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Dean Dean BakerAmerican economist
Date of Birth: 13.07.1958
Country:  USA |
Content:
Biography of Dean Baker
Dean Baker is an American economist and one of the founders of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) in Washington, DC, along with Mark Weisbrot. His areas of specialization include housing, consumer prices, intellectual property, social security, healthcare, trade, and employment.
Career and Publications
Since 1996, Baker has been publishing weekly online commentaries on economic reports. His publication, 'Economic Reporting Review,' was active from 1996 to 2006, after which his commentaries 'moved' to his blog 'Beat The Press.' Initially, they appeared in the monthly journal 'The American Prospect' and are now available on the CEPR website. Baker's expertise has led to frequent citations in major newspapers and television channels, including the New York Times, Washington Post, London Financial Times, CNN, CNBC, and National Public Radio. He also writes a weekly column for the British Guardian Unlimited, Huffington Post, and Truthout.
Early Life and Education
Dean Baker was born on July 13, 1958. He graduated with a bachelor's degree from Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania in 1981. In 1983, he obtained a master's degree from the University of Denver and a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Michigan. His doctoral dissertation focused on consumption theory and argued that the analysis of consumption requires classification of objects based on their social functions rather than just their physical characteristics.
During his time at the University of Michigan, Baker participated in two sit-in protests against Republican Carl Pursell, who voted in favor of military aid to the Nicaraguan Contras and even got arrested. In 1986, Baker ran as a Democratic candidate against Donald Grimes and attempted to challenge Pursell in the congressional elections for Michigan's second district but was unsuccessful.
Career and Publications
Before co-founding the Center for Economic and Policy Research in 1999, Baker served as a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute and held a position as an assistant professor of economics at Bucknell University in Pennsylvania. He has also worked as a consultant for the World Bank, the Joint Economic Committee of the U.S. Congress, and the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
Baker gained recognition as one of the first economists to predict the bursting of the housing bubble in the United States and the subsequent recession. Based on his analysis of government-provided 'home-price' data and the work of Yale University economist Robert Shiller, Baker criticized the regulatory framework in the real estate and financial sectors, the use of financial instruments such as debt obligations, and the incompetence and conflicts of interest among American policymakers, like former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson.
Baker has authored several books, including 'Taking Economics Seriously,' in which he argues that society could benefit by abandoning ideological blind spots in fundamental economic principles. His book 'False Profits: Recovering from the Bubble Economy' discusses the causes of the current economic crisis and proposes solutions. In 2009, he published 'Plunder and Blunder: The Rise and Fall of The Bubble Economy,' which described the rise and fall of the stock market and explained how policy mistakes and politician's greed led to catastrophic yet predictable consequences.
