Robin Allen is a Senior Fellow with the Niskanen Center Climate department. Her research focuses on consent-based siting for high-capacity electric transmission lines, and in particular on potential stakeholder strategic initiatives fostering transmission lines in a mutually advantageous way for stakeholders and transmission developers.
From 1983 to 2022, Allen was an economist with the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, where she analyzed the economic effects of mergers and civil non-mergers, many involving the electric power, healthcare or software industries. She has testified as an expert economic witness in U.S. District Court and at a U.S. Department of Agriculture hearing and has provided antitrust training for a number of international bodies, including the Andean Community Competition Authorities, the Ukrainian Anti-Monopoly Committee and the ASEAN Nations Expert Group on Competition. She is a co-author of the 2022 DOJ/FTC Comment to FERC on its Notice of Public Rulemaking on Transmission.
Allen holds a Ph.D in Economics from Northwestern University and was a Kramer Antitrust Fellow at the University of Chicago Law School.