Eye on Alumni: Fabiana Tito '08 and Thiago Arashiro '10
Both of these graduates of the Barcelona GSE master program in Competition and Market Regulation have returned to their native São Paulo to work as economists at Tendências Consultoria Integrada. They agree that the the theoretical and practical training they received from GSE faculty provided a powerful toolbox for analyzing cases for clients across sectors.
What is the path that took you from Barcelona to São Paulo?
Fabiana Tito (FT): I came back in early 2010 after completing internships at LECG (Madrid) and RBB Economics (London), and then working for a year at the UK Antitrust Authority (Competition Commission). All that excellent experience, combined with the very good theoretical and practical concepts in antitrust and regulation taught during the GSE Competition and Market Regulation Program, gave me a strong background to reach a senior position in one of the top economic consultancies in my country.
Thiago Arashiro (TA): I was hired last year, right after graduating from the Barcelona GSE.
What are your main responsibilities at Tendências?
FT: My main responsibilities are very broad and demanding. I help clients to understand their main concern, giving direct support explaining the issues and representing them in the interface with Competition Authorities and Regulatory Bodies. I also coordinate economic and econometric analysis in order to produce economic reports on mergers & acquisitions and anticompetitive cases. Taking into account that we deal with different sectors, our work is very dynamic. Also, we are always learning new things to keep ourselves updated with the newest theoretical concepts on antitrust matters.
TA: As an economist, my work involves econometric analysis to support companies during their merger process, advising companies against a complaint of anti-competitive practices in the competition authority, or any case related to competition policy. We also have to deal with theoretical issues advising regulated-industry companies (such as electricity) during public consultations. The highly practical focus of the master program gave us good knowledge to perform this type of challenging analysis.
Anything specific from your GSE coursework that you use in your work?
FT: I very often use lots of concepts learnt in our competition classes. It's not rare to use references given by Prof. Massimo Motta (ICREA-UPF and GSE Research Professor), Prof. Jorge Padilla (Managing Director, European Competition Policy Practice, LECG and GSE guest professor), Prof. Frank Verboven (Katholieke Universiteit Leuven and GSE guest professor) and many others. The training on economic theory, specifically in the fields of microeconomics, industrial organization and econometrics foster the fundamentals of competition issues we need during our projects. Also the practical teaching we have when discussing and arguing European cases helps a lot to transpose the issues to the real world. As I have said, the master provided a very good setting of tools in practical antitrust and regulation applications, which definitely were very fruitful to my work on a daily basis.
TA: Yes, even though the Brazilian competition and regulatory systems present some differences in their structure compared to the European one, it’s possible to say that both competition policy and regulation subjects studied at Barcelona GSE are very useful. In fact, the projects I like the most here at Tendências involve merger cases for which Prof. Motta's classes became indispensible to move forward in the analysis. In this sense the master program gave me important tools to analyze cases and face real world problems in my work.
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