Robert E. Litan

As an economist and attorney, Litan has had nearly four decades of experience in the worlds of the law, economic research and policy, and as an executive in both the private, public and government sectors. Through his extensive publications and many speeches and testimony, he has become a widely recognized national expert in regulation, telecommunications and financial policy, antitrust, entrepreneurship, innovation, and international trade, among other policy subjects. Litan currently is a Shareholder with Berger Montague, based in Philadelphia and several other locations throughout the U.S., where he specializes in large case antitrust litigation. Litan has directed economic research at three leading national organizations: the Brookings Institution, the Kauffman Foundation and Bloomberg Government. He has also been a member of the international advisory board of the Principal Financial Group. Litan is a well-known speaker who has given hundreds of talks during his career before a wide range of audiences in the U.S. and around the world. His TedEx Kansas City talk, “An Economist Who Walks Into a Bar” has been viewed on Youtube over 460,000 times.

During his research career, Litan has authored or co-authored 30 books and edited another 14, and authored or co-authored more than 250 articles in professional and popular publications. His book Trillion Dollar Economists (Wiley, 2014), in part, was the basis of his TedEx talk later that year. And his book Good Capitalism, Bad Capitalism, co-authored with William Baumol and Carl Schramm (Yale University Press, 2007) has been widely used in university classes and has been translated into ten languages. He has written multiple research articles on entrepreneurship, solely and with various co-authors.

Litan earned his B.S. in Economics (summa cum laude) at the Wharton School of Finance at the University of Pennsylvania; his J.D. at Yale Law School; and his M. Phil. And Ph.D. at Yale University.