Author: Taylor Warfield, Former Bain Manager and interviewer

Last Updated: June 13, 2026

 

 

Economic consulting case interviews are 20 to 40 minute problem-solving exercises where firms test how you apply economic theory, data analysis, and structured reasoning to litigation, regulatory, and business problems. This guide covers the four major case types, the six-step solving approach, two full case walkthroughs built from published firm materials, and nine practice examples.

 

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Key Takeaways

 

Economic consulting case interviews are 20 to 40 minute exercises that test economic reasoning, quantitative analysis, and structured thinking on litigation, regulatory, and business problems.

 

• Most cases fall into four types: litigation, regulatory, corporate and advisory, and finance

 

• Bates White structures its case in three parts: brainstorming, calculations, and conceptual discussion

 

• The same 6-step approach used for management consulting cases works here, with deeper economics and statistics

 

• Expect but-for analysis, regression interpretation, and damages estimates in the quantitative portion

 

• The published Bates White and Cornerstone Research practice cases are the two best free prep resources

 

What Changed in 2026?

 

Bates White moved its practice case to a new careers page and now publishes a three-part interview structure with video walkthroughs of every question. Cornerstone Research also refreshed its case examples page with full analyst-level solutions, which this guide now walks through step by step. The latest Bureau of Labor Statistics outlook for economists has been updated as well.

 

What Is an Economic Consulting Case Interview?

 

An economic consulting case interview is a 20 to 40 minute exercise where you analyze a business, legal, or regulatory problem using economic reasoning and quantitative data. The interviewer gives you a prompt, a few data tables or charts, and a series of questions, and you finish by delivering a defensible recommendation supported by your analysis.

 

Economic consulting is a specialized type of consulting that serves law firms, government agencies, and corporations on matters that mix economics, business, and law. The case interview gives you a taste of what the work actually feels like.

 

Examples of business questions you could face include:

 

• Quantifying the revenue losses caused by a competitor's intellectual property theft

 

• Preparing testimony for a client being sued by shareholders for inadequate disclosure

 

• Estimating overcharges from alleged price-fixing between suppliers in 2019 and 2020

 

• Evaluating whether a proposed merger will reduce competition in a relevant market

 

• Modeling the economic effects of a new minimum wage policy on employment and prices

 

Firms use these cases because they reveal a candidate's reasoning, math fluency, and economic intuition in under an hour. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, employment of economists is projected to grow just 1% from 2024 to 2034, with only about 900 openings per year, so competition for each analyst seat is intense.

 

How Is It Different From a Management Consulting Case Interview?

 

Economic consulting cases share the same structure as management consulting cases, but they go deeper on economics, data, and legal context. The framework you build looks similar. The questions you answer along the way are more technical.

 

Here is a side-by-side comparison.

 

Dimension	Economic Consulting Case	Management Consulting Case
Primary focus	Litigation, regulation, damages, market analysis	Business strategy, profitability, growth
Quantitative depth	Heavy. Regression output, damages, elasticity	Moderate. Profit, market share, breakeven math
Economic theory tested	Yes. Microeconomics, antitrust, game theory	Rarely. Basic supply and demand at most
Data interpretation	Tables, time series, regression coefficients	Tables and charts, less statistical
Typical length	25 to 40 minutes	20 to 30 minutes
Recommendation style	Defensible position with economic reasoning	Strategic recommendation with action steps

 

Bates White says its case interviews run 25 to 40 minutes and ask candidates to analyze problems from an economics perspective rather than a business perspective. That single distinction is the most important one to internalize.

 

What Are the 4 Types of Economic Consulting Cases?

 

There are four major types of economic consulting cases. Most cases you encounter will fall into one of these buckets, though the line between them is sometimes blurry.

 

Litigation Cases

 

Litigation cases are the most common type at firms like Cornerstone Research, Bates White, and Analysis Group. These cases support active or potential lawsuits.

 

Topics include antitrust and competition, class action lawsuits, intellectual property, securities and finance, labor and employment, mass torts and product liability, and international arbitration. This is the core of litigation consulting work.

 

A typical litigation case asks you to estimate damages from an alleged harm. You compare the actual world (where the harm happened) to a but-for world (where it did not) and quantify the difference.

 

Regulatory Cases

 

Regulatory cases analyze the economic impact of proposed or existing regulations. Clients are typically government agencies, regulated industries, or law firms advising on regulatory matters.

 

Topics include auction design, utility rate-setting, environmental regulation, and competition policy. You may be asked to model how a policy change will affect prices, output, or consumer welfare.

 

Corporate and Advisory Cases

 

Corporate cases cover corporate governance, risk advisory, transaction support, M&A diligence, and valuation. The work is closer to traditional consulting but still uses economic and financial modeling.

 

A corporate case might ask you to value a business unit, assess the economic rationale for an acquisition, or evaluate transfer pricing arrangements.

 

Finance Cases

 

Finance cases focus on financial markets, banking, and consumer financial services. Topics include bankruptcy, consumer protection, financial institutions, and financial risk management.

 

A finance case could ask you to estimate damages in a securities fraud case, model default risk for a portfolio, or analyze whether a financial product violates consumer protection rules.

 

Entry-level candidates are not expected to be experts in any of these topics. You should be able to solve the case using structured reasoning and the data the interviewer gives you. For senior roles, deeper expertise in one or more practice areas is expected.

 

What Skills Do Economic Consulting Firms Test?

 

Economic consulting case interviews test six core skills. Keep all of them in mind when you walk into the interview.

 

• Logical, structured thinking: can you break a complex problem into clear, manageable components and reason from evidence to a defensible conclusion

 

• Quantitative and statistical fluency: can you interpret a regression table, read a price chart, and execute clean mental math without a calculator

 

• Economic intuition: do you understand supply and demand, elasticity, market power, and how competitive markets work, and can you spot when a price pattern is suspicious

 

• Business and legal judgment: are your recommendations realistic and defensible in a courtroom or regulatory setting

 

• Communication skills: can you explain a regression coefficient or a damages calculation to a judge or attorney who is not an economist

 

• Personality and cultural fit: are you coachable, curious, and pleasant to work with on a long litigation engagement

 

Bates White explicitly tells candidates to analyze cases from an economics perspective, restate the question, and explain reasoning out loud. Those three habits are the single biggest predictors of a strong performance.

 

What Economic Concepts Should You Know Before Your Interview?

 

You should review a short list of microeconomics and econometrics concepts before any economic consulting case interview. The interviewer will not test you on a graduate qualifying exam, but you are expected to know the basics cold.

 

The most useful concepts to review are:

 

• Price elasticity of demand: the percentage change in quantity demanded for a 1% change in price. Elastic demand (elasticity greater than 1) means consumers cut back sharply when prices rise. Inelastic demand (less than 1) means they keep buying

 

• Supply and demand factors: cost of raw materials, labor, and manufacturing on the supply side. Substitutes, product quality, consumer preferences, and macro conditions on the demand side

 

• Regression analysis basics: OLS, R-squared, statistical significance, and how to interpret a coefficient. You do not need to derive the math, but you should know what each output means

 

• Market structure: perfect competition, monopoly, oligopoly, and monopolistic competition. Barriers to entry, market power, and concentration measures like HHI

 

• Game theory basics: Nash equilibrium, cooperation versus defection, and how collusion is sustained or breaks down

 

• Damages methodologies: but-for analysis, before-and-after analysis, and yardstick (or benchmark) analysis. These are the three standard ways to quantify economic damages

 

• Event studies: the standard tool in securities litigation to measure how a stock price reacted to news on a specific day

 

If you have a quantitative background, most of this is review. If you are coming from a non-economics field, spend a few hours on a free microeconomics course and a refresher on basic statistics.

 

What Are the 3 Parts of an Economic Consulting Case Interview?

 

Most economic consulting cases move through three parts: brainstorming, calculations, and conceptual discussion. Bates White publishes this exact structure on its case interview tips page, and in my experience the same arc shows up at nearly every economic consulting firm.

 

Part 1 is brainstorming. The interviewer presents the scenario, and your job is to break it down, ask clarifying questions, and structure your initial thinking. Strong brainstorming means restating the question and using its exact phrasing to guide your answer.

 

Part 2 is calculations. The interviewer provides some numbers and asks you to estimate others. Talk through your setup before you compute, state your assumptions out loud, and simplify the math wherever you can.

 

Part 3 is conceptual discussion. After the math, you zoom out and connect your answer to the bigger economic picture. Interviewers care more about how you support your answer than whether you land on one correct number.

 

Your interview day will also include standard fit interview questions about your background and motivation. Do not neglect them just because the case feels like the main event.

 

What Are the 6 Steps to Solve an Economic Consulting Case?

 

The approach to solving an economic consulting case is similar to the approach for a traditional case interview. Follow these six steps in order.

 

Step 1: Understand the Case

 

The interviewer will give you a case prompt and some background. Take meticulous notes on the most important facts. Focus on the context, the parties involved, and the objective of the case.

 

Ask clarifying questions if anything is unclear. You can also restate the case back to confirm your understanding. The single biggest mistake candidates make is solving the wrong problem because they did not pin down the objective.

 

Step 2: Structure the Problem

 

Develop a framework that breaks the problem into the key areas you need to investigate. Good case interview frameworks have three or four buckets, each tied to the objective.

 

It is acceptable to ask the interviewer for a minute to collect your thoughts before presenting your structure. Walk the interviewer through your framework clearly, and let them push back or guide you to the area they want to explore first.

 

Step 3: Kick Off the Case

 

How you start depends on whether the case is candidate-led or interviewer-led. In a candidate-led case, you propose an area to explore first and give a brief reason. In an interviewer-led case, the interviewer points you to the first area or gives you a specific question.

 

There is generally no right or wrong area to start with in a candidate-led case. Pick the area most likely to drive the answer and explain your reasoning.

 

Step 4: Solve Quantitative Problems

 

Economic consulting cases always have a quantitative component. You may need to estimate damages, interpret a regression coefficient, calculate an overcharge, or compute the present value of future cash flows.

 

Before you do any math, lay out your approach to the interviewer. State your assumptions, write out the calculation you are about to perform, and confirm the approach is sound. Once the structure is approved, the math is straightforward execution.

 

Write your calculations clearly on the page and label units. Sense-check your answer against the magnitudes of the inputs. A misplaced decimal in a damages estimate is one of the most common ways to lose an otherwise strong case.

 

Step 5: Answer Qualitative Questions

 

Qualitative questions ask you to reason about market behavior, legal context, or business implications. You may be asked to brainstorm supply and demand factors, evaluate whether a merger would harm consumers, or list reasons an industry might be vulnerable to collusion.

 

Structure your answer before you speak. If you are brainstorming, group your ideas into clear categories like supply and demand. If you are taking a position, state your conclusion first and then walk through the supporting reasons.

 

Step 6: Deliver a Recommendation

 

At the end of the case, present your recommendation and the two or three reasons that support it. Do not recap every step of the case. Lead with the answer.

 

Always include potential next steps. These can be areas of your framework you did not have time to explore, additional data you would want to pull, or sensitivity tests you would run to stress-test your conclusion.

 

What Quantitative Methods Show Up in Economic Consulting Cases?

 

Economic consulting cases lean on a handful of quantitative methods that come up again and again. You do not need to execute them at the level you would in a real engagement, but you need to understand what each one does and when to use it.

 

Method	What It Does	Where It Shows Up
But-for analysis	Compares the actual world to a hypothetical world without the alleged harm	Antitrust, IP, breach of contract damages
Before-and-after analysis	Compares outcomes during the harm period to outcomes before and after	Price-fixing, collusion, market manipulation
Yardstick analysis	Compares the affected market to a similar unaffected market	Class actions, antitrust, regulatory impact
Regression analysis	Estimates how one variable changes when another changes, controlling for other factors	Damages models, wage discrimination, demand estimation
Event study	Measures the abnormal stock return on a specific news day	Securities fraud, materiality, loss causation
Discounted cash flow	Values an asset or business based on its expected future cash flows	Valuation, M&A advisory, lost profits
Sensitivity analysis	Tests how the answer changes when key assumptions move	Any case where assumptions drive the result

 

In a typical interview, you will use one or two of these. The most common pairing is a but-for analysis with a before-and-after comparison, which is exactly the structure used in the published Bates White cellphone battery case.

 

Case interviews are the single most important piece of your prep. If you want a structured path that gets you to a top 10% candidate in about a week, my case interview course walks you through every framework, math drill, and case type from the ground up.

 

How Do You Solve the Bates White Cellphone Battery Case?

 

Bates White publishes a full example case interview with answers and video walkthroughs on its careers site. Working through it is one of the best ways to see how an economic consulting case actually flows.

 

The prompt: a major cellphone manufacturer, TalkTek, has retained Bates White to investigate potential collusion between cellphone battery suppliers from 2019 to 2020. TalkTek alleges the suppliers fixed prices, raising the cost of batteries above the competitive level. Damages are the difference between the actual price TalkTek paid and the but-for price it would have paid without the alleged collusion.

 

Question 1: What supply and demand factors affect the price of a cellphone battery?

 

Restate the question. The interviewer asked for supply and demand factors, so cover both.

 

Supply factors include the cost of raw materials, the cost of labor, and other manufacturing costs like energy and overhead.

 

Demand factors include the availability and price of substitute batteries, product quality, consumer trends and population characteristics, and macroeconomic factors like consumer income and spending.

 

Question 2: Looking at the price trend, what should prices have been in 2019 and 2020? How much did TalkTek overpay?

 

Bates White provides a table of battery prices from 2017 to 2022. The numbers show a steady downward trend in most years, but prices spike in 2019 and 2020 before resuming the decline.

 

If you assume the trend should have continued at about $0.50 per year, the but-for price for 2019 and 2020 is roughly $3.50 per battery below the actual price. Overpayment is $3.50 per unit in each of those two years.

 

This is a classic before-and-after analysis. You use the trend from the clean periods to estimate what prices should have been during the alleged collusion period.

 

Question 3: What if costs were also higher in 2019 and 2020 due to a natural disaster?

 

Bates White then gives you a cost table showing higher manufacturing costs in 2019 and 2020. This changes the analysis. Some portion of the price increase is explained by legitimate cost pressure rather than collusion.

 

If costs were $2.00 higher per battery in those years, then $2.00 of the $3.50 overcharge is explained by costs. The remaining $1.50 per unit is the more conservative estimate of damages from alleged price-fixing.

 

This is the heart of economic consulting. The first answer is rarely the final answer. You have to control for confounding factors before you can say what damages were actually caused by the alleged conduct.

 

Question 4: How are consumers affected by elevated battery prices?

 

The answer depends on the price elasticity of demand for TalkTek phones.

 

If demand for TalkTek phones is inelastic, TalkTek can pass higher battery costs through to consumers as higher phone prices. Consumers are harmed.

 

If demand is elastic, TalkTek may absorb the cost rather than risk losing sales. Consumers are not directly harmed unless competitors also faced fixed prices, in which case all phones rise in price and consumers are harmed industry-wide.

 

This question tests whether you can move from a damages calculation to the broader economic effects on the market. That ability to zoom out is what separates a good economic consulting candidate from an average one.

 

How Do You Solve the Cornerstone Research Securities Case?

 

Cornerstone Research publishes two full analyst case examples with complete solutions on its careers site. The securities case is the most instructive, because it shows exactly how an event study works in practice.

 

The prompt: Zilo Corporation, a high-tech firm, completed its IPO at $20 per share and climbed above $60 within a year. After Zilo lost two customers that together accounted for 40% of its sales, the stock fell to $16. Shareholders sued, claiming management hid the customer losses for months, and calculated damages of $40 per share based on the decline over the disclosure period.

 

Question 1: What is the problem with the plaintiffs' damages approach?

 

The plaintiffs attributed the entire $40 decline to the alleged misconduct. That assumes nothing else moved the stock during the class period, which is almost never true.

 

Estimating true damages requires isolating how much of the decline was caused by the alleged misconduct after controlling for all other news. This is the same causal reasoning you saw in the battery case, applied to a stock price instead of a battery price.

 

Question 2: What other news could have moved the stock?

 

Group your answer into three buckets: economy-wide news that affects all publicly traded companies, industry-wide news that affects companies in Zilo's sector, and company-specific news unrelated to the alleged misconduct. Interviewers reward this kind of clean categorization far more than a long unstructured list.

 

Question 3: How do you estimate the but-for stock price?

 

Run a regression of Zilo's stock price on a market index like the S&P 500 and an industry index, trained on data from before the class period. Then plug in the values of those indices during the class period to predict what Zilo's price would have been absent the alleged misconduct.

 

Days where the actual return is statistically significantly below the predicted return are the candidates for misconduct-related drops. Everything else is explained by market and industry movement.

 

Question 4: What did the analysis conclude?

 

Cornerstone's team matched the remaining significant price drops to specific news announcements in an event study. After removing market-wide, industry-wide, and unrelated company news, only $3 of the $40 claimed decline might relate to the allegations.

 

That gap between $40 claimed and $3 supported is the entire value proposition of economic consulting in one number. Rigorous causal analysis routinely changes damages estimates by an order of magnitude.

 

What Are Real Economic Consulting Case Interview Examples?

 

We have compiled all of the economic consulting practice cases and examples that we could find below:

 

• Bates White Practice Case: Your client is a major cellphone manufacturer investigating the impact of potential collusion between suppliers of cellphone batteries in 2019 and 2020. Collusion may have resulted in price-fixing, which would have led to your client overpaying their suppliers

 

• Cornerstone Research Case Example #1: Your client, Zilo Corporation, is being sued by shareholders for neglecting fiduciary responsibilities to update shareholders on major changes to the business. You have been hired to help estimate how much of the stock price decline the alleged misconduct actually caused

 

• Cornerstone Research Case Example #2 (same link as above): A federal court ruled that Duff Products unlawfully used manufacturing techniques patented by ACME Manufacturing. You have been hired to determine the extent to which ACME's alleged lost profits resulted from the unauthorized use

 

• NERA Economic Consulting Case Example #1: Your client is a North American construction company considering a public-private-partnership project to build a stretch of interstate highway for the federal government. The construction costs $1B, but your client would earn revenue by collecting tolls for the next 10 years. Determine whether this project is worth taking on

 

• NERA Economic Consulting Case Example #2: Your client is a steel manufacturer with one fairly old, marginally profitable mini-mill in California. A competitor has recently built a new steel plant about 200 miles away. How should your client respond, and is the new plant a competitive threat

 

• NERA Economic Consulting Case Example #3: Your client is one of the largest shipping companies in the world. Historically, your client has earned an average return on equity of 10%, but the board wants to increase this to 15% in the next two years. How should they go about accomplishing this

 

• NERA Economic Consulting Case Example #4: Your client is a major broadcasting company considering a bid for the exclusive rights to broadcast the upcoming Winter Olympic Games. How much should they bid

 

• NERA Economic Consulting Case Example #5: The Philadelphia Orchestra is exploring the possibility of increasing ticket sales. Historically, they have relied on corporate donations and government grants for revenues, but they would like a greater proportion of revenues to come from ticket sales. How would you help them accomplish this goal

 

Work through the Bates White and Cornerstone cases first, since both publish full solutions. The NERA examples are best used to practice structuring an approach out loud.

 

MBA consulting casebooks are another strong source of practice material, with more than 700 free cases across 23 schools. Filter for cases tagged antitrust, damages, or regulation to stay close to economic consulting topics.

 

What Are the Best Tips for Economic Consulting Case Interviews?

 

Below are seven tips that come up over and over in feedback from successful candidates and from my own time interviewing candidates for consulting roles.

 

Tip #1: Analyze From an Economics Perspective

 

Bates White makes this explicit in its case prep materials. When the interviewer asks about supply and demand, do not jump to business strategy. Stay in the language of supply, demand, prices, elasticities, and market structure.

 

Tip #2: Restate the Question Before You Answer

 

Every question in an economic consulting case has a specific structure. If the question asks for supply and demand factors, give both, and if it asks whether an effect is beneficial, harmful, or both, address all three possibilities. Restating the question forces you to answer all parts.

 

Tip #3: Write Out Every Calculation

 

Even simple math goes wrong under pressure. Writing out each step makes errors easier to catch and easier to correct. It also lets the interviewer follow your logic, which is half the point of the case.

 

Tip #4: Label Your Units

 

Dollars per battery, percent change, basis points, units sold. Mislabeling units is the second most common math mistake after misplaced decimals. Write the unit next to every number.

 

Tip #5: Sense-Check Before You Commit

 

If your damages estimate comes out to $40 trillion or $0.02, something is wrong. Before you present a number, ask yourself whether the magnitude makes sense given the inputs. A 30-second sanity check has saved more candidates than any framework.

 

Tip #6: Control for Confounding Factors

 

The first explanation is rarely the only explanation. A price spike could be collusion, or it could be a natural disaster, a supply shock, or a shift in demand. Always ask what else could explain the pattern you see in the data before concluding it is the alleged harm.

 

Tip #7: End With Next Steps

 

Strong candidates close the case by naming the next analysis they would run. Examples: pull additional cost data to test the natural disaster hypothesis, run a yardstick analysis against another regional market, or stress-test the result by varying the elasticity assumption. This signals you think like a consultant, not just a problem-solver.

 

If you want targeted feedback on your case performance, my case interview coaching gives you 1-on-1 practice with a former Bain interviewer.

 

Master the four case types, the six-step approach, and the two published practice cases, and you will walk into your economic consulting case interview ahead of most of the candidate pool. Start with the Bates White battery case today, since it is the single highest-return hour of prep available.

 

Frequently Asked Questions

 

How do you prepare for an economic consulting case interview?

 

Start with a review of microeconomics and basic statistics. Focus on price elasticity, market structure, regression interpretation, and damages methodologies (but-for, before-and-after, yardstick). Work through the published Bates White and Cornerstone Research cases, then practice three or four traditional case interview examples to build structured thinking.

 

Is an economic consulting case interview harder than a management consulting case?

 

Harder is the wrong word: different is more accurate. Economic consulting cases are more quantitative and require specific economic and statistical knowledge. Management consulting cases require broader business intuition and faster framework-building. Candidates strong in math and economics often find economic consulting cases easier.

 

Do you need a PhD to pass an economic consulting case interview?

 

No. Most analysts at top firms have bachelor's degrees in economics, math, statistics, or another quantitative field. PhDs are required for senior expert testimony roles along the economic consulting career path, not entry-level positions. Bachelor's-level analysts make up the largest population at firms like NERA, Cornerstone Research, and Analysis Group.

 

How long does an economic consulting case interview last?

 

Most economic consulting cases run 25 to 40 minutes. Bates White publishes 25 to 40 minutes on its careers page. Cornerstone Research and NERA cases typically fall in the same range. Final-round case interviews can be longer if combined with technical questions or a data interpretation exercise.

 

Which economic consulting firms use case interviews?

 

Most major economic consulting firms use case interviews. The list includes Cornerstone Research, Bates White, Analysis Group, NERA Economic Consulting, Charles River Associates, Compass Lexecon, The Brattle Group, Berkeley Research Group, and FTI Consulting. Big Four firms like EY, Deloitte, PwC, and KPMG also use case-style questions in their economic consulting practices.

 

What should you bring to an economic consulting case interview?

 

Bring two pens, a notepad, and a copy of your resume. Most economic consulting cases are run on paper, not on a whiteboard. Some firms now use take-home written assessments instead of in-person cases, in which case you will need basic spreadsheet skills as well.

 

How are case interviews different at Cornerstone Research vs NERA?

 

Cornerstone Research cases lean heavily on litigation contexts and follow the published case examples on the firm's website, with an emphasis on causal reasoning and statistical analysis. NERA cases cover a wider mix of finance, regulatory, and competition topics, with more emphasis on quantitative modeling. Bates White cases focus on antitrust and damages and follow a tightly structured question and answer format with data tables.

 

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