Kai-Uwe Kühn

From May 2011 to August 2013, Professor Kühn was chief economist at DG Competition, European Commission. During his time as chief economist, he advised the Competition Commissioner on all competition cases and policy initiatives (in particular State Aid Modernisation) and led the economic analysis on many large mergers (e.g. Deutsche Börse/NYSE, UPS/TNT, Univeral/EMI, H3G/Orange Austria, Western Digital/Hitachi, Outokumpu/Inoxum) and antitrust cases (e.g. Google, e-books, and the Standard Essential Patent cases), often in close cooperation with counterparts at US agencies. His consultancy experience has covered mergers in a broad range of industries (e.g. GE/Honeywell merger (2001) including the court appeal). Professor Kühn has participated in many complex antitrust matters, starting from Microsoft I on server interoperability and including multiple MFN cases, cases on radius clauses, brand gating, novel forms of exploitative abuses such as privacy, purchasing alliances and information exchanges. He has recently been advising on the rebuttal of designation decisions for digital platforms under the Digital Markets Act (DMA) and Article 19a of the German competition law and other regulatory matters in the digital economy. He has also acted as an expert in a large number of cartel damages cases and been involved in advising companies involved in large state aid matters.

Professor Kühn has spent most of his academic career as a tenured associate professor of economics at the University of Michigan. His research has included theoretical, experimental and empirical industrial organisation covering a wide range of topics, including durable goods, vertical integration, vertical restraints, market foreclosure and the impact of credit constraints on market behaviour, as well as collusion and the coordinated effects of mergers. His work has been published in leading journals including the Journal of Political Economy, RAND Journal of Economics, American Economic Journal: Microeconomics and Journal of the European Economic Association. He has served as a coeditor of The Journal of Industrial Economics.

Professor Kühn is fluent in German and English.

Employment History

The Brattle Group,
Academic advisor, 2019–2023

University of East Anglia
Professor of Economics and deputy director, Centre for Competition Policy, 2016-present

Charles River Associates,
Senior consultant, 2013–2018

University of Michigan,
Associate professor, 1998–2015

DG Comp, European Commission,
Chief economist, 2011–2013

CEMFI,
Visiting professor, 1997–1998

Instituto de Analisis Economico (CSIC),
Associate professor, 1993–1997

Professional Affiliations

Georgetown University, Georgetown Center for Economic Research
Fellow

Düsseldorf Institute of Competition Economics (DICE)
Permanent visiting professor