Chief of US antitrust enforcement agency finds vigorous competition in markets to corrupt academia:
“All over the world, money earmarked specifically to discourage antitrust and competition law enforcement is finding its way into the expert community upon which we all depend.
“Economics teaches that incentives matter. And the inevitable incentive of that flow of money is to distort the academic dialogue and reshape expertise into advocacy.
“We see this playing out from legal academia, to economics, to public policy. We see it in academic workshops, treatises and wonky empirical reports. In competition policy today, the expertise-buying game is ascendant. Conflicts of interest and capture have become so rampant and commonplace that it is increasingly rare to encounter a truly neutral academic expert.”