Hal Varian becomes Google’s chief economist.

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Via Greg Mankiw (whom you will have to read between the lines), this New York Times piece:

The View column will now be written by a rotating panel of outside economists. Besides Mr. Mankiw, it will include Alan Blinder, Judith Chevalier, Robert Shiller and Lester Thurow, as well as three of the economists who have been writing the Economic Scene column on Thursdays: Austan Goolsbee, Tyler Cowen and Robert Frank. (The fourth member of the Scene rotation, Hal R. Varian, is leaving to concentrate on his new role as Google’s chief economist.)

The Midas Oracle readers will remember that professor Hal Varian is the economics authority (revered by the Google executives) who consulted with Bo Cowgill’s 20% team on designing and pitching an internal prediction markets pilot. Professor Hal Varian commands respect and has made important contributions to Google’s core business.

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Hal R. Varian interviewed by the Wall Street Journal on his new position at Google.

WSJ: What does the job entail?

Varian: During my time at Google we have built up a world-class group of quantitative analysts, and the economics team will complement these existing resources. Google has a great infrastructure for data analysis, and a management team that is very receptive to quantitative methods and willing to invest in this area. So what more could you ask for? In addition to working on analytics, I’ve also worked on various business strategy and public policy issues, and will continue to do so as the occasion arises. This set of issues will only get more important to Google as time goes on, so I expect that this will also involve a fair amount of my time.

Note: Bo Cowgill‘s official business title at Google is “Technical Data Analyst“.

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