Brian D. Wright

Dr. Brian Wright is Professor at the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics at the University of California, Berkeley, and an economist with the Agricultural Experiment Station and the Giannini Foundation of Agricultural Economics. His research focuses on the 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 relating to genetic resources. Dr. Wright has published extensively in the leading academic journals in economics and agricultural economics. He has 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. In addition, Dr. Wright has co-authored articles in Nature Biotechnology, The Handbook of Plant Biotechnology, and Crop Science. Dr. Wright was elected a Fellow of the Agricultural & Applied Economics Association and has served on the editorial boards of Revista Economia y Administración and Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics. He has reviewed articles and proposals for numerous academic journals, for the National Science Foundation and for the USDA’s National Research Initiative Competitive Grants Program. He has received grant support from the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health.

Dr. Wright’s consulting experience includes insurance, economic damages, patent licensing, and patent infringement matters in pharmaceuticals, agricultural and food markets. He has served as the economist member of the Subcommittee on Proprietary Science and Technology of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), and on the Committee on Intellectual Property in Genomic and Protein Research and Innovation of the National Academies’ Board of Science, Technology and Economic Policy. Dr. Wright consulted on numerous assignments for the World Bank, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization, and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. Recently, he has presented invited lectures on the food price volatility in England, France, Austria, Australia, and Brazil, and addressed the Board of Directors of the World Bank and the Advisory Board of Rabobank on this issue. Dr. Wright presented his work on agricultural innovation at the National Bureau of Economic Research meeting on “Accelerating Energy Innovation: Insights from Multiple Sectors” in Washington, D.C., and presented his research on patents and innovation in Austria, Beijing, and Melbourne.