Robert J. Barro is a professor of economics at Harvard University. Robert Lucas, Thomas J. Sargent, and Robert J. Barro were responsible for the rise of New Classical Economics during the 1970's. Unlike Keynesian ideology, New Classical economics bases its ideology on the assumption that wages and prices are flexible, i.e., they don't take the New Keynesian view of "sticky" prices and wage as the explanation for involuntary unemployment and the strong influence of monetary policy on the economy.
Barro has also worked extensively on "reputational equilibria", which, according to Sargent, states that "the preferences of citizens and policymakers and the available production technologies and trading opportunities are not by themselves sufficient to determine whether a government will follow a low-inflation or a high-inflation policy mix . Instead, reputation remains an independent factor even after rational expectations have been assumed." Also, Barro believes that deficits do not matter, and the evidence for this is the fact that there exists very little correlation between budget deficits and interest rates, saving and investment rates, or productivity growth rates. He agrees with David Ricardo that deficits don't matter because current generations will pass on the means to pay off the debt to future generations. According to Barro, parents and grandparents do this by leaving savings to their children.
According to Alan Reynolds, in 1990 Robert Barro and economist Paul Romer" surveyed the latest studies for the year-end report from the National Bureau of Economic Research." Their results led them to the conclusion that "...all economic improvement can be traced to actions taken by people who respond to incentives...[which leads to a] very different prediction about how such policy variables as taxes can influence growth." This appears to me to be very similar to supply-side economic ideology.
Works by Robert J. Barro:
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