Dean Baker co-founded CEPR in 1999. His areas of research include housing and macroeconomics, intellectual property, Social Security, Medicare and European labor markets. He is the author of several books, including Rigged: How Globalization and the Rules of the Modern Economy Were Structured to Make the Rich Richer. His blog, “Beat the Press,” provides commentary on economic reporting. He received his B.A. from Swarthmore College and his Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Michigan.

His analyses have appeared in many major publications, including the Atlantic Monthly, the Washington Post, the London Financial Times, and the New York Daily News.

Dean has written several books including Getting Back to Full Employment: A Better Bargain for Working People (with Jared Bernstein, Center for Economic and Policy Research 2013), The End of Loser Liberalism: Making Markets Progressive (Center for Economic and Policy Research 2011), Taking Economics Seriously (MIT Press 2010) which thinks through what we might gain if we took the ideological blinders off of basic economic principles; and False Profits: Recovering from the Bubble Economy (PoliPoint Press 2010) about what caused — and how to fix — the current economic crisis. In 2009, he wrote Plunder and Blunder: The Rise and Fall of the Bubble Economy (PoliPoint Press), which chronicled the growth and collapse of the stock and housing bubbles and explained how policy blunders and greed led to the catastrophic — but completely predictable — market meltdowns. He also wrote a chapter (“From Financial Crisis to Opportunity”) in Thinking Big: Progressive Ideas for a New Era (Progressive Ideas Network 2009). His previous books include The United States Since 1980 (Cambridge University Press 2007); The Conservative Nanny State: How the Wealthy Use the Government to Stay Rich and Get Richer (Center for Economic and Policy Research 2006), and Social Security: The Phony Crisis (with Mark Weisbrot, University of Chicago Press 1999). His book Getting Prices Right: The Debate Over the Consumer Price Index (editor, M.E. Sharpe 1997) was a winner of a Choice Book Award as one of the outstanding academic books of the year.

Among his numerous articles are “The Benefits of a Financial Transactions Tax,” Tax Notes Vol. 121, No. 4 (2008); “Are Protective Labor Market Institutions at the Root of Unemployment? A Critical Review of the Evidence,” (with David R. Howell, Andrew Glyn, and John Schmitt), Capitalism and Society Vol. 2, No. 1 (2007); “Asset Returns and Economic Growth,” (with Brad DeLong and Paul Krugman), Brookings Papers on Economic Activity (2005); “Financing Drug Research: What Are the Issues,” Center for Economic and Policy Research (2004); “Medicare Choice Plus: The Solution to the Long-Term Deficit Problem,” Center for Economic and Policy Research (2004); The Benefits of Full Employment (also with Jared Bernstein), Economic Policy Institute (2004); “Professional Protectionists: The Gains From Free Trade in Highly Paid Professional Services,” Center for Economic and Policy Research (2003); and “The Run-Up in Home Prices: Is It Real or Is It Another Bubble,” Center for Economic and Policy Research (2002).

Dean previously worked as a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute and an assistant professor 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. He was the author of the weekly online commentary on economic reporting, the Economic Reporting Review (ERR), from 1996–2006.

By this expert

Missing Voters and Missing Unemployed Black Workers

Article | Mar 3, 2021

Like Republicans with political polls, unemployed Black workers are underrepresented in federal employment data because of non-response.

Masking Real Unemployment: The Overall and Racial Impact of Survey Non-Response on Measured Labor Market Outcomes

Paper Working Paper Series | | Mar 2021

A large and growing percentage of households are missed in the monthly Current Population Survey (CPS).

Innovation, Intellectual Property, and Development

Paper Conference paper | | Oct 2017

A better set of approaches for the 21st century.

The Economics of the Affordable Care Act

Article | Jan 17, 2017

Any effort to replace the Affordable Care Act will be confronted by the same structural imbalances in the health care economy that the legislation’s authors faced

Featuring this expert

Intellectual Property Is Broken

Video | Aug 3, 2022

Why are we incentivizing wealth at the expense of health?

How to Unf★ck America

Video | May 18, 2022

Over the last four decades, the US economy has done quite well for the top 1%, but it has been stagnant for most Americans. This was not an accident, nor the natural workings of the market and certainly not an inevitability. US policies have been deliberately structured since 1980 to redistribute income upwards. In other words, the system has been rigged.

Cai & Baker’s INET working paper is discussed in News One

News Mar 5, 2021

“With all of that said, The Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET) recently published a study casting doubt about the methodology BLS uses to tabulate its unemployment data, especially when it comes to Black people. INET suggested that BLS’ data is inaccurate and downplays Black unemployment. On average, Black men’s unemployment rate is 2.8 percentage points higher than BLS data shows,” according to INET’s study, entitled, “Masking Real Unemployment: The Overall and Racial Impact of Survey Non-Response on Measured Labor Market Outcomes.” The same was true for BLS’ unemployment rate for Black women, which INET found was, on average, about 2.4 percentage points lower than its actual rate. The differences grow for younger Black males from 16 to 34 years old. INET’s findings lend some credence to a tweet from the Center for American Progress after January’s jobs report was published that said Black women, in particular, “are still being left behind by the recovery.” — Bruce C.T. Wright, News One