Bronwyn Hall is a Professor of Economics at the University of California, Berkeley.  Her research interests since 1995 have been primarily in the areas of R&D and intellectual property rights. Professor Hall’s studies have examined the Semiconductor industry, the difference between patent policy in the United States and Europe, and the partnerships between R&D and Universities.

Professor Hall’s research questions come to her from a variety of sources. Sometimes they are presented to her in the course of her work with graduate students and other academics. Other times they come to her via policy demand from a board or commission. Professor Hall currently is part of a committee on Science, Technology, and Economics. Professor Hall formulates her questions primarily by looking at puzzles that occur in the course of her work. She often finds sets of contradicting facts which might be reconciled with an economic explanation.

When asked about the process of formulating questions, Professor Hall suggested that issues that may come up in the mainstream media tend to be questions that a lot of people are working on, but not much ground has been broken. These types of questions, she says, are not strong points of entry for students who wish to write a thesis. For example when asked about developing countries and pharmaceutical patents, Professor Hall suggested that a student should look at a smaller part of the puzzle. Her suggestion was to take a welfare model for intellectual property and see where, and under what circumstances the model applies. For the question above Professor Hall suggested applying the model to two regions, Sub-Saharan Africa and India, the former being a region that is simply dependent on imported drugs, and the latter being one with the capability of imitating the existing technology.

Professor Hall’s data sources come from government agencies (state and federal), as well as industry published data. Professor Hall is currently very busy with multiple papers and continues to work in the area of intellectual property.