Mr. Clifton’s professional career has spanned the worlds of business, government and academia as economist and consultant, trade association executive, and political appointee at the federal level. Currently, he owns and manages Clifton Associates South, LLC.
In a quarter century of professional consulting, Mr. Clifton helped to open and manage, in the early 1990s, the Washington DC office of Law and Economics Consulting Group and also worked for Nathan Associates. In 1997, he incorporated his own firm. He has qualified and testified as an expert witness in U. S. District Court for the 7th and 9th circuits. In decisions or out of court settlements, his views have generally prevailed. In federal regulation, while representing Fox and Viacom, a one million cell electronic database his staff constructed from Arbitron hard copy data was adopted by the FCC for its own use in rendering its decision. In private litigation Clifton has also testified on economic damages before the American Arbitration Association in Chicago on behalf of the original patent holder for UHT milk, now owned by Parmalat.
He worked with the Semiconductor Industry Association and Harris Corporation to persuade the Reagan White House to support a subsidy to improve America’s competiveness in the manufacture of DRAMS. He also represented Harris in patent antitrust litigation with Motorola. His 75-page analysis helped avoid litigation on terms favorable to Harris. His expert testimony on behalf of Harris prevailed in the 9th Circuit against IXYS, a Silicon Valley company.
For two decades, Mr. Clifton represented several First-Class mailers before the Postal Regulatory Commission, including McGraw Hill, The American Bankers Association, The Greeting Card Association, Hallmark Corporation, Edison Electric Institute, Newspaper Association of America, and the National Association of Presort Mailers.
In federal legislative and regulatory policy while at the U. S. Chamber of Commerce, Dr. Clifton popularized the use of “core inflation” measures in national policy and media circles and improved the technical accuracy of the CPI-U at the Bureau of Labor Statistics, as a member of the Business Research Advisory Council to BLS. He uncovered a flaw in the productivity growth estimates used by the Carter administration’s Council on Wage and Price Stability. He used this finding working with the Senate in authorizing legislation to effectively end the council. He worked with OMB and the Chairman of Lehman Brothers to effect generational neutrality in cost of living adjustments by capping federal entitlement COLAs for retirees at the average of private sector wage COLAs for working age employees.
Mr. Clifton has presented testimony before several committees in Congress, including the Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs, House Committee on the Budget, and Joint Economic Committee.
Clifton has taken temporary leaves of absence from his consulting practice to help restructure academic and trade association programs in the Washington, DC area. He was retained to restructure a small PH. D. program in economics at the Catholic University of America, paving the way for a Business Economics Masters program with substantially greater student interest. He served for five years as associate professor while accomplishing that goal. As a result of publications in 1977 and 1983 through Cambridge University, he was recognized in 1987 by The New Palgrave as one of the “top economists in the world” for original research on the economic theory of competition.
