Hal Varian

If you want to understand the future, just look at what rich people do today.

Hal Varian

There’s already been a big revolution in how we view intellectual property. So it’s not so much the question of what’s owned or what’s not owned. It’s a question of how can you leverage the assets you have to realize the most value.

Netting A Profit

“Last fall, Robert Litan of the Brookings Institution and I, along with a team of researchers at Momentum Research Group, set out to examine and quantify how the Internet has affected productivity and profitability. To what extent, we wondered, did Internet investments contribute to the revenue growth of the companies that launched them, and to what extent did they contribute to cost reduction? Which Internet … [ Read more ]

Information Rules: A Strategic Guide to the Network Economy

Given the healthy cynicism that the reader, circa fall 2001, now feels toward New Economy books, it’s refreshing to pick up a volume from 1999 that opens with a hearty dose of curmudgeonry. The authors of Information Rules: A Strategic Guide to the Network Economy, Carl Shapiro and Hal R. Varian, are both professors at Berkeley, and together they’ve written a surprisingly age-free book that … [ Read more ]