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The Bureau of Economics in the Federal Trade Commission has a three-part role in the Agency and the strength of its functions changed over time depending on the preferences and ideology of the FTC’s leaders, developments in the field of economics, and the tenor of the times. The over-riding current role is to provide well considered, unbiased economic advice regarding antitrust and consumer protection law enforcement cases to the legal staff and the Commission. The second role, which long ago was primary, is to provide reports on investigations of various industries to the public and public officials. This role was more recently called research or “policy R&D”. A third role is to advocate for competition and markets both domestically and internationally. As a practical matter, the provision of economic advice to the FTC and to the legal staff has required that the economists wear “two hats,” helping the legal staff investigate cases and provide evidence to support law enforcement cases while also providing advice to the legal bureaus and to the Commission on which cases to pursue (thus providing “a second set of eyes” to evaluate cases). There is sometimes a tension in those functions because building a case is not the same as evaluating a case. Economists and the Bureau of Economics have provided such services to the FTC for over 100 years proving that a sub-organization can survive while playing roles that sometimes conflict. Such a life is not, however, always easy or fun.

Iran’s potential to expand its natural gas exports has received a great deal of attention since Hassan Rouhani’s election in 2013. Rouhani’s presidency centered around adopting a foreign policy approach to actively promote a constructive engagement and dialogue with the West, as well as seriously pursuing diplomatic and prudent interactions with Iran’s immediate neighbors and beyond on an equal footing with a view toward advancing mutual accommodation, respect, and shared interests. This chapter’s central argument is that Iran’s ability to export natural gas to Europe depends largely upon maintaining stable and strong trade ties with Turkey. The cooperation between these two countries, despite competition and occasional frictions, could arguably foster a balance of power at middle-power level countries that will be necessary for an enduring stability in the region.

In this chapter we develop a monthly output index of the U.S. transportation sector covering air, rail, water, truck, transit, and pipeline activities. We call it the transportation services index (TSI). Separate indexes for freight and passenger are also constructed. Before the development of TSI, there was no comprehensive monthly measure of the economic activity by all modes of transportation. Since policymakers are increasingly concerned about the critical role transportation plays in enabling economic growth, monitoring of TSI can provide them with insights about the current and future state of the economy. Fortunately we find that our monthly transportation services output index (TSI), which is based on a new measurement approach, matches very well with the annual transportation output figures produced by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) and the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA). Some analysis reported in this chapter indicate that the cyclical movements in the transportation output appear to be more synchronized with the growth slowdowns rather than full-fledged recessions of the U.S. economy. The index has led the turning points of the 6 National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)-defined growth cycles over the period with an average lead-time of 6 months at peaks and 5 months at troughs.