Joshua Wright
Department: Antonin Scalia Law School
Colleges / Universities: George Mason University
Joshua D. Wright is University Professor and Executive Director of the Global Antitrust Institute at George Mason University. He also holds a courtesy appointment in the Department of Economics. He is a leading scholar in antitrust law, economics, intellectual property, and consumer protection.
Professor Wright served as a commissioner of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) from 2013 to 2015. In this role, he led efforts to reach an agreement with fellow commissioners to release the FTC's first-ever guidelines on how the agency plans to use its powers to police "unfair" competition by businesses. Previously, he served in the FTC's Bureau of Competition as its inaugural Scholar-in-Residence from 2007 to 2008; and he also served the FTC as an intern in the Bureau of Economics and the Bureau of Competition.
Professor Wright has published more than 70 articles and book chapters, co-authored a leading antitrust casebook, and edited several book volumes in the areas of antitrust law, economics, intellectual property, and consumer protection. Professor Wright also served as Co-Editor of the Supreme Court Economic Review, a Senior Editor of the Antitrust Law Journal, and an Editor of the International Review of Law and Economics. Before his tenure at George Mason University, Professor Wright clerked for Judge James V. Selna of the United States District Court for the Central District of California.
Degrees
Ph.D. Economics, University of California, Los Angeles, 2003
J.D. University of California, Los Angeles, 2002
M.A. Economics, University of California, Los Angeles, 2001
B.A. Economics, University of California, San Diego, 1998
Recent Academic Article Summaries
The Missing Role of Economics in FTC Privacy Policy
Privacy regulation restricts information flows, the lifeblood of the digital economy, and have significant economic impact. Yet actions by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to protect privacy often lack economic analysis and fail to provide clear evidence of consumer harm.
Rules to protect privacy should be based on evidence of harm to consumers and economic analysis.
Antitrust Provides a More Reasonable Regulatory Framework than Net Neutrality
In 2015, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) imposed network neutrality rules on Internet Service Providers (ISPs). The rules depressed investment and harmed consumers. In 2017, the FCC started a proceeding to end net neutrality regulation.
Antitrust law can address harm to innovation arising from anticompetitive acts by ISPs. Antitrust requires proof that consumers were harmed, reducing the cost of regulation.
The Death of Antitrust Safe Harbors: Causes and Consequences
In the 1980s and 1990s, antitrust courts ruled that some business behavior would be presumed legal under antitrust case law and merger guidelines, creating “safe harbors.” In the twenty-first century, most of those safe harbors have disappeared.
Advances in economic analysis and theory do not justify abandonment of safe harbors. The loss of safe harbors is best explained by political changes at administrative agencies.
Are State Consumer Protection Acts Really Little-FTC Acts?
This article compares legal protections for consumers at the state and federal levels.
State-level consumer protection acts favor consumers against businesses much to a greater degree than does the Federal Trade Commission.
Antitrust, Economics and Innovation in the Obama Administration
The author warns that aggressive antitrust policy will lead to harmful errors in assessing novel business practices.
Antitrust enforcement strategies and economic understanding of innovative business practices and methods have often lagged behind innovation causing a reliance on monopolistic explanations. This results in false positive findings of monopolies.
Blog Posts
Related Scholars
Bruce Kobayashi
Colleges / Universities: George Mason University
C. Scott Hemphill
Colleges / Universities: New York University
Carl Shapiro
Colleges / Universities: University of California, Berkeley
Christopher Sprigman
Colleges / Universities: New York University
