Professor Dr. Dr. Doris Hildebrand is the founder and managing partner of EE&MC with offices in Munich, Paris, and Vienna.
Two Academic Disciplines. One Field of Practice.
Doris Hildebrand’s professional profile rests on complementary pillars: distinct academic trajectories in two different disciplines - economics and law - and more than three decades of competition practice.
Rather than approaching competition economics from a single disciplinary perspective, she has developed substantial academic expertise in economics and law independently. Her career in economics extends from graduate and doctoral studies through international research and university appointments to a professorship in Applied Economics. In parallel, she established a second academic foundation in law through an LL.M., a Doctorate in Law and subsequent university teaching in EU competition law. The third pillar is practice, where both disciplines converge and are tested against the realities of markets, firms, evidence and competition cases.
ACADEMIC PROFILE
1 | ECONOMICS
Doris Hildebrand’s academic career in economics began at the Vienna University of Economics and Business, where she obtained a Master’s degree in Social and Economic Sciences in 1987 and a Doctorate in Social and Economic Sciences in 1990. Her doctoral research was supervised by Ewald Nowotny, who subsequently served as Vice-President of the European Investment Bank.
During her doctoral studies, Doris Hildebrand spent the academic year 1989/90 as a Research Fellow with Janos Kornai in the Department of Economics at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Her research experience at Harvard was followed by academic appointments at Maastricht University, where she served as Assistant Professor in 1991, and at the University of Groningen, where she was Associate Professor from 1994 to 1998.
Her academic career in economics culminated in her appointment as Professor of Applied Economics at Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), part-time, a position she held from 2010 to 2019.
2 | LAW
Alongside her academic career in economics, Doris Hildebrand developed law as a distinct second academic discipline.
She obtained an LL.M. from Vrije Universiteit Brussel in 1992 and subsequently pursued doctoral research in EU competition law under the academic guidance of Karel Van Miert, then EU Commissioner for Competition, and Koen Lenaerts, now President of the Court of Justice of the European Union. In 1998, she was awarded her Doctorate in Law. Her doctoral research in law examined how economic concepts can be integrated into the analytical framework of EU competition law rather than be treated merely as external instruments applied to legal questions.
Doris Hildebrand’s doctoral research was leading towards a policy shift in European competition policy: under Karel Van Miert, the academic work of Hildebrand contributed to the development what became known as the “More Economic Approach”, placing economic analysis and the assessment of competitive effects at the centre of EU competition enforcement. This intellectual and policy shift subsequently became one of the driving forces behind the modernisation of EU competition law, fundamentally reshaping the analytical framework for agreements, merger control and, subsequently, abuse of dominance and State aid.
From 2019 to 2026, Doris Hildebrand taught EU competition law (part-time) at Sorbonne University in Paris. Her teaching brought together her legal scholarship and her long-standing work in competition economics including questions of the Digital Market Act.
The significance of Doris Hildebrand’s academic background lies not merely in holding outstanding qualifications in both economics and law, but in the independent academic development of both disciplines over the course of her career: This combination of two distinct academic careers in economics and law is exceptionally rare in European competition practice.
PROFESSIONAL PROFILE
3 | COMPETITION PRACTICE
The third pillar of Doris Hildebrand’s work is competition practice. It is here that her two academic disciplines - economics and law - converge and are tested against the realities of markets, firms and individual competition cases.
Doris Hildebrand founded EE&MC in 1992 and is serving as its Managing Partner ever since. Over more than three decades, she has advised more than 200 clients on the economic analysis in competition law matters, with extensive experience in cartel cases, private antitrust damages litigation and other complex questions of competition economics.
Since 2008, she is also serving as a court-certified expert in competition economics, registered at the commercial court in Vienna, and has been appointed by courts to provide independent economic expert opinions.
It is precisely this rare combination of two distinct academic careers in economics and law that particularly qualifies Doris Hildebrand for her work as a court-appointed expert: she is able not only to conduct complex economic analysis at the highest academic level, but also to understand precisely the legal question the court must decide and to translate economic evidence into conclusions that are rigorous, legally relevant and judicially applicable.
Since 2015, Doris Hildebrand is serving as a Non-Governmental Adviser (NGA) to the German Federal Cartel Office and, in this capacity, participates in the work of the International Competition Network (ICN).
She has been active in the ICC's Competition Commission since 2000. In 2023, she was appointed by the ICC to chair the Advisory Committee of the Task Force on Private Antitrust Damages Enforcement.
For Doris Hildebrand, competition economics cannot be conducted in isolation from the legal and factual context in which economic analysis is applied. Economic analysis in competition cases does not begin with a model; it begins with the question that has to be answered. That question is defined by the applicable legal framework, while the appropriate economic methodology depends on the particular characteristics of the market and the evidence available in the individual case.
This is particularly important because economic concepts and legal concepts are related, but not necessarily identical. Market definition, market power, competitive constraints, causation, counterfactual analysis and damages are economic questions embedded in a legal framework. A technically sophisticated economic analysis may therefore be of limited value if it addresses a different question from the one the law requires to be answered. Conversely, legal analysis of competition cannot fully assess market behaviour and competitive effects without understanding the economic mechanisms underlying them.
Doris Hildebrand speaks the language of both economics and law, translating complex economic evidence into analysis that is directly accessible and relevant to judicial decision-making. Her approach is consequently based on keeping all three dimensions in view: economic theory, the legal framework and market reality.
- Economic models provide the analytical instruments;
- competition law determines the relevant legal questions and boundaries of the analysis; and
- the facts of the individual market determine whether the assumptions underlying a particular economic approach are appropriate.
More than three decades of competition practice have also informed Hildebrand’s academic work. Her experience with actual markets, company data, competition authorities, courts and litigation has allowed her to examine how economic concepts operate when confronted with evidentiary requirements and legal standards. Practice is therefore not merely an application of her academic work; it is also an important source of insights for her research.
THE CONVERGENCE OF THE THREE PILLARS: THE EUROPEAN SCHOOL OF THOUGHT
The interaction between economics, law and practice is central to Doris Hildebrand’s work on the European School of competition analysis.
Its premise is that economic analysis in EU competition law must be economically rigorous while remaining anchored in the objectives, concepts and institutional framework of EU competition law. The economist must therefore understand not only the economic model, but also the legal question the model is intended to illuminate and the market reality against which its conclusions must ultimately be tested.
This approach is developed in Doris Hildebrand’s principal publication, The Role of Economic Analysis in the EU Competition Rules - The European School, currently in its fourth edition. She is presently preparing the fifth edition for 2027, further developing the analytical framework that has formed a central part of her academic work since 1998.
Economics determines how to analyse. Law determines what must be analysed. Practice determines whether the analysis holds in the real world.
Professor Hildebrand is married and has four children. She lives in Tirol, Austria.