Richard Higgins has worked as an economist in private and public sector roles since 1980. Dr. Higgins has expertise in business litigation, antitrust, and mergers and acquisitions in many industries. He supervised merger investigations for clients such as Cargill, Nestle, Anheuser Busch, PepsiCo, and Diageo; and he supervised the economic analysis of Heinz’s proposed acquisition of Beech Nut that was presented to the agencies. Dr. Higgins submitted affidavits to the FCC addressing the federal court’s line of business restrictions, and he coauthored affidavits with Prof. Janusz Ordover addressing the competitive effects of Comcast and Time Warner’s acquisition of Adelphia. Dr. Higgins has supervised litigation support in the aircraft parts, mining, and specialty metals industries. He has published numerous articles in professional journals and books in the fields of law and economics, economic regulation, and antitrust policy, on topics such as the competitive effects of FTC prohibitions on “reverse payments” by branded pharmaceutical companies, computational methods for analyzing mergers among firms in spatial competition, and the short-run competitive effects of vertical integration. Dr. Higgins supervised key aspects of the damage analysis in the well-known vitamins class action for one of the major defendants.

Ph.D., Economics, University of Virginia; B.A., Economics, Louisiana State University