Robert Joseph Barro is an
AmericanThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
classical macroeconomist and the Paul M. Warburg Professor of Economics at
Harvard UniversityHarvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
. The
Research Papers in EconomicsResearch Papers in Economics is a collaborative effort of hundreds of volunteers in 57 countries to enhance the dissemination of research in economics. The heart of the project is a decentralized database of working papers, preprints, journal articles and software components. The project started...
project ranked him as the 4th most influential economist in the world as of August 2011 based on his academic contributions. Barro is considered one of the founders of
new classical macroeconomicsNew classical macroeconomics, sometimes simply called new classical economics, is a school of thought in macroeconomics that builds its analysis entirely on a neoclassical framework. Specifically, it emphasizes the importance of rigorous foundations based on microeconomics...
, alongside
Robert Lucas, Jr.Robert Emerson Lucas, Jr. is an American economist at the University of Chicago. He received the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1995 and is consistently indexed among the top 10 economists in the Research Papers in Economics rankings. He is married to economist Nancy Stokey.He received his B.A. in...
and
Thomas J. SargentThomas John "Tom" Sargent is an American Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences winning economist, specializing in the fields of macroeconomics, monetary economics and time series econometrics...
. He is currently a senior fellow at
Stanford UniversityThe Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...
's
Hoover InstitutionThe Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace is a public policy think tank and library founded in 1919 by then future U.S. president, Herbert Hoover, an early alumnus of Stanford....
.
Academic career
Barro graduated with a
B.S.A Bachelor of Science is an undergraduate academic degree awarded for completed courses that generally last three to five years .-Australia:In Australia, the BSc is a 3 year degree, offered from 1st year on...
in
physicsPhysics is a natural science that involves the study of matter and its motion through spacetime, along with related concepts such as energy and force. More broadly, it is the general analysis of nature, conducted in order to understand how the universe behaves.Physics is one of the oldest academic...
from the
California Institute of TechnologyThe California Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Pasadena, California, United States. Caltech has six academic divisions with strong emphases on science and engineering...
in 1965, where he learned under
Richard FeynmanRichard Phillips Feynman was an American physicist known for his work in the path integral formulation of quantum mechanics, the theory of quantum electrodynamics and the physics of the superfluidity of supercooled liquid helium, as well as in particle physics...
, but realized he "wouldn't be close to the top in those fields". He turned to
economicsEconomics is the social science that analyzes the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. The term economics comes from the Ancient Greek from + , hence "rules of the house"...
and earned a
Ph.D.Doctor of Philosophy, abbreviated as Ph.D., PhD, D.Phil., or DPhil , in English-speaking countries, is a postgraduate academic degree awarded by universities...
from Harvard University in 1970. He first reached wide notice with a 1974 paper entitled "Are Government Bonds Net Wealth?", a paper which argued that, under certain assumptions, present borrowing would be matched by increased bequest to future generations in order to pay future taxes expected to pay the debt on the government bonds. This paper was direct response to the
BlinderAlan Stuart Blinder is an American economist. He serves at Princeton University as the Gordon S. Rentschler Memorial Professor of Economics and Public Affairs in the Economics Department, Vice Chairman of The Observatory Group, and as co-director of Princeton’s Center for Economic Policy Studies,...
-
SolowRobert Merton Solow is an American economist particularly known for his work on the theory of economic growth that culminated in the exogenous growth model named after him...
results, which had implied that the long term implications of government borrowing would be compensated for by the
wealth effectThe wealth effect is an economic term, referring to an increase in spending that accompanies an increase in perceived wealth.-Effect on individuals:...
. This paper is among the most cited in macro-economics, and its implications of his
Ricardian EquivalenceThe Ricardian equivalence proposition is an economic theory holding that consumers internalize the government's budget constraint: as a result, the timing of any tax change does not affect their change in spending...
are still being debated in the present.
In 1976, he authored a second influential paper, "
Rational expectationsRational expectations is a hypothesis in economics which states that agents' predictions of the future value of economically relevant variables are not systematically wrong in that all errors are random. An alternative formulation is that rational expectations are model-consistent expectations, in...
and the role of
monetary policyMonetary policy is the process by which the monetary authority of a country controls the supply of money, often targeting a rate of interest for the purpose of promoting economic growth and stability. The official goals usually include relatively stable prices and low unemployment...
", in which he argued that information asymmetries would cause real effects as rational economic actors in response to uncertainty, but not in response to expected monetary policy changes. While he has revisited the topic since then, and critically appraised the paper, it was important in integrating the role of money into neo-classical economics, and in the synthesis of General Equilibrium and macroeconomic models.
In 1983 he applied this
information asymmetryIn economics and contract theory, information asymmetry deals with the study of decisions in transactions where one party has more or better information than the other. This creates an imbalance of power in transactions which can sometimes cause the transactions to go awry, a kind of market failure...
argument to the role of central banks, and concluded that central banks, in order to have credibility in inflation fighting, have to be locked into inflation targets that they cannot violate to reduce unemployment. (See also
MonetarismMonetarism is a tendency in economic thought that emphasizes the role of governments in controlling the amount of money in circulation. It is the view within monetary economics that variation in the money supply has major influences on national output in the short run and the price level over...
, Phillips Effect,
InflationIn economics, inflation is a rise in the general level of prices of goods and services in an economy over a period of time.When the general price level rises, each unit of currency buys fewer goods and services. Consequently, inflation also reflects an erosion in the purchasing power of money – a...
). During the 1970s economist Arthur Okun developed the concept of the Misery Index, which
Jimmy CarterJames Earl "Jimmy" Carter, Jr. is an American politician who served as the 39th President of the United States and was the recipient of the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize, the only U.S. President to have received the Prize after leaving office...
publicized during his
1976 presidential campaignThe United States presidential election of 1976 followed the resignation of President Richard Nixon in the wake of the Watergate scandal. It pitted incumbent President Gerald Ford, the Republican candidate, against the relatively unknown former governor of Georgia, Jimmy Carter, the Democratic...
, and
Ronald ReaganRonald Wilson Reagan was the 40th President of the United States , the 33rd Governor of California and, prior to that, a radio, film and television actor....
in his
1980 presidential campaignThe United States presidential election of 1980 featured a contest between incumbent Democrat Jimmy Carter and his Republican opponent, Ronald Reagan, as well as Republican Congressman John B. Anderson, who ran as an independent...
. Numerous sources incorrectly credit Barro with this, due to the similarity of name with his own "Barro Misery Index". Barro's version first appeared in a 1999
BusinessWeekBloomberg Businessweek, commonly and formerly known as BusinessWeek, is a weekly business magazine published by Bloomberg L.P. It is currently headquartered in New York City.- History :...
article.
His 1984
Macroeconomics textbook remains a standard for explaining the subject, and his 1995 book, with
Columbia UniversityColumbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
economist
Xavier Sala-i-MartinXavier Sala-i-Martin is a professor of economics at Columbia University.Sala-i-Martin earned his degree from the Autonomous University of Barcelona in 1985 and his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1990, both in economics...
, on
Economic Growth is a widely cited and read graduate-level textbook on the theory and evidence concerning long-run economic growth. Barro's research in the 90s was mainly focused on the theoretical and empirical determinants of growth: he gave fundamental contributions to the theory of endogenous growth (with particular attention to the links between innovation and public investment on one side and growth on the other side), and was a pioneer in the econometric analysis of the main factors associated with growth in the modern era. He was elected a Fellow of the
American Academy of Arts and SciencesThe American Academy of Arts and Sciences is an independent policy research center that conducts multidisciplinary studies of complex and emerging problems. The Academy’s elected members are leaders in the academic disciplines, the arts, business, and public affairs.James Bowdoin, John Adams, and...
in 1988.
Another often-cited work is a paper co-authored with
Gary BeckerGary Stanley Becker is an American economist. He is a professor of economics, sociology at the University of Chicago and a professor at the Booth School of Business. He was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1992, and received the United States' Presidential Medal of Freedom...
, "A Reformulation of the Economic Theory of Fertility" published in the
Quarterly Journal of EconomicsThe Quarterly Journal of Economics, or QJE, is a peer-reviewed academic journal published by the Oxford University Press and edited at Harvard University's Department of Economics. Its current editors are Robert J. Barro, Elhanan Helpman and Lawrence F. Katz...
, which is influential in thinking about "infinite time horizon" modelling.
In the last decade, Barro has begun investigating the influence of religion and popular culture on political economy, working with his wife
Rachel McClearyRachel Mary McCleary is an American philosopher by training and Senior Research Fellow, Harvard Kennedy School. She is an associate, Peabody Museum, Harvard University, a research fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution....
.
Barro believes that the Keynesian multiplier is close to zero. For every dollar the government borrows and spends, spending elsewhere in the economy falls by almost the same amount.
Barro's work has been central to many of the economic and public policy debates of the last 30 years, including business cycle theory, growth theory, the neo-classical synthesis and public policy. Robert Barro is
doctor honoris causa from
Universidad Francisco MarroquinUniversidad Francisco Marroquín is a private, secular, university in Guatemala City, Guatemala. According to the school's website, "the mission of Universidad Francisco Marroquín is to teach and disseminate the ethical, legal and economic principles of a sociey of free and responsible persons."...
.
Selected publications
- ——— (1986). “The Left and Democracy: Recent Debates in Latin America”. TELOS 68 . New York: Telos Press.
External links
- https://www.ufm.edu/cms/es/honorary-doctoral-degreesHonorary Doctoral Degrees, Universidad Francisco Marroquín
Universidad Francisco Marroquín is a private, secular, university in Guatemala City, Guatemala. According to the school's website, "the mission of Universidad Francisco Marroquín is to teach and disseminate the ethical, legal and economic principles of a sociey of free and responsible persons."...
]
- http://newmedia.ufm.edu/gsm/index.php/Listados:Robert_BarroAudiovisual Media, NewMedia Universidad Francisco Marroquín
Universidad Francisco Marroquín is a private, secular, university in Guatemala City, Guatemala. According to the school's website, "the mission of Universidad Francisco Marroquín is to teach and disseminate the ethical, legal and economic principles of a sociey of free and responsible persons."...
]
- Barro's web page.
- Podcast featuring Barro Barro discusses growth on EconTalk
EconTalk is a weekly podcast hosted by professor Russell Roberts at George Mason University. Roberts interviews guests—often professional economists—on topics in economics....
.
- Topping the Charts Article on Barro from the IMF.