Hal Varian

Hal Ronald Varian (born March 18, 1947, in Wooster, Ohio) is an economist specializing in microeconomics and information economics. He is the chief economist at Google and he holds the title of emeritus professor at the University of California, Berkeley where he was founding dean of the School of Information. He has written two bestselling textbooks: Intermediate Microeconomics, an undergraduate microeconomics text, and Microeconomic Analysis, an advanced text. Together with Carl Shapiro, he co-authored Information Rules: A Strategic Guide to the Network Economy and The Economics of Information Technology: An Introduction.

He joined Google in 2002 as a consultant, and has worked on the design of advertising auctions, econometrics, finance, corporate strategy, and public policy.

He received his B.S. from MIT in economics in 1969 and both his M.A. (mathematics) and Ph.D. (economics) from the University of California, Berkeley in 1973. He has taught at MIT, Stanford University, the University of Oxford, the University of Michigan, the University of Siena and other universities around the world. He has two honorary doctorates, from the University of Oulu, Finland in 2002, and a Dr. h. c. from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Germany, awarded in 2006.

Chief economist

Chief economist is a single position job class having primary responsibility for the development, coordination, and production of economic and financial analysis. It is distinguished from the other economist positions by the broader scope of responsibility encompassing the planning, supervision, and coordination of the economic research.

Synopsis

The chief economist is a supervisory and leading class with substantial responsibility for the exercise of independent judgement in employing, disciplining, or adjudicating grievances of subordinates.

Chief economists work primarily in banks and government institutions. They are also common in economic research units from university departments; economics, business, and finance publications; and other research bodies in economics. By the 2010s, the chief economist position was established at large internet companies such as Google and Microsoft. Further, a trend began in data and financial services companies to utilize chief economists in customer- and media-facing roles to help in placing data in a larger economic context.