Luke Froeb

Previously, Professor Froeb completed a two-year term as director of the Bureau of Economics at the US Federal Trade Commission, where he managed economic impact analyses of US antitrust and consumer-protection laws. His major accomplishments included clarifying the role of economic structural models—such as merger simulation modeling, auction models, and bargaining models—and contributing to analysis of bundling, cartel investigations, oil merger investigations, and gasoline pricing. In addition, he participated in several major bureau investigations.

Over the last twenty years, Professor Froeb has been a leading figure in the economics of competition policy. His models have been applied widely in the area of merger analysis, and his publications have appeared in prominent academic journals including Antitrust Law Journal and Journal of Industrial Economics. In addition, he has spoken around the world on topics including antitrust, mergers, law and economics, and patent damages. He has created or collaborated on several economic software products, including software written for the DOJ, and has been honored with multiple grants and awards.

Along with former colleagues at the DOJ, Professor Froeb has helped develop a suite of interactive web applications designed to teach lay people (attorneys and judges) how oligopoly models work. The models provide a transparent mapping from evidence to prediction, which not only provides them credibility, but also gives lay attorneys and judges an intuitive feel for how they work.

Professor Froeb has also taught graduate-level courses in industrial organization and econometrics at Tulane University. Before joining Vanderbilt University, he was an economist at the Antitrust Division of the DOJ. In 1989, he spent a year as the Kramer Foundation Fellow at the University of Chicago Law School.

Professor Froeb can be contacted by email through Ray Kolls, a managing director at BRG.