Patrick Leon Mason is an American economist who is a professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts - Amherst.

He attended St. Edward's University in Austin, Texas on a College Assistance Migrant Program (CAMP) scholarship.

[2] As a graduate student in economics at the University of Michigan, he observed the better conditions of manual laborers in Michigan who were represented by unions, but found traditional economic theory did not fit his lived experience of the labor market.

[2] Mason is a professor of economics, University of Massachusetts - Amherst, where he is also affiliated with the Political Economy Research Institute.

He is a past chairman of the Board of Directors, Partners for Dignity & Rights (formerly the National Economic and Social Rights Initiative),[5] and he has been president of the National Economic Association.