Before coming to Harvard in 1967 he served as deputy national security advisor to President Lyndon Johnson covering U.S.-European relations and foreign economic policy.
Bator's 1958 article "The Anatomy of Market Failure,"[5] was recently described as "the standard reference" to the "approach [that] now forms the basis of …textbook expositions in the economics of the public sector."
He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a member of the Council of Foreign Relations, and of the US Army Infantry School Hall of Fame.
Foreign Affairs, Spring 1989; "The State of Macroeconomics" Employment and Growth: Issues for the 1980s, Kluwer Academic Publishers 1987; "America's Inflation" The Economist, March 21–27, 1981; "The Energy-Inflation Connection" Washington Post, April 17, 1980; "The Political Economics of International Money" Foreign Affairs, October 1968; "Money and Government" Atlantic Monthly, April 1962; The Question of Government Spending, Harper & Brothers, 1960.
Also: "On Deficit Cutting" Regional Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, Summer 1995; "GNP Budgeting: Old Theory, New Reality" Challenge, September–October 1989; "Budgetary Reform: Notes on Principles and Strategy" The Review of Economics and Statistics, May, 1963; "On Government Spending" Proceedings of a Symposium on the Federal Budget, American Bankers Association, 1968; "Fine Tuning" and "Functional Finance" The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics, 1987; "Saving, Investment, and the Federal Budget: A Primer," Bulletin, Kennedy School of Government, Winter 1990.
Macroeconomic policy since 2008 : "There Is No US Federal Debt Crisis" Financial Times Economists Forum, March 28, 2011; "Should the US Launch a Temporary Fiscal Push Now?"