Gerald A. Epstein is Professor of Economics and a founding Co-Director of the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, USA. Epstein has written articles on numerous topics including financial crisis and regulation, alternative approaches to central banking for employment generation and poverty reduction, capital account regulations and the political economy of central banking and financial institutions. Epstein has worked with numerous UN agencies including the ILO, UNDESA, UNDP, and UNCTAD on the topics of macroeconomics and monetary policy in developing countries. His most recent edited volumes are: The Handbook of The Political Economy of Financial Crises, (co-edited with Martin Wolfson) and The Political Economy of International Finance in an Age of Inequality: Soft Currencies, Hard Landings. In recent years he has been the recipient of two INET grants, one to study the "social efficiency" of thefinancial system and a second to look at the distributional impacts of quantitative easing. He has also won the Samuel F. Conti Faculty Fellowship Award from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.