Expertise in Economic Theory and Modeling
| The interdependence and growth of global markets have increased the scale and frequency of international trade disputes. As these disputes become more complex, expert assessments of financial, economic, and business matters have become increasingly important.
The venues where our firm has provided expert analysis include the U.S. International Trade Commission, the U.S. Department of Commerce, the International Trade Administration, and the World Trade Organization. |
In these matters, Cornerstone Research experts and staff:
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Our extensive network includes top experts from academia and industry.
Our extensive network includes top experts from academia and industry.
John Asker
Armen A. Alchian Chair in Economic Theory and Professor of Economics,
University of California, Los Angeles;
Senior Advisor, Cornerstone Research
John Asker is a leading expert in industrial organization and antitrust and competition economics. Professor Asker focuses on topics related to antitrust policy, cartel behavior, vertical restraints, auction design, firm-level productivity, industry subsidy effects, artificial intelligence (AI) pricing mechanisms, and cryptocurrency. He also has experience with issues at the intersection of financial markets and antitrust.
Professor Asker has testified in numerous high-profile matters, including mergers and civil litigation.
Professor Asker was retained by Amazon in its $8.5 billion acquisition of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, which Global Competition Review named as 2023 Matter of the Year. Counsel for Meta retained him to assess competitive effects in the U.S. Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC’s) review of Meta’s $1 billion acquisition of Kustomer. He was retained by counsel for SoftBank and Sprint Corporation in the $26 billion T-Mobile/Sprint merger. Professor Asker provided written testimony to the World Trade Organization on behalf of the Canadian government in the U.S.–Canada softwood lumber dispute.
Professor Asker has served as an economic consultant to both federal and state regulatory agencies. In the AT&T/DirecTV merger, he served as an expert for the U.S. Federal Communications Commission. The U.S. Department of Justice retained him to evaluate potential competitive effects of the then-proposed merger between Dow Chemical Co. and DuPont. He has coauthored several amicus briefs presented before the U.S. Supreme Court and federal appellate courts.
Professor Asker has provided testimony, in depositions and at trial, in multiple civil litigation matters. In EFN West Palm Motor Sales LLC v. Hyundai Motor America Corp. et al., a federal trial, his testimony on vertical relations between a manufacturer and dealers contributed to the jury ruling in favor of Hyundai and awarding no damages. Professor Asker has also testified in cases alleging exclusionary conduct, cartel behavior, price discrimination, and predatory trading. He has been retained in antitrust matters involving financial markets to address issues of alleged collusion and price manipulation.
Professor Asker has conducted extensive research on cartels, including their structure and operation, aggregate market power impact, related economic damages, and implications for antitrust policy. He has contributed research on cartels and collusion to leading economics reference texts, notably the Handbook of Industrial Organization. He has also published in leading journals on vertical restraints.
Professor Asker is an editor of the Journal of Political Economy. He has also held editorial positions at the American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, the RAND Journal of Economics, and the Journal of Industrial Economics. His research has been published in leading economics journals, including the Journal of Political Economy and the American Economic Review.
Lexology Index (formerly Who’s Who Legal) has recommended Professor Asker as a leading competition economist and consulting expert in the competition field. Global Competition Review recognized him to its inaugural list of the world’s most important antitrust academics. The Australian government appointed Professor Asker to a Competition Task Force Advisory Panel that oversees changes to Australia’s competition laws.
Professor Asker teaches courses in antitrust policy, industrial organization, and strategy. He also speaks on antitrust topics, including to U.S. federal agencies, and has been a visiting scholar at the FTC’s Bureau of Economics, the Department of Economics at Harvard, and Yale Law School. Before joining the UCLA faculty, Professor Asker was an associate professor of economics at the Stern School of Business at New York University.
Our extensive network includes top experts from academia and industry.
Daniel Sumner
Frank H. Buck Jr. Distinguished Professor of Agricultural and Resource Economics,
Chair, California Agricultural Issues Lab,
University of California, Davis
Daniel Sumner is an expert in national and international competition in agricultural markets as well as agricultural economics and policy. His research and writing focus on the consequences of farm and trade policy for agriculture and the economy. Professor Sumner has analyzed markets for beef, dairy, wine, olive oil, rice, wheat, cotton, and many other agricultural products.
He has testified in numerous matters involving agriculture, including cases related to antitrust, false advertising, class certification, and cross-border trade. Professor Sumner has experience as an expert witness in depositions and trials in state and federal courts in the United States, with regulatory agencies, and before the U.S. International Trade Commission, the Canadian International Trade Tribunal, and dispute settlement panels and the Appellate Body of the World Trade Organization.
As chair of the California Agricultural Issues Lab, Professor Sumner oversees and conducts a university outreach program related to public issues concerning agriculture. Prior to his current positions, Professor Sumner was the assistant secretary for economics at the United States Department of Agriculture, where he was involved in policy formulation and analysis on the whole range of topics facing agriculture and rural America, from food and farm programs to trade, resources, and rural development. In his role as supervisor of the Department of Agriculture’s economics and statistics agencies, Professor Sumner was also responsible for data collection, outlook, and economic research. He has also served as a senior economist for the President’s Council of Economic Advisers.
Professor Sumner is the author or coauthor of more than one hundred academic publications, including articles in the Journal of Political Economy, Agricultural Economics, and the Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics. He has also coauthored and contributed to a number of books and has written widely for industry outlets.
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