Professor of Law
Professor Wickelgren joined the Northwestern University School of Law as an assistant professor in 2006. He currently teaches contracts, antitrust and a law and economics workshop. Prior to that, he was a visiting assistant professor at the University of Texas at Austin Department of Economics, where he taught law and economics, and introduction to microeconomics. From 1999-2004, he served as a staff economist at the Federal Trade Commission, Bureau of Economics, in Washington, DC. He taught contract theory and law and economics while a graduate teaching fellow at Harvard University. His research interests are law and economics, contract theory, antitrust, bargaining theory, and media economics.
Professor Wickelgren received his Ph.D., in 1999, from the Harvard University Economics Department; his J.D. magna cum laude from Harvard Law School in 1994 where he was a recipient of an Olin Fellowship in Law and Economics and on the board of editors for the Harvard Law Review; and his A.B. cum laude in applied mathematics/economics form Harvard College in 1991.
Forthcoming papers include "Why Divorce Laws Matter: Incentives for Non-Contractible Martial Investments under Unilateral and Consent Divorce," Journal of Law, Economics & Organization; "Advantage Defendant: Why Sinking Litigation Costs Makes Negative Expected Value Defenses, but not Negative Expected Value Suits Credible" (With Warren Schwartz), Journal of Legal Studies. Most recent published papers include "Naked Exclusion, Efficient Breach, and Downstream Competition" (with John Simpson), American Economic Review; "Bundled Discounts, Leverage Theory, and Downstream Competition" (with John Simpson), 9 American Law and Economics Review 370 (2007); "Government and the Reverse-Holdup Problem," 9 Journal of Public Economic Theory 221 (2007); "The Limitations of Buyer-Option Contracts in Solving the Hold-up Problem," 23 Journal of Law, Economics & Organization. "Bayesian Jurors and the Limits to Deterrence," (with Ezra Friedman), 22 Journal of Law, Economics, & Organization 70 (2006); "The Inefficiency of Contractually-Based Liability with Rational Consumers," 22 Journal of Law, Economics, & Organization 168 (2006); and "The Effect of Exit on Entry Deterrence Strategies," 54 Games and Economic Behavior 226 (2006).