Dr. David Harbord
David Harbord is the Director of Market Analysis Ltd. He has a BA in Political Economy from the University of Toronto; an MA in Economics from York University; and a PhD in Economics from the London School of Economics. Prior to taking up a career in consulting he pursued an academic career, and held teaching and research positions at Bristol University, the University of Oxford, Stanford University, the University of British Columbia and the London School of Economics.
Since founding Market Analysis in 1995, Dr. Harbord has completed regulatory studies for the World Bank, the European Commission, the Industry Commission of Australia and the Treasury of New South Wales. He has acted as an economic adviser to the majority of telecommunications and media companies in the UK, and represented energy companies in the UK, Europe and Australia in regulatory proceedings and competition policy litigation.
He has been involved in many of the most high-profile regulatory inquiries and antitrust cases of recent years, including the Endesa/Iberdrola merger in the Spanish electricity market; the regulatory review of conditional access pricing in the UK pay-TV market; the UK Competition Commission's two inquiries into mobile operators' termination charges; the Airtours merger case; the FA Premier League's sale of television broadcasting rights; the Wanadoo/Orange margin squeeze complaint against BT in the UK broadband market; and Hutchison 3G's appeals of its SMP designations in the UK and Ireland. He has advised the Polish Office of Telecommunications and Post Regulation and 2 Degrees New Zealand on the regulation of mobile termination rates; and recently gave the keynote address on mobile network economics at the 10th annual Telecommunications and ICT Summit in Auckland, New Zealand.
Dr. Harbord specializes in competition policy generally. He has advised Al Ezz Steel on the law and economics of vertical restraints as they relate to Ezz Steel's vertical distribution arrangements in Egypt; and is currently preparing an economic analysis of the proposed merger between Orange and T-Mobile in the UK's mobile telephony market.
Dr. Harbord's academic research focuses on the design and performance of electricity auctions; collusive access pricing agreements; the extra-legal governance of trade agreements; and the welfare economics of alternative approaches to regulating access charges in mobile network markets. He has recently published articles in the Journal of Competition Law and Economics, the RAND Journal of Economics, the Economic Journal, the International Review of Law and EconomicsEuropean Economy, the European Competition Law Review and the Electricity Journal