Brian Wright

About

Brian Wright is a Distinguished Professor of the Graduate School in the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics at the University of California, Berkeley. His research interests include 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 of genetic resources. Wright's background includes a Bachelor of Agricultural Economics with First Class honors from the University of New England in Australia, and an A.M. and Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard University, where he was awarded a Frank Knox Fellowship. He has held faculty positions at Yale University and is a Fellow of the American Agricultural Economics Association. His work encompasses extensive publication in leading economics journals, as well as contributions to books and articles in prominent scientific outlets such as Nature Biotechnology. His research is characterized by a focus on the intersection of agricultural economics, innovation, and resource conservation.

Research topics

• Economics
• Business
• Geology
• Computer science
• Econometrics

Selected publications

• Government targets, end-of-year patenting rush and innovative performance in China

  Nature Biotechnology · 2021-09-01 · 18 citations

  article
  PublisherDOI

• Citations backward and forward: Insights into the patent examiner's role

  Research Policy · 2022-04-06 · 17 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior authorCorresponding

  Examiners’ instructions and academic studies on patent validity determination focus on identification of “blocking” citations that invalidate claims in applications as non-novel or obvious, generally ignoring the non-blocking majority as irrelevant to validity. Recently available datasets allow us to identify, for the first time, “forward” citations received by applications before grant, as well as “backward” citations in those applications, and distinguish those identified by the examiner as bl…

  PublisherDOI

• Putting the Empirical Commodity Storage Model Back on Track: Crucial Implications of a “Negligible” Trend

  American Journal of Agricultural Economics · 2020-11-09 · 15 citations

  article

  The dynamics of consumption and stocks are crucial for analysis of commodity prices and policies. But empirical application of the standard storage model has been derailed by failure to replicate high real price autocorrelation. Our proposed storage model is the first empirical model to recognize the full implications of nonstationarity for price behavior and speculative arbitrage with an occasionally binding non‐negativity constraint, a challenge shared by DSGE models in macroeconomics and grow…

  PublisherDOI

• Sustaining productivity gains in the face of climate change: A research agenda for US wheat

  Global Change Biology · 2022-11-23 · 11 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Wheat is a globally important crop and one of the "big three" US field crops. But unlike the other two (maize and soybean), in the United States its development is commercially unattractive, and so its breeding takes place primarily in public universities. Troublingly, the incentive structures within these universities may be hindering genetic improvement just as climate change is complicating breeding efforts. "Business as usual" in the US public wheat-breeding infrastructure may not sustain pr…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Endogenous thresholds in energy prices: Modeling and empirical estimation

  Energy Economics · 2023-04-11 · 4 citations

  articleSenior author
  PublisherDOI

Recent grants

• Collaborative Research: The Impacts of University Research and Funding Sources in Chemical Sciences: Publishing, Patenting, Commercialization

  NSF · $431k · 2011–2015

Frequent coauthors

• Jeffrey C. Williams

  39 shared

• Philip G. Pardey

  36 shared

• Bonwoo Koo

  National Institute of Agricultural Science and Technology

  29 shared

• Eugenio Bobenrieth

  Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile

  27 shared

• Wiley J. Youngs

  University of Akron

  19 shared

• Juan Bobenrieth

  University of Bío-Bío

  19 shared

• Matthew J. Panzner

  University of Akron

  18 shared

• G.W. Timco

  15 shared

Education

• AM, PhD, Economics

  Harvard University

  1975

• Bachelor of Agricultural Economics, First Class Honors, Agricultural Economics

  University of New England

  1969

Awards & honors

• Frank Knox Fellowship

Similar researchers at University of California, Berkeley

• Maximilian Auffhammerh-52
• Joseph Shapiroh-47
• Gordon Rausserh-42