My interests in economics uncertainty and innovation date from my early experiences on my family’s sheep station in the Riverina district of New South Wales, Australia. I received a Bachelor of Agricultural Economics (First Class honors) from the University of New England, Armidale, and won one of two Frank Knox Fellowships given annually to Australian students by Harvard University, where I received an A.M. and Ph.D. in Economics. I then joined Yale University’s Economics Department and am now Chair of the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics at the University of California, Berkeley.
My research interests include economics of markets for storable commodities, market stabilization, agricultural policy, industrial organization, public finance, invention incentives, intellectual property rights, the economics of research and development, and the economics of conservation and innovation of genetic resources. I co-authored or co-edited several books, including Storage and Commodity Markets; Reforming Agricultural Commodity Policy; Saving Seeds: The Economics of Conserving Genetic Resources at the CGIAR Centers, and Accessing Biodiversity and Sharing the Benefits: Lessons from Implementing the Convention on Biodiversity. I have published extensively in the leading journals in Economics and Agricultural Economics. In addition, I have co-authored articles in Nature Biotechnology, The Handbook of Plant Biotechnology, and Crop Science.
I am a Fellow of the American Agricultural Economics Association. I served as the economist member of the Subcommittee on Proprietary Science and Technology of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR). I served on the Committee on Intellectual Property in Genomic and Protein Research and Innovation of the National Academies’ Board of Science, Technology and Economic Policy. I have recently collaborated with the Research Center for Property Exchange of Peking University. Last June, at the request of the World Bank, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, I gave a technical presentation at the World Grain Forum, Petersburg, Russia, on the use of international grain reserves for market stabilization. In October 2010 I presented an invited paper on agricultural innovation at the Washington, DC National Bureau of Economic Research meeting on Accelerating Innovation in Energy: Lessons from Other Sectors? I subsequently presented invited lectures on grain markets and their stabilization at the World Bank, the Milken Institute, and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.
A.M. Ph.D. Economics Harvard University
B. Ag. Econ. University of New England, Australia
Drivas, K., Lei, Z., Merrill, S.A. and Wright, B.D. 2014 “Industry-Funded Academic Inventions
Boost Innovation.” Nature (forthcoming.)Auffhammer, Maximilian, Bo Li, Brian Wright and Seung-Jick Yoo (forthcoming).
“Specification and Estimation of the Transfer Function in Dendroclimatological
Reconstructions.” Environmental and Ecological StatisticsWright, Brian D. 2014. “Global Biofuels: Key to the Puzzle of Grain Market Behavior.”
2014 Journal of Economic Perspectives Vol. 28 no. 1, Winter.Bobenrieth, Eugenio S.A., J.R.A. Bobenrieth and B. D. Wright (forthcoming). “Bubble
Troubles? Rational Storage, Mean Reversion and Runs in Commodity Prices.” The
Economics of Food Price Volatility by Jean-Paul Chavas, David Hummels, and Brian
Wright. Chicago, IL. National Bureau of Economic Research.Bobenrieth, Eugenio, Brian D. Wright and Di Zeng. 2013. “Stocks-To-Use Ratios And Prices As
Indicators Of Vulnerability To Spikes In Global Cereal Markets.” Agricultural
Economics 44 (2013) 1–10.Wright, Brian D. 2012. “Grand missions of agricultural innovation.” Research Policy, Vol. 41,
pp. 1716-1728.Bobenrieth, Eugenio S.A., J.R.A. Bobenrieth and B. D. Wright. 2012. “Strict Concavity of the
Value Function for a Family of Dynamic Accumulation Models. The B.E. Journal of
Theoretical Economics, Vol. 12, No. 1.Wright, Brian D. 2012. “International Grains Reserves, and other instruments to address volatility
in Grain Markets.” The World Bank Research Observer;
doi: 10.1093/wbro/lkr016.Cafiero, Carlo, E.S.A. Bobenrieth, J.R.A Bobenrieth, and B.D. Wright. 2011.
“The empirical relevance of the competitive storage model.” Journal of Econometrics,
162: 44-54.T. Shih. and Brian D. Wright. 2011.“Agricultural Innovation.” In: Accelerating
Innovation in Energy: Lessons from Multiple Sectors, eds. R. Henderson and R.
Newell, pp.: 49-85, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press for National Bureau of
Economic Research.Wright, Brian D. and C. Cafiero. 2011.“Grain reserves and food security in the Middle East
and North Africa.” Food Security, (Suppl 1): S61–S76 DOI 10.1007/s12571-010-0094-z.Wright, Brian D., and A. Prakash. 2011. “The fallacy of price interventions: a note on price
bands and managed tariffs.” In: Safeguarding Food Security in Volatile Global Markets,
ed. A. Prakash, Chapter 12, pp.: 241-251, Food and Agriculture Organization of the
United Nations (FAO).Wright, Brian D. 2011. “Addressing the biofuels problem: food security options for agricultural
Feedstocks.” In: Safeguarding Food Security in Volatile Global Markets, ed. A. Prakash,
Chapter 23, pp.: 481-492, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
(FAO).Wright, Brian D. 2011. “The Economics of Grain Price Volatility.” Applied Economic
Perspectives and Policy, Vol. 33, No. 1: 32-58. DOI:10.1093/aepp/ppq033.Wright, Brian D. 2011. Biofuels and Food Security: Time to Consider Safety Valves? IPC
Policy Focus. February.Koo, Bonwoo and B.D. Wright. 2010. "Dynamic Effects of Patent Policy on Sequential
Innovation." Journal of Economics and Management Strategy, Vol. 19, Issue 2, pp. 489-
512, Summer.
