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Ire Int Res Econ Heritage

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The Institute for Research Economics (IRE) is a research hub established by The Heritage Foundation in 2024. Designed to expand conservative policy research, the institute connects scholars with academia to analyze economic trends. [1]

The IRE's foundation features the following key aspects:

If you would like to read the strategic plan or access current economic policy findings, I can provide links to the 2024 Annual Report or the Index of Economic Freedom. Let me know which you prefer!

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A mericans have witnessed the effects of public policy that isn’t grounded in sound economics, from runaway deficits, sky-high inflation, falling real wages, and sagging economic optimism. But in today’s woke academic world, economists who want to conduct research on the benefits of limited government and the free exchange of goods and services are at a severe disadvantage—not only in numbers but in the ability to get financial support for their research from existing institutions. In 2024, Heritage embarked on another bold plan: to establish the Institute for Research Economics (IRE). The goal of the IRE is to build a community of scholars, create opportunities for new scholars and those pursuing doctorates, extend our reach into academia, enhance Heritage’s reputation for superior policy research, and create a vital new hub for scientific excellence in the shadow of Capitol Hill. Heritage enlisted esteemed economists Robert Barro and Charles Calomiris to ...

Heritage enlisted esteemed economists Robert Barro and Charles Calomiris to oversee the project. When fully up and running, IRE will feature a regular stable of full- and part-time scholars, host regular seminars, and publish a regular working paper series, including a blog edited by Barro and Calomiris. As part of Heritage’s commitment to academic excellence, IRE scholars will be free to follow the paths dictated by objective scientific inquiry.

2024_AnnualReport

EJ Antoni, research fellow with the Grover M. Hermann Center for the Federal Budget, joined the Kevin Roberts Show to talk about Bidenomics and how to restore the American dream.

Robert Joseph Barro (born September 28, 1944) is an American macroeconomist and the Paul M. Warburg Professor of Economics at Harvard University.[1] Barro is considered one of the founders of new classical macroeconomics, along with Robert Lucas Jr. and Thomas J. Sargent.[2] He is currently a senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution and co-editor of the influential Quarterly Journal of Economics.[3]

Academic career

Barro graduated with a B.S. in physics from the California Institute of Technology in 1965, where he was a student of Richard Feynman, but he realized he "wouldn't be close to the top in those fields."[4] He then turned to economics and earned a Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1970.[5] He first reached wide notice with a 1974 paper, "Are Government Bonds Net Wealth?" It argued that under certain assumptions, present governmental borrowing would be matched by increased bequests to future generations to pay future taxes expected to pay down the government bonds; thus a lowering of current taxes, financed by the issuance of government bonds, would have no effect on the public's spending on consumer goods. The paper was in direct response to Alan Blinder and Robert Solow's results, which had implied that the long term implications of government borrowing would be compensated for by the wealth effect. The paper is among the most cited in macroeconomics. Its implications of his Ricardian equivalence are still being debated.

Barro collaborated with Herschel Grossman to produce the influential 1971 article "A General Disequilibrium Model of Income and Employment",[6] which for many years held the distinction of being the most cited article published in the American Economic Review.[7] The article explored the idea that disequilibrium in one market can have spillover effects to another market, creating a distinction between notional demand and effective demand. Barro and Grossman expanded on their work and produced the classic textbook Money, Employment, and Inflation in 1976.[8]

In 1976, he authored another influential paper, "Rational expectations and the role of monetary policy" 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. In it and other essays, he investigated the real effects of monetary changes through which he could significantly contribute to the clarification of the exact circumstances of the validity of the policy-ineffectiveness proposition. While he has revisited the topic since then and critically appraised the paper, it was important in integrating the role of money into neoclassical economics and into the synthesis of general equilibrium and macroeconomic models.[9]

In 1983, he applied the information asymmetry argument to the role of central banks and concluded that central banks, to have credibility in inflation fighting, must be locked into inflation targets that they cannot violate to reduce unemployment. In the 1970s, economist Arthur Okun developed the concept of the Misery Index, which Jimmy Carter publicized during his 1976 presidential campaign, and Ronald Reagan did the same in his 1980 presidential campaign. Numerous sources incorrectly credit Barro with this because of the similarity of name with his own "Barro Misery Index." Barro's version first appeared in a 1999 BusinessWeek article.[10]

His 1984 Macroeconomics textbook remains a standard for explaining the subject, and his 1995 book, with Columbia University economist Xavier Sala-i-Martin, 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 1990s was focused mainly 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. He was a pioneer in the econometric analysis of the main factors associated with growth in the modern era.[11]

Barro served as Vice President of the American Economic Association in 1998, and served on its executive committee from 1987 to 1990.[5] He has been a research associate at the NBER since 1978.[5] He was elected a Fellow of the Econometric Society in 1980, and was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1988.[12][13]

Another often-cited work is a 1988 paper that he coauthored with Gary Becker, "A Reformulation of the Economic Theory of Fertility" published in the Quarterly Journal of Economics, which is influential in thinking about "infinite time horizon" modelling.

Subsequently, Barro began investigating the influence of religion and popular culture on political economy by working with his wife, Rachel McCleary.

Barro believes that the Keynesian multiplier is close to zero. He believes that for every dollar the government borrows and spends, spending elsewhere in the economy falls by almost the same amount.[14]

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 neoclassical synthesis and public policy. Barro received an honorary doctorate from Universidad Francisco Marroquin.[15] The Research Papers in Economics (RePEc) project ranked him as the fifth most influential economist in the world, as of March 2016, based on his academic contributions.[16]

Finally, Barro has been an outspoken opponent of stimulus spending, calling Obama's stimulus bill "garbage" and "the worst bill since the 1930s."[17][18][19]

Personal life

Robert Barro is married to Rachel McCleary. Together they have made critical contributions to the field of religion and economics. McCleary holds a doctorate from the University of Chicago and teaches at Harvard. Barro has four children: Jennifer, Lisa, Jason, and Josh, who is a journalist.

Charles William Calomiris (born November 8, 1957) is an American financial policy expert, author, and co-director of the Institute for Research in Economics in Washington, D.C. Previously, he was a professor at Columbia Business School, where he was the Henry Kaufman Professor of Financial Institutions and the Director of Columbia Business School Program for Financial Studies,[1] and was director of the Center for Politics, Economics and History at UATX.[2]

Early life, education, and career

Early life and parentage

Born in Washington, D.C., his father was businessman William Calomiris, who was also born in Washington, D.C., to Greek immigrant parents and grew up in the Capitol Hill neighborhood.[3] William Calomiris was a former president of the Washington Board of Trade and founder of the William Calomiris Investment Corp, which led efforts to create housing for low-income and middle-income Washington residents.[3] In addition, he was a banker who served as director of both Lincoln National Bank and Jefferson Federal Savings & Loan, and also as an advisory director of Riggs National Bank. He also had been board chairman of the Washington Federal Savings Bank before its 1996 sale to First Maryland Bancorp.[3] William Calomiris died in 2000, when he was 80 years old.[3]

Education and career

Charles Calomiris received a B.A. in economics from Yale University and a Ph.D. in economics from Stanford University.[1][4][5] Calomiris thereafter served in numerous capacities with organizations addressing economic policy, including serving as a Fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, a member of the Shadow Open Market Committee, co-director of the Hoover Institution's Program on Regulation and the Rule of Law, and a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research.[1][4] He has advised government entities as a researcher at the Office of Financial Research in the United States Department of the Treasury,[1] and as a member of the International Financial Institution Advisory Commission of the United States Congress.[4] Prior to joining the Columbia Business School faculty in 1996, he was an assistant professor of economics at Northwestern University and an associate professor of finance at the University of Illinois.[6]

Views

Calomiris was critical from the outset of the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, a set of financial regulations passed in response to the 2008 financial crisis. Argued that the law doubles down on "too big to fail" and does not prevent the government from subsidizing mortgage risk, which fueled the crisis.[7][8] He further cited the law's overly complicated and ambiguously worded provisions, and instead advocated alternative "incentive-robust" solutions, such as "a rule requiring that banks hold cash at the central bank equal to 20% of their assets", and "a minimum uninsured debt requirement for large banks in the form of subordinated debt".[8]

In 2018, Calomiris argued in favor of capitalism, noting that many predictions made by Karl Marx have failed to materialize.[9] In a September 2018 conference at Columbia University's Centre on Capitalism and Society, he argued that the improvement of the U.S. economy since 2016 "cannot be reasonably contested".[10]

Religiously, Calomiris is a Greek Orthodox Christian.[11]

Fragile By Design

In 2014, Calomiris coauthored, with Stephen Haber, Fragile By Design: The Political Origins of Banking Panics and Scarce Credit.[12][13] ^[8] In the book, Calomiris and Haber argue that the problems faced by the banking industry arise from the extensive network of government regulations effectively directing how they do business, including that "geographic restrictions on banking made banks too small to weather regional economic shocks".[14] The book received various accolades, including an American Publishers 2015 Award for best book in Business, Finance and Management, and being named to best books of the year lists by the Financial Times and Bloomberg Businessweek.[4]