Juliet Schor to deliver 2019 Samuel Bowles Lecture on November 20, 2019

Juliet SchorJuliet Schor, professor of sociology at Boston College, will deliver the 2019 Samuel Bowles lecture on November 20th. Schor's talk is titled 'It's Beyond the Gig: Work and the Platform Economy.'

 Schor is also a member of the MacArthur Foundation Connected Learning Research Network. Schor’s research focuses on consumption, time use, and environmental sustainability. 

Arindrajit Dube Comments in 'The New York Times' about the Recent Socio-Political Attitude Shift about Labor Unions

Arindrajit Dube, economics professor"We as social scientists live in a society where clearly the general social and political environment affects the questions we ask,” said Arindrajit Dube, a labor economist at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

When Bernie Sanders ran for president in 2016, his campaign was strikingly pro-labor. He proposed a $15-an-hour minimum wage, which was much further than most mainstream Democrats, including Hillary Clinton, were willing to go. He denounced a trans-Pacific trade deal that was anathema to many unions. He endorsed an organizing method, known as card check, that would allow workers to unionize without holding a secret-ballot election.

Capitalism, Conflict, and Cooperation: A Celebration of the Work of Samuel Bowles & Herbert Gintis

Columbia University Conference On October 4-5, 2019, a conference was organized at Columbia University, Department of Economics, to celebrate the illustrious careers of Sam Bowles and Herbert Gintis, UMass Amherst Emeritus Professors of Economics. The program featured presentations by scholars from around the world including friends, colleagues and former students of Sam and Herb on various topics around the theme “Capitalism, Conflict, and Cooperation”. 

UMass Economics in the News

There is continued coverage of research findings by Dania Francis, economics and Afro-American studies, that between $3.7 and $6.6 billion has been lost from dispossession of black-owned agricultural land in the South. (Esquire, 8/14/19)

Kartik Misrak, PhD candidate in economics, has been accepted for publication of his paper, “Does Historical Land Inequality Attenuate the Positive Impact of India’s Employment Guarantee Program?” in the World Development today.