Author: Taylor Warfield, Former Bain Manager and interviewer

Last Updated: October 7, 2026

 

The Oxera interview has two interview rounds plus an online critical thinking test and a written economics exercise, and it tests applied microeconomics and econometrics rather than business strategy. This guide covers every stage, the questions candidates actually get asked, and the ten habits that separate offer-holders from everyone else.

 

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Key Takeaways

 

Oxera runs a two-round interview process built around guided economics case studies, a written exercise, and motivational questions, and the technical bar is set by microeconomics and econometrics rather than by profitability frameworks.

 

• Round one is with two experienced consultants and includes a short case study plus a written economics exercise

 

• Round two is with a partner and a principal and includes another short case study

 

• Candidates consistently report a Watson Glaser critical thinking test after the online application

 

• Cases center on mergers, market definition, cartel damages, regulated returns, and econometric identification

 

• Oxera asks for a 2:1 or above in economics or finance, with a postgraduate degree preferred but not required

 

• Self-reported pay in England runs £44,000 to £55,000 for an Analyst and £80,000 to £115,000 for a Senior Consultant

 

What Is the Oxera Interview Process?

 

The Oxera interview process has four stages: an online application with motivational questions, an online critical thinking test, a first-round interview with two experienced consultants that includes a short case study and a written economics exercise, and a second-round interview with a partner and a principal built around another case study.

 

Oxera describes the interview structure directly on its careers site. Both rounds are technical, both include a case, and the written exercise sits inside the first round rather than standing alone as a separate assessment day.

 

Stage	Who runs it	What it contains	What it screens for
Online application	Recruitment team	CV, cover letter, grades, motivational questions	Academics and genuine interest in economics
Online test	Automated	Watson Glaser critical thinking test, sometimes an economics test	Reasoning under time pressure
First interview	Two experienced consultants	Motivational questions, a short guided case, a written economics exercise	Applied microeconomics and clear writing
Second interview	A partner and a principal	Another short case, deeper technical probing, fit	Judgement, depth, and team fit

 

One detail catches people out. Oxera lets you submit only one application per recruitment period, so you cannot hedge across two offices or two teams in the same cycle.

 

What Does Oxera Do and Who Does It Hire?

 

Oxera is a European economics and finance consultancy that advises companies, regulators, competition authorities, and law firms on competition, regulation, valuation, and damages. Founded in 1982 as Oxford Economic Research Associates, the firm now has 340 or more colleagues across 11 European offices and a team that works in over 30 languages, according to its about page.

 

That matters for your interview because the work is expert evidence, not slide decks. Oxera economists write submissions to competition authorities, quantify antitrust damages, and model the allowed returns of regulated utilities, which is why the interview is technical rather than framework-driven.

 

The firm hires into four teams, and you pick one when you apply:

 

• Competition: merger investigations, antitrust cases, damages quantification, and remedy design

 

• Regulation: price controls, cost of capital, and regulatory frameworks for energy, water, transport, and telecoms

 

• Finance and Valuation: valuation analysis, state aid, corporate finance, and capital markets

 

• Analytics and Data Science: econometrics, statistics, and data-heavy quantitative work

 

Roles sit in Amsterdam, Berlin, Brussels, Hamburg, London, Madrid, Milan, Oxford, Paris, and Rome. Fluent English is required everywhere, and a second European language is required for offices outside Brussels, London, and Oxford, which quietly rules out a lot of applicants before the technical bar even applies.

 

Compared with generalist strategy firms, economic consulting asks for far more academic economics and far less business intuition. If you cannot explain what an instrumental variable does, Oxera is a hard sell.

 

What Happens in the Oxera Online Application and Tests?

 

The online application asks for your CV, a cover letter, your grades, and written answers to motivational questions such as why Oxera and why economic consulting. Candidates report that the grade requests are detailed, so have your module-level marks ready before you start.

 

Two rules here are absolute. Oxera states that applications using AI to generate a cover letter will be rejected, and that using AI during any interview or written exam also results in rejection.

 

That makes your consulting cover letter a real screening document rather than a formality. Write it yourself, cite a specific Oxera case or Agenda article, and connect it to a piece of your own academic work.

 

Your consulting resume should foreground econometrics coursework, your dissertation topic, and any Stata, R, or Python work you have actually done. If you need a second pair of eyes on it, my resume review service gives you unlimited revisions with a 24-hour turnaround.

 

What is the Oxera online test?

 

Candidates across the Oxford, London, Amsterdam, and Rome offices consistently describe a Watson Glaser critical thinking test after the initial screen. Oxera's assessment provider has published an account of introducing an Oxera-branded Watson Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal into the firm's graduate recruitment, so this is a deliberate, long-standing part of the process rather than an occasional add-on.

 

The Watson Glaser runs 40 questions in about 30 minutes across five sections: inference, recognizing assumptions, deduction, interpretation, and evaluation of arguments. The single rule that trips people up is that you must reason only from the passage in front of you and ignore everything you know about the subject.

 

Some candidates also report an economics test covering undergraduate microeconomics and econometrics, delivered as multiple choice. Treat both tests as pass or fail gates and spend two or three hours practicing the Watson Glaser format specifically, because it is unlike any other reasoning test you have taken.

 

What Should You Expect in the First-Round Oxera Interview?

 

The first round is a roughly one-hour interview with two experienced consultants, split between motivational questions and technical work, plus a written economics exercise. Candidates describe the first half hour as behavioral and CV-based and the second half as technical, with a guided case delivered question by question.

 

Expect the interviewers to draw on their own live projects. Multiple candidates report being asked about the interviewer's recent publications and cases, which is a strong argument for reading the firm's published work before you show up.

 

What is the Oxera written test?

 

The written exercise typically gives you four economics questions and asks you to answer one in about an hour, in plain language. Reported prompts include estimating the damages caused by a cartel, explaining the problems with a vertical merger, and describing how you would judge whether a model is any good.

 

This is closer to a written case interview than to a university essay. Lead with your answer in the first two sentences, state your assumptions explicitly, and structure the rest as short labeled sections a lawyer could read without a background in economics.

 

The most common failure I see is candidates writing a literature review instead of an argument. Oxera's clients are regulators, courts, and legal teams, so the firm is testing whether you can turn theory into a recommendation someone can act on.

 

What Happens in the Oxera Partner Interview?

 

The second round is with a partner and a principal, and it contains another short case study alongside deeper technical and cultural questions. Candidates repeatedly describe this round as harder than the first, with more practical cases and more direct probing.

 

One recurring theme matters here. Several candidates report that second-round economics questions are deliberately vague, testing whether you can impose structure on an ambiguous problem instead of reciting a model.

 

Partners also test communication hard. If you have coasted through the first round on technical fluency and given long, tangled answers, this is where it costs you.

 

What Types of Case Questions Does Oxera Ask?

 

Oxera cases fall into four recurring families: merger and market definition analysis, damages quantification, regulatory economics, and econometric identification. The firm's own advice tells candidates to practice applying economic theory to real problems such as mergers and cartels, and candidate accounts line up with that exactly.

 

These are guided cases. The interviewer walks you through the problem one question at a time and reveals new information as you go, which means your ability to update an answer matters more than your ability to deliver a perfect opening structure. That is the biggest difference between this and a generalist economic consulting case interview at a litigation-heavy firm.

 

Merger and market definition cases

 

One widely reported case asks you to assess a merger between two hospitals, starting with market definition. The interviewer wants to hear you ask what patients would actually do if the merged entity worsened quality or raised prices, not a recital of the horizontal merger guidelines.

 

Here's an example of how to reason through it. Let's say 30% of Hospital A's patients would switch to Hospital B if A closed, while only 5% would travel to the next nearest provider 40 miles away. That high diversion ratio tells you the two hospitals are close substitutes, which points to a narrow geographic market and a real competition concern.

 

From there, move to the counterfactual: what happens without the merger? A hospital that would otherwise exit the market changes the entire analysis, and interviewers reward candidates who raise that unprompted.

 

Damages quantification cases

 

Estimating cartel damages is the single most frequently reported Oxera case question, appearing in both interviews and the written exercise. The structure they want is the overcharge, the volume effect, and pass-on.

 

Here's an example. Assume a cartel operated in industrial cables for five years and your client bought £40m of cable per year, so £200m in total. If benchmark analysis suggests prices would have been 12% lower without the cartel, the direct overcharge is roughly £24m.

 

Then push further, because that number is not the answer. You need to net off any overcharge the client passed on to its own customers, add the lost profit on sales it never made because its input costs were inflated, and say which counterfactual benchmark you would use and why. Being fast and accurate with this kind of case interview math under pressure is a real differentiator.

 

Regulatory economics cases

 

Regulation cases usually revolve around the allowed rate of return for a monopoly network. A typical prompt asks how you would decide the reasonable profit a regulated firm should earn, or how you would justify the current level of monopoly pricing in an industry.

 

The numbers matter here more than people expect. Let's say a water network has a £5bn regulatory asset base and the regulator is choosing between a 4.0% and a 3.5% allowed return, a gap that is worth £25m per year to the company and explains why these disputes get fought so hard.

 

Econometrics cases

 

Reported econometrics questions include omitted variable bias, how you would determine the effect of a policy, and how you would evaluate whether a model is good. These are usually conversational rather than computational, so you are explaining identification rather than deriving estimators.

 

Have one clean example ready for each of endogeneity, instrumental variables, difference-in-differences, and fixed effects. If your dissertation used any of them, use that as your example, because candidates are frequently asked to describe their dissertation to a non-economist.

 

If you also have generalist consulting interviews in the same cycle, my case interview course covers the strategy-side case structures in as little as 7 days so you are not preparing two skill sets from scratch.

 

What Economics Do You Need to Know for an Oxera Interview?

 

You need solid microeconomics, industrial organization, and econometrics, plus whichever specialist body of theory sits under the team you applied to. Oxera's stated requirements are a solid understanding of microeconomics and experience with data analysis or programming in Stata, R, Python, or Excel.

 

Team	Core theory to revise	Typical interview question
Competition	Market definition, diversion ratios, unilateral and coordinated effects, oligopoly and game theory	What factors should we consider in this merger?
Regulation	Natural monopoly, price caps, cost of capital, regulatory asset base, incentive regulation	What profit should a regulated firm be allowed to earn?
Finance and Valuation	DCF, WACC, beta estimation, comparables, state aid tests	How do you value firms in the same industry across countries?
Analytics and Data Science	OLS assumptions, omitted variable bias, instrumental variables, difference-in-differences, panel data	How would you identify the effect of this policy?

 

Do not over-index on breadth. Candidates who fail typically know a little about everything and cannot go three questions deep on anything, which is exactly what a guided case exposes.

 

What Behavioral Questions Does Oxera Ask?

 

Roughly four to five motivational and behavioral questions open each interview, covering why Oxera, why economic consulting, your CV, and standard competency themes such as conflict and leadership. Oxera lists motivation and communication as two of the five things it explicitly wants candidates to prepare.

 

Here are the questions candidates report most often:

 

• Why Oxera, and why economic consulting rather than strategy consulting or a PhD

 

• Tell me about yourself and walk me through your CV

 

• Describe your dissertation to someone who is not an economist

 

• Tell me about a time you resolved a conflict with a colleague

 

• Describe a time you convinced a colleague to change direction on a piece of work

 

• Where do you see yourself in five years

 

• What makes someone a good economic consultant

 

The dissertation question is the one people underprepare. Practice a 90-second version with no jargon, then a three-minute version with the identification strategy, because interviewers routinely start with the first and escalate to the second.

 

Structure your competency answers with the STAR method and keep them under two minutes. Rambling is the fastest way to lose a partner's attention.

 

Oxera's consulting behavioral questions are less scripted than at the large strategy firms, so preparing six flexible stories beats memorizing twenty answers. My fit interview course covers 98% of the questions you will face in a few hours.

 

How Does the Oxera Interview Differ from an MBB Case Interview?

 

An Oxera case tests whether you can apply economic theory to a legal or regulatory question, while an MBB case interview tests whether you can structure a business problem and reach a commercial recommendation. Preparing for one does not prepare you for the other.

 

Dimension	Oxera interview	MBB case interview
Case format	Guided, question by question, information revealed as you go	Interviewer-led or candidate-led with an upfront structure
Core skill tested	Applied microeconomics and econometrics	Structured problem solving and business judgment
Math	Damages, elasticities, returns, and regression interpretation	Profitability, market sizing, breakeven, and NPV
Written component	Standard, one hour, inside round one	Occasional, usually a written case at final round
Who interviews you	Two consultants, then a partner and a principal	Consultants, then partners, usually one on one
Degree expectation	Economics or finance, postgraduate preferred	Any discipline

 

In my years interviewing at Bain, the candidates who struggled most in economic consulting interviews were the ones who had drilled profitability trees for months. They reached for a framework when the interviewer wanted a theory of harm.

 

How Much Do Oxera Analysts and Consultants Get Paid?

 

Based on Glassdoor's England salary data, which pools 188 self-reported salaries across 50 job titles, Oxera pay runs from roughly £44,000 at Analyst level to £214,000 at Principal. These are self-reported figures rather than published bands, so read them as a range rather than an offer prediction.

 

Level	Self-reported pay	Submissions	Typical profile
Intern	£24,000 to £31,000	9	3 to 12 month placement
Analyst	£44,000 to £55,000	45	Graduate entry point
Consultant	£55,000 to £66,000	46	Roughly 2 to 4 years in
Senior Consultant	£80,000 to £115,000	30	Runs workstreams and client delivery
Principal	£165,000 to £214,000	3	Small sample, treat as indicative

 

Source: Glassdoor self-reported Oxera salaries in England, retrieved August 2026.

 

Two things stand out in that table. The Analyst to Consultant jump is modest, but the step up to Senior Consultant roughly doubles pay, which is where economic consulting starts competing with strategy firm compensation.

 

Analyst pay sits below MBB London entry pay, which is the standard trade-off across the economic consulting career path. What you get in exchange is technical depth, expert witness exposure, and a genuine route into competition authorities, regulators, and academia.

 

How Hard Is It to Get an Offer at Oxera?

 

Oxera is hard to get into on technical grounds rather than volume grounds. Glassdoor candidates rate the interview difficulty at 3.43 out of 5, with Graduate Analyst applicants specifically rating it 4 out of 5, and 73.3% describe the experience as positive.

 

The eligibility bar filters heavily before anyone reads your answers:

 

1. Degree: a 2:1 or above in economics or finance, or the international equivalent, with a postgraduate degree preferred but not essential
   
   
2. Technical skills: a solid understanding of microeconomics plus data analysis or programming experience in Stata, R, Python, or Excel
   
   
3. Languages: fluent English, with a second European language required for offices outside Brussels, London, and Oxford
   
   
4. Experience: internships and relevant work experience help but are not mandatory

 

Timing is unusually strict. You get one application per recruitment period, you must wait 12 months to reapply after a rejection, and Oxera states it aims to extend all graduate offers by May 2026 at the latest for the current cycle.

 

Because of that single-application rule, most serious candidates run parallel processes at peer firms. A Frontier Economics interview uses a similar mix of applied micro and written work, so the preparation overlaps almost completely.

 

10 Tips to Pass Your Oxera Interview

 

These ten tips come from what actually separates candidates in technical interviews, drawn from over 10 years helping people land offers at top consulting firms.

 

Tip #1: Read three Oxera case studies before you interview

 

Oxera's own preparation advice tells candidates to research its published case studies, and candidates report that at least one interview case tracked material already published on the site. Pick one from your target team, one from a sector you know, and one you find genuinely interesting.

 

Tip #2: Rebuild microeconomics from first principles

 

Do not revise definitions. Practice deriving why a monopolist prices where marginal revenue equals marginal cost and what changes when you add capacity constraints, because that is the level the second interview probes at.

 

Tip #3: Practice explaining econometrics to a non-economist

 

Oxera's clients include lawyers and judges, and communication is one of the five skills the firm tells candidates to prepare. Explain omitted variable bias to a friend outside economics, and keep rewriting the explanation until they get it.

 

Tip #4: Learn market definition properly

 

Market definition is the entry point for most competition cases and the place where weak candidates start guessing. Be able to talk through substitution on both the demand and supply side, diversion ratios, and geographic scope with a concrete example.

 

Tip #5: Get comfortable estimating damages out loud

 

Damages quantification comes up more often than any other Oxera question. Practice saying the overcharge, volume effect, and pass-on structure aloud until it is automatic, then attach a rough number to each piece.

 

Tip #6: Treat the written exercise as a client memo

 

You have about an hour and four questions to choose from, so pick fast and spend five minutes planning. Lead with your answer, list your assumptions, then justify, and stop writing with ten minutes left so you can edit.

 

Tip #7: Build a real answer to "why economic consulting"

 

Interviewers hear "I enjoy applying economics to real problems" from almost everyone. Name the specific type of question you want to work on, whether that is merger control, price controls, or damages, and tie it to something you have already done.

 

Your answer to why consulting also needs a second layer explaining why not a PhD, since most Oxera candidates have that alternative and interviewers know it.

 

Tip #8: Pick your team and defend the choice

 

You apply to one of four teams, and interviewers will ask why that one. A candidate who says "Regulation, because I want to work on the cost of capital debates in water" is instantly more credible than one who is open to anything.

 

Tip #9: Practice thinking out loud under interruption

 

Guided cases mean the interviewer will interrupt you with new information mid-answer. Have someone feed you facts that break your reasoning halfway through, so updating gracefully becomes a habit rather than a shock.

 

Mock interviews with someone who has run these processes are the fastest way to fix this, which is what my interview coaching is built around.

 

Tip #10: Ask questions that prove you read their work

 

Oxera interviewers frequently reference their own recent projects and publications, which gives you an obvious opening. Asking about a specific Agenda article or case beats any generic question about culture, and the best questions to ask are the ones only someone who did the reading could ask.

 

The Oxera interview rewards depth over polish, so the single highest-return thing you can do is pick three economics topics that match your target team and get genuinely deep on them. Read three of the firm's published cases, rehearse your dissertation explanation for a non-economist, and practice one guided case out loud every day for a week before your first round.

 

Frequently Asked Questions

 

How long does the Oxera interview process take?

 

Glassdoor puts the average Oxera hiring process at 24 days across 15 self-reported interviews, but candidate accounts range from two weeks to more than three months. Graduate roles run on a fixed cycle, and Oxera states that it aims to extend all graduate offers by May 2026 at the latest for the current intake. Experienced hire timelines are usually shorter because they are not tied to a cycle.

 

Is the Oxera interview hard?

 

Glassdoor candidates rate Oxera interview difficulty at 3.43 out of 5, and Graduate Analyst applicants specifically rate it 4 out of 5. The difficulty comes from technical depth rather than volume. You are asked to apply microeconomics, industrial organization, and econometrics to live regulatory and litigation problems, and vague answers get probed immediately.

 

Does Oxera use case interviews?

 

Yes. Oxera confirms that both interview rounds include a short case study, and its own guidance tells candidates to practice applying economic theory to real problems such as mergers and cartels. The cases are guided and question by question rather than open-ended, so the interviewer feeds you information as you go instead of handing over a prompt and waiting.

 

What degree do you need to work at Oxera?

 

Oxera asks for a 2:1 or above in economics or finance, or the international equivalent, with a postgraduate degree preferred but not essential. You also need a solid grounding in microeconomics and some experience with data analysis or programming in Stata, R, Python, or Excel. Fluent English is required, and a second European language is highly desirable and mandatory for some offices.

 

Does Oxera sponsor work visas?

 

Oxera can sponsor under the skilled worker visa scheme for Analyst roles, though this depends on the specific position and location. Internships are not sponsored, so applicants for those must already hold the right to work in the relevant country. Confirm sponsorship for your target office before you apply, because you only get one application per recruitment cycle.

 

Can you reapply to Oxera if you are rejected?

 

Yes, but you must wait 12 months from the date of your previous application. Oxera also limits you to one application per recruitment period, so applying to a second office or team in the same cycle is not an option. The recruitment team will give feedback if you ask, which is worth using before you reapply.

 

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