Markets Wired

Federal Trade Commission Chairman Jon Leibowitz today announced the appointment of two new deputy directors of the FTC’s Bureau of Economics. Ken Heyer will join the agency from the Department of Justice’s Economic Analysis Group on June 18, and will serve in a career position as Deputy Director for Antitrust. Leemore Dafny, from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, will assume a newly created position on August 1 as Deputy Director for Health Care and Antitrust to enhance the agency’s efforts to promote competition in the health care sector.

“I am very pleased that we will have two such distinguished economists joining the Bureau,” said Howard Shelanski, who was named Director of the Bureau last month and is slated to assume the position on July 1. “Ken’s skill and wealth of experience will be invaluable to our competition mission, and Leemore will bring cutting-edge expertise to our antitrust enforcement in health care markets and more broadly as well. I am also very thankful to Alison Oldale, who Ken replaces, for her expert guidance of the Bureau’s antitrust mission during her year as Deputy on detail from the UK Competition Commission.”

Heyer has held a variety of management positions since joining the DOJ’s Antitrust Division in 1982. Most recently, he was Chief of the Economic Analysis Group’s Competition Policy Section, and from 2001 to 2010 he served as the Division’s Economics Director, the highest position held by a career economist in DOJ’s Antitrust Division. Prior to being promoted to management, he had worked at the Division for many years as a staff economist. In 1999 Heyer received the Antitrust Division’s first William F. Baxter Award for outstanding contributions in the area of economic analysis. Heyer holds a Ph.D. in Economics from U.C.L.A., and a B.A. from Queens College, CUNY.

Dafny is an Associate Professor of Management and Strategy, and the Herman Smith Research Professor in Hospital and Health Services at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, where she has served on the faculty since 2002. She is a microeconomist whose research focuses on competition in healthcare markets. Her work has appeared in the American Economic Review, the Journal of Law and Economics, and the New England Journal of Medicine. Dafny graduated summa cum laude from Harvard College and earned her Ph.D. in Economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. From 1995-1997, she worked as a consultant with McKinsey & Company in Washington, DC. She is a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, a Faculty Associate of the Institute for Policy Research, and a Faculty Affiliate of the Center for the Study of Industrial Organization at Northwestern.

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