Michael S. Barr is the Roy F. and Jean Humphrey Proffitt Professor of Law at the University of Michigan Law School. Former dean of the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, he is the Frank Murphy Collegiate Professor of Public Policy at the Ford School. He also serves as faculty director of the U-M Center on Finance, Law & Policy.  Barr currently is on leave from the University, serving with the Federal Reserve Board of Governors.

A member of the Law School faculty since 2001, Barr teaches Financial Regulation and International Finance. He co-founded both the International Transactions Clinic and the Detroit Neighborhood Entrepreneurs Project of the Community and Economic Development Clinic, and is a nonresident senior fellow at the Center for American Progress.

Barr conducts large-scale empirical research regarding financial services, and researches and writes about a wide range of issues in domestic and international financial regulation. His books include Financial Regulation: Law & Policy (Foundation Press 2016, 2d ed. 2018, 3d ed. 2021, with Howell Jackson and Margaret Tahyar), No Slack: The Financial Lives of Low-Income Americans (Brookings Press, 2012), Insufficient Funds (Russell Sage, 2009, co-edited with Rebecca Blank), and Building Inclusive Financial Systems (Brookings Press, 2007, co-edited with Anjali Kumar and Robert Litan).

Barr was on leave during 2009 and 2010, serving as the US Department of the Treasury's assistant secretary for financial institutions and was a key architect of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010. Barr previously served as Treasury Secretary Robert E. Rubin's special assistant, as deputy assistant secretary of the Treasury, as special adviser to President William J. Clinton, and as a special adviser and counselor on the policy planning staff at the US Department of State.