Director of Outreach and Innovation

Acting Director of Impact

Competition Policy, Economic History, Empirical Industrial Organisation, Industrial Organisation.

Franco is an associate professor in Econometrics at the School of Economics and a member of the Centre for Competition Policy. Before UEA, he covered the position of contract lecturer at the Department of Economics, Trinity College Dublin (2004-2007); a postdoctoral research position at the Department of Economics and Econometrics of the University of Groningen (2007-2008); research associate position at Geary Institute, University College Dublin (2008-2011). 

He obtained his Bachelor's degree in Economics and Commerce from the University of Venice and a Master’s degree in Economics and Finance from Venice International University. He completed his Doctorate in Quantitative Economics in 2004 at the University of Venice. 

His research interests are empirical industrial organisation (structural and reduced-form), competition policy (classic and digital), and economic history. He has worked on cartels, horizontal mergers, innovation and platforms. His research was conducted in various markets: automobiles, carbonated soft drinks, cereals, health, mobile apps, pharmaceutical and tablet PCs. 

He published in the Cambridge Journal of Economics, Economics Bulletin, Economic Inquiry, Economic and Social Review, Energy Policy, International Journal of Industrial Economics, International Journal of Production Economics, Journal of Economic History, Journal of Economics and Management Strategies, Review of Economics and Statistics, Review of Industrial Organization, Small Business Economics. 

He has worked on two projects for DGComp. He has been the principal investigator for a project for the Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy and a project for the Financial Regulatory Council. 

His current research is on the redistributive effects of competition policy and the role of acquisitions on innovation in the cloud computing market. 

Competition Policy and Empirical Industrial Organisation.