Michael Barr

Senior Fellow

Michael S. Barr is a Senior Fellow at American Progress and a Professor of Law at the University of Michigan Law School, where he teaches Financial Institutions, International Finance, Finance and Development, Jurisdiction and Choice of Law, and Transnational Law. He is also a nonresident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution. Barr conducts large-scale empirical research regarding low- and moderate-income households, including as the Principal Investigator for the Detroit Area Household Financial Services Study at the Survey Research Center of the University of Michigan, and as a key researcher for the FDIC’s study of bank services for LMI households.

Barr recently co-edited Building Inclusive Financial Systems (Brookings Press 2007, with Kumar & Litan). Other recent publications include An Inclusive Progressive National Savings and Financial Services Policy, Credit Where it Counts, Banking the Poor, Microfinance and Financial Development, and Global Administrative Law: The View from Basel. Barr previously served as Treasury Secretary Robert E. Rubin’s Special Assistant, as Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Community Development Policy, as Special Advisor to President William J. Clinton, and as a law clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Justice David H. Souter and District Court Judge Pierre N. Leval. He received his J.D. from Yale Law School, an M. Phil in International Relations from Magdalen College, Oxford University, as a Rhodes Scholar, and his B.A., summa cum laude, with Honors in History, from Yale University.