John Asker

John Asker is an expert in antitrust and competition economics. He has testified as an expert witness and served as an economic consultant and advisor to both federal and state regulatory agencies.

Professor Asker conducts research related to antitrust policy, cartel behavior, vertical restraints, auction design, firm-level productivity, and the effects of industry subsidies. He also has expertise at the intersection of financial markets and antitrust.

Professor Asker was retained by counsel for SoftBank and Sprint Corporation in the $26 billion T-Mobile/Sprint merger. The U.S. Department of Justice retained him as a consulting expert to evaluate potential competitive effects of the then-proposed merger between Dow Chemical Co. and DuPont. He served as an expert for the U.S. Federal Communications Commission in the matter of the AT&T–DirecTV merger. He has coauthored several amicus briefs presented before the U.S. Supreme Court and federal appellate courts.

Professor Asker has held editorial positions at the American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, the RAND Journal of Economics, and the Journal of Industrial Economics. His research has been published in leading economics journals, including the Journal of Political Economy and the American Economic Review. Who’s Who Legal has named Professor Asker as a leading competition economist, as well as a Thought Leader and Future Leader in the competition field.

Professor Asker has taught graduate-level courses in antitrust policy, industrial organization, and strategy. He also regularly lectures on antitrust topics, including to U.S. federal agencies, as part of the American Bar Association’s continuing legal education programs, and as a participant in academic conferences. Professor Asker has been a visiting scholar at the Federal Trade Commission’s Bureau of Economics, the Department of Economics at Harvard, and Yale Law School. Before joining the faculty of UCLA, he was an associate professor of economics at the Stern School of Business at New York University.

Education

• Harvard University, Ph.D.
• Australian National University, Bachelor of Economics (first class honours and University Medal)