Bar received his Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley, studied at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, and holds a Diplôme d'Ingénieur from the Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées (ENPC) in Paris. Bar is an Associate Professor at the University of Southern California's Annenberg School of Communication, and serves as Director of its Research Network on International Communication.  His current research interests include comparative telecommunication policy, as well as economic, strategic and social dimensions of computer networking, new media and the Internet. His research has been published in books of collected studies, in policy reports, and in such journals as Telecommunications Policy, The Information Society, Organization Science, Infrastructure Economics and Policy, Communications & Strategies, Réseaux, and the International Journal of Technology Management. He currently serves on the advisory boards of non-profit Compumentor, and start-ups Clickability and Polaris Wireless.