- Admitted legal practitioner (in Australian Capital Territory (Non-practising)
- Fellow of the Australian Institute of Company Directors
- Formerly a Member of the Singapore Copyright Tribunal.
Biography
Ian McEwin competed his PhD in economics at ANU (Supervisors Glenn Withers AO and Noel Butlin AC) on the economics of tort law while on the staff of the University of NSW at Duntroon and the Australian Defence Force Academy. In 1985 he was appointed to the Faculty of Business at the University of Chicago for nine months in Nobel Prize winner George Stigler’s Centre for the Study of the Economy and the State.
Returning to Australia he was a Senior Research Fellow at the Federally funded Centre of Excellence Policy Studies Centre where he co-taught competition law at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels with Maureen Brunt – the doyen of Australian competition economists and the first economist to be appointed to the Australian Trade Practices Tribunal. He subsequently completed a law degree at ANU was later appointed the foundation Director of the Centre for Law and Economics at ANU. In 2002 he was recruited by the Singapore Government (Ministry of Trade & Industry) to work for two years helping with the drafting of the Singapore Competition Act and the setting up of the Competition Commission of Singapore. While at MTI he was a member of the Singaporean negotiating team on competition with the United States and South Korean free-trade negotiations.
Ian was subsequently appointed Assistant Chief Executive (designated Chief Economist) with the Singapore Competition Commission (for three years). My involvement in setting up the Competition Commission of Singapore was recognized by the Chairman of the Competition Commission of Singapore who said in a Letter of Appreciation:
“CCS has benefitted from the legacy of your work in MTI (Ministry of Trade & Industry). You played an instrumental role in putting in place an operational framework for the implementation of the Act. You were pivotal in steering the agency towards adopting a balanced approach to competition law. As Chief Economist you provided sound guidance to the younger officers and helped to build up their technical knowledge and analytical skills. You have also contributed much in developing the CCS’s profile as a competent and dynamic agency in ASEAN and internationally.”
For the next 10 years Ian was a Visiting Professor of Law at the National University of Singapore and Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok and the Khazanah National Chair of Regulatory Studies at the University of Malaya.
In the past few years he has also taught competition economics to judges in Asia. For example, he taught on several courses for judges and regulators in Asia with George Mason Law School’s Global Antitrust Institute (together with Judge Doug Ginsberg, until recently Chief Justice of the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit in the United States, Joshua Wright, ex Commissioner of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission and Bruce Kobayashi, an economist with George Mason Law School).
In 2016 he also taught in an economics course for judges run by the OECD in Seoul, Korea together with former French Judge, Frederic Jenny, and Canadian judge, Justice Gascon. In 2017 he co-chaired with Bill Kovacic a two-day course in economics for Judges of the China’s People’s Supreme Court in Beijing.
Significant research publications
Books
- Competition Law in Mainland Southeast Asia (co-editor with Sakda Thanitcul), Winyuchon Publishers, Bangkok (2018).
- Getting the Balance Right: Intellectual Property, Competition Law and Economics in Asia (Editor), Hart Publishing, Oxford (2011).
- ASEAN Competition Law (General Editor with Kala Anandarajah) LexisNexis 2011 (Looseleaf - updated quarterly – now defunct).
- Competition Law in Singapore – Principles, Practice and Procedure (with Kala Anandarajah and Nicholas Chan) (2007) LexisNexis, Singapore.
Major Commissioned (Monograph) Reports
- Superannuation Fees & Competition (with Michael Rice) Study, Australian Investment and Financial Services Association Limited (2002).
- Regulation of the Legal Profession in New Zealand, New Zealand Business Roundtable (2000). This led to changes in the regulation of lawyers.
- Wrote reports for the NSW and Victorian Bars on the competition economics of the regulation of barristers as a result of a study of the legal profession by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission in1995.
- Access to Legal Services: The Role of Market Forces, Australian Parliament, Senate Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs (1992).
- Lawyers in Civil Litigation (With T. W. Beed), Civil Justice Research Centre, Law Foundation of New South Wales (1990).
Selected Articles and Book Chapters
- “Why Economists Should Design and Enforce Competition Laws in Developing Countries” in Nicolas Charbit and Sonia Ahmad (eds) Standing Up for Convergence Liber Amicorum for Frederic Jenny (Chairman of OECD Competition Committee), Concurrences 2018.
- “Chinese family firms in SE Asia and Competition Law” in Cassey Lee and Michael Schaper Competition Law, Regulation and SMEs: Understanding the Small Business Perspective 2016, Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore
- “Making Markets Work in Southeast Asia” in Eleanor Fox, Harry First, Nicolas Charbit and Elisa Ramundo (eds) Antitrust in Emerging and Developing Countries New York (2015)
- Chapters on Thailand, Cambodia and Laos in Katrina Groshinski and Caitlin Davies (eds} Competition Law in Asia Pacific: A Practical Guide Wolters Kluwer (2015)
- “Business, Politics and Competition Law in Southeast Asia” Charbit, Nicolas, Elisa Ramundo, Anna Chehtova and Abigail Slater (eds) (2014) in William E. Kovacic: An Antitrust Tribute Liber Amicorum – Volume II The Institute of Competition Law, Paris, Brussels and New York.
- “Competition and Intellectual Property Laws in the ASEAN ‘Single Market” (with Ashish Lall) in Sanchita Basu Das, Jayant Menon, Rodolfo Severino and Omkar Lal Shrestha (eds) The ASEAN Economic Community: A Work in Progress (2013) Asian Development Bank and Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore.
- “The Political Economy of Competition Law in Thailand” with Sakda Thanitcul (in Mark Williams (ed) The Political Economy of Competition Law in Asia Edward Elgar (2013).
- “Thailand: Medicines, Competition Law and Compulsory Licensing” (with Sakda Thanitcul) in McEwin (ed) Getting the Balance Right: Intellectual Property, Competition Law and Economics in Asia (Editor) Hart Publishing, Oxford (2011)
- “Competition Law in Singapore” in Trustbusters David S. Evans and Frederic Jenny (eds), Competition Policy International (2009), pp 345-357.
- “Competition Policy in Singapore and its Implications” in The Tenth Singapore Economic Roundtable (ed) Manu Baskaran. Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, Institute of Policy Studies and Straits Times Press (2008) pp 48-53 and 65-71.
- “The New Singapore Competition Act” (with Minn Naing Oo) Singapore Academy of Law Conference: Developments in Singapore Between 2001 and 2005, Singapore Academy of Law, (2006) General Editor Professor Teo Keang Sood.
- “No-Fault Insurance - A Survey” - Invited contribution to the new Encyclopaedia of Law and Economics, (eds) Boudewijn Bouckaert (Univ.Ghent), Gerrit De Geest (Univ. Ghent and Univ. Utrecht), Elsevier, Amsterdam (2000), pp 735-763.
- “Corporate Law and Corporate Governance in Australia” in On Kit Tam (ed) Chinese Corporate Governance, Economic Press, Beijing (in Chinese, 1997).
- “Law, Liberty and Economics” in The Jurisprudence of Liberty (Moens, G. and S Ratnapala), Butterworths (1995), (also in 2nd ed., Lexis Nexis 2010).
- “Safety, Disability and Workers' Compensation”, in J. Freebairn, M. G. Porter and C. Walsh (eds.), Spending and Taxing II, (1988) Allen and Unwin, Sydney.
Selected Refereed Articles
- Invited by Singapore Economic Review to co-edit a special edition of their journal on ASEAN competition law and economics to be published in 2021.
- Forward: “Asian Transparency” in Concurrences Review N° 4-2015, Art. N° 74082, September 2015, available at: http://www.concurrences.com/Journal/Issues/No-4-2015/Asian-Transparency-74082.
- “Designing Competition Law Under Financial Crisis—Indonesia and Thailand Compared’ in Competition Policy International Journal Summer, 2014.
- “Some Recent Developments in ASEAN Competition Law” CPI Antitrust Chronicle February (2013) – selected by the Journal as one of their best for 2013.
- “Is East Asian Antitrust Different? 4 Intl. Antitrust Bull. (2012) (with Stephen Harris)
- “China – The Baidu Decision”, (with Corinne Chew) Competition Policy International Journal (November 2010), 222-233.
- “Competition Law in a Small Open Economy – A Critique of the Dawson Committee Report”, 9(1) University of New South Wales Law Journal Forum (2003) pp 14-20.
- “Vertical Restraints in the Australian Trade Practices Act”, (9) Review of Industrial Organisation (October 1994), pp 627-647. [subsequently reprinted in David Round (editor) The Australian Trade Practices Act 1974: Proscriptions and Prescriptions for a More Competitive Economy Springer-Science + Business Media (2013).
- “Third-Line Forcing in Australia”, Australian Business Law Review (1994), pp 114-137.
- Review of "Chicago vs Virginia: Charles K. Rowley, The Right to Justice: The Political Economy of Legal Services in the United States, Edward Elgar, Aldershot, 1992," in Agenda - A Journal of Policy Analysis and Reform, Australian National University, College of Business and Economics, School of Economics, vol. 1(1), pages 123-124.
- “Legal Versus Economic Perceptions of Real Property Rights”, Australian Economic Review (1993), pp 35-40.
- “The Overlap Between Sections 46 and 47 in the Trade Practices Act”, 2(2) Australian Journal of Corporation Law (1992), pp 214-224.
- “Australia's Continuous Disclosure Regime: Some Comments”, 2(1) Australian Journal of Corporation Law (1992), pp 77-81.
- “Public Versus Shareholder Control of Company Directors”, Companies and Securities Law Journal (1992), pp 182- 204.
- “Federal Versus State Incorporation: Why the High Court Got it Right”, Policy (June 1990) pp 50-52.
