Who We Are

A democratic and non-hierarchical collective of radical economists founded Dollars & Sense in 1974. Today, D&S is still a democratic workplace. In addition to our four paid staff members, our volunteer Editorial Collective, compprising economists, journalists, and activists, helps set editorial policy and produce our magazine and books. Collective members write for Dollars & Sense, and the collective meets weekly to read submissions and edit forthcoming articles. The meetings regularly spark spirited discussions of economic topics! Dollars & Sense also has a Board of Associates, who are less active than collective members but help support the organization.

Dollars & Sense Staff

Elizabeth T. Henderson, magazine co-editor, joined D&S in 2018. She previously worked for several years as an editor at The Indypendent. Her reporting has appeared in Dissent, The Nation, Waging Nonviolence, and The Indypendent.

Ben Beckett, magazine co-editor, joined D&S in 2023. Ben’s previous editorial experience includes working for several years as a freelance editor and writer. He is a contributing writer at Jacobin, and his reporting has also appeared in Burnaway and Labor Notes. His work focuses primarily on American politics and economics and the labor movement.

Chris Sturr, magazine co-editor, joined the staff in July of 2005, after several years on the D&S collective. He taught at the college level for several years; his research focused on the prison crisis and the history of prison reform in the United States. His media activism has included reporting for WMBR (MIT's radio station), participating in the Boston Independent Media Center, and co-producing a weekly two-hour radio program, Unwelcome Guests. His current projects include coordinating the Political Economy of Prisons article series and improving the D&S website. Chris's articles in Dollars & Sense include Fidelity and Genocide, "Military Spending and the Cost of the Wars" (July/August, 2006), The Penal Welfare State, and (with Amy Offner) Flattening Appalachia.

Some members of the Dollars & Sense Collective:

Tom Louie is a long-time organizer, public policy advocate, media skills trainer, and fundraiser. He coordinated programs for the Boston chapter of the Progressive Communicators Network (PCN-Boston), primarily working with grassroots activists and community-based organizations on economic justice, immigrant rights, and public education issues. Prior to PCN, Tom was the Director of Development and Communications at Political Research Associates (PRA), and directed advocacy programs at the Massachusetts English Plus Coalition and the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition. In 2006, he led research efforts on the needs and status of programs for English Language Learners in the Boston Public Schools for the Citizen Commission on Academic Success for Boston Children.

Peter Kolozi is an assistant professor of Political Science at Bronx Community College. He earned his Ph.D. from the City University of New York Graduate Center in 2011. His research interests include political ideologies, social movements, globalization and pedagogical approaches to the study of comparative urban politics.

John Miller is a professor of economics at Wheaton College. He has been a visiting professor at the University of California and has served as an Economic Consultant to the Southeast Asia Office of Oxfam America. John is co-author of the books Economic Collapse, Economic Change: Getting to the Roots of the Crisis and Which Way to Grow? Poverty and Prosperity in Southeast Asia. His areas of interest include the Federal Reserve, unemployment, tax policy, and macroeconomic and budget issues. In addition to editing many editions of the best-selling Dollars & Sense anthology Real World Macro, John has written numerous articles for D&S including: What's Good for Wal-Mart..., (Economic) Freedom's Just Another Word for ... Crisis-Prone, Outing Alan Greenspan, Free, Free at Last and Recovery Denied.

Jawied Nawabi is Assistant Professor of Sociology, Economics, and International Politics at Bronx Community College. He earned his Ph.D. in Economic Sociology from The New School in 2014. His dissertation was on "The Socioeconomic Origins of the Developmental State," a comparative historical analysis of England, Spain, France, Brazil, India, and South Korea. His research agenda includes studying the roots of institutional development, global political economy, and sociology of state formation.

Zoe Sherman is Assistant Professor of Economics at Merrimack College. Her areas of specialization are Political Economy and U.S. Economic History. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 2014. Zoe has written several articles for D&S, including the cover story for our 40th anniversary issue, Are We Better Off Than We Were 40 Years Ago?

Bryan Snyder, a longtime collective member, teaches economics at Bentley University. He helps edit our popular textbooks Real World Macro and Real World Micro.

Jeanne Winner is an activist in the Boston area. She has been active in local organizations devoted to housing, labor, and welfare issues since the early seventies. Her undergraduate degree is in the History of Science. Her articles in D&S include The Social Relations of Health and Disease.

Some Dollars & Sense Associates

Randy Albelda is a professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts-Boston. She has written numerous articles over the years for D&S, including What's Wrong with Welfare to Work and What Welfare Reform Has Wrought. She is the author of numerous books, including Unlevel Playing Fields: Understanding Wage Inequality and Discrimination, published by Dollars & Sense and now in its fourth edition. She also authored Glass Ceilings and Bottomless Pits: Women's Work, Women's Poverty, Economics and Feminism, and other books.

Marc Breslow is a former editor of Dollars & Sense. His many articles for the magazine include: George Soros: Beware Market Fundamentalism, The Fake Federal Budget Surplus, I Want My Ford Explorer! But Can the World Afford Cheap Gas?, Merger Mania Continues, and Minimum Wage, Maximum Benefit?.

Jim Campen is a professor emeritus of economics at the UMass-Boston and was a member of the D&S collective from 1974 to 1982. He served from 2007 to 2009 as executive director of Americans for Fairness in Lending, which "exists to raise awareness of abusive credit and lending practices and to promote re-regulation of the industry." (Check out this video of Jim on Fox Business News. He faces down the hosts quite well.) His many articles for D&S include: Giving the Nod to Conglomerates, A Law that Works, and Update on Mortgage Lending Discrimination.

Chuck Collins is a senior scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies and directs IPS's Program on Inequality and the Common Good. His most recent book is 99 to 1: How Wealth Inequality is Wrecking the World and What We Can Do About It. He is also the co-author of Wealth and Our Commonwealth (with Bill Gates Sr.), Economic Apartheid in America, and Robin Hood Was Right, among other books. He was co-founder of United for a Fair Economy, which educates, organizes and advocates against widening inequality, and Responsible Wealth, a national network of affluent Americans who are concerned about economic inequality. Chuck's articles in Dollars & Sense include Balancing State Budgets: Who Will Pay?, and The Wealth Gap Widens.

Ellen Frank teaches economics at the University of Massachusetts–Boston. She writes and speaks on international economics and on US economic policy. Ellen is the author of The Raw Deal: How Myths and Misinformation about Deficits, Inflation, and Wealth Impoverish America, and of many articles in Dollars & Sense including Beyond Deficit Scare-Mongering, Does Rent Control Hurt Tenants?, The Great Stock Illusion, Social Security Q&A, and Making Patients Pay: U.S. Health System Puts Profits First.

Thea Lee is Deputy Chief of Staff at the AFL-CIO, where she has also served as Policy Director and Chief International Economist. Previously, she worked as an international trade economist at the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, D.C. and as an editor at Dollars & Sense. She received her bachelor's degree from Smith College and her master's degree in economics from the University of Michigan. She is co-author of A Field Guide to the Global Economy, published by the New Press. She serves on the State Department Advisory Committee on International Economic Policy, and the Board of Directors of the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Arthur MacEwan is a professor emeritus of economics at UMass-Boston, and one of the founders of D&S. His most recent book (co-authored with John A. Miller) is Economic Collapse, Economic Change: Getting to the Roots of the Crisis. His previous books include Neo-Liberalism or Democracy?: Economic Strategy, Markets, and Alternatives for the 21st Century, Debt and Disorder: International Economic Instability and U.S. Imperial Decline and Instability and Change in the World Economy. His many articles for D&S include: New Man at the World Bank, Is It Oil? and Why CEO Salaries Skyrocket.

Amy Offner was the first book editor at D&S. She is currently Assistant Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania. Her research and teaching address the history of capitalism and political economy, empire and foreign relations, and social and intellectual history. She earned her Ph.D. at Columbia University. Among the many articles she has written for D&S is Innovative Labor Strategies: Ten Campaigns to Learn From.

Laura Orlando is a civil engineer and executive director of the ReSource Institute for Low Entropy Systems, a nonprofit organization working on public health and environmental issues in the US and abroad. She is an adjunct assistant professor at Boston University and associate director of the Program for the Ecology of Human Systems at the B.U. School of Public Health. She is co-editor of Toward Sustainable Sanitation (May 2001), and has published articles in the Women's Review of Books, Dollars & Sense, and In These Times. Her articles in D&S include: Industry Attacks on Dissent: From Rachel Carson to Oprah and Sustainable Sanitation: A Global Health Challenge.

Adria Scharf is currently director of the Richmond Peace Education Center, in Richmond, Va. She was a co-editor of D&S from 2002-2005. Before that, she worked as a senior researcher and trainer at Ownership Associates, Inc. Her writing has been published in Dollars & Sense, Left Business Observer, Journal of Employee Ownership Law and Finance, and Washington Housing Quarterly. Her many articles for the magazine include Space Wars: An Interview with Bruce Gagnon, and Scripted Talk: Employers control the speech of service workers.

Chris Tilly was a member of the D&S collective for over twenty years. He is currently professor of Urban Planning at UCLA and director of UCLA's Institute for Research on Labor and Employment. Some of his many articles for D&S are Haiti's Fault Lines: Made in the USA, Part-Time Work and Temporary Work: Flexibility for Whom?, Land Reform Under Lula, and “They Work Here, They Live Here, They Stay Here!” Chris is the author of many books, such as: Urban Inequality: Evidence from Four Cities, Glass Ceilings, Bottomless Pits: Women's Work, Women's Poverty, Half a Job: Bad and Good Part-Time Jobs in a Changing Labor Market, and Work Under Capitalism.

Ramaa Vasudevan teaches economics at Colorado State University. She completed her Ph.D. in economics at the New School University in 2006. She answered a reader's query on the relationship between unemployment and inflation in the “Ask Dr. Dollar” column in the September/October 2006 issue of the magazine.

Thad Williamson was a member of the D&S collective for several years; he now teaches political science at the University of Richmond. He has also served as a consultant to the National Center for Economic and Security Alternatives in Washington. He is author of What Comes Next? Proposals for a Different Society; co-author (with Gar Alperovitz and David Imbroscio) of Making a Place for Community: Local Democracy in a Global Era; and author of More Than a Game: Why North Carolina Basketball Means So Much to So Many. He has written articles for many publications, including Tikkun, Cross Currents, Review of Radical Political Economy, In These Times, and The Nation. His articles for D&S include Interview with Joel Bakan, author of The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power, Capital Stability and Local Democracy, and Global Economic Inequality.