Rate My Professor Robert Pollin

Robert Pollin is Distinguished University Professor of Economics and Co-Director of the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, contributing significantly to the field of Business & Economics. He earned his B.A. in History from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1972, followed by an M.A. in Economics in 1979 and a Ph.D. in Economics in 1982 from the New School for Social Research. Pollin's academic career began at the University of California, Riverside, where he served as Assistant Professor from 1982 to 1988, Associate Professor from 1988 to 1994, and Professor from 1994 to 1998. In 1998, he joined the University of Massachusetts Amherst as Professor of Economics and Co-Director of PERI, advancing to Distinguished University Professor in 2013. He is also the founder and President of Pollin Energy and Retrofits (PEAR), a green energy company based in Amherst, Massachusetts, operating nationwide. Pollin has held consulting roles with the U.S. Department of Energy, the International Labour Organization, the United Nations Industrial Development Organization, and various non-governmental organizations on developing high-employment green economies. He directed employment creation and poverty reduction projects in sub-Saharan Africa for the United Nations Development Program and collaborated on living wage statutes, financial regulatory policies, and the economics of single-payer health care in the United States. From 2011 to 2016, he served on the Scientific Advisory Committee of the European Commission's Financialization, Economy, Society, and Sustainable Development (FESSUD) project.

Pollin's research interests encompass macroeconomics, finance, labor markets, wages, poverty, and clean-energy economics. His major publications include Climate Crisis and the Global Green New Deal: The Political Economy of Saving the Planet (2020, co-authored with Noam Chomsky), Greening the Global Economy (MIT Press, 2015), Back to Full Employment (MIT Press, 2012), A Measure of Fairness: The Economics of Living Wages and Minimum Wages in the United States (2008), and The Living Wage: Building a Fair Economy (1998). He has received numerous honors, including selection as one of Foreign Policy magazine's 100 Leading Global Thinkers in 2013, the Robert H. Mundheim Medal to the Living Spirit from the New School for Social Research in 2025, the Distinguished Outreach Professor award from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 2006, and the Distinguished Faculty Research Lecture in 2008-2009. Pollin's work has influenced policy discussions on green growth, job creation, and economic equity globally.