Ioannis Lianos

is a City Solicitors Educational Trust Lecturer in European Union Law, University College London, Faculty of Laws.

Ioannis Lianos is the City Solicitors’ Educational Trust Lecturer in European Union Law at the Faculty of Laws, University College London (UCL) (since 2004), the Associate Executive Director of the Jevons Institute of Competition Law and Economics at UCL and the co-Director of the Centre for Law and Governance in Europe (UCL).

He was a visiting scholar at the University of California, Berkeley in 2006. Since September 2004, he has been a visiting Professor in competition and intellectual property law at the Centre for International Industrial Property Studies (CEIPI) of the University of Strasbourg. He has also lectured in various areas of European law and competition law at the Robert Schuman University of Strasbourg in France and has held visiting appointments in competition and regulatory law at the University Paul Cézanne (Aix-en Provence/Marseille) and the Centre for European Studies of the Ecole Nationale d’Administration (ENA). Ioannis also has working experience at the European Court of Justice, the Federal Trade Commission (New York office) and is a qualified advocate at the Athens and Paris bars.

He is the recipient of numerous academic scholarships and awards, including the Emile Girardeau prize of the French Academy of Social Sciences (Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques), for his book, published in 2007, on the Transformation of competition law by economic analysis of law (Bruylant/Sakkoulas, XIX+1698 pp). He has also published widely in European law and competition law in the Common Market Law Review, the Journal of Competition Law and Economics, the Tulane Journal of International and Comparative law, the Revue Trimestrielle de droit européen.

His primary research interest lies in comparative (EU, UK, French, US) and international antitrust, European Union law (internal market, external relations), comparative administrative and regulatory law, law and economics, economic sociology. His current work focuses on the contribution of new institutional economics to competition law, innovation policy and the law (competition law, IP rights), the law and economics of litigation in competition law, the comparative law and economics of cost-benefit analysis/impact assessment. At NYU, he will be working on a project exploring issues of economic evidence and expertise in the courts as well as completing a book on Competition Law Remedies in Europe (forthcoming Hart Pub, Oxford, 2009). He will be also leading a project on “trust/distrust and economic integration” (funded by the Modern Law Review), which explores the importance of the concept of trust (in law, economics and sociology) in explaining the relatively important harmonization of regulatory standards in some sectors of trade in services and the lack of harmonisation or resistance of harmonisation in other economic sectors.

Research Project

Judging Economists: Expert Economic Evidence in Competition Law Litigation

There are important differences across legal systems on the way economic analysis informs competition law. The research project will explore the hypothesis that this divergence may be explained by three factors: (1) institutional dissimilarities regarding the administration of economic expertise in courts, (2) different perceptions concerning the role of the actors of the system (experts, judges) and (3) the role of scientific networks (e.g. schools of economic thought) and power relations in shaping the behaviour of the actors of the system. This is a particularly significant topic in view of the recent decentralisation and privatization of competition law enforcement in Europe. The influence of economics in competition law has been largely documented. There are, however, extremely few studies on the role of economic experts in competition law litigation. The emerging role of economic consultancies in litigation has been the notable result of the more economics-oriented approach in competition law. The emergence of a market for economic experts in Europe may profoundly affect the way economic expertise is integrated in legal proceedings. Common law jurisdictions (e.g. United Kingdom, United States) have traditionally used different mechanisms from civil law jurisdictions (e.g. France, Germany) in order to address the information asymmetry that exists between economic experts and judges and to ensure the objectivity of judicial decision-making. They chose to emphasize the role of the adversarial process (expert witnesses) instead of the quest for a neutral arbiter (court appointed experts), mechanism traditionally chosen by civil law jurisdictions. The need to mitigate this asymmetry of information between judges and economic experts has also led to the development of hybrid mechanisms (e.g. assessors, specialised courts) and to the adoption in the United States (US) of specific rules for the admissibility and the evaluation of economic evidence. The existence of a market for economic experts may also affect the scientific process of investigation in economics. Contrary to other disciplines, where forensic scientists and academic researchers form distinct scientific communities, the leading forensic competition economists are academics who actively participate in theoretical economic debates. Consequently, the emergence of a market for economic experts inevitably affects the research agenda of certain areas in economics (e.g. industrial organization, welfare economics). The research will depart from the assumption that the content of scientific knowledge is shaped in a complex social process. Social networks and relations of power have important implications on the directions of future research agenda and on the emergence of dominant schools of thought in science. The possible lack of confidence on the objectivity of the scientific process that may follow may increase the risk of adverse selection and moral hazard and may amplify the information asymmetry between the judges and the economic experts. The social costs do not only relate to the non-optimal outcome of the specific case but they also extend to the costs flowing from the monopoly of a particular school of economics in the marketplace of ideas. This is a significant concern, in view of the important economic consequences of competition law litigation.