Werner Baer was born in 1931 and died on March 31, 2016.

He was an American economist at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and the Jorge Lemann Professor of Economics.

Werner Baer received his bachelor’s degree from Queen’s College in 1953, and a Master’s and a Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1955 and 1958 respectively.

Baer research was centered on Latin America’s industrialization and economic development, especially of Import Substitution Industrialization (ISI) and Brazil.

His research and writing was essentially focused on the areas of industrialization, growth and economic development, public policy, inflation, and income distribution and equity.

Werner Baer had a outstanding record of scholarly achievement, such as books like Industrialization and Economic Development in Brazil (1965), The Development of the Brazilian Steel Industry (1970) The Brazilian Economy: Its Growth and Development (1979), now in its sixth edition, as well as a lengthy stream of articles on a diverse range of economic and policy issues.

One of the most unusual and influential aspects of Baer’s work is the link he makes between historical, social, and institutional legacies of the Brazilian past and his direct and ongoing engagement with the most current issues of economic and public policy.

Werner Baer served on the editorial boards of the Luso-Brazilian Review, Emerging Markets Review, Economia Aplicada, Latin American Business Review, Revista Latinoamericana de Historica Economica y Social, Revista Paraguaya de Estudios Sociologicos, Latin American Research Review, and World Development.

Werner Baer was a teacher at Yale (1961–65), Vanderbilt (1965–74), and the University of Illinois (1974–2016), and he served as a program advisor for the Ford Foundation in Rio de Janeiro from 1967 to 1976.

Bear has encouraged large numbers of young people to enter Brazilian studies and recruited many, from both the United States and Brazil, to undertake doctoral studies in economics under his direction.

Professor Baer also served as a visiting lecturer at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil as well as the New University of Lisbon, Portugal.

Werner also served as an assistant professor at Yale and an instructor at Harvard.

Werner Baer passed away at 85 yrs old.