Age Bakker (1950) is an economist and served as board member of various institutions. He served for many years at the Dutch Central Bank and subsequently was Executive Director at the International Monetary Fund, financial supervisor in the Caribbean part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands and State Councilor at the Council of State. His areas of interest are monetary and budgetary policy, the international financial system and European cooperation. He was closely involved in the establishment of the European Economic and Monetary Union.

 

He obtained his master's degree in economics, with a specialization in development programming, from the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam in 1976. After his studies, he joined the Nederlandsche Bank in the International Affairs department. From 1979 to 1981 he was an assistant to IMF Executive Director Onno Ruding and his successor Jacques (Koos) Polak in Washington. After returning to the Nederlandsche Bank, he obtained his PhD from the University of Amsterdam in 1994 with a dissertation on The Liberalization of Capital Movements in Europe. In 1995 he was appointed part-time professor of Financial Markets and Institutions at the Vrije Universiteit as successor to Nout Wellink, a position he held until 2014. While at the Nederlandsche Bank he was a member of the Social-Economic Council from 1994 to 2004, initially as a deputy for governor Wim Duisenberg, and from 1998 as a Crown-appointed member. 

 

In 2007, he was appointed as Executive Director of the Dutch-led constituency at the International Monetary Fund in Washington. During the financial crisis he was involved in the conclusion of a large number of IMF credit programs for the mostly Eastern European countries in the Dutch constituency. After his return to the Netherlands, he was appointed Chairman of the Financial Supervisory Board that oversees sustainable government financial management in the Caribbean countries of the Kingdom of the Netherlands (2011-2017). In 2016, he was appointed State Councilor at the Advisory Division of the Council of State, where he was involved in monitoring compliance with European budgetary rules and advising on strengthening EMU.

 

He held several additional positions, including at the OECD Expert Group on Development Financing (2013-2014), the Audit Committee of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (2012-2016) and the Advisory Committee on Guaranteeing SME Credits. He held board positions at Pension Fund Horeca & Catering (PFHC, 2013-2021), NWB Bank (2012-2020), Pension Fund Zorg en Welzijn (PFZW, 2013-2021) and Pension Fund Caribbean Netherlands (PCN, 2018-2022). 

 

Age Bakker has several publications to his name in the field of European cooperation, the international financial system and development cooperation. He wrote i.a. the standard work International Financial Institutions (Longman, London/New York, 1996) and is an expert on free capital movements.

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