Professor Barber is an authority on investor psychology, stock analyst recommendations, online trading and the performance of mutual funds. He has done extensive research on the effect of expenses on money flowing into mutual funds, gender-related overconfidence in stock trading, the impact of coordinated trading by individual investors, and how active trading of equities is hazardous to the wealth of individual investors. His research has been covered extensively in the media, including Business Week, Time, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times, and he has appeared on ABC News, NBC Nightly News, CNN, MSNBC and CNBC.

Professor Barber has published frequently in leading academic journals, including the Journal of Finance, the Journal of Financial Economics, Review of Financial Studies, the Journal of Political Economy, Quarterly Journal of Economics, American Sociological Review, the Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, and the Financial Analyst Journal.

Professor Barber teaches courses in investment analysis and corporate financial policy, and he is a regular speaker at academic and industry conferences.