Alden Abbott is associate director in the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) Bureau of Competition. He leads policy development, evaluation, and international activities in the Bureau, and previously supervised the bureau’s policy and international offices from 2006–07. From April through June 2005, Mr. Abbott was a visiting fellow at All Souls College, Oxford University, where he lectured on American antitrust law and wrote articles on comparative antitrust topics. Prior to joining the FTC in June 2001, Mr. Abbott served in a variety of senior government positions at the Department of Commerce (DOC) and the Department of Justice (DOJ), including acting general counsel, DOC; chief counsel, National Telecommunications and Information Administration, DOC; senior counsel, Office of Legal Counsel, DOJ; and special assistant to the assistant attorney general, Antitrust Division, DOJ. Mr. Abbott has published and lectured widely on law and economics and antitrust, and has been an adjunct professor at George Mason University Law School since 1990.

Paul Atkins was appointed by President George W. Bush to be a commissioner of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on July 29, 2002. Commissioner Atkins’s twenty-two-year career has focused on the financial services industry and securities regulation. Before his appointment as commissioner, he assisted financial services firms in improving their compliance with SEC regulations and worked with law enforcement agencies to investigate and rectify situations in which investors were harmed. The largest of these investigations involved the Bennett Funding Group, Inc., a $1 billion leasing company that perpetrated the largest “Ponzi” fraud in U.S. history, in which more than 20,000 investors lost much of their investment. Assisting the company’s court-appointed bankruptcy trustee, he served as crisis president of Bennett’s sole surviving subsidiary. By stabilizing its finances and operations and rebuilding and expanding its business, Commissioner Atkins improved its share value for the remaining investors by almost 2,000 percent.

Thomas O. Barnett was confirmed on February 10, 2006, by the Senate as assistant attorney general of the Antitrust Division of the United States Department of Justice. Mr. Barnett became the Antitrust Division’s acting assistant attorney general effective June 25, 2005, and previously served as the division’s deputy assistant attorney general for civil enforcement, a position he occupied beginning on April 18, 2004. Prior to joining the Antitrust Division, Mr. Barnett was a partner in the Washington, D.C., office of Covington & Burling, where he was vice chair of the firm’s Antitrust and Consumer Protection Practice Group. At Covington & Burling, Barnett provided counsel on corporate transactions and licensing arrangements in the airline, chemical, construction aggregate, defense, hospital, petroleum, and pharmaceutical industries. Mr. Barnett is experienced in antitrust litigation and antitrust issues involving intellectual property, e-commerce, sports law, and corporate compliance programs.

Dennis Carlton is deputy assistant attorney general for economic analysis at the United States Department of Justice. He is a professor of economics at the Graduate School of Business at the University of Chicago, where he teaches in the business school, Law School, and Economics Department. His work, in both teaching and research, centers on microeconomics, industrial organization, and antitrust. He has published more than eighty articles and two books, including one of the leading textbooks in industrial organization. In addition to his academic credentials, Mr. Carlton is a senior managing director and former president of Lexecon Inc., a leading economic consulting firm specializing in the application of economics to litigation. Mr. Carlton has served as an expert in numerous domestic and foreign cases involving issues in antitrust, regulation, and intellectual property in industries such as telecommunications, energy, airlines, railroads, insurance, computers, credit cards, chemicals, and automotives. He recently served as a consultant for the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission.

Sean Ennis is a senior economist in the Competition Division of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), where he leads the OECD’s competition assessment project, an international effort to develop and foster best practice for identifying and removing the anticompetitive effects of regulation. He previously worked at the Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division and at the European Commission’s Directorate General Competition, developing economic analyses for merger and non-merger investigations. His scholarly writings focus on topics in competition and regulation, with published research on telecommunications and health care.

Robert W. Hahn is co-founder and executive director of the AEI-Brookings Joint Center, which examines cutting-edge issues in law and economics, regulation, and antitrust. Previously, he worked for the President’s Council of Economic Advisers, where he helped design the innovative market-based approach for reducing acid rain. Hahn has served on the faculties of Harvard University and Carnegie Mellon University. He frequently contributes to leading scholarly journals and general-interest periodicals, including the American Economic Review, Yale Law Journal, Science, and the New York Times. He is the author of Reviving Regulatory Reform: A Global Perspective (AEI Press–Brookings Institution, 2000) and several other books. He has been a consultant to governments and businesses on a variety of economic issues. In addition, Hahn is co-founder of the Community Preparatory School, an inner-city middle school in Providence, Rhode Island, that provides opportunities for disadvantaged youth to achieve their full potential.

Marc Kesselman was sworn in as the U.S. Drug Administration’s (USDA) general counsel by Agriculture secretary Mike Johanns on June 1, 2006. As general counsel, Mr. Kesselman advises the secretary and directs all legal activity for the department, including litigation, counseling, and regulatory development. Before joining the USDA, Mr. Kesselman was deputy general counsel at the Office of Management and Budget where he handled a wide range of regulatory and budgetary matters, mediated interagency disputes, addressed significant matters on the Justice Department’s civil litigation docket, formulated presidential executive orders, and developed and implemented legal policy initiatives. Mr. Kesselman worked extensively with numerous federal departments and agencies, focusing on the Departments of Agriculture, Defense, Energy, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, Justice, Labor, State, and Treasury, as well as with the various White House offices.

William Kovacic was sworn in on January 4, 2006, as a commissioner of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC)). Mr. Kovacic joined the FTC from his position as the E. K. Gubin Professor of Government Contracts Law at George Washington University Law School, where he began teaching in 1999. He was the FTC’s general counsel from 2001 through the end of 2004. Mr. Kovacic worked at the Commission from 1979 to 1983, first with the Bureau of Competition’s Planning Office and later as an attorney advisor to former commissioner George W. Douglas. After leaving the FTC in 1983, he was an associate with the Washington, D.C., law office of Bryan Cave, where he practiced in the firm’s antitrust and government contracts departments, until joining the George Mason University School of Law in 1986. Earlier in his career, he spent a year on the majority staff of the Subcommittee on Antitrust and Monopoly of the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary. Mr. Kovacic also clerked for the Honorable Roszel C. Thomsen, U.S. district judge for the District of Maryland.

Deborah Platt Majoras was sworn in on August 16, 2004, as chairman of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). Chairman Majoras’s tenure as FTC chairman has been marked by the commission’s strong efforts to protect and enhance consumer welfare. She has focused on ensuring data security and protecting consumers from emerging frauds, such as identity theft, spyware, and deceptive spam. Previously, she worked at Jones Day in Washington, D.C., where she was a partner in the firm’s antitrust section. While at Jones Day, she worked on a variety of antitrust counseling and civil and criminal litigation matters, including mergers and acquisitions, monopolization, price-fixing, distribution issues, and governmental investigations. Chairman Majoras was also a member of the firm’s technology issues practice and participated in a variety of non-antitrust commercial disputes and criminal cases, including fraud, securities violations, and employment discrimination.

Brian Mannix is the associate administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Policy, Economics, and Innovation. He oversees the Sector Strategies initiative, a collection of innovative industry-sector specific programs. Mr. Mannix has over three decades of scientific and policy experience, including positions as a senior research fellow in regulatory studies at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, director of science and technology studies at the Manufacturers Alliance for Productivity and Innovation, and managing editor of Regulation magazine. He also served as deputy secretary of natural resources for the Commonwealth of Virginia under Governors George Allen and Jim Gilmore.

Daniel Meron was sworn in on August 31, 2006, as general counsel of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Prior to joining HHS, Mr. Meron was the principal deputy assistant attorney general for the Civil Division of the United States Department of Justice. In that capacity, he assisted in overseeing the work of over 700 lawyers litigating thousands of cases, and, in particular, providing counsel and legal representation to the department on a broad array of legal issues. Mr. Meron joined the Department of Justice (DOJ) in July 2003. Prior to joining the DOJ, Mr. Meron was a partner at the national law firm of Sidley Austin, where he specialized in appellate, regulatory, and commercial litigation, with a particular focus on regulated industries.

Timothy Muris is a George Mason University Foundation Professor of Law. He served from 2000 until 2004 as chairman of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). During his tenure at the FTC, he created the highly popular “National Do Not Call Registry,” which has allowed millions of consumers to block unwanted telemarketing calls. In addition to his current position at George Mason, Professor Muris is of counsel at the law firm of O’Melveny & Myers, and is co-chairman of the firm’s antitrust/competition practice. Professor Muris held three previous positions at the FTC: assistant director of the Planning Office (1974–76), director of the Bureau of Consumer Protection (1981–83), and director of the Bureau of Competition (1983–85). After leaving the FTC in 1985, Muris served with the Executive Office of the President, Office of Management and Budget, for three years. He was also of counsel with the law firms of Collier, Shannon, Rill & Scott (1992–2000) and Howrey, Simon, Arnold & White (2000-01). Muris joined George Mason University School of Law as a professor in 1988 and was interim dean of the law school from 1996 to 1997.

Charles Nottingham is chairman of the Surface Transportation Board (STB), an economic regulatory agency that Congress charged with the fundamental missions of resolving railroad rate and service disputes and reviewing proposed railroad mergers. Prior to joining the STB, Nottingham was the associate administrator for policy and governmental affairs for the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA). From 1999 through 2002, he served as the chief executive officer of the Virginia Department of Transportation. He previously served as Virginia’s assistant secretary of transportation. From 1995 until 1998, he served as counsel and chief of staff for Congressman Tom Davis, and chief of staff for Congressman Bob Goodlatte. Prior to his appointment to his previous position at the FHWA in 2002, Nottingham served as counsel to the Committee on Government Reform of the U.S. House of Representatives.

Robert Pitofsky is counsel in the Washington office of Arnold & Porter and a professor at Georgetown Law, where he was dean during most of the 1980s. Mr. Pitofsky served as the chairman of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). He has also worked for the FTC as a commissioner and as the director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection. His practice and his teaching focus on antitrust and trade regulation matters for companies such as Hoffmann-La Roche, Bell South, Microsoft, Becton, Dickinson and Company, Pactive, and Visa.

Jeffrey Rosen is general counsel and senior policy advisor for the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). Before joining the OMB, Mr. Rosen served as general counsel of the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT). As that department’s chief legal officer, he had final authority within the DOT to resolve all legal questions arising within or referred to the department. Rosen oversees the activities of more than 400 lawyers in the DOT and its operating administrations. He was also responsible for the department’s regulatory program, enforcement and litigation activities, legal issues relating to international activities involving transportation, and coordination and clearance of legislative matters. He also acted as counsel to Secretary Norman Mineta. Before joining the DOT, Mr. Rosen was a senior partner in the Washington, D.C., office of the national law firm of Kirkland & Ellis LLP, where he also served on the firm’s management committee.

Michael Salinger was appointed in June 2005 as director of the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) Bureau of Economics. Before his appointment, he served as a professor of economics and as chairman of the Department of Finance and Economics at the Boston University School of Management. Prior to joining Boston University in 1990, Salinger was an associate professor at Columbia University Business School. From 1985 to 1986, he was a staff economist in the Bureau of Economics. Salinger has published extensively in areas of interest to the FTC’s mission, including the competitive effects of tying and of vertical mergers, the structural determinants of market power, and the statistical properties of firm growth. He serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of Industrial Economics and the Review of Industrial Organization. He has been a consultant for the FTC, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, and private clients.

Todd Zywicki is a professor of law at George Mason University School of Law and a senior fellow of the James Buchanan Center’s Program on Politics, Philosophy, and Economics at George Mason University. He is editor of the Supreme Court Economic Review. From 2003 through 2004, Professor Zywicki served as the director of the Office of Policy Planning at the Federal Trade Commission. He teaches in the areas of bankruptcy, contracts, commercial law, business associations, law and economics, and public choice and the law. He previously taught at Georgetown Law Center, Boston College Law School, and Mississippi College School of Law. He is a fellow of the International Centre for Economic Research in Turin, Italy. During the fall 2007 semester, Professor Zywicki will be a visiting Professor of law at Vanderbilt University Law School. He has lectured and consulted with government officials around the world, including in Italy, Japan, and Guatemala. Professor Zywicki was recently named a member of the United States Department of Justice study group on identifying fraud, abuse, and errors in the United States bankruptcy system.