Professor of Economics at the University of Massachusetts and Executive Director of the Hopbrook Institute, Gerald Friedman was graduated from Columbia College in 1977 and earned a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University in 1986. In addition to his 1998 book, State-Making and Labor Movements. The United States and France, 1876-1914, he has written Reigniting the Labor Movement: Restoring means to ends in a democratic labor movement (2008) and Microeconomics: Individual Choice in Communities (4th edition 2018) and is the author of numerous articles on topics in the labor history of the United States and Europe, on the evolution of economic thought, labor economics, economic theory, the history of slavery in the Americas, and on current economic issues. He has also drafted funding plans for campaigns for single-payer health insurance in Colorado, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Washington, and for the United States.