Profile: Robert Willig

Competition Economists

Biography: Competition Economists

Robert D Willig is a senior consultant to Compass Lexecon. He is also professor of Economics and Public Affairs at Princeton University, where he teaches in the Economics Department and in the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, and serves as the faculty chair of the Masters of Public Affairs programme.

He served as deputy assistant attorney general in the US Department of Justice, antitrust division, from 1989 to 1991. Before joining the Princeton Faculty in 1978, he was supervisor in the Economics Research Department of Bell Laboratories. Mr Willig has written, lectured and consulted widely on the subjects of industrial organisation, the relationships between government and business, and domestic and international microeconomic policy. He is the author of Welfare Analysis of Policies Affecting Prices and Products, Contestable Markets and the Theory of Industry Structure and numerous articles in the professional economics and legal literature. He is a co-editor of the Handbook of Industrial Organization, Can Privatization Deliver? Infrastructure for Latin America and Second Generation Reforms in Infrastructure Services.

Mr Willig has served as a consultant and adviser for the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice on antitrust policy; for the OECD, the Inter-American Development Bank and the World Bank on global trade, competition, regulatory and privatisation policy; and for governments on microeconomic reforms. He has provided expert testimony to Congress, federal administrative agencies, federal courts, state courts and state public utility commissions on antitrust matters and issues concerning regulation and deregulation of telecommunications, transportation, energy, and other industries. He has advised many corporations on antitrust and regulatory issues, and on pricing, costing and business organisation.