Michael Ash

In addition to the School of Public Policy and the Department of Economics, Ash is affiliated with the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI), where he collaborates on the Corporate Toxics Information Project and uses EPA data to track the exposure of communities to pollution hazards (findings from which appeared in a paper he coauthored, Justice in the Air).

He is coauthor, with Francisco Louçã, of Shadow Networks: Financial Disorder and the System that Caused Crisis (Oxford University Press, 2018) and has written numerous articles on topics including environmental justice, unionization, and public debt. He received a grant from the National Institutes of Health to support his research on the relationship between hospital labor unions, wages, and patient safety.

Ash was a Fulbright Fellow in Budapest, Hungary, and served as a staff labor economist for the Council of Economic Advisors. He has received a UMass Amherst Outstanding Accomplishment in Research Award and a College of Social and Behavioral Sciences Outstanding Teaching Award and was named one of Foreign Policy's 100 Leading Global Thinkers. 

He has a PhD in economics from the University of California, Berkeley, and an AB in economics from Princeton University.