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About Michael
Michael Ash is a Professor of Economics and Public Policy at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where he has been a faculty member in the Business & Economics field since 1999. He earned a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of California, Berkeley in 1999 and an A.B. in Economics, cum laude, from Princeton University in 1991. His career at UMass includes positions as Assistant Professor (1999-2005), Associate Professor (2005-2011), and Professor (2011-present). He served as Chair of the Department of Economics from 2011 to 2017, currently serves as Graduate Program Director, and has held acting directorships in Social Thought & Political Economy (2012-13) and the Energy Transition Institute (2022). Ash is also Co-Director of the Corporate Toxics Information Project at the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI), faculty in the School of Public Policy, and affiliated with the Labor Relations and Research Center. Earlier roles include Staff Labor Economist at the Council of Economic Advisers (1995-1996), Fulbright Fellow in Hungary (2007), and Visiting Scholar at the Lisbon School of Economics and Management (2015).
Ash's research focuses on labor, health, and environmental economics, particularly environmental justice, right-to-know laws, and greenhouse gas policies. He co-directs PERI's Toxic 100 index, identifying top U.S. corporate polluters, with recent updates on greenhouse suppliers and petrochemical workforce disparities. Key publications include the book Shadow Networks: Financial Disorder and the System that Caused Crisis (Oxford University Press, 2018, with Francisco Louçã); the influential critique "Does High Public Debt Consistently Stifle Economic Growth? A Critique of Reinhart and Rogoff" (Cambridge Journal of Economics, 2014, with Thomas Herndon and Robert Pollin); "Racial disparities in pollution exposure and employment at US industrial facilities" (PNAS, 2018, with James K. Boyce); and "Measuring environmental inequality" (Ecological Economics, 2016, with James K. Boyce and Katrin Zwickl). His work has garnered recognition such as the UMass Amherst Outstanding Accomplishment in Research Award (2014), Foreign Policy's 100 Leading Global Thinkers (2013), the Washington Post Wonky Award (2013), and the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences Outstanding Teaching Award (2011).