Robert J. Barro to Deliver Winter Lecture on Feb. 10

Robert J. Barro, the Paul M. Warburg Professor of Economics at Harvard University, will deliver the Judge Ralph K. Winter Lecture on Corporate Law and Governance titled “Fiscal Influences on Inflation in OECD Countries, 2020–2023” on Feb. 10 at 4:30 p.m. at Yale Law School. 

Barro’s most recent research focuses on rare macroeconomic disasters, corporate tax reform, religion and economy, empirical determinants of economic growth, and economic effects of public debt and budget deficits. Barro is co-editor of Harvard’s Quarterly Journal of Economics, and his 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.” Barro was a viewpoint columnist for Business Week from 1998 to 2006, and a contributing editor of The Wall Street Journal from 1991 to 1998. 

In addition to his Harvard appointment, Barro is a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research. He previously served as president of the Western Economic Association and vice president of the American Economic Association. 

Barro holds a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University and a B.S. in physics from the California Institute of Technology.

The lecture is open to the Yale community. To attend, register by 12:00 p.m. ET on Monday, Feb. 10.

Ralph K. Winter Jr. ’60 was a Senior Judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals, 2nd Circuit. He served as the William K. Townsend Professor of Law at Yale Law School when appointed to the bench in 1982 and continued to teach at the Law School part-time until 2014.

Winter received the 2017 Edward J. Devitt Distinguished Service to Justice Award, which honors an Article III judge who has achieved a distinguished career and made significant contributions to the administration of justice, the advancement of the rule of law, and the improvement of society as a whole. Recipients are chosen by a committee of federal judges consisting of a Supreme Court Justice, an appellate court judge, and a district court judge.

To commemorate the extraordinary influence of Judge Winter as a corporate law scholar and his distinguished career as a jurist, former law clerks and students established The Judge Ralph K. Winter Lectureship on Corporate Law and Governance, under the auspices of the Yale Law School Center for the Study of Corporate Law. The inaugural lecture took place in the fall of 2005.

Established in 1999, the Yale Law School Center for the Study of Corporate Law has a wide-ranging objective to enhance the quality of students’ educational experience and of faculty research in the business law area by increasing exposure to and engagement with contemporary business law issues.