About

Professor Michael Ash is affiliated with the Department of Economics at the School of Public Policy at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He is involved in research related to the Corporate Toxics Information Project, which analyzes and disseminates information from the US Environmental Protection Agency concerning corporate releases of toxic chemicals and the resulting exposures of communities to air and water pollution hazards. His work aims to help community-based activists and socially responsible investors translate the right to know into the right to clean air and water. His research encompasses a range of computational methods, including fate-and-transport modeling of point-source pollution from industrial facilities, analysis of spatial and socioeconomic data from the Bureau of the Census, and research on corporate structure. Professor Ash, along with James K. Boyce, directs the Corporate Toxics Information Project at the Political Economy Research Institute at UMass Amherst.

Research topics

• Sociology
• Political Science
• Geography
• Economics
• Medicine
• Econometrics
• Natural resource economics
• Environmental health
• Development economics
• Ecology
• Demography

Selected publications

• A systematic literature review on residential demand response with a focus on opportunities for low-income communities

  Energy Research & Social Science · 2026-03-31

  articleSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Pervasive racial and ethnic disparities in the U.S. petrochemical workforce

  Ecological Economics · 2025-04-09 · 2 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  The burden of petrochemical pollution on communities of Color is well established, but the corresponding distribution of economic benefits is unclear. We evaluated employment equity in chemical manufacturing (NAICS 325) and petroleum/coal products manufacturing (NAICS 324) among U.S. states and core-based statistical areas (CBSAs) relative to racial education gaps, using data from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and Census Bureau. As a case study, we also examined local-level employment disparities and industrial tax incentives in Louisiana. People of Color were consistently underrepresented among the highest -paying jobs and overrepresented among the lowest -paying jobs in both subsectors. Disparities persisted on a local scale, including in Louisiana parishes providing large tax subsidies for job creation. For both subsectors, the strongest predictor of disparities in better-paying jobs was population diversity. Education gaps were not significantly correlated with observed disparities in either subsector. Collectively, our findings reveal systemic inequality in the United States' petrochemical workforce. The observed disparities appear to reflect institutional racism and are not solely due to the racial education gap, as some have suggested. Regulators should consider that current approaches to industrial permitting, which typically ignore the distribution of economic benefits, are likely to perpetuate this pattern of racial injustice.

  PublisherDOI

• What a Difference a Datum Makes: Revisiting the Impacts of Cap-and-Trade on Emissions and Environmental Justice

  Environmental Justice · 2024-07-17

  article1st authorCorresponding

  A recent article by Danae Hernandez-Cortes and Kyle Meng suggests that the cap-and-trade program in California led to improvements in the degree of environmental inequity in the state, a result that was taken up with some enthusiasm by proponents of carbon pricing. We suggest that their approach is not designed to capture the variation at the heart of the equity debate and show that the results these authors offer may be problematic because of the potential misidentification of which facilities were actually subject to the cap.

  PublisherDOI

• Carbon capture and co-pollutants in a networked power system

  Environmental Research Energy · 2024-06-25 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access

  Abstract We evaluate how the availability of carbon capture (CC) in a networked electricity system affects the emissions of both carbon and of co-pollutants, under a range of plausible technical, economic, and policy scenarios about CC technology, the pace of renewable deployment, the structure of the power grid, and climate policy. We employ a Power Flow model of a three-node, mixed-source network in which fossil fuel power plants may invest in CC via retrofit. Our stylized model retains some of the complexities of a real power system while allowing for a detailed analysis of the impact of power plant operations and transmission constraints. We find that, in a networked system, the availability of CC may lead some generation to move from natural gas to coal, thus leading to a significant increase in co-pollutants. This is of particular concern during the mid-transition, a period when both carbon and non-carbon electrical generation is active. The introduction of CC can lead to an increase in co-pollution even as the energy system transitions toward renewable energy and, surprisingly, co-pollution outcomes can be worse under a stronger decarbonization policy. This insight is important and timely in light of recent rules incentivizing the use of CC. Systems in the early stages of the energy transition may experience an increase in co-pollution if the co-pollutant dynamics are not considered in the first steps of CC policy design.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Can the Clinical Frailty Scale predict futility in out-of-hospital cardiac arrest?

  Journal of Paramedic Practice · 2024-03-02 · 1 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Background: Cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) is considered an essential intervention in unanticipated cardiac arrest, but in the out-of-hospital setting it is often the default treatment for many patients dying of chronic and incurable disease who experience this. The Clinical Frailty Scale (CFS) can predict an individual's vulnerability to adverse health outcomes and might be a useful tool in prognostication in the prehospital setting. Aims: The primary aim was to assess if the CFS can be used for prognostication in cardiac arrest and whether UK paramedics would be able to use the CFS in the context of an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest. Methods: A rapid review of the literature was undertaken to identify research relating to frailty's influence on cardiac arrest outcomes. Five primary research articles were identified and were included. Findings: All the primary research focused on in-hospital cardiac arrest and demonstrated that an higher clinical frailty score was associated with increased mortality following cardiac arrest, with a significant reduction in survival at CFS ≥6. Conclusion: Research could assess whether these findings would be replicated in the out-of-hospital cardiac arrest context and whether paramedics could use the CFS to aid in prognostication in this situation.

  PublisherDOI

• People of Color are Systematically Underrepresented in the U.S. Petrochemical Workforce

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2024-01-01 · 1 citations

  preprintOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Review of Komlos, John. Foundations of real-world economics: What every economics student needs to know

  Journal of Evolutionary Economics · 2024-01-01

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Environmental inequality in industrial brownfields: Evidence from French municipalities

  Ecological Economics · 2023-11-22 · 8 citations

  article
  PublisherDOI

• Environmental Inequality in Industrial Brownfields: Evidence from French Municipalities

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2023-01-01

  articleOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• Income-based U.S. household carbon footprints (1990–2019) offer new insights on emissions inequality and climate finance

  PLOS Climate · 2023-08-17 · 29 citations

  articleOpen accessCorresponding

  Current policies to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and increase adaptation and mitigation funding are insufficient to limit global temperature rise to 1.5°C. It is clear that further action is needed to avoid the worst impacts of climate change and achieve a just climate future. Here, we offer a new perspective on emissions responsibility and climate finance by conducting an environmentally extended input output analysis that links 30 years (1990–2019) of United States (U.S.) household-level income data to the emissions generated in creating that income. To do this we draw on over 2.8 billion inter-sectoral transfers from the Eora MRIO database to calculate both supplier- and producer-based GHG emissions intensities and connect these with detailed income and demographic data for over 5 million U.S. individuals in the IPUMS Current Population Survey. We find significant and growing emissions inequality that cuts across economic and racial lines. In 2019, fully 40% of total U.S. emissions were associated with income flows to the highest earning 10% of households. Among the highest earning 1% of households (whose income is linked to 15–17% of national emissions) investment holdings account for 38–43% of their emissions. Even when allowing for a considerable range of investment strategies, passive income accruing to this group is a major factor shaping the U.S. emissions distribution. Results suggest an alternative income or shareholder-based carbon tax, focused on investments, may have equity advantages over traditional consumer-facing cap-and-trade or carbon tax options and be a useful policy tool to encourage decarbonization while raising revenue for climate finance.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Frequent coauthors

• James K. Boyce

  21 shared

• Jean Ann Seago

  12 shared

• Joanne Spetz

  Lee University

  12 shared

• Carolina Herrera

  Boston University

  10 shared

• Charalampos Konstantinidis

  9 shared

• Lawrence King

  University of Queensland

  5 shared

• Jared Starr

  University of Massachusetts Amherst

  5 shared

• Craig Nicolson

  University of Massachusetts Amherst

  5 shared

Labs

• Computational Social Science InstitutePI

  The lab focuses on computational social science research.