Predicting the Present with Search Engine Data
Hal Varian
About the speaker
Hal R. Varian is the Chief Economist at Google, where he started as a consultant in 2002, dealing with auction design, econometric analysis, finance, corporate strategy and public policy. He is also an emeritus professor at the University of California, Berkeley, in three departments: business, economics, and information management.
Professor Varian received his S.B. degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1969 and his M.A. in mathematics and Ph.D. in economics from the University of California Berkeley in 1973. He has also taught at M.I.T., Stanford, Oxford, Michigan and other universities around the world.
A fellow of the Guggenheim Foundation, the Econometric Society, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Professor Varian served as co-editor of the American Economic Review from 1987-1990, and holds honorary doctorates from the University of Oulu, Finland and the University of Karlsruhe, Germany.
Professor Varian has published numerous papers in economic theory, industrial organization, financial economics, econometrics and information economics. He is the author of two major economics textbooks which have been translated into 22 languages. He is the co-author of a bestselling book on business strategy, Information Rules: A Strategic Guide to the Network Economy and wrote a monthly column for the New York Times from 2000 to 2007.