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Dean Baker
Born	(1958-07-13) July 13, 1958 (age 66) Columbus, Ohio
Academic career
Field	Economics macroeconomics Real estate economics Urban economics
Institution	Center for Economic and Policy Research Bucknell University
Alma mater	Swarthmore College (BA) University of Denver (MA) University of Michigan (PhD)
Doctoral advisor	W. H. Locke Anderson
Information at IDEAS / RePEc
Website	DeanBaker.net

Dean Baker (born July 13, 1958) is an American macroeconomist who co-founded the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) with Mark Weisbrot. Baker has been credited as one of the first economists to have identified the 2007–08 United States housing bubble.

Early life and education

Baker was born into a Jewish family and grew up in the Lake View neighborhood of Chicago, Illinois. In 1981, Baker graduated from Swarthmore College with a bachelor's degree in history with minors in economics and philosophy. In 1983, he received a master's degree in economics from the University of Denver. In 1988, he received a PhD from the University of Michigan in economics.

Economics career

Baker was a lecturer at the University of Michigan from 1988 to 1989 and an assistant professor of economics at Bucknell University from 1989 to 1992. From 1992 to 1998, he was an economist at the Economic Policy Institute. During this time, he published a paper with Mark Weisbrot in a journal of evolutionary economics.

In 1999, Baker and Weisbrot co-founded the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), a US independent, nonpartisan think tank that produces economic research on US national affairs (social security, healthcare, the US national budget), and international topics (the global economy, the International Monetary Fund or Latin America policy). In that same year Baker was a senior research fellow at the Preamble Center for Public Policy.

Baker has consulted with officials from the World Bank and provided testimony to the Joint Economic Committee of the U.S. Congress and to the OECD's Trade Union Advisory Council.

From 1996 to 2006, Baker was the author of a weekly online commentary on the economic reporting of The New York Times and The Washington Post, the Economic Reporting Review. Since 2006, he has continued this commentary on his blog Beat The Press, formerly published at The American Prospect and now on CEPR's website.

2007–08 United States housing bubble

In 2006 Baker predicted that "plunging housing investment will likely push the economy into recession." That year he published "Recession Looms for the U.S. Economy in 2007", in which he predicted that weakness in the US housing market was likely in 2007 to push the US economy into a recession.

Baker won the Revere Award, along with Steve Keen and Nouriel Roubini, for predicting the crash of the United States housing bubble and the resulting recession, which occurred from 2007 to 2008. He warned about the coming crisis and the related government policies in multiple articles, op-eds and interviews from 2002 to 2005. Basing his outlook on housing price data sets produced by the U.S. government, Baker asserted that there was a bubble in the US housing market in August 2002, well before its peak, and predicted that the bubble's collapse would lead to recession. His prediction for when the recession would start was off by only one quarter.

Regarding the housing bubble, Baker was critical of Federal Reserve chair Alan Greenspan. He has also been critical of the regulatory framework of the real estate and financial industries, the use of financial instruments like collateralized debt obligation, and U.S. politicians and regulators' performance and conflicts of interest.

Baker opposed the U.S. government bailout of Wall Street banks on the basis that the only people who stood to lose from their collapse were their shareholders and high-income CEOs. Of any hypothetical negative effects of not extending the bailout, he said, "We know how to keep the financial system operating even as banks go into bankruptcy and receivership," citing U.S. government action taken during the S&L crisis of the 1980s. He has ridiculed the U.S. elite for favoring it, asking, "How do you make a DC intellectual look less articulate than Sarah Palin being interviewed by Katie Couric? That's easy. You ask them how failure to pass the bailout will give us a Great Depression."

Rigged

Baker's 2016 book Rigged: How Globalization and the Rules of the Modern Economy Were Structured to Make the Rich Richer argues that changing how the U.S. economy has been managed over the past 50 years would add between $2 and 3.7 trillion (in constant 2016 dollars) to the U.S. GDP, between 11 and 20 percent. This is summarized in his Table 8-1:

In Rigged, Baker argues that, for example, focusing more on decreasing unemployment and less on minimizing inflation would primarily benefit the bottom 99%, though the top 1% would get some of those gains. Similarly, Baker says that changes in patent and copyright law over the past 50 years have violated their purpose under the Copyright Clause of the Constitution: "To promote the progress of science and the useful arts". He concludes that if the U.S. had spent the same amount on research and media with the results being placed in the public domain, everyone would be better off, with the possible exception of the ultra-wealthy. In particular, the world would be healthier not having to pay patent royalties to U.S. pharmaceutical companies.

He also writes that so-called free-trade agreements have exempted doctors and other highly paid professionals, not because of any intrinsic difference in what they do, but because they have more political power than organized labor.

Political activism

As a graduate student at the University of Michigan, Baker was arrested at two sit-ins protesting Representative Carl Pursell's votes for military aid to the Contras. In 1986, Baker defeated Donald Grimes in the Democratic primary and ran unsuccessfully against Pursell to represent Michigan's second Congressional district; his candidacy opposed aid to the Contras.

In 2020, Baker endorsed Elizabeth Warren's 2020 presidential campaign.

Personal life

Baker is married to economist Helene Jorgensen. They live in southern Utah and he is a visiting professor at the University of Utah.

Bibliography

Selected articles

• Baker, Dean; Weisbrot, Mark (December 1994). "The Logic of Contested Exchange". Journal of Economic Issues. 28 (4): 1091–1114. doi:10.1080/00213624.1994.11505613. JSTOR 4226888.
• Baker, Dean; Hassett, Kevin (May 12, 2012). "The Human Disaster of Unemployment". The New York Times.

Books

• Baker, Dean (1988). The Logic of Neo-Classical Consumption Theory. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan. OCLC 68299542.
• Baker, Dean; Weisbrot, Mark (1999). Social Security: The Phony Crisis. Chicago, IL: Univ. of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0-226-03544-4. OCLC 41090883.
• Bernstein, Jared; Baker, Dean (2003). The Benefits of Full Employment: When Markets Work for People. Washington, DC: Economic Policy Institute. ISBN 978-1-932-06604-3. OCLC 52467815.
• Baker, Dean (2006). The Conservative Nanny State How the Wealthy Use the Government to Stay Rich and Get Richer (Free e-book). Washington, DC: Center for Economic and Policy Research. ISBN 978-1-411-69395-1. OCLC 71423207.
• Baker, Dean (2007). The United States Since 1980. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511510830. ISBN 978-0-511-27471-8. OCLC 252534980.
• Baker, Dean; Frank, Thomas (foreword by) (2009). Plunder and Blunder the Rise and Fall of the Bubble Economy. San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler Publishers. ISBN 978-1-609-94478-0. OCLC 742517362.
• Baker, Dean (2011). False Profits Recovering from the Bubble Economy. San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler Publishers. ISBN 978-1-609-94475-9. OCLC 740435886.
• Baker, Dean (2010). Taking Economics Seriously. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. ISBN 978-0-262-01418-2. OCLC 939219451.
• Baker, Dean (2011). The End of Loser Liberalism: Making Markets Progressive (Free e-book). Washington, DC: Center for Economic and Policy Research. ISBN 978-0-615-53363-6. OCLC 765978209.
• Baker, Dean; Bernstein, Jared (2013). Getting Back to Full Employment: A Better Bargain for Working People (Free e-book). Washington, DC: Center for Economic and Policy Research. ISBN 978-0-615-91835-8. OCLC 866909924.
• Baker, Dean (2016). Rigged: How Globalization and the Rules of the Modern Economy Were Structured to Make the Rich Richer (PDF). Washington, DC: Center for Economic and Policy Research. ISBN 978-0-692-79336-7. OCLC 961184821.

References

1. "IDEAS/RePEc: Dean Baker". Research Papers in Economics (RePEc).
2. ^ Baker, Dean (1988). The Logic of Neo-Classical Consumption Theory. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan. OCLC 68299542.
3. Wachter, Paul (January 2010). "Bubble Buster: Dean Baker '80 [sic] saw it coming. But if anything, his gloomy forecasts now look conservative". Swarthmore College Bulletin.
4. "Dean Baker on Inflation: How Bad Is It, Really?". Gallup. June 9, 2022. Retrieved January 5, 2024. At 17:40.
5. Bain, Ken (2012). What the Best College Students Do. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-06664-9. OCLC 821823403.
6. "Curriculum Vitae 2014: Dean Baker" (PDF). United States House of Representatives. 2014.
7. Baker, Dean; Weisbrot, Mark (December 1994). "The Logic of Contested Exchange". Journal of Economic Issues. 28 (4): 1091–1114. doi:10.1080/00213624.1994.11505613. JSTOR 4226888.
8. K.S., Jomo; Weisbrot, Mark; James, Deborah (April 15, 2011). "The Scorecard on Development, 1960-2010: Closing the Gap?" (Video). Center for Economic and Policy Research. Archived from the original on December 14, 2021.
9. "Curriculum Vitae. Dean Baker" (PDF). congress.gov. Retrieved May 10, 2023.
10. Dean Baker, CEPR, 9 June 2003, Reflections on Economic Reporting: Seven Years of the Economic Reporting Review Archived May 24, 2012, at the Wayback Machine
11. ^ Bezemer, Dirk J, 16 June 2009. "“No One Saw This Coming”: Understanding Financial Crisis Through Accounting Models"
12. "Revere Award for Economics – The Progressive Economics Forum". www.progressive-economics.ca.
13. "Keen, Roubini and Baker win Revere Award for Economics". May 13, 2010.
14. " Wall Street Economists: A Research Project on Economic Predictions". Archived from the original on September 1, 2013. Retrieved July 21, 2013.
15. Baker, Dean (August 2002). "The Run-Up in Home Prices: Is it Real or Is it Another Bubble?". Center for Economic and Policy Research. Archived from the original on June 3, 2009. Retrieved June 18, 2012.
16. Reinhart, Carmen M.; Rogoff, Kenneth S. (2009). This Time is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. p. 160 (see table 10.8). ISBN 978-0-691-14216-6.
17. Robert Manne (May 2009). "The Rudd Essay & the Global Financial Crisis". The Monthly (45).
18. Dirk J. Bezemer (June 16, 2009). "'No One Saw This Coming': Understanding Financial Crisis Through Accounting Models" (PDF). MPRA Paper No. 15892. Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. Archived from the original (PDF) on September 6, 2015. Retrieved June 16, 2012.
19. David Smiley (October 8, 2009). "The Economy in Palliative Care". Progress Magazine.
20. Baker, Dean (2006). Recession Looms for the U.S. Economy in 2007 (PDF). CEPR. Retrieved June 14, 2012.
21. Isidore, Chris (December 1, 2008). "It's official: Recession since Dec. '07". CNNMoney.com. Retrieved June 14, 2012.
22. Dean Baker (October 28, 2013). "Alan Greenspan owes America an apology". theguardian.com. Retrieved November 1, 2013.
23. Gwiazda, Nick (October 31, 2013). "Financial Crisis: The Guardian's Dean Baker Is Wrong – Alan Greenspan Owes Nobody An Apology". ibtimes.com. Retrieved November 1, 2013.
24. Baker, Dean (October 31, 2013). "Yes, Alan Greenspan Owes Us a Really Big Apology". Beat the Press. Archived from the original on November 3, 2013. Retrieved November 1, 2013.
25. Dean Baker, The Housing Bubble and the Financial Crisis, Real-World Economic Review, Issue no. 46, 20 March 2008
26. Beat The Press Archived 2011-08-10 at the Wayback Machine, March 9, 2008
27. William Seidman, Who Led Cleanup of S&L Crisis, Dies, Bloomberg, May 13, 2009
28. Huffington Post, September 30, 2008
29. p. 215 (p. 222 of 263 in the PDF)
30. ch. 5
31. ch. 7
32. Earle, Rob (October 22, 1986). "Baker, Pursell spar in face-to-face debate". The Michigan Daily. Vol. XCVII, no. 35. pp. 1, 5.
33. Cockburn, Alexander (October 25, 1986). "Beat the Devil: Dean Baker for Congress". The Nation. 245 (13): 399. Archived from the original on April 19, 2017. Retrieved April 19, 2017.
34. "Opinion. August 2 primaries: Vote for progressive candidates". The Michigan Daily. Vol. XCVIII, no. 11S. July 29, 1988. p. 4.
35. "Elizabeth Warren picks up a slew of new progressive endorsements". NBC News. Retrieved October 8, 2021.
36. Hong, Peter Y. (August 17, 2009). "Some saw the housing bubble and sold; trick now is spotting the bottom". Los Angeles Times.
37. "Rigged Economy - Department of Economics - The University of Utah". econ.utah.edu.

Further reading

• Dean Baker presentation on 2008–2009 economic trouble at Bucknell University
• NPR's Fresh Air (Audio): "The Key to Economic Stimulus?", January 13, 2009
• Bill Moyers Journal (Video), August 8, 2008
• News Hour with Jim Lehrer (Video): "Massive Job Cuts Renew Calls for Quick Action on Stimulus" Archived January 22, 2014, at the Wayback Machine, January 26, 2009
• C-SPAN's Book TV (Video): "Plunder and Blunder: The Rise and Fall of the Bubble Economy", January 27, 2009
• Marketplace Public Radio (Audio): We Demand to See More Transparency, March 9, 2009
• Scott, Jonathan (July 25, 2009). "Dean Baker's war of position". Race & Class. 51 (1): 55–68. doi:10.1177/0306396809106163. S2CID 154607912.
• Dean Baker: Banks Could Be Big Winners of President Obama’s Foreclosure Prevention Program – video by Democracy Now!
• Roberts, Russ (January 9, 2012). "Dean Baker on the Crisis". EconTalk. Library of Economics and Liberty.
• Video (and audio) of debates & discussions involving Baker on Bloggingheads.tv
• Dean Baker argues that the debate over the economy should not be over whether to regulate, but how Archived 2009-07-12 at the Wayback Machine in the Boston Review

External links

• DeanBaker.net
• Dean Baker at Center for Economic and Policy Research
• "Beat The Press"
• Dean Baker on Twitter
• Appearances on C-SPAN
• Dean Baker at IMDb

• 1958 births
• 21st-century American economists
• American economics writers
• American male non-fiction writers
• Bucknell University faculty
• Center for Economic and Policy Research
• Economists from Illinois
• Economists from Utah
• International finance economists
• Living people
• American macroeconomists
• Swarthmore College alumni
• University of Denver alumni
• University of Michigan College of Literature, Science, and the Arts alumni
• University of Utah faculty
• Writers about globalization
• Writers from Chicago
• Writers from Utah