Jon Hartley and Robert Barro discuss Robert’s career in economics including his long list of famous students, and research on Ricardian equivalence, fiscal theory of the price level, government spending multipliers, business cycles and the legacy of New Keynesian modeling, economic growth, political economy, the interplay between religion and economics, and much more.
ABOUT THE SERIES:
Each episode of Capitalism and Freedom in the 21st Century, a video podcast series and the official podcast of the Hoover Economic Policy Working Group, focuses on getting into the weeds of economics, finance, and public policy on important current topics through one-on-one interviews. Host Jon Hartley asks guests about their main ideas and contributions to academic research and policy. The podcast is titled after Milton Friedman‘s famous 1962 bestselling book Capitalism and Freedom, which after 60 years, remains prescient from its focus on various topics which are now at the forefront of economic debates, such as monetary policy and inflation, fiscal policy, occupational licensing, education vouchers, income share agreements, the distribution of income, and negative income taxes, among many other topics.
For more information about Capitalism and Freedom, visit: https://www.hoover.org/podcast/capitalism-and-freedom?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=description&utm_campaign=cf21_description
Or watch our previous episodes here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLKruweaZqDNfugbnq9W11FbBlR0gnJXbN
ABOUT THE GUEST SPEAKER:
Robert J. Barro is a Paul M. Warburg Professor of Economics at Harvard University, a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, and a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research. He has a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University and a B.S. in physics from Caltech.
Barro is co-editor of Harvard’s Quarterly Journal of Economics and has been President of the Western Economic Association and Vice President of the American Economic Association.He was a viewpoint columnist for Business Week from 1998 to 2006 and a contributing editor of The Wall Street Journal from 1991 to 1998. He has written extensively on macroeconomics and economic growth.
Recent research involves rare macroeconomic disasters, corporate tax reform, religion & economy, empirical determinants of economic growth, and economic effects of public debt and budget deficits. Recent books include The Wealth of Religions: The Political Economy of Believing and Belonging (with Rachel M. McCleary), Economic Growth (2nd edition, with Xavier Sala-i-Martin), Nothing Is Sacred: Economic Ideas for the New Millennium, Determinants of Economic Growth, and Getting It Right: Markets and Choices in a Free Society.
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The opinions expressed on this channel are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Hoover Institution or Stanford University.
© 2025 by the Board of Trustees of Leland Stanford Junior University.
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