Hal Varian is mostly famous for his undergraduate microeconomics text Intermediate Microeconomics and graduate microeconomics text Microeconomic Analysis. Both of these books are taught in the economics curriculum of major universities around the world.

He received his bachelor's degree from MIT in 1969 and both his MA (mathematics) and Ph.D. (economics) from the University of California at Berkeley in 1973. He has taught at MIT, Stanford University, the University of Oxford, the University of Michigan, and other universities around the world.

Professor Varian is a fellow of the Guggenheim Foundation, the Econometric Society, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has served as Co-Editor of the American Economic Review and is on the editorial boards of several journals.

Professor Varian has published numerous papers in economic theory, industrial organization, financial economics, econometrics and information economics. He is the author of two major economics textbooks which have been translated into 22 languages. His current research has been concerned with the economics of information technology and the information economy. He is the co-author of a bestselling book on business strategy, Information Rules: A Strategic Guide to the Network Economy and writes a monthly column for the New York Times.

Hal R. Varian is the Class of 1944 Professor at the UC Berkeley School of Information, the Haas School of Business, and the Department of Economics at the University of California, Berkeley. From 1995-2002, he served as the founding dean of SIMS.