Bruce Owen
Member, Steering Committee
Senior Fellow, SIEPR
Director, Public Policy Program

Bruce Owen is the Gordon Cain Senior Fellow at SIEPR. He is the Morris M. Doyle Professor in Public Policy and director of the Public Policy Program and also a professor, by courtesy, of economics. Bruce’s research is in the areas of competition and regulation policy, law and economics, and mass media.

Professor Owen co-founded Economists Inc. in 1981 and was president and chief executive officer until recently. Economists Inc. is a consulting firm specializing in microeconomic analysis that provides expert advice to legal counsel, businesses, trade associations and government agencies. Previously, Professor Owen was the chief economist of the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice and, earlier, of the White House Office of Tele-communications Policy. He was a faculty member in the schools of business and law at Duke University, and before that at Stanford University.

He is the author or co-author of numerous articles and eight books, including Television Economics (1974), Economics and Freedom of Expression (1975), The Regulation Game (1978), The Political Economy of Deregulation (1983), Video Economics (1992), and Electric Utility Mergers: Principles of Antitrust Analysis (1994). He has been an expert witness in a number of antitrust and regulatory proceedings, including United States v. AT&T, United States Football League v. National Football League and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission review of Southern California Edison’s proposed acquisition of San Diego Gas and Electric Co.

In 1992 he headed a World Bank task force that advised the government of Argentina in drafting a new antitrust law. More recently, he has advised government agencies in Mexico and the United States on telecommunications policy and Peru on antitrust policy. He is a consultant to the World Bank in connection with the economic evaluation of legal and judicial reform projects.

For more than 10 years, Professor Owen taught a seminar on law and economics at Stanford University’s Washington campus. His latest book, The Internet Challenge to Television, was published by Harvard University Press in 1999. His research interests include regulation and antitrust, economic analysis of law, economic development and legal reform, and intellectual property rights. He is a specialist in telecommunications and mass media economics.