Dr. Alexander Raskovich is the Director of Research for the Global Antitrust Institute (GAI). Prior to joining the GAI in January of 2022, he was a research economist for 31 years with the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ). While at the DOJ, Dr. Raskovich performed hundreds of economic analyses of mergers, acquisitions, and business practices.
Among his fondest achievements was helping to vacate the so-called Fin-Syn decrees of the 1960s, which had restricted contracting between broadcast television networks and independent producers. He also helped to vacate the 1948 Paramount decrees, which had prohibited Hollywood studios from owning theater chains and restricted how the studios could license their films.
Most recently, Dr. Raskovich was the longest tenured member of the team, first within DOJ and later as part of the interagency team with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), to draft the 2020 Vertical Merger Guidelines. In 2004–2005, he spent a year as senior staff economist at the President’s Council of Economic Advisors, where he advised Chairman Mankiw, other council members and White House staff on a variety of economic issues including on energy, insurance, and cost-benefit analyses of regulation.
Dr. Raskovich also worked at the Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) where he helped prepare Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill for Congressional testimony on terrorism insurance, and likewise helped prepare Ben Bernanke for his confirmation hearings to become the next CEA Chair. From 1994–1995, Dr. Raskovich was the Victor H. Kramer Fellow at the University of Chicago Law School. In 1992, he was a member of the Interagency Bank Competition Working Group which harmonized bank merger review across the DOJ, FRB, FDIC, and OCC.
Dr. Raskovich received his Ph.D. in economics from UCLA in 1990 with a specialization in industrial organization. He has published research in industrial organization in a number of peer-reviewed journals, including the Journal of Law & Economics, the European Economic Review, Journal of Industrial Economics, and International Journal of Industrial Organization.
