Research Fellows

Bernard Ascher is former Director of Service Industry Affairs in the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR), an agency within the Executive Office of the President. A graduate of Brooklyn College (B.A. in Economics) and City University of New York (M.B.A. in International Trade), he is currently Adjunct Professor at University of Maryland University College. Research interests include trade in services; international mobility, licensing and regulation of service providers, including the professions. Nigel Barrella holds a J.D. from Harvard Law School and a B.S. from Duke University, and is registered to practice before the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office. He joined AAI after completing law school. His research interests include antitrust issues in technology-driven industries and in the agriculture industry.

Jonathan DeVito holds a J.D. from Rutgers School of Law — Camden (graduated May 2011) and a B.A. in History from Gettysburg College. He has served as a member of AAI's research team since 2010. His research interests include matters involved in proving efficiency at trial; the benefits of private antitrust enforcement; cartel criminalization; and the role of competition policy amid financial crises. As an AAI Research Fellow, Jonathan authored "The Role of Competition Policy and Competition Enforcers in the EU Response to the Financial Crisis" — a working paper in which he evaluates the EU's competition-based regulation of bank bailouts during the financial crisis and recommends that other jurisdictions incorporate competition policy in future crisis proceedings.

Flavia Teixeira Fortes holds a LL.M. in Intellectual Property from the George Washington University Law School (GWU) and a Bachelor of Laws from the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (UFMG), Brazil. While at GWU she interned with the Honorable Chief Judge Randal R. Rader of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. Flavia also interned at the Federal Trade Commission's Northwest Regional Office, in Seattle, and spent a summer at the Brazilian Competition Enforcement Agency (CADE). She has published on antitrust issues in Brazil, specifically on the judicialization of economic defense; buyer power in antitrust analysis; and the dynamic of leniency agreements and consent decrees in cartel settlements. Her research interests include the intersection of antitrust law and intellectual property law, antitrust review of mergers, especially in technology-driven or innovative markets, and cartel investigations.

James D. Hurwitz has a B.A. from San Francisco State University, a J.D. from University of California at Berkeley Law School and an LL.M from University of London's School of Economics and Political Science. From 1973 to 1978, he was a Deputy Attorney General for the State of California specializing in criminal appeals. From 1978 to 2008, he was an attorney at the Federal Trade Commission's Bureau of Competition and Office of the General Counsel. As an AAI Research Fellow, he has been writing on matters relating to the live event ticketing industry.

Graciela Miralles Murciego is a researcher and PhD candidate at the European University Institute (Florence, Italy). Her thesis,“Legal and Economic Perspectives on the Competitive Impact of Rebates” (supervised by Prof. Giorgio Monti), looks at fidelity discounts and loyalty rebates from a EU-US comparative perspective. Graciela holds an LLM in EU Law from the College of Europe (Bruges) and an LLM in Comparative European and International Laws from the European University Institute. She joins the AAI after being a Visiting Scholar at the University of Michigan Law School where she co-authored a paper with Prof Dan Crane (“Toward a Unified Theory on Exclusionary Vertical Restraints”, University of Southern California Law Review, 2011, vol. 84/3). Graciela is a qualified lawyer of the Madrid Bar since 2003 and worked between 2005-2008 as Legal Adviser and Head of International at the Spanish Bar Council (Consejo General de la Abogacía Española). Additionally, she also spent a summer at the Office of Commissioner William E. Kovacic at the Federal Trade Commission of the United States.

Tyler Patterson holds a J.D. Penn State University - The Dickinson School of Law and a B.A. in Political Science, with a concentration in international relations, from Binghamton University, State University of New York. His research interests include pharmaceutical antitrust issues, namely branded drug reformulations.

Ben Van Rompuy is a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute for European Studies of the Free University of Brussels (VUB), Belgium. He holds a Ph.D. in competition law, an LL.M. in International and European Law, and a Masters Degree in Media Studies from the VUB. In 2011, Ben was a Visiting Fellow at Georgetown University Law Center and served as a consultant for the FTC’s Office of International Affairs. He is the author of various book chapters and articles on antitrust and trade-related questions of normative conflict resolution, particularly in the context of the media sector and the sports sector, and on the role of economic thinking in the formulation of antitrust enforcement norms. His major work is “Economic Efficiency: The Sole Concern of Modern Antitrust Policy? Non-efficiency considerations within Article 101 TFEU” (Kluwer Law International, forthcoming 2012).

Bojana Vrcek holds a Ph.D. in competition law from the University of Hamburg, Germany, a Masters Degree in European Studies from Europa-Kolleg Hamburg and B.A. from the University of Zagreb, Croatia. She practiced law in corporate and competition law departments of Lovells LLP in Zagreb and Howrey LLP in Brussels where she consulted on matters involving corporate law, treaty law, antitrust and regulatory. Bojana completed a traineeship in the Competition Directorate of the European Commission where she worked in the Information, Telecommunication and Multimedia Unit.

Edmond Wybaillie holds a J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law and a B.A. in Economics from The Johns Hopkins University, where he graduated Phi Beta Kappa. He joined AAI after completing law school. Research interests include antitrust review of mergers and the intersection of antitrust laws with financial institutions and markets. As an AAI Research Fellow, Edmond has written a paper discussing the antitrust implications of proposed NYSE mergers and is currently engaged in several ongoing projects.