that aim to inflict damage on fossil fuel corporations through two channels: stigmatizing them and undermining their financial operations. We focus in this paper on this second purpose, considering the extent to which divestment campaigns have succeeded in inflicting financial damage on fossil fuel corporations. We present descriptive data on…
Defending the Global Commons through a Global Green New Deal
An Industrial Policy Framework to Advance a Global Green New Deal
This chapter argues that, as an analytic proposition and industrial policy challenge, it is realistic that global CO 2 emissions can be driven to net zero by 2050, the goal set in 2018 by the IPCC. This will require an average level of investment spending of about 2.5 per cent of global GDP per year, focused in two areas: (1) dramatically improving energy-efficiency standards in the stock of buildings, automobiles and public transportation system…
Green Economics and Decent Work: A Viable Unified Framework
Nature and Value
This book brings together essays that individually and as a whole present a detailed and rigorous multidisciplinary exploration of the concept of nature and its wider ethical and political implications. The essays together present a revaluation of the natural world with a view to addressing some of the fundamental concerns of our time.
Degrowth versus Green New Deal: Response to Juliet Schor and Andrew Jorgenson
Green New Deal; climate stabilization; absolute decoupling
The Economics of Just Transition: A Framework for Supporting Fossil Fuel–Dependent Workers and Communities in the United States
We develop a Just Transition framework for U.S. workers and communities that are currently dependent on domestic fossil fuel production. Our rough high-end estimate for such a program is a relatively modest $600 million per year. This level of funding would pay for (1) income, retraining, and relocation support for workers facing retrenchments; (2) guaranteeing the pensions for workers in the affected industries; and (3) mounting effective transi…
De-Growth vs a Green New Deal
Can degrowth supply a political economy that meets environmental and egalitarian aims? In a powerful contribution to the debate initiated by Herman Daly and Benjamin Kunkel (NLR 109), Robert Pollin argues that a green-growth model offers a more viable alternative
Does high public debt consistently stifle economic growth? A critique of Reinhart and Rogoff
We replicate Reinhart and Rogoff (2010A and 2010B) and find that selective exclusion of available data, coding errors and inappropriate weighting of summary statistics lead to serious miscalculations that inaccurately represent the relationship between public debt and GDP growth among 20 advanced economies. Over 1946–2009, countries with public debt/GDP ratios above 90% averaged 2.2% real annual GDP growth, not −0.1% as published. The published r…
Coal Miners and the Green Agenda
New Openings in the Fight Against Austerity
Austerity Economics Is Bad Economics
Fighting for Wall Street Regulation: Who Said It Was Easy
Austerity Economics and the Struggle for the Soul of US Capitalism
The paper then reviews the recent experiences of U.S. state and local governments, which show how the austerity agenda is attacking the foundations of is already a modest U.S. welfare state. It is becoming increasingly clear that many, if not most, austerity hawks view this period as an opportunity to eviscerate the public sector, labor unions, social insurance and other basic social protections. The paper closes by sketching some ideas capable o…
Economic Prospects: Getting Real on Jobs and the Environment: Pipelines, Fracking, or Clean Energy
Public policy, community ownership and clean energy
This paper considers policies for promoting productive investments in the USA, especially as regards the project of building a clean energy economy. The four main policies examined are (i) expanding public investments throughout the economy and gaining the crowding-in benefits that will accrue from such investments, (ii) refocusing the successful but ad hoc, US model of industrial policies, (iii) advancing this agenda of public investments, indus…
Economic Prospects: A U.S. Financial Transaction Tax: How Wall Street Can Pay for Its Mess
Economic Prospects: Fighting Seriously for Jobs and Social Security
State and Municipal Alternatives to Austerity
Economic Prospects: Field Notes on Wall Street Reform: The Battle Continues
Economic Prospects: Can We Please Stop Blaming Immigrants
the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which grants automatic citizen ship to all babies born on U.S. soil, regardless of the citizenship status of the baby s parents. Of course, these actions are primarily a response to the economic wreckage caused by the 2008-2009 Wall Street collapse. But they fly in the face of evidence, which shows that immigrants are by no means responsible for mass unemployment or the cutbacks in social benefit…
The Economics of Just Transition: A Framework for Supporting Fossil Fuel–Dependent Workers and Communities in the United States
We develop a Just Transition framework for U.S. workers and communities that are currently dependent on domestic fossil fuel production. Our rough high-end estimate for such a program is a relatively modest $600 million per year. This level of funding would pay for (1) income, retraining, and relocation support for workers facing retrenchments; (2) guaranteeing the pensions for workers in the affected industries; and (3) mounting effective transi…
Financial Structures and Egalitarian Economic Policy
In various incarnations, egalitarianism has been a fundamental concern of economic policy for most of the twentieth century. The egalitarian impulse—and its corollary, opposition to the stark inequalities of free market capitalism—was embodied in both Soviet-style socialism and social-democratic Keynesianism as they developed, primarily in the first quarter-century
Fossil Fuel Industry Phase-Out and Just Transition: Designing Policies to Protect Workers’ Living Standards
This paper focuses on transition policies targeted at supporting workers now employed in the fossil fuel industries and ancillary sectors within high-income economies. As a general normative principle, I argue that the overarching aim of such policies should be to protect workers against major losses in their living standards resulting through the fossil fuel industry phase-out. The impacted workers should be provided with guarantees to accomplis…
The Multinational Mineral Industry in Crisis
The international capitalist mineral industry is dominated at every level—from resource ownership to production and refining—by a small number of Western multinational corporations. Since the 1960s, however, the grip of the multinationals over the industry has been weakening. This is a result largely of efforts by nationalist movements in Third World countries to break the multinationals' control over the Third World's resources. As the power of …
Public policy, community ownership and clean energy
This paper considers policies for promoting productive investments in the USA, especially as regards the project of building a clean energy economy. The four main policies examined are (i) expanding public investments throughout the economy and gaining the crowding-in benefits that will accrue from such investments, (ii) refocusing the successful but ad hoc, US model of industrial policies, (iii) advancing this agenda of public investments, indus…
Economics and climate justice activism: Assessing the financial impact of the fossil fuel divestment movement
Since 2011, climate activists have advanced divestment campaigns against private fossil fuel corporations that aim to inflict damage on fossil fuel corporations through two channels: stigmatizing them and undermining their financial operations. We focus in this paper on this second purpose, considering the extent to which divestment campaigns have succeeded in inflicting financial damage on fossil fuel corporations. We present descriptive data on…
De-Growth vs a Green New Deal
Can degrowth supply a political economy that meets environmental and egalitarian aims? In a powerful contribution to the debate initiated by Herman Daly and Benjamin Kunkel (NLR 109), Robert Pollin argues that a green-growth model offers a more viable alternative
Austerity Economics and the Struggle for the Soul of US Capitalism
The paper then reviews the recent experiences of U.S. state and local governments, which show how the austerity agenda is attacking the foundations of is already a modest U.S. welfare state. It is becoming increasingly clear that many, if not most, austerity hawks view this period as an opportunity to eviscerate the public sector, labor unions, social insurance and other basic social protections. The paper closes by sketching some ideas capable o…
Economic Prospects: Can We Please Stop Blaming Immigrants
the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which grants automatic citizen ship to all babies born on U.S. soil, regardless of the citizenship status of the baby s parents. Of course, these actions are primarily a response to the economic wreckage caused by the 2008-2009 Wall Street collapse. But they fly in the face of evidence, which shows that immigrants are by no means responsible for mass unemployment or the cutbacks in social benefit…
Latin American Debt: The Choices Ahead
The Latin American debt crisis is halfway into its fifth year with no end in sight. Since August 1982, when Mexico announced its inability to make interest payments on its outstanding debt of $90 billion, tremendous hardship has been imposed on the indebted countries through austerity programs devised by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and, more recently, the Latin governments themselves. Amidst an almost constant swirl of activity—new pron…
The Multinational Mineral Industry in Crisis
The international capitalist mineral industry is dominated at every level—from resource ownership to production and refining—by a small number of Western multinational corporations. Since the 1960s, however, the grip of the multinationals over the industry has been weakening. This is a result largely of efforts by nationalist movements in Third World countries to break the multinationals' control over the Third World's resources. As the power of …
A Theory of Financial Instability
Review of Can "It" Happen Again? Essays on Instability and Finance by Hyman P. Minsky.This article can also be found at the Monthly Review website, where most recent articles are published in full.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website
Latin American Debt: The Choices Ahead
The Latin American debt crisis is halfway into its fifth year with no end in sight. Since August 1982, when Mexico announced its inability to make interest payments on its outstanding debt of $90 billion, tremendous hardship has been imposed on the indebted countries through austerity programs devised by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and, more recently, the Latin governments themselves. Amidst an almost constant swirl of activity—new pron…
The Abyss of Third World Debt
Review of The Debt Squads: The U.S., the Banks, and Latin America by Sue Branford and Bernardo Kucinski; A Fate Worse Than Debt: The World Financial Crisis and the Poor by Susan George.This article can also be found at the Monthly Review website, where most recent articles are published in full.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website
The World, the Free Market and the Left
A Progressive Program for Monetary Reform
Review of A Matter of Interest: Reexamining Money, Debt, and Real Economic Growth by William F. Hixson.This article can also be found at the Monthly Review website, where most recent articles are published in full.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website
Financial Structures and Egalitarian Economic Policy
In various incarnations, egalitarianism has been a fundamental concern of economic policy for most of the twentieth century. The egalitarian impulse—and its corollary, opposition to the stark inequalities of free market capitalism—was embodied in both Soviet-style socialism and social-democratic Keynesianism as they developed, primarily in the first quarter-century
Contemporary Economic Stagnation in World Historical Perspective
There is little dispute now that the history of Western capitalism since the end of World War ii can be partitioned into two distinct periods. Its ‘Golden Age’, lasting roughly through the end of the 1960s, was characterized by rapid economic growth, low unemployment, mild business cycles
Response to Giovanni Arrighi
The Long Twentieth Century is a volume of great historical sweep and originality. I don’t think my review could have been clearer in recognizing the many strengths of Giovanni Arrighi’s work. However, I did also find that much of the book’s core theoretical framework was in disarray
Globalization and Progressive Economic Policy
The authors of this book challenge mainstream thinking about the nature of globalization. While not hostile to markets per se, they believe that capitalist market processes, left to operate freely, tend to generate injustice, insecurity, instability, and inefficiency. Taking account of the new realities of globalization, this volume explores an unusually wide range of subjects, including trade integration, multinational corporations, labor market…
The Living Wage: Building a Fair Economy
Anatomy of Clintonomics
The performance of the American economy is widely hailed as stellar, and the policies of the US President as financially prudent and socially progressive. Robert Pollin dismantles Clinton’s record as steward and reformer. Stock bubble and poverty sump as ‘residuals’ of the New Economy
A People's Economy Is Possible
Economic Prospects: Making the Federal Minimum Wage a Living Wage
Economic Prospects: Global Outsourcing and the U.S. Working Class
Resurrection of the Rentier
Economic Prospects: Why Militarism Hurts the U.S. Economy
Economic Prospects: S Green Investments and the Path to Prosperity
Economic Prospects: The Housing Bubble and Financial Deregulation: Isn't Enough Enough
Reindustrializing America: A Proposal for Reviving U.S. Manufacturing and Creating Millions of Good Jobs
The Wall Street Collapse and Return of Reality-Based Economics
Over the past generation, the U.S. economy as well as most of the rest of the global economy have been dominated by the idea that free market capitalism produces dynamic growth, financial stability, and as close as we are likely to come to a fair society. Supporters of this pro-market framework hold that government interventions to encourage growth, stability, or even fairness will almost always produce more harm than good. This mode of thinking …
Economic Prospects: U.S. Trade Policy and the Jobs Crisis
How much, by itself, could a change in our global trade policies?including especially tariff restrictions on imports or lowering the value of the dollar relative to other currencies?accom plish toward pushing the unemployment rate down to around 4 percent? My own answer is: not very much. At the same time, Buy America provisions can sometimes, but not always, make sense, as one part of a broader set of industrial policies, especially on behalf of…
Economic Prospects: Industrial Policy and the Revival of U.S. Manufacturing
State and Municipal Alternatives to Austerity
Economic Prospects: Field Notes on Wall Street Reform: The Battle Continues
Economics (39 works) · Political science (26 works) · Economic system (15 works) · Politics (15 works) · Business (14 works) · Political economy (13 works) · Law (12 works) · Economic Theory and Policy (11 works) · Market economy (10 works) · Finance (8 works)