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Luke Wainscoat

Luke Wainscoat, Senior Economist

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Competition and regulatory economist who is an expert in understanding how markets work.

Luke has over fifteen years’ experience as a professional economist. He has provided advice to both private sector and government clients in Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom on all the major competition issues including mergers, cartels, misuses of market power, anti-competitive agreements, exclusive dealing, access disputes and market studies.

Luke has been engaged as an economic expert and given expert testimony in competition and damages matters in the Federal Court and the Supreme Court of Victoria.

Luke has provided economic advice on competition projects in relation to an extensive range of industries across the whole economy. Through this breadth of experience, Luke has honed a keen eye for understanding how a market works, and to identify the key issues and information that is relevant to the question at hand.

Luke is an expert in assessing commercial damages, and has provided advice in relation to such matters in the coal, gas, pharmaceutical products and motor vehicle sectors. Luke has designed and applied a number of cutting edge quantitative techniques to calculate the loss that was incurred by an individual or firm based on determining the likely prices and/or quantities sold in a counterfactual world in which some event that caused the loss did not take place.

On regulatory matters, Luke has undertaken a number of assignments concerning the appropriate form of economic regulation of infrastructure services in the electricity, gas, telecommunications, disability services and rail sectors.

Career path

  • 1997 – 2000

    Bachelor of Science in Economics, University of Warwick

  • 2000 – 2004

    Assistant Economist, Office of Fair Trading, United Kingdom

  • 2004

    Master of Commerce, specialising in Economics, University of Melbourne

  • 2005 – 2007

    Economist (part-time), DLA Philips Fox

  • 2005 – 2008

    PhD in Economics, University of Melbourne

  • 2008 – 2009

    Assistant Economist, Department for Business, United Kingdom

  • 2010 – 2011

    Economist, Office of Fair Trading, United Kingdom

  • 2011 – 2014

    Consultant, NERA Economics Consulting

  • 2014

    Joined HoustonKemp

  • 2015 – 2018

    Guest lecturer, University of Sydney

  • 2017

    Published article in the Competition and Consumer Law Journal entitled, Not quite a cartel: Applying the new concerted practices prohibition

  • 2017 – 2018

    Listed in Who’s Who Legal, Competition: Future Leaders

  • 2018

    Reviewer for the Competition and Consumer Law Journal