Truth on the Market and the International Center for Law & Economics are delighted (if a bit saddened) to announce that President Obama intends to nominate Joshua Wright, Research Director and Member of the Board of Directors of ICLE and Professor of Law at George Mason University School of Law, to be the next Commissioner at the Federal Trade Commission.
Josh is widely regarded as the top antitrust scholar of his generation. He is the author of more than 50 scholarly articles and book chapters, including several that were released as ICLE White Papers. He is a co-author of the most widely-used antitrust casebook, and co-editor of three books on topics ranging from Competition Policy and Intellectual Property Law to the Intellectual History of Law and Economics. And, of course, he is Truth on the Market’s most prolific blogger — a platform that has likely projected his influence more than any other.
Josh holds economics and law degrees from UCLA, and he is one of only a small handful of young antitrust scholars in the legal academy to hold both a PhD in economics as well as a JD. If confirmed, he will also be only the fourth economist to serve as FTC Commissioner (following Jim Miller, George Douglas and Dennis Yao) and the first JD/PhD.
Josh’s scholarship and approach to antitrust are firmly grounded in the UCLA economics tradition, exemplified by the members of Josh’s dissertation committee — Armen Alchian, Harold Demsetz & Benjamin Klein.
For my part, I couldn’t be happier with Josh’s nomination. Josh’s “error cost” approach to antitrust and consumer protection law will be a tremendous asset to the Commission. His work is rigorous, empirically grounded, and ever-mindful of the complexities of the institutional settings in which businesses act and in which regulators enforce. I am honored to have co-authored several articles with Josh, and, like many of the readers of this blog, I have learned an incredible amount about antitrust law and economics from my interactions with him. The Commissioners and staff at the FTC will surely similarly profit from his time there.
