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{{Short description|American economist}}{{Use mdy dates|date=March 2023}}

factoids

|birth_place = Columbus, Ohio|death_date = |death_place =EconomicsmacroeconomicsReal estate economicsUrban economicsIDEAS/REPEC: DEAN BAKER WEBSITE=RESEARCH PAPERS IN ECONOMICS (REPEC), |institution = Center for Economic and Policy ResearchBucknell UniversitySwarthmore College {{small>(Bachelor of Arts)}}University of Denver {{small>(Master of Arts)}}University of Michigan {{small>(PhD)}}W. H. Locke AndersonBAKER TITLE=THE LOGIC OF NEO-CLASSICAL CONSUMPTION THEORY PUBLISHER=UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN OCLC=68299542, weblink|DeanBaker.net}}|repec_prefix = f|repec_id = pba441}}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.NEWS, Wachter, Paul, Bubble Buster: Dean Baker '80 [sic] saw it coming. But if anything, his gloomy forecasts now look conservative,weblink Swarthmore College Bulletin, January 2010,

Early life and education

Baker was born into a Jewish familyWEB, Dean Baker on Inflation: How Bad Is It, Really?,weblink Gallup, 9 June 2022, 5 January 2024, At 17:40. and grew up in the Lake View neighborhood of Chicago, Illinois.BOOK, Bain, Ken, What the Best College Students Do, 2012, The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 978-0-674-06664-9, 821823403, {{rp|205–209}} 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.WEB, Curriculum Vitae 2014: Dean Baker,weblink United States House of Representatives, 2014,

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.JOURNAL, Baker, Dean, Weisbrot, Mark, The Logic of Contested Exchange, Journal of Economic Issues, December 1994, 28, 4, 1091–1114, 10.1080/00213624.1994.11505613, 4226888, {{closed access}}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).WEB, K.S., Jomo, Weisbrot, Mark, James, Deborah, The Scorecard on Development, 1960-2010: Closing the Gap?,weblinkweblink 2021-12-14, live, Center for Economic and Policy Research, Video, 15 April 2011, {{cbignore}} In that same year Baker was a senior research fellow at the Preamble Center for Public Policy.WEB, Curriculum Vitae. Dean Baker,weblink congress.gov, 10 May 2023, 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,Dean Baker, CEPR, 9 June 2003, Reflections on Economic Reporting: Seven Years of the Economic Reporting Review {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120524165858weblink |date=May 24, 2012 }} 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."Bezemer, Dirk J, 16 June 2009. "“No One Saw This Coming”: Understanding Financial Crisis Through Accounting Models" 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.WEB,weblink Revere Award for Economics – The Progressive Economics Forum, www.progressive-economics.ca, WEB,weblink Keen, Roubini and Baker win Revere Award for Economics, May 13, 2010, He warned about the coming crisis and the related government policies in multiple articles, op-eds and interviews from 2002 to 2005.WEB,weblink Wall Street Economists: A Research Project on Economic Predictions, 2013-07-21,weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20130901155755weblink">weblink 2013-09-01, dead, 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,WEB,weblink Baker, Dean, August 2002, The Run-Up in Home Prices: Is it Real or Is it Another Bubble?, Center for Economic and Policy Research, 2012-06-18, 2009-06-03,weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20090603132142weblink">weblink dead, well before its peak,BOOK, Reinhart, Carmen M., Carmen Reinhart, Rogoff, Kenneth S., Kenneth Rogoff, 2009, This Time is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly, Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 978-0-691-14216-6, 160 (see table 10.8), 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.JOURNAL,weblink The Rudd Essay & the Global Financial Crisis, Robert Manne, May 2009, The Monthly, 45, WEB,weblink 'No One Saw This Coming': Understanding Financial Crisis Through Accounting Models, Dirk J. Bezemer, 2009-06-16, MPRA Paper No. 15892, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, June 16, 2012, dead,weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20150906094437weblink">weblink September 6, 2015, JOURNAL,weblink The Economy in Palliative Care, David Smiley, October 8, 2009, Prosper Australia, Progress Magazine, {{citation |mode=cs1 |url=weblink |last= Baker |first= Dean |year= 2006 |title= Recession Looms for the U.S. Economy in 2007 |publisher= CEPR |access-date= 14 June 2012}}WEB,weblink Isidore, Chris, 1 December 2008, It's official: Recession since Dec. '07, CNNMoney.com, 14 June 2012, Regarding the housing bubble, Baker was critical of Federal Reserve chair Alan Greenspan.NEWS, Dean Baker, 28 October 2013, Alan Greenspan owes America an apology,weblink 1 November 2013, The Guardian, theguardian.com, NEWS, Gwiazda, Nick, 31 October 2013, Financial Crisis: The Guardian's Dean Baker Is Wrong – Alan Greenspan Owes Nobody An Apology,weblink 1 November 2013, International Business Times, ibtimes.com, WEB, Baker, Dean, 31 October 2013, Yes, Alan Greenspan Owes Us a Really Big Apology,weblink 1 November 2013, Center for Economic and Policy Research, Beat the Press, November 3, 2013,weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20131103063644weblink">weblink dead, 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.Dean Baker, The Housing Bubble and the Financial Crisis, Real-World Economic Review, Issue no. 46, 20 March 2008Baker 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,"Beat The Press {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110810205832weblink |date=2011-08-10 }}, March 9, 2008 citing U.S. government action taken during the S&L crisis of the 1980s.William Seidman, Who Led Cleanup of S&L Crisis, Dies, Bloomberg, May 13, 2009 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."Huffington Post, September 30, 2008

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:p. 215 (p. 222 of 263 in the PDF){| class="wikitable"! rowspan="2" | policy ! colspan="2" | billions of 2016 USD! colspan="2" | % of savings ! colspan="2" | % of GDP ! low !! high !! low !! high !! low !! high | full-employment $1,115 $2,300 56% 62% 6.0% 12.3% | financial sector waste $460 $636 23% 17% 2.5% 3.4% | patent/copyright monopolies $217 $434 11% 12% 1.2% 2.3% | corporate governance $90 $145 5% 4% 0.5% 0.8% | protecting highly paid professions $100 $200 5% 5% 0.5% 1.1% ! Total ! align="right" |$1,982 ! align="right" | $3,715 !! !! ! align="right" | 10.6% ! align="right" | 19.9%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.ch. 5He 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.ch. 7

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.NEWS, Earle, Rob, Baker, Pursell spar in face-to-face debate,weblink The Michigan Daily, XCVII, 35, 22 October 1986, 1, 5, JOURNAL, Cockburn, Alexander, Beat the Devil: Dean Baker for Congress,weblink The Nation, 245, 13, 25 October 1986, 399, April 19, 2017, April 19, 2017,weblink dead, NEWS, Opinion. August 2 primaries: Vote for progressive candidates,weblink The Michigan Daily, XCVIII, 11S, 29 July 1988, 4, In 2020, Baker endorsed Elizabeth Warren's 2020 presidential campaign.WEB, Elizabeth Warren picks up a slew of new progressive endorsements,weblink 2021-10-08, NBC News, en,

Personal life

Baker is married to economist Helene Jorgensen. They live in southern UtahNEWS, Hong, Peter Y., Some saw the housing bubble and sold; trick now is spotting the bottom,weblink Los Angeles Times, 17 August 2009, and he is a visiting professor at the University of Utah.WEB, Rigged Economy - Department of Economics - The University of Utah,weblink econ.utah.edu,

Bibliography

Selected articles

• JOURNAL, Baker, Dean, Weisbrot, Mark, The Logic of Contested Exchange, Journal of Economic Issues, December 1994, 28, 4, 1091–1114, 10.1080/00213624.1994.11505613, 4226888, {{closed access}}
• NEWS, Baker, Dean, Hassett, Kevin, The Human Disaster of Unemployment,weblink The New York Times, 12 May 2012,

Books

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

References

{{Reflist|30em}}

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" {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140122040519weblink |date=January 22, 2014 }}, January 26, 2009
• weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20110816145548weblink">C-SPAN's Book TV (Video): "Plunder and Blunder: The Rise and Fall of the Bubble Economy", January 27, 2009
• weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20101206112451weblink">Marketplace Public Radio (Audio): We Demand to See More Transparency, March 9, 2009
• JOURNAL, Scott, Jonathan, Dean Baker's war of position, Race & Class, 25 July 2009, 51, 1, 55–68, 10.1177/0306396809106163, 154607912, {{closed access}}
• Dean Baker: Banks Could Be Big Winners of President Obama’s Foreclosure Prevention Program – video by Democracy Now!
• WEB, Roberts, Russ, Dean Baker on the Crisis,weblink EconTalk, Library of Economics and Liberty, Russ Roberts, January 9, 2012,
• 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 {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090712065527weblink |date=2009-07-12 }} in the Boston Review

External links

{{Commons category|Dean Baker}}

• {{URLweblink|DeanBaker.net}}
• Dean Baker at Center for Economic and Policy Research
• "Beat The Press"
• {{Twitter}}
• {{C-SPAN|29899}}
• {{IMDb name|id=11799298}}

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