David S. Evans

Dr. Evans is an Advisory Board Member with Global Economics Group and is based in Boston. He has served as a testifying expert on numerous antitrust matters in the United States, and other jurisdictions, including several landmark cases. He has made submissions to, and appearances before, antitrust and regulatory authorities with respect to mergers, antitrust and related matters in the US, EU, China, and Korea among others. For more details see https://davidsevans.org.

His academic work focuses on industrial organization, including antitrust economics, with a particular expertise in platform businesses and the digital economy.  He has authored six major books, including the award-winning Matchmakers: The New Economics of Multisided Business, and more than 100 articles and handbook chapters in these areas. The U.S. Supreme Court cited his work on multisided platforms and payment systems extensively in State of Ohio v. American Express.

Dr. Evans has taught courses related to antitrust economics, multisided platforms, and the digital economy, primarily for graduate students, officials, judges, and practitioners. From 2004-2022, he was the Co-Executive Director of the Jevons Institute for Competition Law and Economics, and Visiting Professor, University College London, where he taught courses on antitrust, multisided platforms, and the digital economy. He has also taught antitrust economics at The University of Chicago Law School and Fordham Law School.

Dr. Evans has worked on a variety of other matters outside of antitrust, many involving platform and digital businesses, intellectual property, financial markets, and payment systems.  In the US, across all matters, he has testified in federal and state courts, several arbitration panels, and Congress.

REPRESENTATIVE MATTERS
—

• Epic Games v. Apple. Lead testifying economic expert for Epic Games on market definition, monopoly power, and anticompetitive effects related to Apple’s conduct concerning app distribution and payment methods. Expert reports, deposition testimony, written testimony, and trial testimony.  Expert reports, deposition testimony, and trial testimony.

• T-Mobile acquisition of Sprint. On behalf of T-Mobile and Sprint, submitted declarations to the FCC concerning the dynamic effects of the proposed merger on cellular data prices and capacity, the competitive investment of other carriers, and the likely value of 5G capacity.

• Apple v. Qualcomm. Testimony on behalf of Qualcomm related an antitrust and intellectual property issues arising from the licensing of standards essential patents subject to FRAND commitments. Expert reports and deposition testimony. Apple and Qualcomm reached a settlement agreement at the start of trial.

• Federal Trade Commission v. 1-800 Contacts. Testimony on behalf of the FTC concerning the competitive effects of agreements between 1-800 Contacts and other online sellers of contact lenses that restricted certain forms of search advertising. Expert report and trial testimony on the economics of search engines and search advertising, market definition, and competitive effects.

• NACHA’s Interchange Fees for Same Day ACH System. On behalf of NACHA, an association of most banks in the US which sets rules for the ACH system, submitted reports and made presentations to the Federal Reserve Board concerning the economics of established a same-day ACH banking network in the US, and the role of interchange fees in doing so.

• Comcast’s Proposed Acquisition of Time Warner Cable. On behalf of Netflix, submitted multiple declarations to the Federal Communications Commission in opposition to the merger and made appearances before the Federal Communications Commissions and US Department of Justice.

• Qihoo 360 v. Tencent. Written testimony in support of Tencent before the Supreme People’s Court, People’s Republic of China, concerning Qihoo 360’s market definition and abuse of dominance claims against Tencent. This was the first antitrust matter decided under the Anti-Monopoly Law by the Supreme Court of China.

• European Commission v. Microsoft. Oral testimony and written submissions before the Grand Chamber, European Court of First Instance (now the European General Court) on behalf of Microsoft concerning economic aspects of the European Commission’s Decision that Microsoft had abused its dominant position with respect to media players and server interoperability. Made several appearances, providing oral testimony concerning various topics, particularly with regard to abuse of dominance, over five days.

HONORS AND RANKINGS

—

• Gold Medal Winner, Economics, 2017 Axiom Business Books Awards, for Matchmakers: The New Economics of Multisided Platforms (with R. Schmalensee).

• Winner of the Business, Management & Accounting category in the 2006 Professional/Scholarly Publishing Annual Awards presented by the Association of American Publishers, Inc. for Invisible Engines: How Software Platforms Drive Innovation and Transform Industries(with R. Schmalensee).

• Top 2% of published economists, IDEAS/RePEC, based on quality-weighted citations (January 2022); ranked among top 20 economists, and top 20 law professors, on SSRN based on total downloads of papers (January 2022).

REPRESENTATIVE PUBLICATIONS

—

• Matchmakers: The New Economics of Multisided Platforms (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business School Press, 2016).  Published or pending translations in Chinese, French, Japanese, Korean, Russian, Spanish, Vietnamese. Gold Medal Winner, Economics, 2017 Axiom Business Book Awards.

• Invisible Engines: How Software Platforms Drive Innovation and Transform Industries, (Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2006), with A. Hagiu and R. Schmalensee. Translated into Chinese and Korean. Winner of the Business, Management & Accounting category in the 2006 Professional/Scholarly Publishing Annual Awards presented by the Association of American Publishers, Inc.

• Paying with Plastic: The Digital Revolution in Buying and Borrowing
  (Massachusetts: MIT Press, first edition 1999, second edition 2005), with R. Schmalensee. Translated into Chinese.

• “The Antitrust Analysis of Multi-Sided Platform Businesses,” (with R. Schmalensee), in Oxford Handbook on International Antitrust Economics, R. Blair and D. Sokol, eds., Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015.

• “Attention Rivalry among Online Platforms and Its Implications for Antitrust Analysis,” Journal of Competition Law and Economics, 2013, 9(2), 313-357.

• “Governing Bad Behavior by Users of Multi-Sided Platforms,” Berkeley Technology Law Journal, 2012, 27(2).

• “The Online Advertising Industry: Economics, Evolution, and Privacy,” Journal of Economic Perspectives, 2009, 23(3), 37-60.

• “The Microsoft Judgment and its Implications for Competition Policy towards Dominant Firms in Europe,” (with C. Ahlborn), Antitrust Law Journal, 2009, 75(3), 887.

• “Designing Antitrust Rules for Assessing Unilateral Practices: A Neo-Chicago Approach,” (with A. Padilla), University of Chicago Law Review, 2005, 72(1), 73-98.

• Why Do Firms Bundle and Tie? Evidence from Competitive Markets and Implications for Tying Law,” (with M. Salinger), Yale Journal on Regulation, 2005, 22(1), 37-89.

• “The Antitrust Economics of Multi-Sided Platform Markets,” Yale Journal on Regulation, 2003, 20(2).

• “Some Economic Aspects of Antitrust Analysis in Dynamically Competitive Industries,” (with R. Schmalensee), in Innovation Policy and the Economy, Vol. 2, A. Jaffe, J. Lerner and S. Stern, eds., Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2002.