Bruce M. Owen

Bruce M. Owen (b. October 13, 1943 in Worcester, Massachusetts) is an economist and author. He currently serves as Morris M. Doyle Centennial Professor in Public Policy and Director of the Public Policy Program in the School of Humanities and Sciences at Stanford University. He has also served as Gordon Cain Senior Fellow at Stanford's Institute for Economic Policy Research since 2003.

Owen graduated with a Bachelor of Arts from Williams College in 1965, where he was a Merit Scholar, and subsequently earned his Ph.D. from Stanford in 1970. At Stanford, Owen was a Woodrow Wilson Fellow, National Defense Education Act Title IV Fellow, and Brookings Institution Economic Policy Fellow.

Owen acted as Chief Economist in the White House Office of Telecommunications Policy in 1971 before returning to Stanford University in 1973 to serve as Assistant Professor of Economics. From 1974 to 1975, Owen was a Hoover Institution National Fellow.

In 1978, Owen moved to Chapel Hill, North Carolina, where he briefly taught at Duke University as Associate professor of business and law. During this time, Owen was an Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies Fellow and chairman of the Task Force on the Future of the United States Postal Service.

In 1979, Owen became Chief Economist within the Antitrust Division of the United States Department of Justice, where he served until 1981. Owen played a key role in the ultimate deregulation of AT&T while serving in this position.

Owen entered the private sector with the 1981 co-founding of Economists Incorporated in Washington, D.C., where he served as President and Chairman of the Board until his retirement in 2002.

Economists Incorporated experienced tremendous growth during Owen's tenure, providing consulting and expert witness services under his watch to corporations, law firms, and government entities.

During this time, Owen also taught an undergraduate seminar on economic analysis of law at Stanford's Washington, D.C. campus from 1989 to 2002.

Owen has written eight books, including "The Internet Challenge to Television" (Harvard University Press, 1999), "Economics of a Disaster: The Exxon Valdez Oil Spill" (Praeger, 1995 (with others)), "Electric Utility Mergers: Principles of Antitrust Analysis" (Praeger, 1994. (with M. Frankena)), "Video Economics", (Harvard University Press, 1992 (with S. Wildman)), The Political Economy of Deregulation (American Enterprise Institute, 1983 (with R. Noll)), "The Regulation Game: Strategic Use of the Administrative Process" (Ballinger, 1978 (with R. Braeutigam)), "Economics and Freedom of Expression: Media Structure and the First Amendment", (Ballinger, 1975), and "Television Economics" (D.C. Heath, 1974 (with J. Beebe, and W. G. Manning, Jr). He is currently working on a book manuscript entitled "Mass Media Power".

He is also a member of the American Economic Association, the Econometric Society, the American Law and Economics Association, and is an Associate of the American Bar Association.

Owen is married to Josetta Owen and has two adult children, Bradford Kelly (1974), and Peter Brandon of Arlington, Virginia (1969). He has two sisters, Patrice Owen of Gorham, ME and Marcia Benson of Brewster, MA. Owen currently resides near Palo Alto, California.

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