Life Sciences

Darius Lakdawalla

Quintiles Chair in Pharmaceutical Development and Regulatory Innovation, School of Pharmacy,
Professor, Sol Price School of Public Policy,
Director of Research, Leonard D. Schaeffer Center for Health Policy and Economics,
University of Southern California

Darius Lakdawalla is a leading authority on health economics and health policy. Professor Lakdawalla has extensive expertise in pharmaceutical industry policy, medical innovation, prescription drug pricing and drug competition, as well as health insurance coverage and drug reimbursement by private payors and Medicare Part D. In connection with his research, Professor Lakdawalla has testified before Congress a number of times on topics related to innovation, patient access, and government reimbursement of prescription drugs including most recently in connection with the Inflation Reduction Act’s anticipated economic impacts on the pharmaceutical industry.

Professor Lakdawalla has been retained as an expert witness in multiple life sciences and healthcare matters, in which he evaluated both liability and damages issues. He has provided economic testimony related to allegations of product liability, breach of contract, misappropriation of trade secrets, product hopping, and generic drug price fixing. He also served as an expert for the merging parties in the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC’s) challenge of Amgen’s acquisition of Horizon Therapeutics, addressing the FTC’s allegation that the acquisition would allow Amgen to entrench Horizon’s dominant position through the use of bundled rebates. Professor Lakdawalla has testified both in deposition and at trial.

Professor Lakdawalla also has extensive experience providing business consulting services to major pharmaceutical companies, as well as analyzing drug clinical trial data.

An award-winning researcher, Professor Lakdawalla has published articles in leading economics, medical, and health policy journals, including the American Economic Review, Health Affairs, the Quarterly Journal of Economics, the New England Journal of Medicine, and the Journal of the American Medical Association. His article “Economics of the Pharmaceutical Industry” was published in the Journal of Economic Literature. He has also coauthored chapters in the Handbook of Health Economics, The Oxford Handbook of the Economics of the Biopharmaceutical Industry, and The Elgar Companion to Health Economics (2nd edition), among others.

Professor Lakdawalla currently serves as an associate editor for the Journal of Health Economics. He was previously an associate editor for the American Journal of Health Economics and the Review of Economics and Statistics. He has also served as an expert panelist for the National Academy of Medicine. Professor Lakdawalla is a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER).

For more than a decade, Professor Lakdawalla has taught courses on health economics and policy, risk analysis, and health management. Before joining USC, he served as senior economist and director of research at the RAND Corporation’s Bing Center for Health Economics.

Margaret K. Kyle

Chair in Intellectual Property and Markets for Technology,
MINES ParisTech

Margaret Kyle is a noted authority on competition, intellectual property (IP), and innovation, with extensive multinational experience with life sciences and healthcare topics.

Professor Kyle has been retained as an expert witness in multiple matters and has significant testifying experience, including at trial. She has provided testimony on a range of issues, including damages related to alleged product misrepresentation, pricing of pharmaceutical products, and nascent competition. The global Women@Competition platform named Professor Kyle among forty notable women competition professionals in their forties. Global Competition Review recognized her to its inaugural list of the world’s most important antitrust academics.

In her academic work, Professor Kyle has examined the impact of antitrust, trade, and IP policies on R&D investment, innovation, and competition. In particular, Professor Kyle has substantive experience with issues related to pricing of pharmaceutical products, R&D productivity, new product distribution, and competition between branded and generic pharmaceutical products. In addition, she has written about antitrust merger enforcement issues in pharmaceutical markets, with applications to other dynamic markets characterized by innovation. In the context of COVID-19, she has analyzed how incentives can promote the development of new medical technologies and advance the rapid manufacture of tests and treatments.

Professor Kyle’s previous positions include visiting professor of strategy at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management; visiting scholar at the Center for the Study of Income and Productivity at the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco; professor at the Toulouse School of Economics; assistant professor at the London Business School, Duke University, and Carnegie Mellon University; and visiting professor at the University of Hong Kong.

Professor Kyle consults to policy entities in the United States, Europe, and the UK on competition, economics, and innovation topics. She is a member of DG Competition’s Economic Advisory Group on Competition Policy. At France’s Conseil National de Productivité, which advises the French Prime Minister and the Minister of Economic Affairs, she is one of eleven independent academic economists analyzing the country’s productivity and competitiveness, particularly issues linked to the Euro Zone. She coauthored a note on policies to encourage pharmaceutical innovation for France’s Conseil d’Analyse Économique. In the UK, Professor Kyle serves on the Research Committee for the Office of Health Economics.

Professor Kyle has coauthored chapters in the Handbook of Health Economics, the Oxford Handbook of the Economics of the Biopharmaceutical Industry, and Elsevier’s Encyclopedia of Health Economics. Her academic papers have been published in leading economics, strategy, and health policy journals. In 2024, Professor Kyle won a Concurrences Antitrust Writing Award for her coauthored article, “The Economics of New Product Launches and Access to Pharmaceutical Products in the EU.”

Professor Kyle is associate editor of the International Journal of Industrial Organization. She has been invited to speak at numerous conferences on issues such as nascent competition, reverse payment patent settlements, and excessive pricing.

Sean Nicholson

Professor, Department of Economics,
Professor, Brooks School of Public Policy,
Director, Sloan Program in Health Administration,
Cornell University;
Senior Advisor, Cornerstone Research

Sean Nicholson is an expert in the analysis of pharmaceutical competition, innovation, and pricing. In pharmaceutical and healthcare matters, Professor Nicholson has provided expert testimony in antitrust and competition, product misrepresentation, fraudulent pricing, kickback, patent infringement, trade secrets, and breach of contract matters. He has testified at trial in federal and state courts and before the International Trade Commission.

Professor Nicholson conducts research on innovation in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries and the value of new medical technologies. He is a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and has served as a research director of the Upstate Health Research Network.

Widely published, Professor Nicholson’s research has appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine, the Journal of Health Economics, and the Handbook of Health Economics, among others. He is a former associate editor of Health Economics.

Professor Nicholson teaches in the department of economics and the Brooks School of Public Policy at Cornell University. Before joining the Cornell faculty, he taught courses on healthcare systems at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. Professor Nicholson has received several awards for excellence in teaching.