ABC - Key Persons
Axel has over three years of professional experience in competition and public economics. His main expertise lies in the applied economics for overcharge analysis where he combines data from the industry with stand-of-the-art theory on causal inference. Axel has a solid track record of collecting, understanding and preparing data sources for econometric analyses. His expertise includes statistical theory, modelling, computational economics, reproducible research, coding and programming.
Axel uses microeconomic data to build and estimate econometric models, with a focus on arbitration and antitrust litigation cases, notably in damage quantification, a field in which he co-authored multiple expert reports. He is involved in major German and European cartels in various industries including agriculture, automotive and pharmaceutical. He has also gained experience in abuse of dominance cases in digital markets and regulation of platforms. Before joining the ABC team, Axel worked at the OECD, the Banque de France and the French Ministry of Economy and Finance.
Axel has a Master in Economics from Sciences Po in Paris. He holds a Bachelor's degree in Political Science from the Freie Universität Berlin and a Bachelor of Arts from Sciences Po.
A native French speaker, he is also fluent in English and German and has basic knowledge of Spanish.
Falk has over six years of experience in economic modeling in the areas of industrial organization and microeconomics. As an empirical economist Falk has extensive experience in data analysis applying various microeconometric methods including strategies for causal inference. His experience includes the implementation of structural models and comprehensive data analysis with a focus on damage quantification.
Co-author of a large number of economic reports and studies, his experience in competition and arbitration matters covers a wide range of sectors including industries such as forestry, food & beverages and fast-moving consumer goods as well as the chemical sector, heavy industries, large vehicles and the pharmaceutical sector. Falk has also been active as court appointed expert in a major European cartel case.
Falk also has substantial experience in state aid, for instance he analyzed the impacts of rescue and restructuring aid in the banking sector among other sectors. Falk is involved in discussions about the use of state aid to promote economic policy goals in the EU as for example within the scope of IPCEI.
Falk also has dedicated his attention to mergers and the impact of common ownership on pricing decisions by applying structural modeling and simulation techniques in various sectors including notably in banking. Further, Falk has co-worked on policy statements regarding the developments of prices in the energy market and its impact on environmental sustainability.
Falk has first-hand experience of European competition policy from his time in the Cabinet of the European Commissioner for Competition Margrethe Vestager. At the European Commission he dealt with state aid cases in sectors such as banking, energy and heavy industries. He also spent some time at the Chief Economist of the Dutch competition authority (ACM) where he investigated the impact of mergers in the telecommunications sector on consumer prices. During a research stay at the Max-Planck-Institute for Research on Collective Goods he conducted research on banking regulation.
Falk presented his work at various international academic conferences such as the International Industrial Organization Conference (IIOC) in 2019 in Boston, the Annual Conference of the European Association for Research in Industrial Economics (EARIE) in 2019 in Barcelona, the Congress of the European Economic Association in 2020 and at annual conferences of Verein für Socialpolitik. Falk assisted teaching undergraduate courses in microeconomics and international economics and several seminars at TU Darmstadt. He also published in Open Economies Review.
Falk holds a Ph.D. in Economics from TU Darmstadt and completed the doctoral program at the Graduate School of Economics, Finance and Management (GSEFM) at Goethe University in Frankfurt. Falk acquired his M.Sc. in Policy Economics from the Erasmus School of Economics in Rotterdam and his B.Sc. in Economics from the University of Bonn (including a stay at the University of Toronto).
A native German speaker, he is fluent in English, has advanced knowledge of French and basic knowledge of Spanish and Czech.
Lukas has over six years of experience in economic modelling in the area of microeconomics and game theory. He has gathered extensive expertise in analyzing economic and regulatory policies both in foundational research and for application purposes. His experience includes evaluations of the energy market, of sustainability issues and of digital market design. He is Co-author of various economic reports, and his experience in competition and regulatory economics covers the agricultural, the chemical, the banking, and the consumer goods sector. Lukas notably worked on damage quantification, regulatory impact assessments, and on various other economic analyses in the context of antitrust and arbitration cases. As a theoretical economist his methodological tool box is filled with a range of solutions for optimization problems and market design.
Lukas is a frequent commentator on issues of current economic interest, including on monetary policy, trade policies and regulatory design. He regularly publishes economic articles in political magazines, such as Global & European Dynamics and Die Politische Meinung.
As a researcher, Lukas published in Energy Economics and presented his work at various conferences, such as the bi-annual conference on economic design in York, United Kingdom 2017. He taught undergraduate and graduate courses in game theory and microeconomics for several years. Lukas was also visiting researcher at Maastricht University.
Lukas holds a Ph.D. in Economics from Paderborn University. He also holds a M.Sc in International Economics and Management and a B.A. in International Business Studies both from Paderborn University (including a semester at Universidad de Montevideo (Uruguay), and Oita University (Japan)).
A native German speaker, he is fluent in English, has advanced knowledge of Spanish and basic knowledge in French and Japanese.
Job Titles:
- Managing Director
- Full Professor
Frank has over 20 years of competition experience. Before joining ABC economics, he was Head of European Competition Economics at NERA, Berlin, for over seven years where he led over 120 competition and regulatory cases for various clients. His experience also includes over eight years as senior official in DG Competition, Brussels, dealing with many merger and in particular also Article 102 cases and over two years at the OECD Competition Division, Paris.
His experience covers all sectors and all areas of competition and regulatory economics, notably competitive effects of mergers, cartels, quantification of damage, abuse of dominance and state aid, as well as vertical and horizontal restraints. He has acted as economic expert witness in front of national and international arbitration tribunals, the European courts and EU Member State courts and also worked as court appointed expert.
He has worked on a wide range of competition and regulatory matters including large national or EU-level merger cases such as the GE/Alstom transaction considered "Merger Control Matter of the Year 2015" by Global Competition Review, abuse of dominance and horizontal cases in front of the European Commission or national authorities and worked on some of the largest damages claims and arbitration cases in the EU. In addition, he and his team worked on various state aid and vertical cases as well as national merger cases such as Reckitt Benckiser/KY in front of the CMA or cases in front of the Bundeskartellamt or the Autorité de la Concurrence.
Frank is Full Professor in the Department of Economics and Quantitative Methods at the IÉSEG School of Management Paris and the Université Catholique de Lille, and a member of LEM-CNRS, the French Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique. He previously held academic positions at the Max Planck Institute in Bonn, Germany, the University of Bonn, Germany, at Indiana University Bloomington and at the University of California, Berkeley in the United States.
As Head of European Competition at NERA he rebuilt the European Competition practice from scratch and ensured a competition presence in several EU Member States and the UK reaching an overall team size of over 30 economists mainly located in Berlin, Paris and London.
As Senior Economist at the European Commission, he was responsible for the review and scrutiny of hundreds of antitrust and merger decisions, the peer review panels and the sector inquiry framework. In that function he also coordinated the sector inquiries into financial services, energy, and pharmaceuticals. He led among the largest European Commission inspection teams comprised also of members of the French, German, and UK authorities on dawn raids and was involved in cases such as ENI, Intel, Prokent/Tomra, Réel/Alcan Pechiney, MasterCard, Oracle/PeopleSoft, and Sony/BMG. He appeared on behalf of the European Commission at numerous conferences, presenting for example the Review of Article 102 for the European Commission at the 2006 ABA Fall meetings in the plenary session, in case hearings, and before the European courts. As a Senior Economist in the Policy and Decision Scrutiny Directorate, he was involved in the review of Article 102, the project group on services of general economic interest laying the foundations for a more economic approach in state aid control and was the responsible economist in the early phases of the damages claims initiative. He also repeatedly gave internal trainings for lawyers and economists both at DG Competition but also at national competition authorities.
Frank was also Senior Economist at the Competition Division of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) where he oversaw the Working Party on Competition and Regulation, the tri-annual meetings of OECD member and observer country competition authorities on technical economic and regulatory competition issues. In that function he authored several OECD background papers for example on market definition (joint with Prof. Ulrich Schwalbe) and on excessive prices. He also worked on subsidies and state aid and held responsibility for the OECD Competition Assessment Toolkit. His work comprised presentations and one-week training sessions at various competition authorities across Asia and Europe.
Frank is a frequent speaker at conferences and international seminars. Presentations include several two-day training sessions for German judges on the assessment and quantification of damage, market definition and abuse of dominance, a presentation at the Federal Cartel Office (Bundeskartellamt) on the European Commission's experience with the SIEC test in merger control in the context of the introduction of the test in Germany and a presentation on buyer power at the annual meeting of the Studienvereinigung Kartellrecht. Frank is member of the advisory board of the Journal of German and European Competition Law (Wirtschaft und Wettbewerb) the oldest competition journal in Europe. He teaches courses in Industrial Organisation, Competition Policy, Public and Regulatory Economics and Experimental Economics and publishes regularly in these areas. Among other journals, OECD publications, and books, his work has been published in the Antitrust Bulletin, Antitrust Law Journal, Economics Bulletin, European Competition Journal, the European Competition Law Review, the Journal of Competition Law and Economics, the Journal of European Competition Law and Practice, the Journal of Conflict Resolution, the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, the Journal of Institutional Economics, Neue Zeitschrift für Kartellrecht, the Journal of German and European Competition Law (Wirtschaft und Wettbewerb) and World Competition. He also won the 2014 Concurrences Antitrust Writing Award for his work on retail price maintenance.
Frank holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Bonn obtained under Nobel Laureate Reinhard Selten, and an MA in Political Science (obtained under Nobel Laureate Lin Ostrom) and an MA in Economics, both from Indiana University Bloomington, as well as a BA (Vordiplom) from the University of Freiburg.
A native German and French speaker, he is also fluent in English.
Remi Maier-Rigaud studied economics and political science at the University of Freiburg, the University of California Berkeley and the University of Cologne. After receiving his PhD from the University of Cologne, where he also held research positions, he worked for three years at the Directorate General Competition of the European Commission. Subsequently he served as Assistant Professor at the University of Cologne. In 2015 he was appointed Professor for Economics and Social Policy at Wiesbaden Business School (Department of RheinMain University of Applied Sciences) before he accepted a position as Professor at the Bonn-Rhein-Sieg University of Applied Sciences. He has over thirteen years of competition experience, including research stays at the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), the International Labour Office (ILO), the Rokkan Centre for Social Studies in Bergen, Norway and the Max Planck Institute in Bonn, Germany. During his time at the European Commission, he worked in the Pharma and Health Services Unit of DG Competition focussing on consumer benefits of the market entry of pharmaceutical companies producing generic drugs. He contributed to the Pharmaceutical Sector Inquiry and cases such as AT.39685 - FENTANYL and AT.39612 - Perindopril (Servier).
His major research interests comprise social security, health and consumer protection regulation as well as competition and regulation in the pharmaceutical sector. Remi Maier-Rigaud has published widely on the regulatory implications of digital innovations such as health apps and wearables with a focus on consumer protection, solidarity and ethics. His work appeared in Journals such as The Quarterly Journal of Economic Research and the German Review of Social Policy. He is a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Social Economy and Common Welfare.
Ulrich Schwalbe studied economics and political science at the Free University of Berlin. After receiving his PhD from the Free University of Berlin, he served as Associate Professor at the Institute of Economic Theory at the University of Mannheim. After completing his habilitation thesis, he served as acting Professor at the Universities of Mannheim, Bonn, and Essen before he accepted a position as a Senior Lecturer at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand. Since 1999 he holds the chair for Microeconomics and Industrial Organization at the University of Hohenheim, Stuttgart. Ulrich Schwalbe also teaches at the Free University of Berlin in the Master Program "European and International Business, Competition, and Regulatory Law".
His major research interests comprise microeconomics with a special focus on industrial organization, competition theory and policy, game theory and general equilibrium theory. Ulrich Schwalbe has published widely on all aspects of competition theory and policy as well as on game theory and general equilibrium theory. His work appeared in Journals such as the Journal of Competition Law and Economics, Journal of European Competition Law andPractice, Concurrences, Journal of German and European Competition Law (Wirtschaft und Wettbewerb), Games and Economic Behavior, Metroeconomica, Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics, Journal of Economics, Perspektiven der Wirtschaftspolitik, Zeitschrift für Urheber- und Medienrecht, Zeitschrift für das gesamte Handelsrecht und Wirtschaftsrecht, Neue Zeitschrift für Kartellrecht, Zeitschrift für Wettbewerbsrecht.He is a member of the scientific advisory board of the FIW (Research Institute for Economic Constitution and Competition), of the editorial board of NZKart, the Working Group Competition Economics at the German Federal Cartel Office and was member of the expert group of the Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology on the 8th amendment of the German Competition Law.
Ulrich Schwalbe has over 15 years of experience in advising private firms on all areas of competition law, including questions of market definition, merger control, cartels and collusive behavior, abuse of dominant market positions, quantification of damage caused by cartels as well as abusive behavior. Before joining ABC economics, he worked seven years asan academic affiliate for NERA. He regularly advises private firms (e.g. Heidelberg Zement, SevenOne Media, VG Media, Creaton, Pfeiffer & Langen, Deutsche Bahn, KabelDeutschland, ThyssenKrupp) as well as public institutions such as the OECD, the German Parliament, German Ministry of Economics and Energy, the German Federal Cartel Office (Bundeskartellamt) the German Network Agency (Bundesnetzagentur) on questions of competition theory and policy.
A native German speaker, he is also fluent in English.