| Cornerstone Research delivers rigorous economic analysis in labor market antitrust, workplace discrimination, and higher education admissions matters. Our strength lies in translating complex economic theories and data into compelling testimony that resonates in litigation. We support leading economists to analyze labor issues related to class certification, labor market definition, disparate treatment and impact and/or discrimination in the workplace, wage structure, and labor market antitrust issues including no-poach agreements, monopsony cartel and wage-fixing allegations, and the effect of mergers on labor market competition and workers.
We also help clients mitigate litigation risks and navigate regulatory scrutiny of wage and equity disputes; gender, race, and legacy status issues in higher education; discrimination claims in a variety of settings including reverse discrimination claims and in settings outside the workplace; and compliance with emerging labor standards, including those involving AI and worker classification. |
Working alongside legal teams, we have successfully supported first-of-their-kind, policy-setting labor cases involving mergers, no-poach agreements, and alleged discrimination in the workplace and in higher education admissions. We provide pragmatic, data-driven analyses to address the contentious issues that often arise in labor and employment litigation. Aligning our economic insights with specific case strategies, we have helped clients achieve favorable outcomes in high-stakes cases.
Our professionals and academic experts are at the forefront of cutting-edge labor issues, including algorithmic bias in hiring practices and gig worker classification. Leveraging advanced econometric methods and analyses to address these and other evolving disputes, our approach is thorough, rigorous, and actionable in litigation. |
Our extensive network includes top experts from academia and industry.
Our extensive network includes top experts from academia and industry.
David Card
Class of 1950 Professor Emeritus of Economics,
Professor of the Graduate School,
Director, Econometrics Laboratory (EML),
University of California, Berkeley
David Card is a world-renowned economist with wide-ranging econometric and statistical expertise. Professor Card has served as an expert witness in antitrust, labor, consumer fraud and product liability, and statistical sampling matters.
In 2021, Professor Card was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his empirical contributions to labor economics, and particularly for pioneering research on social and economic forces that affect low-wage workers. His work covers topics that include immigration, wages, education, and gender- and race-related differences in the labor market. He also has expertise in complex statistical techniques such as machine learning (ML) algorithms, which are central to cases alleging algorithmic discrimination.
Professor Card has provided testimony in numerous matters, both in depositions and at trial. He testified in Students for Fair Admissions Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College et al., a high-profile trial addressing Harvard College’s use of race in its undergraduate admissions process.
Professor Card coauthored the book Myth and Measurement: The New Economics of the Minimum Wage, and has coedited multiple books, including Immigration, Poverty, and Socioeconomic Inequality, as well as several volumes of the Handbook of Labor Economics. He has published over one hundred journal articles or book chapters and has served as coeditor of Econometrica and the American Economic Review.
Prior to joining the faculty at the University of California, Berkeley, Professor Card taught at Princeton University. He has served as a visiting professor at Harvard University, Columbia University, and the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. A former director of the National Bureau of Economic Research’s Labor Studies Program, Professor Card has been elected a fellow of the Econometric Society, the Center for Advanced Study in Behavioral Sciences, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Among his numerous awards, Professor Card received the American Economic Association’s 1995 John Bates Clark Medal, which honors the economist under forty whose work is judged to have made the most significant contribution to the field. The Econometric Society has honored him with the Frisch Medal Award, and he received BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award for his contributions to evidence-based economic policy.
Our extensive network includes top experts from academia and industry.
Margaret S. Stockdale
Professor of Psychology,
Purdue School of Science,
Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI)
Margaret “Peggy” Stockdale is an expert on employment discrimination. An industrial and organizational (I/O) psychologist with more than twenty-five years of experience, Professor Stockdale addresses a range of issues related to gender, race, and age discrimination; sexual harassment; organizational culture; and retaliatory behavior. She has testified in multiple employment discrimination matters, including class actions. Professor Stockdale directs the Women in Work Laboratory (WoW Lab), which conducts and disseminates research on gender issues in the workplace.
Professor Stockdale has broad expertise in human resources and organizational psychology research and methodologies. Her work covers subjects that include job analysis, personnel selection, promotion, compensation, turnover, workplace diversity, leadership, and social issues in the workplace.
Professor Stockdale has coauthored or coedited five books, including The Psychology and Management of Workplace Diversity and Sex Discrimination in the Workplace: Multidisciplinary Perspectives. She has contributed book chapters and published peer-reviewed articles on sex discrimination, sexual harassment, occupational and job segregation, and workplace policy, among other topics. She has served on the editorial boards of several academic and professional journals.
At IUPUI, Professor Stockdale teaches undergraduate and graduate courses on workplace diversity, I/O psychology, and social science research methods.
Professor Stockdale is a fellow at the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues, and the American Psychological Association.
Our extensive network includes top experts from academia and industry.
Paul Oyer
The Mary and Rankine Van Anda Entrepreneurial Professor and Professor of Economics,
Stanford Graduate School of Business;
Senior Fellow, Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research;
Stanford University
Paul Oyer is an authority on empirical labor economics. He focuses on labor and human resources issues, the economics of organizations, incentives, and matching (or two-sided) markets. Professor Oyer has been retained as an expert witness in a variety of matters related to labor economics and compensation, such as performance-based pay systems, overtime pay, alleged discrimination, the effects of “non-compete” agreements, class actions, and lost wages.
Professor Oyer analyzes career dynamics of highly skilled workers in competitive labor markets. Focusing particularly on legal and software engineering professionals, he assesses recruitment and employee incentive systems, including stock option programs. Recently, using data from the global freelancing platform UpWork, Professor Oyer wrote a report about the impact of the “gig” economy on flexible work arrangements and on improved “matching” between firms and workers. He teaches these concepts to MBA students at Stanford Graduate School of Business.
Professor Oyer is a research associate with the National Bureau of Economic Research. He serves as the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Labor Economics and is the author or coauthor of two books. His articles have appeared in numerous journals, including the Journal of Finance, Research in Labor Economics, and the Journal of Financial Economics.
Professor Oyer began his career in management consulting and has also worked in the high-tech industry.
Our extensive network includes top experts from academia and industry.
Justin McCrary
Paul J. Evanson Professor of Law,
Columbia Law School;
Senior Advisor, Cornerstone Research
Justin McCrary is a leading expert on statistical methods and economic modeling, with a focus on antitrust and competition, labor, and consumer product matters. Professor McCrary has testified on class certification, antitrust, labor, and statistics issues. His wide-ranging experience covers numerous industries and markets, such as automotive, commodities, technology, healthcare, life sciences, finance, telecommunications, and retail.
Antitrust and competition
Professor McCrary testifies in complex antitrust and competition matters in various industries. His experience includes:
- In a significant matter in a high-tech industry, he addressed allegations of a conspiracy to fix prices and also analyzed and rebutted an opposing expert’s damages model. In another matter, he analyzed damages resulting from alleged collusion among pharmacies.
- On behalf of a global food and agriculture corporation, Professor McCrary evaluated an alleged conspiracy to manipulate wheat futures and options contracts.
- Professor McCrary has experience in multiple large and complex antitrust class actions involving financial markets. For example, he addressed statistical sampling of alleged cartel communications in In re Foreign Exchange Benchmark Rates Antitrust Litigation.
- Professor McCrary rebutted damages in a case alleging that a large software provider maintained its monopoly position through anticompetitive practices, including exclusionary contracting. The client prevailed in a confidential arbitration proceeding.
- Professor McCrary has provided testimony in antitrust matters involving intellectual property. For example, in Palm Beach Tanning Inc. et al. v. Sunless Inc., an antitrust counterclaim filed in response to a trademark case, he analyzed Section 1 and 2 tying allegations and issues related to the Robinson-Patman Act.
- In the telecommunications industry, Professor McCrary served as a consulting expert for the U.S. Department of Justice in its review of AT&T’s acquisition of T-Mobile.
Labor
Professor McCrary has wide-ranging labor markets expertise. His representative experience includes:
- Professor McCrary provided testimony in two seminal no-poach litigation matters involving the McDonald’s and Jimmy John’s franchises. In both matters, he analyzed the potential procompetitive benefits of the challenged clauses and opined on class certification issues. Class certification was denied in both cases, with both U.S. district court judges relying on Professor McCrary’s analyses in their opinions.
- Professor McCrary testified on class certification issues in a high-profile gender discrimination case focused on pay and promotion outcomes at a large U.S. retailer. The judge subsequently denied certification of the plaintiffs’ proposed class.
- Defense counsel retained Professor McCrary to analyze merits and damages issues in Morgan et al. v. U.S. Soccer Federation Inc., a gender pay discrimination class action. Citing Professor McCrary’s expert report in his order, the judge ruled in favor of the defendant’s motion for summary judgment.
- Defense counsel in Robinson et al. v. Jackson Hewitt Inc. and Tax Services of America retained Professor McCrary to analyze allegations that franchise no-poaching agreements restricted mobility and suppressed compensation.
Consumer fraud and product liability
Professor McCrary has testified in multiple matters alleging product liability, false advertising, and breach of contract. For example, in Beaty v. Ford Motor Company, a product liability matter involving alleged automotive defects, he provided class certification and damages rebuttal testimony.
Serving as an expert in high-profile consumer class actions, Professor McCrary has conducted empirical analyses and provided testimony on issues related to causation, liability, and damages. He has also rebutted damages models using a variety of empirical techniques, including conjoint analysis and hedonic regressions.
Statistical methods and analysis
The founding director of the Social Sciences Data Laboratory (D-Lab) at the University of California, Berkeley, Professor McCrary is an authority on high-performance computing and statistical techniques.
He has testified on sampling, probability theory, and statistical methods. In the closely watched matter, In Re Twitter Inc. v. Elon Musk et al., he was retained to address allegations regarding the statistical sampling methods employed by Twitter in analyzing spam and fake accounts.
Professor McCrary has examined the statistical evidence for healthcare providers’ alleged overbilling of Medicare in both government audit and False Claims Act (FCA) matters. He also has substantial experience with mortgage-backed securities matters, including rebuttals to analyses invoking matching estimators.
Research and teaching
Professor McCrary publishes research on econometric methods, including on measuring damages in antitrust litigation. In addition, his scholarship covers a wide range of topics, including employment discrimination, high-frequency trading, financial market structure, and monetary policy. A prolific author and coauthor, his work has appeared in leading journals, including the American Economic Review, the Journal of Econometrics, and the Review of Economics and Statistics. Professor McCrary is a faculty research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER).
Before joining Columbia University, Professor McCrary taught at the School of Law at the University of California, Berkeley.
Labor and Discrimination Capabilities
Class certification issues are central to complex discrimination and labor market antitrust matters. Working with leading academic experts, Cornerstone Research applies advanced statistical methods to assess whether common impact can be established using common class-wide evidence and methodologies. Our experience spans a range of industries, including retail, fast food, manufacturing, technology, sports, finance, and healthcare. The matters we have worked on involve consideration of employees of at a variety of skill levels—from workers at quick-service restaurants to healthcare and finance professionals. Our experience at the class certification phase on labor-related cases includes high-profile matters such as Dukes v. Walmart and Phipps v. Walmart.
Following recent U.S. Supreme Court rulings on race-based admissions policies, higher education institutions face complex legal challenges involving the use of race and legacy status in admissions policies. Cornerstone Research has worked with colleges and universities to quantify the role of race and legacy status in admissions outcomes. This includes simulating alternative admissions regimes that do not consider these factors.
Cornerstone Research supported the key labor economists in Students for Fair Admissions Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College et al. and Students for Fair Admissions Inc. v. University of North Carolina et al. In each case, the district court judges favorably and extensively cited these experts and ruled in favor of our clients. Through our involvement in these prominent cases, we have demonstrated our wide-ranging expertise in quantifying the role of race in admissions and developing innovative admissions models.
Cornerstone Research brings cutting-edge statistical techniques and decades of experience to complex discrimination claims. Our collaborative team of professionals and affiliated experts evaluates discrimination allegations in a variety of contexts, including promotion and pay, pre-litigation consulting on pay equity issues, and the use of race, gender, or other factors in education admissions and employment decisions. High-profile matters in which we have been involved include Dukes v. Walmart, Students for Fair Admissions Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College et al., and Morgan v. United States Soccer Federation.
As big data and algorithmic decision-making reshape industries, concerns about bias and discrimination are ascendant in many business contexts. Cornerstone Research’s interdisciplinary approach, combining economic theory and data science expertise, enables us to provide insightful analyses of algorithmic bias and discrimination claims in the advertising, consumer finance, employment, and healthcare sectors, among others.
Regulatory bodies and policymakers are increasingly focused on antitrust concerns in labor markets. We have worked on a variety of high-profile labor antitrust matters, including merger evaluation, no-poach (both vertical and horizontal), and monopsony cartel matters. Our labor economists understand the unique economics of labor markets when assessing allegations of anticompetitive conduct. High-profile matters we have worked on in this space include Conrad v. Jimmy John’s, Deslandes v. McDonald’s, Hunter v. Booz Allen Hamilton, and In Re: Broiler Chicken Grower Antitrust Litigation, as well as matters involving no-poach allegations in the tech sector and in healthcare.
As the gig economy and platform work models evolve, disputes over worker classification, particularly the nature of employment and independent contracting, are on the rise. Cornerstone Research has a proven track record of providing expert testimony and analysis in complex worker classification matters, including those involving the gig economy, leading technology platforms, and traditional industries. We have additionally worked on matters related to whether employees are rightly classified as trainees versus employees.
Cornerstone Research brings wide-ranging experience to executive compensation issues, including performance, risk-taking, firm viability, and shareholder rights. Because analysis and testimony in these cases may also call for accurate compensation valuation, our professionals and affiliated experts are skilled in quantifying the incentives inherent in compensation structures. We evaluate the full spectrum of compensation components, including cash, nonmonetary benefits such as stock options, and other executive perks.
Our consulting professionals and affiliated labor economist experts have extensive experience in assessing labor law violations. This includes determining class eligibility based on job descriptions and analyzing large datasets, such as time cards and payroll information, that are often produced in labor code compliance matters.
Featured Cases
Selected Professionals
Our staff consultants contribute expertise in economics, finance, accounting, and marketing, as well as business acumen, familiarity with the litigation process, and a commitment to provide outstanding support.
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Bryan M. Ricchetti
Bryan M. Ricchetti
Senior Vice President
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Darwin V. Neher
Darwin V. Neher
Senior Vice President
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Sara Champion
Sara Champion
Principal
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Elisa Olivieri
Elisa Olivieri
Principal
Featured Publications
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