A Conference on
Grocery Store Antitrust: Historical Retrospective & Current Developments
Sponsored by the Bureau of Economics
Federal Trade Commission
Biographies of Participants
Introduction, “Can Antitrust Be Forward Looking?”
- Michael Salinger
- Dr. Michael Salinger is a Professor of Economics at the Boston University School of Management, where he has served as Chairman of the Department of Finance and Economics. Prior to joining Boston University in 1990, he was an Associate Professor at Columbia University Business School. From 1985 to 1986, he was a staff economist in the Bureau of Economics. Salinger has published extensively in areas of interest to the Commission’s mission, including the competitive effects of tying and of vertical mergers, the structural determinants of market power, and the statistical properties of firm growth. He serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of Industrial Economics and the Review of Industrial Organization. He has been a consultant for the FTC, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Australian Competition and Commerce Commission, and private clients. Salinger has a Ph.D. in Economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an undergraduate degree from Yale University.
-
Broad Overview
- Paul Ellickson
- Paul B. Ellickson is an Assistant Professor of Economics at Duke University. He received his PhD in Economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2000 and taught at the University of Rochester from 2000 to 2003. His research interests are in industrial organization, applied micro-econometrics and marketing. His current research focuses on analyzing competition in retail industries from a game theoretic perspective, with an emphasis on structural modeling.
- Andrew Taylor
- Andrew Taylor is an Inquiry Director at the UK Competition Commission (CC) where he is responsible for leading multi-disciplinary teams of economists, lawyers, accountants and business analysts inquiring into merger transactions as well as the effectiveness of competition in markets more generally. Andrew is currently leading the CC's investigation into the UK groceries industry. His previous cases have included the proposed acquisition of the London Stock Exchange by both Deutsche Boerse and Euronext in 2005 as well as merger transactions in carbonated soft drinks and waste treatment and disposal. Prior to joining the CC in 2005, Andrew was a consultant in the utilities sector, primarily water, and previously, worked for the Australian Government.
- David Parker
- David Parker is a Manager at Frontier Economics, London. During a ten-year career, he has worked on a wide variety of EU and UK antitrust cases, including the GE/Honeywell merger (for Rolls Royce) and the removal of Resale Price Maintenance on UK Medicaments (for the UK Office of Fair Trading). He has advised Tesco, the UK’s largest grocery retailer, on all the major investigations into the UK grocery industry over the last decade.
-
Panel, “Merger Objectives and Merger Review”
- Deborah Feinstein
- Deborah Feinstein is a leading antitrust lawyer, principally focusing on merger and acquisition matters before the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and Department of Justice (DOJ). She is named to The Best Lawyers in America® 2007 for Antitrust Law and Global Competition Review named her on its international list of the “Top 100 Women in Antitrust.” Ms. Feinstein has advised clients on hundreds of transactions, involving virtually all sectors of the economy. She has special expertise in the following areas: retail, food, consumer products, healthcare, chemicals, and automotive parts.
- James Fishkin
- James A. Fishkin is a Partner in the Antitrust/Competition practice group at Dechert LLP. Mr. Fishkin represents clients from a variety of industries on mergers and acquisitions before the Federal Trade Commission and Department of Justice. He also represents clients in private antitrust litigation. Prior to entering private practice in 2002, Mr. Fishkin spent 15 years at the Federal Trade Commission where he was lead attorney on many high profile merger investigations, including some of the most significant antitrust matters of the period. Mr. Fishkin was the lead attorney on virtually all of the major supermarket merger investigations, including Kroger/Winn-Dixie (2000), Ahold/Pathmark (1999), Albertson’s/American Stores (1999), Ahold/Giant Food (1998), Albertson’s/Buttrey (1998), Jitney-Jungle/Delchamps (1997), and Stop & Shop/Purity Supreme (1995). Mr. Fishkin was also lead attorney on the Staples/Office Depot (1997) and Time Warner/Turner Broadcasting System (1996) merger investigations, and various investigations of mergers between food manufacturers, industrial goods manufacturers and niche retailers. Mr. Fishkin participated in several merger trials, including FTC v. H.J. Heinz Co. (2000) and FTC v. Staples, Inc. (1997). Mr. Fishkin received numerous honors at the FTC, including the Distinguished Service award (2002) and the Paul Rand Dixon award (2000) for his work as the prime architect of the Commission’s supermarket merger enforcement program. Mr. Fishkin received his J.D. from the University of Iowa College of Law.
- Christopher MacAvoy
- Chris MacAvoy is a partner in Howrey LLP’s antitrust practice group in Washington, DC. His practice focuses on mergers, antitrust counseling, and government investigations. Mr. MacAvoy’s areas of expertise include mergers and joint ventures, distribution practices, price discrimination, and trade association activities. He has represented many prominent suppliers, distributors, and retailers of grocery products, as well as trade associations, in mergers, government investigations, and litigation. Significant merger and acquisition matters include Albertson’s merger with American stores, which was one of the largest supermarket mergers in history, Fortune Brands’ acquisition of multiple distilled spirits and wine brands from Pernod Ricard and Allied Domecq, ScanSoft’s acquisition of Nuance Communications, PepsiCo’s acquisition of Quaker Oats, and Tyson Foods’ acquisition of IBP. Mr. MacAvoy also serves as antitrust counsel to the Food Marketing Institute, the leading national trade association of grocery retailers and wholesalers.
- David Scheffman
- Dr. Scheffman, a Director with LECG, is a noted scholar, and award winning professor, with several years experience in high level government positions, including over 13 years at the FTC, twice as Director of the Bureau of Economics at the FTC. Dr. Scheffman has authored several important books and articles in the area of industrial organization and antitrust economics on topics such as “raising rivals’ costs,” market definition, merger analyses, analyses of barriers-to-entry, and vertical analyses. He has also written on, taught, and consulted on issues involving business strategy, marketing, pricing, distribution, and intellectual property. Dr. Scheffman is also an Adjunct Professor of Business Strategy and Marketing at the Owen Graduate School of Management at Vanderbilt University, where he was a chaired professor from 1989 until 1998. As an expert witness and regulatory and litigation consultant, Dr. Scheffman has worked on and testified on matters involving antitrust, mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures, class certification, RP, complex business litigation (marketing practices, contracts, torts, management practices, etc.), damages, and intellectual property (patents, copyrights, and trade secrets). He has made many presentations before the FTC, DOJ, and other federal government agencies, and in Canada, Europe, and South Africa.
-
Keynote Address, “The Role of Intellectual Leadership in Competition Policy”
- William Kovacic
- William Evan Kovacic was sworn in on January 4, 2006, as a Commissioner of the Federal Trade Commission.
Kovacic joined the FTC from his position as the E.K. Gubin Professor of Government Contracts Law at George Washington University Law School, where he began teaching in 1999. He was the FTC’s General Counsel from 2001 through the end of 2004. Kovacic earlier worked at the Commission from 1979 to 1983, first with the Bureau of Competition’s Planning Office and later as an attorney advisor to former Commissioner George W. Douglas. After leaving the FTC in 1983, Kovacic was an associate with the Washington, D.C., office of Bryan Cave, where he practiced in the firm’s antitrust and government contracts departments, until joining the George Mason University School of Law in 1986. Earlier in his career, he spent a year on the majority staff of the Subcommittee on Antitrust and Monopoly of the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary. He also clerked for the Honorable Roszel C. Thomsen, U.S. District Judge for the District of Maryland.
Since 1992, Kovacic has served as an adviser on antitrust and consumer protection issues to the governments of Armenia, Benin, Egypt, El Salvador, Georgia, Guyana, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, Morocco, Nepal, Panama, Russia, Ukraine, Vietnam, and Zimbabwe. He also has authored or coauthored books and articles on antitrust law, including Antitrust Law and Economics in a Nutshell and Antitrust Law in Perspective: Cases, Concepts, and Problems in Competition Policy.
Kovacic graduated with a bachelor’s degree from Princeton University in 1974, and received his J.D. from Columbia University in 1978.
-
Academic Paper Presentations on Retail Competition
- Catherine Tucker
- Catherine Tucker specializes in the marketing of new technologies, in particular those with an interactive component. Her research focuses on understanding marketing techniques for overcoming the "chicken and egg problem" inherent in technologies with network externalities. Recent empirical research projects have focused on exploiting heterogeneity in network externalities and how information about other participants affects technology adoption decisions. She received a Ph.D. in economics from Stanford University and took her first academic position at the marketing group at MIT Sloan. Her complete vitae is available at Catherinetucker.com.
- Jonathan Seaton
- Jonathan’s current research interests focus on micro-econometric analysis, specifically panel estimation and limited dependent variable techniques. Prior to joining the Business School he held positions at the University of St Andrews (1992-94), Keele University (1989-1991) and the University of Manchester (1986-1989).
- Raphael Thomadsen
- Raphael Thomadsen is an Assistant Professor of Marketing at UCLA Anderson. He holds a PhD in Economics from Stanford University, and has previously served on the Finance and Economics faculty at Columbia Business School. Prof. Thomadsen's research interests focuses on the nature of competition between firms, and how this affects pricing and product decisions. Much of his research has focused on the impact of geographic location on competition, including a current project that focuses on geographic and other determinants of how consumers choose which grocery store to patronize.
-
Academic Paper Presentations on Change/Dynamics in the Retail Industry
- Thomas Holmes
- Thomas J. Holmes is Curtis L. Carlson Professor of Economics at the University of Minnesota. He serves as a consultant for the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis and is a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research. He has been at Minnesota since 1995 and before that was on the faculty of the University of Wisconsin. He works in the field of industrial organization and much of his recent work addresses issues related to the location of industry.
- Brett Wendling
- Brett Wendling is currently a staff economist at the Federal Trade Commission. His dissertation addresses conceptual and measurement issues with medical care prices in the United States. He specifically examines how medical costs related to disease treatments have changed over time and differ across insurance types. He has been published in the Journal of Health Economics and the Journal of Women's Health.
- Arie Beresteanu
- Arie Beresteanu came to Duke in the Fall, 2001, after receiving his Ph.D from Northwestern University. He received his B.S. in Mathematics (1994) and M.A. in Economics (1997) from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His specialty is cross-sectional econometrics and, in particular, estimation under shape restrictions and partially identified models. He is interested both in theoretical issues and in applying the theory to fields like industrial organization and public finance. Professor Beresteanu's current research focuses on (1) estimation and testing in partially identified models (2) imposing restrictions coming from economic theory on nonparametric estimators and on testing. Professor Beresteanu's interests in applied Industrial Organization include the telecommunications industry and estimating dynamic models of entry and exit for retail industries.
- Adam Copeland
- Adam Copeland joined the BEA as an economist in 2005, after almost three years at the Federal Reserve Board. His work focuses on estimating structural models of firm and consumer behavior, with recent work focusing on durable goods markets, such as the automobile industry.
-
Panel, “Can Antitrust Be Forward Looking?”
- Dennis W. Carlton
- Dennis W. Carlton is the Deputy Assistant Attorney General for Economic Analysis. He is a Professor of Economics at the Graduate School of Business at the University of Chicago where he teaches in the Business School, Law School and Economics Department. His teaching and research centers on microeconomics, industrial organization, and antitrust. He has published more than 80 articles and two books including one of the leading textbooks in industrial organization. He is the co-editor of the Journal of Law and Economics and of Competition Policy International. In addition to his academic credentials, Mr. Carlton is the former President of Lexecon, a leading economic consulting firm specializing in the application of economics to litigation. Mr. Carlton has served as an expert in numerous domestic and foreign cases involving issues in antitrust, regulation and intellectual property in industries relating to telecommunications, energy, airlines, railroads, insurance, computers, credit cards, chemicals and autos and has also recently served as a consultant for the Department of Justice and FTC. He also served as a special consultant to the Department of Justice in the revision of the 1992 Merger Guidelines and to the Federal Trade Commission on antitrust policy. He lectures frequently on antitrust issues and is currently the sole economist serving on the Antitrust Modernization Commission, a Congressional commission examining U.S. antitrust laws.
- Joseph J. Simons
- Joe Simons is co-chair of the Antitrust Group at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP, resident in the firm’s Washington, D.C. office. Prior to joining the firm, he was the Director of the Bureau of Competition from June 2001 until August 2003. Along with a former chief economist of the Department of Justice Antitrust Division, Mr. Simons developed “Critical Loss Analysis,” a technique for market definition that has been adopted and used by the Antitrust Division, the FTC, and the U.S. Court of Appeals.
- Tim Brennan
- Tim Brennan is a professor of public policy and economics at the University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC) and a senior fellow with Resources for the Future (RFF). During 2006, he held the T. D. MacDonald Chair in Industrial Economics at the Canadian Competition Bureau. He has been an economist with the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice and taught at George Washington University. From 1996-97, he was a senior economist for the White House Council of Economic Advisers, and recently was a staff consultant to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission. He has authored numerous articles on antitrust, regulatory economics, electricity and telecommunications policy, copyright, and on the philosophy and methodology or economics. With Karen Palmer and others at RFF, he co-authored two books on electricity deregulation, A Shock to the System (1996) and Alternating Currents: Electricity Markets and Public Policy (2002). He is on the editorial boards of the Journal of Regulatory Economics, Information Economics and Policy, Communications Law and Policy, and the International Review of the Economics of Business. His current projects include the antitrust analysis of bundled rebates and economic issues in opening regulated telecommunications markets.
