Lear - Economic Consultancy

Lear is an economic consultancy that specializes in applying microeconomic modelling and quantitative tools to a variety of issues. We support firms and their legal advisors in: (i) proceedings before national and supranational competition authorities for suspected breaches of the antitrust legislation or for the ex ante review of merger transactions; (ii) civil claims before national courts regarding anticompetitive practices, IP or trademark infringements and contractual breaches, acting as the party-appointed expert and providing expert damages quantification. We also routinely undertake research projects, policy evaluations and impact assessments in the field of competition policy and beyond, on behalf of institutional clients such as the European Commission, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the World Bank. Examples of our work include: - the quantification of the damages caused by a cartel in the market for medium and heavy trucks, where we have estimated damages using econometric techniques; - the assessment of the competitive effects of a merger in the sector for the retailing of gasoline, where we have managed large datasets on gas pumps’ prices to predict the price effect of the merger; - an evaluation of so-called killer acquisitions in the pharmaceutical sector, where we have used machine learning techniques to predict which characteristics of a transaction make it more likely to have adverse effects on competition.