Clair Brown

Clair Brown is an American economist who is Professor of Economics and Director of the Center for Work, Technology, and Society at the University of California, Berkeley.

Brown has published research on many aspects of how economies function, including high-tech industries, development engineering, the standard of living, wage determination, poverty, and unemployment.

Her father, Norman Brown, was an attorney, and her mother, Mary Shackleford, graduated in economics from Florida State University.

[3] Brown uses an institutional approach to economic analysis, where social rules and customs or norms structure firm and individual behavior that plays out in the marketplace, following in the long line from Veblen to Commons to Williamson.

Following Marshall, Brown assumed that family expenditures could be divided into basics (necessaries), variety (comforts), and status (luxuries or positional goods).

Berkeley’s Competitive Semiconductor Manufacturing Program headed by Dean Dave Hodges and Professor Rob Leachman in engineering, Brown headed the human resources group, with the goal of studying how the HR system structured worker input into problem solving and process improvements and how workers acquired new knowledge and skills.

With her new focus on mostly well-educated men, Brown asked, “Does education and then a good job allow people to achieve a middle-class life style and leave labor market problems behind?” The answer was a complicated “no”.

Brown with Dr. Michael McCulloch also collected and analyzed the data from a group of women treated with Supermannan, a natural cure for bladder infections discovered by Richard Katz.