Robert D. Willig (In Memoriam)

Robert Willig is Professor of Economics and Public Affairs Emeritus at the Woodrow Wilson School and the Economics Department of Princeton University. Earlier, he was Supervisor in the Economics Research Department of Bell Laboratories. His teaching and research have specialized in the fields of industrial organization, government-business relations, and welfare theory. From 1989 to 1991, Dr. Willig served as Deputy Assistant Attorney General for Economics in the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, where he led the development of the 1992 Merger Guidelines. Dr. Willig is the author of Welfare Analysis of Policies Affecting Prices and Products, Contestable Markets and the Theory of Industry Structure (with William Baumol and John Panzar), and numerous articles, including “Merger Analysis, IO Theory, and Merger Guidelines.” Dr. Willig is also co-editor of The Handbook of Industrial Organization, Can Privatization Deliver?: Infrastructure for Latin America and Second Generation Reforms in Infrastructure Services, and has served on the editorial boards of the American Economic Review, the Journal of Industrial Economics and the MIT Press Series on regulation. He is also an elected Fellow of the Econometric Society and was an associate of The Center for International Studies. Dr. Willig has served as a consultant and advisor for the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice on antitrust policy, for OECD, the Inter-American Development Bank, and the World Bank on global trade, competition, regulatory and privatization policy, and for governments of diverse nations on microeconomic reforms. He has advised many corporations on antitrust and regulatory issues, and on pricing, costing, and business organization. He has testified many times as an expert before Federal and State courts, before administrative agencies, and internationally as well.