Hal R. Varian is the chief economist at Google where he has worked on many aspects of the company, including auction design, econometrics and public policy. He is also an emeritus professor at the University of California, Berkeley in three departments: business, economics, and information management.

He received his SB degree from MIT in 1969 and his MA in mathematics and PhD in economics from UC Berkeley in 1973. He has taught at MIT, Stanford, Oxford, Michigan, and other universities around the world. 

Dr. Varian is a fellow of the Guggenheim Foundation, the Econometric Society, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and holds honorary doctorates from the University of Oulu and the University of Karlsruhe. 

He is the author of two major economics textbooks and a co-author of a bestselling book on business strategy, Information Rules, and wrote a monthly column for the New York Times from 2000 to 2007.