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In the Bureau of Economics, we value an open exchange of ideas between our staff and experts outside the agency. Such an exchange enables us to learn new ideas and perspectives, hone our professional skills, and receive feedback on our work. 

When we engage in such dialogue, transparency about actual, potential, or perceived conflicts is important. This is especially important given our role at the FTC in providing expert economic advice on policy, law-enforcement, and rulemaking. Therefore, we want to know about any relationships that may have exerted influence on the opinions expressed by the experts we interact with. 

To better facilitate transparency, we are introducing a disclosure policy that will apply to all events sponsored by the Bureau of Economics including seminars, workshops, and conferences.  

This policy is based on principles adopted by other professional organizations in economics and antitrust, such as the , , and . We apply the principles from those guidelines to our specific context.

Economic (and other) expertise is critical to accomplishing the FTC’s mission and informing good public policy. This disclosure policy and others like it help ensure that this expertise is grounded in sound analysis and inform us to the possibility that the opinions are.  We hope that similar policies become the norm at events where our staff are present and more generally across the profession.