Dr John Spicer

Director and Managing Consultant

Dr John Spicer is a Director at Europe Economics with over 20 years of experience as a professional economist. John re-joined the company after a decade of working for regulators. He was head of policy, and later the commissioner, for the Irish aviation regulator, and was a senior manager for the UK’s Payment Systems Regulator. John has also worked for the Bank of England.

Dr John Spicer is a Director at Europe Economics with over 20 years of experience as a professional economist. John re-joined the company after a decade of working for regulators. He was head of policy, and later the commissioner, for the Irish aviation regulator, and was a senior manager for the UK’s Payment Systems Regulator. John has also worked for the Bank of England.

John is an expert on price controls, having managed a number of such reviews in his time as a regulator. John is also comfortable applying his economics skills to tackling more general policy questions and has done so across a range of industries, including energy, transport, and financial services. At Europe Economics John worked on a range of policy and regulatory questions for clients such as the European Commission, economic regulators, competition authorities, and large firms.

In his spare time, John likes to cycle, travel, practise his Spanish, and update his sports-betting models.

Critique of regulatory judgements

One form of legal case involves a challenge to regulatory decisions. We offer expert witness assistant assessing whether regulatory decisions are in line with established policy objectives or regulatory precedent and what the competition or other implications are of those decisions or alternatives.

Assessment of profitability or cost of capital

In regulated price controls, a key input is the determined cost of capital. This has often been a subject of appeals against regulatory judgements. Cost of capital analysis also feeds into assessments of profitability in assessing whether firms have been charging prices above the competitive level, and into the valuation of research pipelines in mergers.

Critique of econometric, quantitative methods or data used to support regulatory decisions

One form of a legal case is judicial revision of policy decisions. Such policy decisions are often supported by quantitative models. Those models can be critiqued in various ways – criticised or defended on the basis of their methodology or the data used.