Contributions by Federal Trade Commission Economists to Consumer Protection: Research, Policy, and Law Enforcement

Abstract

Imust begin by thanking William (“Bill”) Wilkie for inviting me to share my perspective on the role of economists at the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in advancing consumer protection policy. Professor Wilkie has long advocated for the preservation of FTC history, with the hope that future researchers will learn from and build on prior work. I share this goal; I know how easy it is for a generation of scholars to be unaware of what has preceded them because I was once like them. There is a significant potential for losing knowledge related to public policy—in part because much of the analy sis within government entities is nonpublic and in part because public reports do not always find homes in the aca demic literature. Moreover, even published research can be lost over time if it appears in a stream of research over looked by newer scholars from different disciplines. Indeed, a new PhD economist working in behavioral economics recently asked me if we at the FTC had ever considered that information disclosures may not work as intended. At that moment, I realized that I had failed because decades of work at the FTC on this issue had not made its way to the next generation of policy researchers. My goal in this essay is to provide readers with a rough road map of consumer protection economics at the FTC. After providing some insight into my perspective in con structing this road map, I describe the history of the Division of Consumer Protection (DCP) within the FTC’s Bureau of Economics (BE) and the current role of econo mists in the division. I then highlight some key contribu tions by FTC economists to the conceptual and empirical development of consumer protection economics, the advancement of consumer policy analysis, and support of