Dr. Daniel P. O’Brien is a Senior Consultant with Econic Partners. He previously served as Deputy Director of the Federal Trade Commission’s Bureau of Economics, where he oversaw the economic analysis in roughly half of all federal antitrust investigations in the United States. He has also held senior positions as Chief of the Economic Regulatory Section in the Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division and as Assistant Director for Consumer Protection in the FTC’s Bureau of Economics.
Dr. O’Brien has extensive experience as an economic consultant and expert on competition and consumer protection matters across a wide range of industries and economic issues. His areas of expertise include vertical and conglomerate mergers, vertical restraints, horizontal mergers (including those involving complex contracting among intermediaries), regulation, and common ownership.
His research in industrial organization and microeconomics has been published in leading economics and law journals, including the American Economic Review, Journal of Economic Theory, RAND Journal of Economics, American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, Antitrust Law Journal, International Journal of Industrial Organization, Journal of Industrial Economics, Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, and Journal of Law, Economics & Organization, among others.
He teaches a short course on vertical mergers at the CRESSE Summer School on Competition Policy and Regulation in Europe and has previously held full-time faculty positions at the University of Michigan and Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business. He has also taught economics at Northwestern University, Georgetown Law Center, the University of Verona (Italy), and the University of California, Berkeley. Dr. O’Brien has been an invited speaker on competition issues at seminars and conferences worldwide, including FTC hearings on vertical merger guidelines and common ownership, OECD sessions on common ownership, the Bergen Center for Competition Law and Economics Conference (where he delivered the keynote address), and events hosted by competition authorities in several countries.