The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Department of Justice's (DOJ) Antitrust Division have been holding a series of joint public hearings designed to examine whether and when specific types of single-firm conduct harm competition and consumer welfare, in violation of Section 2 of the Sherman Act, and when they are procompetitive and lawful.

NERA Affiliated Consultant Dr. Andrew Joskow, a former Deputy Assistant Attorney General at the DOJ's Antitrust Division, participated in the latest session in Washington, DC on 28 March 2007. The panel explored issues regarding remedies in single-firm conduct cases. Other panel participants included Robert W. Crandall, a senior fellow in economic studies at the Brookings Institution; David A. Heiner, vice president and deputy general counsel for antitrust at the Microsoft Corporation; Per Hellstrom, chief of Unit C-3 at the European Commission's Directorate General for Competition; Abbott (Tad) Lipsky, a partner at Latham & Watkins LLP and a former Deputy Assistant Attorney General at the DOJ's Antitrust Division; Richard A. Epstein, the James Parker Hall distinguished service professor of law, faculty director for curriculum, and the director of the law and economics program at University of Chicago Law School; Franklin M. Fisher, the Jane Berkowitz Carlton and Dennis William Carlton professor of microeconomics, Emeritus, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Dietrich Kleemann, head of the task force on ex post assessment of merger decisions at the European Commission's Directorate General for Competition; and John Thorne, senior vice president and deputy general counsel at Verizon.