Center for Economic and Policy Research
   HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

The Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) is a progressive American
think tank A think tank, or policy institute, is a research institute that performs research and advocacy concerning topics such as social policy, political strategy, economics, military, technology, and culture. Most think tanks are non-governmenta ...
that specializes in
economic policy The economy of governments covers the systems for setting levels of taxation, government budgets, the money supply and interest rates as well as the labour market, national ownership, and many other areas of government interventions into the e ...
. Based in
Washington, D.C. ) , image_skyline = , image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan, ...
CEPR was co-founded by economists
Dean Baker 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 Sta ...
and
Mark Weisbrot Mark Alan Weisbrot is an American economist and columnist. He is co-director with Dean Baker of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) in Washington, D.C. Weisbrot is President of Just Foreign Policy, a non-governmental organization ...
in 1999. Considered a
left-leaning Left-wing politics describes the range of political ideologies that support and seek to achieve social equality and egalitarianism, often in opposition to social hierarchy. Left-wing politics typically involve a concern for those in soci ...
organization, notable CEPR contributors include
Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences The Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, officially the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel ( sv, Sveriges riksbanks pris i ekonomisk vetenskap till Alfred Nobels minne), is an economics award administered ...
recipients
Joseph Stiglitz Joseph Eugene Stiglitz (; born February 9, 1943) is an American New Keynesian economist, a public policy analyst, and a full professor at Columbia University. He is a recipient of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences (2001) and the Joh ...
and
Robert Solow Robert Merton Solow, GCIH (; born August 23, 1924) is an American economist whose work on the theory of economic growth culminated in the exogenous growth model named after him. He is currently Emeritus Institute Professor of Economics at the Ma ...
.


History

Politically, CEPR has been described as both progressive and
left-leaning Left-wing politics describes the range of political ideologies that support and seek to achieve social equality and egalitarianism, often in opposition to social hierarchy. Left-wing politics typically involve a concern for those in soci ...
. CEPR contributors include
Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences The Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, officially the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel ( sv, Sveriges riksbanks pris i ekonomisk vetenskap till Alfred Nobels minne), is an economics award administered ...
recipients
Joseph Stiglitz Joseph Eugene Stiglitz (; born February 9, 1943) is an American New Keynesian economist, a public policy analyst, and a full professor at Columbia University. He is a recipient of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences (2001) and the Joh ...
and
Robert Solow Robert Merton Solow, GCIH (; born August 23, 1924) is an American economist whose work on the theory of economic growth culminated in the exogenous growth model named after him. He is currently Emeritus Institute Professor of Economics at the Ma ...
.


Issues


United States


Healthcare

CEPR supports the
Affordable Care Act The Affordable Care Act (ACA), formally known as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and colloquially known as Obamacare, is a landmark U.S. federal statute enacted by the 111th United States Congress and signed into law by Presid ...
(ACA) stating that it is "a family-friendly policy" and that the policy "has allowed thousands of workers to voluntarily reduce their work hours to care for children or elderly parents, or to explore new opportunities." Despite the increase in the percentage of workers employed on a part-time basis, CEPR concluded that such statistics were not sufficient to make any overall judgments on the health of the labor market.


Employment

CEPR backs alongside the
Economic Policy Institute The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit American, left-leaning think tank based in Washington, D.C., that carries out economic research and analyzes the economic impact of policies and proposals. Affiliated with the labor mo ...
(EPI) the Full Employment Caucus, a group on United States House officials that advocate for
full employment Full employment is a situation in which there is no cyclical or unemployment#Cyclical unemployment, deficient-demand unemployment. Full employment does not entail the disappearance of all unemployment, as other kinds of unemployment, namely Structu ...
in the United States.


Minimum wage

A 2014 study by CEPR shows that 13 states that increased their
minimum wage A minimum wage is the lowest remuneration that employers can legally pay their employees—the price floor below which employees may not sell their labor. Most countries had introduced minimum wage legislation by the end of the 20th century. Bec ...
had an average payroll of 0.99% compared to 0.68% in other states, though the CEPR stated the analysis was "far from scientific". In response to criticism of President Joe Biden's support for a $15 minimum wage, Baker calculated that, had wages risen alongside increases in productivity since 1968, the minimum wage would be around $24 an hour. This was later revised to $21.50 per hour on March 16th, 2022, after a spreadsheet error was found and corrected.


Taxes

In a 2014 report in ''
Fortune Fortune may refer to: General * Fortuna or Fortune, the Roman goddess of luck * Luck * Wealth * Fortune, a prediction made in fortune-telling * Fortune, in a fortune cookie Arts and entertainment Film and television * ''The Fortune'' (1931 film) ...
'', CEPR co-founder
Dean Baker 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 Sta ...
suggested that according to poll findings, many citizens of the United States did not notice a 2% increase in their
Social Security tax The Federal Insurance Contributions Act (FICA ) is a United States federal payroll (or employment) contribution directed towards both employees and employers to fund Social Security and Medicare—federal programs that provide benefits for reti ...
.


Latin America

CEPR has been supportive of left-leaning governments in South America.


Brazil

In 2008, Brazilian
Foreign Secretary The secretary of state for foreign, Commonwealth and development affairs, known as the foreign secretary, is a minister of the Crown of the Government of the United Kingdom and head of the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office. Seen as ...
Celso Amorim Celso Luiz Nunes Amorim (born 3 June 1942) is a Brazilian diplomat who served as Minister of Foreign Affairs from 20 July 1993 to 31 December 1994 under President Itamar Franco and again from 1 January 2003 to 31 December 2010 under President Lu ...
cited CEPR's work to explain why Brazil had no interest in signing a
free trade agreement A free-trade agreement (FTA) or treaty is an agreement according to international law to form a free-trade area between the cooperating states. There are two types of trade agreements: bilateral and multilateral. Bilateral trade agreements occur ...
with the United States. He said that the CEPR report concluded that the most severe impacts from the
financial crisis of 2007–08 Finance is the study and discipline of money, currency and capital assets. It is related to, but not synonymous with economics, the study of production, distribution, and consumption of money, assets, goods and services (the discipline of fina ...
would be suffered by those economies most integrated to United States, those that have free trade agreements with the US.


Venezuela

CEPR and its founder Mark Weisbrot have analysed and often written about the
crisis in Venezuela The crisis in Venezuela is an ongoing socioeconomic and political crisis that began in Venezuela during the presidency of Hugo Chávez and has worsened in Nicolás Maduro's presidency. It has been marked by hyperinflation, escalating starvation ...
. In an October 2012 op-ed for ''
The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'', Weisbrot wrote that " though some media have talked of Venezuela’s impending economic collapse for more than a decade, it hasn’t happened and is not likely to happen." In a July 2014 article for ''
Fortune Fortune may refer to: General * Fortuna or Fortune, the Roman goddess of luck * Luck * Wealth * Fortune, a prediction made in fortune-telling * Fortune, in a fortune cookie Arts and entertainment Film and television * ''The Fortune'' (1931 film) ...
'', Weisbrot said the Venezuelan economy had performed well for the period from 2004, when the government gained control of the oil industry from the opposition, to 2012. He said the problems which commenced in 2012 were mainly due to Venezuela's exchange rate system. In a June 2016 article in ''The New York Times'', Weisbrot wrote that "Washington has caused enormous damage to Venezuela in its relentless pursuit of 'regime change' for the last 15 years." He suggested the US end its intervention, which involved economic sanctions, funding of opposition groups and refusal to accept presidential election results.


Bolivia

in 2019, CEPR criticized the
Organization of American States The Organization of American States (OAS; es, Organización de los Estados Americanos, pt, Organização dos Estados Americanos, french: Organisation des États américains; ''OEA'') is an international organization that was founded on 30 April ...
(OAS)'s audit of the 2019 Bolivian general election, which concluded that the results of the elections should be voided because there were "drastic and hard-to-explain change in the trend of the preliminary results after the closing of the polls". Weisbrot wrote that the report "provides absolutely no evidence — no statistics, numbers, or facts of any kind — to support this idea", and called on the OAS to retract its press release. CEPR commissioned researchers at the
MIT The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the m ...
Election Data and Science Lab, John Curiel and Jack R. Williams, to independently verify their work on the 2019 Bolivian election. The MIT researchers published a statistical analysis on 27 February 2020, confirming the results of the CEPR study and finding that there was no "statistical evidence of fraud that we can find — the trends in the preliminary count, the lack of any big jump in support for Morales after the halt, and the size of Morales’s margin all appear legitimate. All in all, the OAS's statistical analysis and conclusions would appear deeply flawed" and that "it is highly likely that Morales surpassed the 10-percentage-point margin in the first round" as originally presented. The OAS dismissed the report as "neither honest, nor fact-based nor comprehensive" and called it "unscientific". Two Bolivian economists writing for
Project Syndicate Project Syndicate is an international media organization that publishes and syndicates commentary and analysis on a variety of global topics. All opinion pieces are published on the ''Project Syndicate'' website, but are also distributed to a wi ...
also argued that the study's assumptions were questionable for methodological reasons.


Personnel

CEPR's staff includes
Ha-Joon Chang Ha-Joon Chang (; ; born 7 October 1963) is a South Korean institutional economist, specialising in development economics. Chang is the author of several widely discussed policy books, most notably ''Kicking Away the Ladder: Development Strateg ...
, Eileen Appelbaum, John Schmitt and Deborah James. CEPR contributors include Advisory Board Members
Joseph Stiglitz Joseph Eugene Stiglitz (; born February 9, 1943) is an American New Keynesian economist, a public policy analyst, and a full professor at Columbia University. He is a recipient of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences (2001) and the Joh ...
and
Robert Solow Robert Merton Solow, GCIH (; born August 23, 1924) is an American economist whose work on the theory of economic growth culminated in the exogenous growth model named after him. He is currently Emeritus Institute Professor of Economics at the Ma ...
. As of 2017, CEPR's Board of Directors includes: * Dean Baker *
Walden Bello Walden Flores Bello (born November 11, 1945) is a Filipino academic, environmentalist, and social activist who served as a member of the House of Representatives of the Philippines. He is an international adjunct professor at Binghamton Univers ...
*
Chuck Collins Chuck Collins (born October 19, 1959) is an author and a senior scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, DC, where he directs the Program on Inequality and the Common Good. He is also co-founder of Wealth for Common Good. He is ...
*
Teresa Ghilarducci Teresa Ghilarducci (born July 22, 1957) is an American scholar on labor and retirement issues. She has advocated for government to extend occupational retirement plan coverage to all workers. She published ''Rescuing Retirement'' (with Tony James ...
*
Danny Glover Danny Lebern Glover (; born July 22, 1946) is an American actor, film director, and political activist. He is widely known for his lead role as Roger Murtaugh in the ''Lethal Weapon'' film series. He also had leading roles in his films include ...
*
Robert Pollin Robert Pollin (born September 29, 1950) is an American economist, and self described socialist. He is a professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and founding co-director of its Political Economy Research Institute (PERI ...
Julian Bond Horace Julian Bond (January 14, 1940 – August 15, 2015) was an American social activist, leader of the civil rights movement, politician, professor, and writer. While he was a student at Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia, during the e ...
served as CEPR's Board Chair in the past.


References


External links


CEPR website
{{Authority control Non-profit organizations based in Washington, D.C. Political and economic think tanks in the United States Think tanks established in 1999 Progressive organizations in the United States 1999 establishments in Washington, D.C.