Andrew Sweeting

Andrew Sweeting is an industrial organization economist who specializes in competition and antitrust, including merger analysis, applied econometrics, and structural modeling.

Professor Sweeting has been retained as a consulting and testifying expert in antitrust litigation, merger investigations, a consumer protection case, a class certification proceeding, and international trade matters both in the U.S. and internationally. He has testified before the UK Competition Appeals Tribunal and the U.S. International Trade Commission, as well as at deposition.

FTC leadership in global merger and consumer protection investigations

Professor Sweeting is a former director of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC’s) Bureau of Economics, where he oversaw many merger investigations conducted by the agency. He was also involved in high-profile consumer protection investigations, including several related to digital platforms and data security.

In addition to his tenure at the FTC, Professor Sweeting has served as an academic visitor at the U.S. Department of Justice’s Economic Analysis Group and as an expert on the Academic Panel of the UK Competition Commission (now the UK Competition and Markets Authority or CMA).

Award-winning research on market competition and auction design

Global Competition Review recognized Professor Sweeting in its inaugural list of the world’s most important antitrust academics. His wide-ranging research has analyzed the impact of mergers on prices, product variety, and product repositioning. He has also addressed collusion in wholesale electricity markets, the performance of different auction designs, dynamic pricing in online resale markets, and the effects of alternative copyright policies in the radio industry.

Professor Sweeting has also researched the effect of government bailouts and firms’ strategic use of pricing and capacity choices to influence future competition.

Professor Sweeting has conducted empirical research in a range of industries, including advertising, aerospace, consumer packaged goods, energy markets, government procurement, online resale markets, radio, television, timber auctions, and transportation.

A widely published author, Professor Sweeting is a two-time winner (in 2026 and 2018) of the prestigious Robert F. Lanzillotti Prize for the best paper in antitrust economics. His work has appeared in leading economics journals, such as Econometrica, the American Economic Review, the Journal of Political Economy, and the RAND Journal of Economics.

Scholarly impact and teaching

Professor Sweeting is a former editor of the Journal of Industrial Economics and the RAND Journal of Economics, as well as a former foreign editor of the Review of Economic Studies. He is a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) and a research fellow of the UK’s Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR).

In his more than two decades as an educator, Professor Sweeting has been honored numerous times for excellence in teaching. Before joining the faculty of the University of Maryland, he held positions at Duke University, Northwestern University, and St. Catherine’s College, Oxford.