BARRY BLUESTONE, PH.D. - Economist
[ View speaker video from conference ]

Barry Bluestone is the Russell B. and Andree B. Stearns Trustee Professor of Political Economy and the founding director of the Center for Urban and Regional Policy at Northeastern University in Boston. The Center has become a leading regional institution devoted to research and community action projects in housing, workforce development, community economic development and the implementation of state-of-the-art information technology for schools, community groups and small business. Before coming to Northeastern in 1999, Bluestone taught political economy for more than 25 years at Boston College and the University of Massachusetts, Boston. He was the founding director of the Doctoral Program in Public Policy at UMass Boston.

As a political economist, Bluestone has written widely in the areas of income distribution, business and industrial policy, labor-management relations, and urban and regional economic development. He contributes regularly to academic as well as popular journals, and is the co-author of nine books. These include most recently, Growing Prosperity: The Battle for Growth with Equity in the 21st Century (with Bennett Harrison) which explores the post-World War II history of economic growth and income distribution in the U.S. and The Boston Renaissance: Race, Space and Economic Change in an American Metropolis (with Mary Huff Stevenson). In Negotiating the Future: A Labor Perspective on American Business (written with his father, retired UAW Vice President, Irving Bluestone), he explored the concept of the “Enterprise Compact”, a new joint approach to labor-management relations.

As part of his work, Bluestone spends a considerable amount of time consulting with community organizations, trade unions, industry groups, and various federal, state and local government agencies. In 1995, he served as Special Policy Advisor to the House Democratic Leader, Richard Gephardt. He is a founding director of the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, DC and a member of the scientific committee of the International Center for Social Studies, based in Rome, Italy.