Michael Ash

Portait of Michael Ash
Professor
306 Crotty Hall
545-6329

CV: 

Education: 

Ph.D., Economics, University of California, Berkeley, 1999
A.B, Economics, Princeton University, 1991

Professional Experience: 

Professor of Economics and Public Policy, UMass-Amherst, 2011-Present
Chair, Department of Economics, UMass-Amherst, 2011-Present
Visiting Scholar, Lisbon School for Economics and Management, Lisbon, Portugal, 2015
Acting Director, Social Thought & Political Economy, UMass-Amherst, 2012-13
Associate Professor of Economics and Public Policy, UMass-Amherst, 2005-2011
Fulbright Fellow, Institute of Sociology and Social Policy, Corvinus University, Budapest, Hungary, 2007
Fulbright Fellow, Center for Environmental Policy and Law, Central European University, Budapest, Hungary, 2007
Assistant Professor of Economics and Public Policy, UMass-Amherst, 1999-2005
Princeton Project 55 Fellow, Trenton Office of Policy Studies, Trenton, NJ 1991-1992
Staff Labor Economist, Council of Economic Advisers, 1995-1996

Research Interests: 

Environment
Health
Health Disparities
Labor

Teaching: 

Capstone in Public Policy and Administration
Econometrics
Economic Instruments for Greenhouse Gas Mitigation
Economics of Health
Graduate Applied Econometrics
Health and Environmental Inequality Module for Social Inequality and Social Justice
Introduction to Political Economy: Social Wealth
Labor in the American Economy
Intermediate Macroeconomics
Microeconomics for Public Policy
Policy Analysis
Political Economy of the Environment and Environmental Policy
Political Economy of Public Policy
Statistics for Public Policy and Administration

Honors and Awards: 

Outstanding Accomplishment in Research Award, UMass-Amherst, 2014
Most Important Economic Developments of 2013 (Bloomberg), 2013
Wonky Award (Washington Post), 2013
2013 Albie for best political economy writing (Foreign Policy)
Foreign Policy 100 Leading Global Thinkers of 2013
College Outstanding Teaching Award, College of Social and Behavioral Sciences, UMass-Amherst, 2011
Wayne F. Placek Award, American Psychological Foundation (2002)

Professional Activities: 

Staff Economist, Center for Popular Economics, 1999-2011  
Board member, Center for Environmental Policy and Law, Central European University, Budapest, Hungary, 2005-09 

Grants: 

  • 2011 "Collaborative Research on the Correlates and Consequences of Risks from Airborne Toxics: Dynamic Spatial Analysis." National Science Foundation (Two-year project, total budget $338,548; UMass budget $90,370). Principal Investigator Paul Mohai, University of Michigan; Ash is a Co-PI.
  • 2010 "Economic Impact of Spending on Public Higher Education in Massachusetts." Ash was Principal Investigator on research grant from the Massachusetts Society of Professors. $15,000.
  • 2010 "An assessment methodology for differential impact on environmental justice populations of releases of industrial toxics to water in Massachusetts." Ash was Principal Investigator on U.S. Geological Survey's Water Resources Annual Institute Program for Fiscal Year 2010. $5,000.
  • 2010 "Toxic Air Pollution, Infant Health, and Disparities by Race and Class" Ash was Principal Investigator on a TeraGrid Allocation.
  • 2007 "Hospital Unions, Staffing, Wages, and Patient Safety," Principal Investigator Joanne Spetz, UCSF, National Institutes of Health (NIH) R01. Ash was a sub-contractor with a three-year budget of $144,256.
  • 2002 "Health Insurance Inequality for Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual People." (with M.V. Lee Badgett) Ash M was Principal Investigator for the Wayne F. Placek Award, American Psychological Foundation, $35,700.

Affiliations: 

American Economic Association
Union for Radical Political Economics
Association of Environmental and Resource Economists
International Association for Feminist Economics
Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management
International Society for Ecological Economics

Presentations: 

2015 "Critical Replication as a Method of Learning and Improving Economic Science." Invited talk, Department of Economics, Universita degli studi Roma Tre (Italy) 19 May.

2015 Ash M, Basu D, Dube A (alphabetical order). "New Research on Public Debt and Growth, A Critical Replication of Several Papers from 2010{2012." Invited talk, Department of Economics, Universita degli studi Roma Tre (Italy) 18 May.

2015 Ash M, Basu D, Dube A (alphabetical order). "Public Debt and Growth: Assessing Key Findings on Causality and Thresholds." INFER Conference, University of Coimbra (Portugal) 18 April.

2014 Critical Replication for Learning and Research, Department of Mathematical Sciences, DePaul University, Chicago, IL. 25 April.

2014 Critical Replication for Learning and Research, Quantitative Methods Core Methods Seminar, University of Massachusetts Medical School Department of Quantitative Health Sciences, Worcester, MA. 1 April.

2014 Transformational Voices: An Afternoon with Leading Global Thinkers, Josef Korbel School of International Studies, University of Denver, Denver, CO. 6 March.

Selected Publications: 

2014 Zwickl K, Ash M, Boyce J. "Regional variation in environmental inequality: Industrial air toxics exposure in U.S. cities." Ecological Economics 107: 494-509.

2014 Herndon T, Ash M, Pollin R.  "Does High Public Debt Consistently Stifle Economic Growth? A Critique of Reinhart and Rogoff." Cambridge Journal of Economics 38(2): 257-279. First published online December 24, 2013.

2013 Ash M, Boyce JK, Chang G, Scharber H (alphabetical order).  "Is Environmental Justice Good for White Folks?" Social Science Quarterly 94(3): 616{636. Early view published 22 June.

2011 Seago JA, Spetz J, Ash M, Herrera C, Keane D.  "Hospital RN job satisfaction and nurse unions." Journal of Nursing Administration, Mar 41(3):109-14.

2011 Spetz J, Ash M, Konstantinidis C, Herrera C. "The effect of unions on the distribution of wages of hospital-employed registered nurses in the United States." Journal of Clinical Nursing Jan;20(1-2):60-7.

2010 Ash M, Boyce J (alphabetical order). "Measuring Corporate Environmental Justice Performance." Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management 238

2009 Ash JM, Ash M, Ash P (alphabetical order). "Constructing a quadrilateral inside another one." Mathematical Gazette, 93: 52-62.

2009 Ash M, Robinson D.  "Inequality, race, and mortality in U.S. cities: A political and econometric review of Deaton and Lubotsky" Social Science and Medicine 68(11): 1909-1913.

2009 Ash M, Arons S.  "Economic Parameters of End-of-Life Care: Some policy implications in an era of health care reform" Western New England Law Review 31(2):305{332.

2008 Ferjentsik V, Ash M.  "An EU sky trust: Can a lower-income country afford climate policy" Environmental Liability 16(5): 183-187.

2008 Gupta S, Ash M. "Whose Money, Whose Time? A Nonparametric Approach to Modeling Time Spent on Housework in the United States.'' Feminist Economics 14(1).

2006. Ash M, Badgett MVL (alphabetical order). "Separate and Unequal: The Effect of Unequal Access to Employment-Based Health Insurance on Same-Sex and Different-Sex Couples.'' Contemporary Economic Policy 24(4).

2006. Ash M, Brandt S (alphabetical order). "Disparities in Asthma Hospitalization in Massachusetts,'' American Journal of Public Health 96(2).