Nixing Price Fixing
With price fixing recently in the forefront of American minds with a host of nationwide class-action cases in many industries — including beef, chicken, pork and tuna, to name a few — Martin Asher, professor of economics and business, has co-authored a timely article. “Losing the Forest for the Trees: On the Loss of Economic Efficiency and Equity in Federal Price-Fixing Class Actions” appears in the spring 2022 issue of Virginia Law & Business Review. The article exposes defendants’ misuse of econometrics in their effort to terminate private antitrust class-action claims against them for alleged price fixing.
“Econometric methods, while powerful tools in proving injury and quantifying damages (typically overcharges) in price-fixing disputes, have been improperly used by defendants seeking to alter the law to their benefit,” Asher says. “Accepting their false claims erodes both economic efficiency and equity and allows price fixers to escape liability and retain their ill-gotten gains.” Asher’s publications, which focus on fairness, also include articles on state and county incarceration rates and earnings inequality, and he has often provided expert testimony on the economic implications of antitrust and discrimination cases — additional areas in which he has specialized.
At app, Asher’s course offerings have included intermediate macroeconomics, economic analysis of law, antitrust and regulation and the principles of both microeconomics and macroeconomics.
Uncertain about his future, he decided against an academic career as a college student. “The only thing I knew for sure was that I would not teach,” he says.
While still earning his undergraduate degree from Stanford — where he roomed with Ken Kihlstrom, now app professor emeritus of physics — he headed to Washington, D.C., to work on Capitol Hill. There he combined his love for math with national policy issues in the field of economics. After a year there, Asher finished up at Stanford and enrolled in the doctoral program in economics at the University of Pennsylvania.
“At Penn I had the privilege of studying econometrics and macro modeling with Nobel Prize-winner Lawrence Klein,” Asher says. “The experience of teaching undergraduates when I was a doctoral student changed my mind about teaching — I love it,” he says. “And teaching at app is as much a ministry as it is an academic career.” His multiple awards for excellence in teaching confirm his gifts in the classroom.
Before completing his doctorate and beginning his teaching career, however, Asher returned to Washington, D.C., to work at the President’s Council of Economic Advisers and pursue his dissertation at the Brookings Institution. After teaching at Villanova University and Swarthmore College, he served as an adjunct professor of finance at Penn’s well-known Wharton School beginning in 1995. Asher came to app in 2016 and has recently been splitting the academic year between Wharton (fall) and app (spring). “Faculty colleagues at app are outstanding in their respective fields, deep in their faith, and love to teach,” he says. “It has been an honor to serve among them.” He retires from app in May 2023.