Author: Carl Shapiro

Carl Shapiro is the Transamerica Professor of Business Strategy at the Haas School of Business, and Professor of Economics in the Economics Department, at the University of California at Berkeley. He earned his Ph.D. in Economics at M.I.T. in 1981, taught at Princeton University during the 1980s, and has been on the Berkeley faculty since 1990. From 1998 to 2008, Shapiro served as Director of the Institute of Business and Economic Research at UC Berkeley. He has been Editor of the Journal of Economic Perspectives and a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, among other honors.

Professor Shapiro is currently on leave, serving as a Member of the President's Council of Economic Advisers, following his confirmation by the United States Senate in April 2011. The Council of Economic Advisers, an agency within the Executive Office of the President, consists of a Chair and two Members. The CEA is charged with offering the President objective economic advice on the formulation of both domestic and international economic policy. The CEA bases its recommendations and analysis on economic research and empirical evidence, using the best data available to support the President in setting economic policy.

From 2009 to 2011 Shapiro was the Deputy Assistant Attorney General for Economics at the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice.

Shapiro has published extensively in the areas of industrial organization, competition policy, patents, the economics of innovation, and competitive strategy. His current research interests include antitrust economics, intellectual property and licensing, patent policy, product standards and compatibility, and the economics of networks and interconnection. Shapiro is the co-author, with Hal R. Varian, of Information Rules: A Strategic Guide to the Network Economy, published by the Harvard Business School Press. Information Rules has received critical acclaim for its application of economic principles to the Information Economy and has been widely read by managers and adopted for classroom use.