Dean Baker

Dean Baker (born 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.

Baker graduated from Swarthmore College (B.A., 1981), the University of Denver (M.A., 1983), and the University of Michigan (Ph.D., 1988). 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.

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; his candidacy opposed aid to the Contras.

After graduate school, Baker was a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute and an assistant professor of economics at Bucknell University. He published a paper with Mark Weisbrot in a journal of evolutionary economics.[6] He and Weisbrot founded the Center for Economic and Policy Research in 1999, He has consulted with officials from the World Bank; he has 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 the economic reporting of the New York Times and Washington Post. From 2006 he continued this commentary on the weblog Beat The Press, where he critiques economic reporting in the leading US broadsheets, NPR, and other mainstream news sources.