Christian E. Weller is a senior fellow at American Progress and a professor of public policy at the McCormack Graduate School of Policy and Global Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. His area of expertise includes retirement income security, macroeconomics, money and banking, and international finance. He is also a research scholar at the University of Massachusetts Amherst’s Political Economy Research Institute and an institute fellow at the University of Massachusetts Boston’s Gerontology Institute. Prior to joining the Center, he was on the research staff at the Economic Policy Institute, where he remains a research associate.
Christian has also worked at the Center for European Integration Studies at the University of Bonn in Germany; under the Department of Public Policy of the AFL-CIO in Washington, D.C.; and served in the banking sector in Germany, Belgium, and Poland. He is a respected academic with more than 100 academic and popular publications. His academic publications have appeared in the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, the Journal of Development Studies, the Cambridge Journal of Economics, the Journal of International Business Studies, the Journal of Aging and Social Policy, and the Journal of Economic Issues, among others. His popular writings have been published in The New York Times, USA Today, and The Atlanta Journal Constitution.
He co-authored with E. Wolff the book, Retirement Income: The Crucial Role of Social Security and was a co-editor of Employee Pensions: Policies, Problems and Possibilities with T. Ghilarducci. In 2006, he was awarded the Outstanding Scholar-Practitioner Award from the Labor and Employment Relations Association. In 2007, Christian was elected to the board of the Labor and Employment Relations Association, one of the country’s largest associations for professionals in the fields of labor and employment relations.
His work is frequently cited in the press and he is often a guest on national TV and radio programs. Christian holds a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
Productivity-enhancing investments, inequality-reducing revenues, and strong financial regulation are all central to responsible fiscal policy.
Public sector jobs have long provided economic security for Black families and communities and reduced the racial wealth gap, but current policy failures threaten that legacy.
A repeal of the Affordable Care Act through the courts would be a massive transfer of money from low- and moderate-income Americans to high-income Americans.
New data indicate that states’ divergent responses to the COVID-19 pandemic are contributing to an uneven economic recovery—and that a national strategy is necessary to ensure a full return to form.
The U.S. government has long been a catalyst for innovation through federal funding and support, but it needs to be more inclusive of Black researchers and inventors.
Permanently terminating the employee payroll tax along the lines President Trump has proposed would empty Social Security’s trust fund by 2026 or earlier.
Less wealth makes it more difficult for African American parents to get reliable access to the internet and devices for remote learning.
Contrary to what is being pushed by the Trump administration, rushing to reopen the economy does not actually result in a return to economic normalcy for working-class Americans.
Only the federal government has the resources to make the necessary investments in people, communities, businesses, and public services to avoid unnecessary harm to the economy over the longer term.
There is a strong economic case for maintaining our commitment to social distancing.
