Taylor's fields of expertise are monetary policy, fiscal policy, and international economics. His book Getting Off Track was one of the first on the financial crisis; his book, First Principles, for which he received the 2012 Hayek Prize, develops an economic plan to restore America’s prosperity.

He has served as Under Secretary of the Treasury for International Affairs; Member, Board of Directors, Overseas Private Investment Corporation; Chair, Working Party III, Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development; Member, President's Council of Economic Advisers; Member, Advisory Panel, Congressional Budget Office; Member, California Governor's Council of Economic Advisers; Advisory Board Chair, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas; Honorary Adviser, Bank of Japan; Member, Board of Trustees, Dodge and Cox Funds; Economic Analyst, Townsend-Greenspan and Company; Professor of Economics and Public Affairs at Princeton University; Visiting Professor of Economics at Yale University; and Professor of Economics at Columbia University.

Taylor has been a Member of the G20 Eminent Persons Group on Global Financial Governance; Selection Committee for the Bradley Prize, Bradley Foundation; Smith Richardson Foundation Grants Advisory Committee; Council on Foreign Relations; Board of Trustees, Foundation for Teaching Economics; Voluntary National Content Standards in Economics; Federal Economic Statistics Advisory Committee; Committee on Economic Stability and Growth and Subcommittee on Monetary Research, Social Science Research Council; Graduate Record Examinations Committee, ETS; Economics Oversight Committee, National Science Foundation; Brookings Panel on Economic Activity; Advisory Committee, Carnegie-Rochester Conference Series on Public Policy; and Advisory Review Panel for Economics, National Science Foundation.

He is the recipient numerous awards, including the Bradley Prize for Contributions to Research and Policy; Liberální Institut Award, Prague, Czech Republic; Adam Smith Award, Association of Private Enterprise Education; Central Banking Award for Economics; Truman Medal for Economic Policy; Bloomberg Markets 50 Most Influential; Economics Distinguished Faculty Teaching Award, Stanford University; Adolph G. Abramson Award, National Association of Business Economics; Medal of the Republic of Uruguay; Hayek Prize, Manhattan Institute for Policy Research; Adam Smith Award for Economic Research, National Association for Business Economics; George P. Shultz Public Service Award, Stanford University; Distinguished Service Award, United States Treasury; Lilian and Thomas B. Rhodes Prize; and Laurence and Naomi Carpenter Hoagland Prize.

He is the author of over 300 scholarly articles and reviews, and his many books include Reform of the International Monetary System: Why and How; Currencies, Capital, and Central Bank Balances (ed. with John Cochrane and Kyle Palermo); Rules for International Monetary Stability (ed. with Michael Bordo); Handbook of Macroeconomics, Vol. 2 (ed. with Harald Uhlig); Policy Stability and Economic Growth: Lessons from the Great Recession; Central Bank Governance and Oversight Reform (ed. with John Cochrane); Making Failure Feasible: How Bankruptcy Reform Can End “Too Big To Fail” (ed. with Kenneth Scott and Thomas Jackson); Inequality and Economic Policy: Essays in Honor of Gary Becker (ed. with Tom Church and Chris Miller); Frameworks for Central Banking in the Next Century, Special Issue of the Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control (ed. with Michael Bordo); Across the Great Divide: New Perspectives on the Financial Crisis (ed. with Martin Neil Baily); Bankruptcy Not Bailout: A Special Chapter 14 (ed. with Kenneth E. Scot); Government Policies and the Delayed Economic Recovery (ed. with Lee Ohanian and Ian Wright); First Principles: Five Keys to Restoring America’s Prosperity; Towards an Exit Strategy: Discretion or Rules?; Ending Government Bailouts As We Know Them (ed. with Kenneth Scott and George Shultz); The Road Ahead for the Fed (ed. with John Ciorciari); Getting Off Track: How Government Actions and Interventions Caused, Prolonged, and Worsened the Financial Crisis; Global Financial Warriors: The Untold Story of International Finance in the Post 9/11 World; Handbook of Macroeconomics (ed. with Michael Woodford); Monetary Policy Rules (edited); Inflation, Unemployment and Monetary Policy (with Robert Solow); Economics; Macroeconomic Policy in a World Economy: From Econometric Design to Practical Operation; Macroeconomics: Theory, Performance and Policy (with Robert E. Hall); and Rational Expectations Analysis (ed. with Mathew Canzoneri).

Taylor's popular articles have appeared in such publications as the Financial Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Central Banking, Bloomberg, Foreign Policy, City Journal, San Francisco Chronicle, Commentary, Investor's Business Daily, Forbes, and New York Daily News.