Joshua D. Wright


Joshua Daniel Wright is an American economist and lawyer who served as a commissioner of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission from 2013 to 2015. He has been a professor of law at George Mason University's Antonin Scalia Law School since 2004, and is the executive director of its Global Antitrust Institute.
Wright is a leading scholar in the fields of antitrust law, law and economics, and consumer protection, and was said in National Review to be "widely considered his generation's greatest mind on antitrust law." He has published more than 100 articles and book chapters, co-authored a leading casebook, and edited several book volumes in these fields. Wright has served as co-editor of the Supreme Court Economic Review and senior editor of the Antitrust Law Journal, and in 2014 received the Paul M. Bator Award.

Career

Wright was born and raised in San Diego, California. He studied economics at the University of California, San Diego, graduating in 1998 with a B.A. with highest departmental honors. He then did doctoral study in economics and attended law school at the University of California, Los Angeles. He received a Juris Doctor in 2002 and a Ph.D. in economics in 2003, and was a managing editor of the UCLA Law Review.
Wright clerked for Judge James V. Selna of the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California from 2003 to 2004, and taught for one year at Pepperdine University before joining the faculty at George Mason University's law school in 2004. Wright served in the Federal Trade Commission in the Bureau of Competition as its inaugural Scholar-in-Residence from 2007 to 2008, where he focused on enforcement matters and competition policy. President Barack Obama appointed him to be an FTC Commissioner in 2013, and he served in that position until resigning in 2015 to return to academia.