Dean Baker

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Dean Baker
Post Keynesian economics
Born July 13, 1958 (1958-07-13) (age 53)
USA
Institution Center for Economic and Policy Research
Bucknell University
Field Economics, Macroeconomics, Urban & Real Estate Economics[1]
Alma mater Swarthmore College (B.A., 1981)
University of Denver (M.A., 1983)
University of Michigan (Ph.D.)
Information at IDEAS/RePEc

Dean Baker (b. July 13, 1958) is an American macroeconomist and co-founder of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, with Mark Weisbrot. He previously was a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute and an assistant professor of economics at Bucknell University. He has a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Michigan.

Since 1996 Baker has been the author of a weekly online commentary on economic reporting. The Economic Reporting Review was published from 1996 to 2006; subsequently he has continued this commentary on his weblog Beat The Press, which was formerly published at The American Prospect, but is now located at the CEPR website.

Contents

[edit] Background

Baker graduated from Swarthmore College (B.A., 1981), the University of Denver (M.A., 1983) and the University of Michigan (Ph.D.). As a grad student at the University of Michigan, Baker participated in, and was arrested at, two sit-ins protesting Rep. 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.[2][3]

Baker wrote his thesis on consumption theory. He argues that analyzing consumption requires categorizing objects, which cannot be done using only physical characteristics. The words for objects must be used, e.g., chair. These words imply socially understood uses, which define the object, e.g., a chair is used to sit on. Individuals have preferences over these uses of objects. This is at odds with consumption theory, which makes no assumptions about how individuals derive utility from objects. Baker also argues that objects' use values change with their social context, rejecting consumption theory's claim that consumption is private, and not influenced by society.[4]

[edit] Career

Before co-founding the Center for Economic and Policy Research in 1999, Baker was a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute and an assistant professor of economics at Bucknell University. "He has also worked as a consultant for the World Bank, the Joint Economic Committee of the U.S. Congress, and the OECD's Trade Union Advisory Council."[5]

From 1996 to 2006 Baker was the author of a weekly online commentary on The New York Times' and The Washington Post's economic reporting.[6] From 2006 he continued this commentary on the weblog Beat The Press, where he critiques economic reporting in the leading broadsheets, NPR and other mainstream news sources.

[edit] Financial crisis of 2007–2009

Basing his outlook on house-price data-sets produced by the US government and Yale economist Robert Shiller, Baker was among the first economists to assert that there was a bubble in the US housing market in August 2002,[7] well before its peak in December 2005,[8] and one of the few economists to predict that the collapse of this bubble must lead to recession, although he did not project the specific behavior of the bubble's movement or its duration before collapse.[9][10] He has been critical of the regulatory framework of the real estate and financial industries, the use of financial instruments like CDOs, and the incompetence and conflicting interests of US politicians or regulators, such as Hank Paulson.[11]

Baker opposed the US government bailout of Wall Street banks on the basis that the only people who stood to lose from their collapse were their shareholders and well-paid CEOs. Regarding any hypothetical, negative effects of not extending the bailout, he has explained, "We know how to keep the financial system operating even as banks go into bankruptcy and receivership,"[12] citing US government action taken during the S&L crisis of the 1980s.[13] He has ridiculed the US 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."[14]

[edit] Bibliography

[edit] References

  1. ^ Dean Baker at IDEAS
  2. ^ Alexander Cockburn, "Dean Baker for Congress," The Nation, Oct 25 1986
  3. ^ Jonathan Scott, "Dean Baker's war of position," Race & Class, July 2009
  4. ^ The logic of neo-classical consumption theory, 1988.
  5. ^ CEPR, Dean Baker
  6. ^ Dean Baker, CEPR, 9 June 2003, Reflections on Economic Reporting: Seven Years of the Economic Reporting Review
  7. ^ Baker, Dean (August 2002). The Run-Up in Home Prices: Is it Real or Is it Another Bubble?. Center for Economic and Policy Research. http://www.cepr.net/index.php/publications/reports/the-run-up-in-home-prices-is-it-real-or-is-it-another-bubble. Retrieved 28 February 2012 2011 
  8. ^ Reinhart, Carmen M; Rogoff, Kenneth S (2009). This Time is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly. New Jersey: Princeton University Press. p. 160 (see table 10.8). ISBN 978-0-691-14216-6. 
  9. ^ Robert Manne (May 2009). "The Rudd Essay & the Global Financial Crisis". The Monthly (45). http://www.themonthly.com.au/monthly-essays-robert-manne-rudd-essay-global-financial-crisis-introduction-1629. 
  10. ^ David Smiley (October 8, 2009). "The Economy in Palliative Care". Progress Magazine. http://www.prosper.org.au/2009/10/08/the-economy-in-palliative-care/. 
  11. ^ Dean Baker, The Housing Bubble and the Financial Crisis, Real-World Economic Review, Issue no. 46, 20 March 2008
  12. ^ Beat The Press, March 9, 2008
  13. ^ William Seidman, Who Led Cleanup of S&L Crisis, Dies, Bloomberg, May 13, 2009
  14. ^ Huffington Post, September 30, 2008

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