[act-ma] 6/12 Venezuelan Ambassador discusses crisis with Bostonian economists

[omar sierra]

The Global Economic Crisis: from North to South
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Venezuelan scholar-diplomat Escalona discusses crisis w/ a stellar
panel of economists

Friday, June 12, 2009, 7:00 p.m. Venezuela's Adjunct Ambassador to the
United Nations and economist Julio Escalona returns to e5 to address
the global economic crisis and preview the upcoming UN Assembly's
Special Session on the crisis. Joining the conversation are Richard
Freeman (Harvard's National Bureau of Economic Research), Julie
Matthaei (Wellesley College) and Arthur MacEwan (UMass Boston).

Program details to follow. See attachments below for flyer and click
to read bios.

Biographies

Julio Escalona || Julie Matthaei || Richard Freeman || Arthur MacEwan

Julio Escalona H.E. Ambassador Julio Escalona is Venezuela's Alternate
Permanent Representative at the United Nations in New York. He holds
degrees in economics, geopolitics and environmental issues, and is a
former director of the School of Economics at the Universidad Central
de Venezuela (UCV) in Caracas and head of its department of human
development. He is a professor of economics, general economic history,
economic education in Latin America, contemporary Marxism and
contemporary social problems. He has coordinated research seminars on
economic integration, local economies and local development, and
alternative technologies and has been a participant and guest lecturer
at seminars, forums, academic institutions in Peru, Brazil, Japan,
France, Mexico and Venezuela.

Richard Freeman holds the Herbert Ascherman Chair in Economics at
Harvard University. He is currently serving as Faculty Director of the
Labor and Worklife Program at the Harvard Law School. He is also
director of the Labor Studies Program at the National Bureau of
Economic Research, Senior Research Fellow in Labour Markets at the
London School of Economics' Centre for Economic Performance, and
visiting professor at the London School of Economics. Professor
Freeman is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and
of Sigma Xi.

He has served on five panels of the National Academy of Sciences,
including the Committee on National Needs for Biomedical and
Behavioral Scientists. He has published over 300 articles dealing with
a wide range of research interests including the job market for
scientists and engineers; the growth and decline of unions; the
effects of immigration and trade on inequality; restructuring European
welfare states; Chinese labor markets; transitional economies; youth
labor market problems; crime; self-organizing non-unions in the labor
market; employee involvement programs; and income distribution and
equity in the marketplace. He is currently directing the NBER / Sloan
Science Engineering Workforce Project (with Daniel Goroff).

In addition, he has written or edited over 35 books, several of which
have been translated into French, Spanish, Chinese and Japanese.

Some of his books include: America Works: The Exceptional Labor Market (2007),
What Workers Want? (2006, 1999), Seeking a Premiere League Economy
(2004), (2004), Can Labor Standards Improve Under Globalization? w/
Kimberly Ann Elliott (2003),
Inequality Around the World - IEA Conference Volume #134 (2002), Youth
Employment and Joblessness in Advanced Countries (2000), The New
Inequality: Creating Solutions for Poor America (New Democracy Forum
Series) (1999), Generating Jobs: How to Increase Demand for
Less-Skilled Workers (1998), The Welfare State in Transition:
Reforming the Swedish Model (1997), Differences and Changes in Wage
Structures (1995), Working Under Different Rules (1994), Small
Differences that Matter: Labor Markets and Income Maintenance in
Canada and the United States (1993), Immigration and the Work Force:
Economic Consequences for the United States and Source Areas (1992),
Immigration, Trade and the Labor Market (1991), Labor Markets in
Action: Essays in Empirical Economics (1989), Public Sector Unionism
in the U.S. (1987), The Black Youth Employment Crisis (1986), (1984),
The Youth Joblessness Problem (1981), Labor Economics (1979), and The
Overeducated American (1976).

Julie Matthaei has been active in anti-war, feminist, ecology,
lesbian/gay, and anti-racist movement in the U.S. since she went to
college at Stanford in 1969, and is a big fan of (and participant in)
the Social Forum movement. She has been teaching economics – including
Feminist Economics – at Wellesley College for 30 years. Julie has
written two books on gender in U.S. economic history, An Economic
History of Women in America (1982) and, with Teresa Amott, Race,
Gender and Work: A Multicultural Economic History of Women in the U.S.
(1996), and has been researching and writing about feminist economic
transformation with Barbara Brandt for the past seven years. Julie was
a member of the Working Group for the US Social Forum, which planned
the caucuses and sessions which are documented in this book, and is
currently a member of the U.S. Solidarity Economy Network Coordinating
Committee. With Carl Davidson and Jenna Allard, she is a co-editor of,
Solidarity Economy: Building Alternatives for People and Planet. Her
2001 article, "Healing ourselves, healing our economy: paid work,
unpaid work, and the next stage of feminist economic transformation"
is particularly important in light of today's crisis.

Arthur MacEwan has been a member of the faculty of the UMass Economics
Department since 1975, teaching courses on economic development,
macroeconomics, the economics of education, Latin America, American
Economic History and Marxist economics. He is also a Senior Fellow in
the Center for Social Policy at UMass Boston. His writing focuses
primarily on issues of international development, but his current
research also focuses on the economics of education. His most recent
book is NEOLIBERALISM OR DEMOCRACY? Economic Strategy, Markets and
Alternatives for the 21st Century, published by Zed Books (London) in
1999. In addition to his scholarly work, Professor MacEwan writes
regularly for Dollars & Sense magazine and is authors its "Doctor
Dollar" column. "Inequality, Power and Ideology" is the most recent
essay. Another recent essay speaks to our present topic, "How Did the
West Get Rich?" During 2001-2002 Professor MacEwan was the
university's Interim Provost and Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs,
and throughout the 1990s he was the Vice President and Grievance
Officer for the Faculty Staff Union at UMass Boston.