Charles W. Baird received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley in 1968. He then spent five years on the faculty at UCLA where, he says, he actually learned economics, mainly from Armen Alchian. He often asserts that he has the best of both worlds: a Berkeley degree and a UCLA education.
He was Professor of Economics at California State University, East Bay (CSUEB) from 1973 to his retirement in July 2007. He was Associate Dean for Academic Affairs in the College of Business and Economics from 2005 – 2007. He is a quarterly columnist in The Freeman, a magazine devoted to free market principles and published by the Foundation for Economic Education, Irvington-on-Hudson, NY.
Dr. Baird is a member, and a past vice president of the board of directors, of the Mont Pelerin Society — the international free-market organization founded by F.A. Hayek and Milton Friedman (and others) in 1947. He was Director of the Smith Center for Private Enterprise Studies at CSUEB from its founding in 1991 to his retirement in 2007. The principal mission of the Smith Center is to foster a better understanding of free market principles and their application to public policy.