Joseph Farrell Bio

Joseph Farrell

Director, Bureau of Economics, Federal Trade Commission

In April 2009, the FTC named Joseph Farrell to head the Bureau of Economics. Prior to that position he taught economics at the University of California, Berkeley, where he also chaired the Competition Policy Center.

Joseph Farrell was educated at Oxford University, where he received his D.Phil. in 1981. He joined UC Berkeley in 1989 as an associate professor and became a full professor in 1991. He was elected a Fellow of the Econometric Society in 2002.

Professor Farrell previously was Deputy Assistant Attorney General for Economics with the U.S. Dept. of Justice, Chief Economist at the Federal Communications Commission, assistant professor at MIT, a principal member of the technical staff at GTE Laboratories, and National Fellow at the Hoover Institution. He served on the Computer Science and Telecommunications Board at the National Academies of Science. He was Editor of the Journal of Industrial Economics, President of the Industrial Organization Society, and Chair of Berkeley's Competition Policy Center.