What does an economist on retainer typically do?

An economist on monthly retainer typically provides ongoing advisory across economic impact analysis, regulatory cost-benefit analysis, antitrust and litigation economics, and market definition and competitive effects analysis. In economic impact advisory, this includes input-output model selection and calibration, regional multiplier methodology, employment and output effect calculation, and fiscal impact analysis for government clients, developers, and industry associations. In regulatory economics, it covers cost-benefit analysis methodology, willingness-to-pay and willingness-to-accept estimation, benefit transfer methodology review, and discount rate selection for regulatory submissions to federal and state agencies. In litigation economics, it addresses antitrust damages methodology, lost profits calculation in commercial disputes, economic expert report review and critique, and deposition preparation and rebuttal report development. In market analysis, it covers market definition using the SSNIP test or hypothetical monopolist framework, competitive effects analysis for merger review, price correlation and cointegration analysis, and entry and expansion analysis. The retainer scope typically specifies whether the economist is serving as a consulting expert, a testifying expert, or providing ongoing policy advisory to a government client or industry association.

What economics consulting work is most commonly underlogged?

The most systematically underlogged categories in economics consulting retainers are: data acquisition and cleaning prior to formal analysis (obtaining, cleaning, and structuring the economic data underlying an impact study or damages analysis — purchasing input-output data tables, downloading BLS or Census datasets, cleaning transaction-level price data — takes 10 to 30 hours per engagement but produces no visible deliverable until the analysis is complete); literature review and benchmark calibration (reviewing the published economic literature to establish the appropriate regional multiplier range, willingness-to-pay estimates, or price elasticity benchmarks for the specific analysis context takes 8 to 20 hours per engagement but is largely invisible in the final report citations); model sensitivity analysis and assumption stress-testing (testing how the economic model's conclusions change under alternative assumptions about multiplier values, discount rates, or counterfactual price levels — the analysis that gives the economist confidence in the conclusions and prepares for scrutiny — takes 6 to 18 hours per engagement but is rarely documented); opposing expert report review before formal rebuttal (reading and annotating an opposing economist's report to identify methodological weaknesses, data errors, and assumption conflicts takes 8 to 20 hours but produces no deliverable until the rebuttal report); and client briefing and agency coordination (preparing for and attending meetings with government agency staff, regulatory counsel, or client executives to explain economic methodology and respond to questions takes 4 to 12 hours per month but is often not captured in time records).

What should an economist retainer agreement include?

Economist retainer agreements should specify: the engagement type (economic impact study, regulatory cost-benefit analysis, antitrust consulting, litigation economics expert, market analysis for merger review, policy advisory for government or association); the role (consulting expert with attorney-client privilege, testifying expert, or policy advisor); the geographic scope of the analysis (local, regional, national, or international, which determines which data sources and multiplier models are applicable); the data access provided (transaction-level pricing data, company financial records, survey data, government statistics, third-party market data subscriptions); the expected deliverables and timeline (preliminary analysis memo, draft report, expert report, rebuttal report, regulatory comment letter, policy brief); how data processing and research assistant time is handled separately from the senior economist's advisory hours; and whether the retainer includes access to the economist's model files and data documentation so the client can verify the analysis inputs and reproduce key calculations. Hours visibility is particularly important in economics retainers because the invisible work — data cleaning, literature review, sensitivity analysis, model calibration — constitutes 40 to 60% of total engagement hours but produces no visible interim deliverable, creating retainer value communication gaps between the economist and the client.

What are typical retainer rates for economists?

Retainer rates for economists vary by credential, specialization, and engagement type. Research economists and analysts (1 to 5 years of experience, primarily data analysis, literature review, and model support) at economics consulting firms typically bill at $150 to $275 per hour. Senior economists and managers (5 to 15 years, with primary responsibility for methodology design, model development, and report authorship) typically bill at $275 to $450 per hour. Principal economists and directors at major economics consulting firms (Compass Lexecon, NERA, Analysis Group, Cornerstone Research) typically bill at $400 to $700 per hour for complex antitrust and litigation matters. PhD economists with academic appointments or published research in the relevant subfield — industrial organization for antitrust, environmental economics for regulatory matters, labor economics for employment discrimination cases — typically command a premium of 20 to 35% for expert witness engagements where the academic credential adds credibility to methodology testimony. Solo applied economists and independent consultants typically charge $200 to $400 per hour for economic impact and policy advisory work. Monthly retainer amounts for ongoing economics advisory typically range from $3,000 to $12,000 per month depending on the volume of analysis, the complexity of the data work, and whether the engagement requires ongoing regulatory monitoring and response.

How should economist retainer hours be logged?

Economist retainer work log entries should capture the project or matter, the specific analytical task, and the methodology decision, data finding, or assumption made. A useful format is: [Project/Matter] + [Specific economic task] + [Methodology decision, data source, or finding]. For example: 'Riverside Convention Center expansion, economic impact analysis: IMPLAN model calibration — reviewing 2023 IMPLAN sector definitions for food service and accommodation; identified that the direct spending estimate includes both visitor and local resident spending; isolated visitor-only spending using visitor origin survey data (68% out-of-region visitors) to avoid counting recirculated local spending as economic impact; recalibrated direct spending from $14.2M to $9.7M; total impact revised from $31.4M to $21.6M: 7 hours.' Or: 'Pharmaceutical merger antitrust review, market definition: SSNIP test analysis — evaluating whether branded and generic versions of the overlapping drug constitute a single relevant market; reviewed 24 months of prescription data from IQVIA; price correlation coefficient 0.14 between branded and generic — inconsistent with single-market hypothesis; conducted critical loss analysis: at 10% price increase, branded product requires less than 8.3% volume loss to be unprofitable, but historical branded-to-generic substitution rate following patent expiry is 34% in first quarter; market definition analysis supports separate markets: 11 hours.' Or: 'Clean energy tax credit regulatory comment, willingness-to-pay estimation: benefit transfer review — draft regulatory analysis uses willingness-to-pay estimates from 2009 hedonic pricing study in Phoenix metropolitan area; reviewed 7 more recent studies (2015-2023) for the relevant air quality improvement magnitude; identified that the 2009 study predates the demographic shift that increased the target area's median income by 28%, producing income-adjusted WTP estimates 18-23% higher; recommended benefit transfer using income-adjusted VSL approach rather than hedonic pricing study transfer: 9 hours.' Entries that name the project, the specific economic function, and the data finding or methodology decision make the work log legible as a concrete analytical history.

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Economist on retainer: economic impact analysis, regulatory economics, litigation economics, and market analysis advisory on monthly retainer

July 25, 2026 · ~22 min read

A regional airport authority commissions an economic impact study for a proposed terminal expansion. The project cost is $340 million. The authority’s finance team has modeled the construction cost, the operating budget, and the projected passenger growth. What they have not modeled is the regional economic activity the expansion will generate: the construction jobs and spending during the three-year build phase, the permanent jobs at the expanded terminal and in the businesses that serve increased passenger traffic, the induced spending as those employees earn wages and spend them in the regional economy, and the long-run productivity effects from improved air service connectivity.

The authority engages an applied economist six months before the environmental review process begins. The economist’s first task is to design an input-output model for the construction phase using the IMPLAN regional economic model calibrated to the airport’s metropolitan statistical area: identifying the construction sector expenditure categories, mapping them to IMPLAN industry codes, separating in-region from out-of-region expenditures to avoid importing multiplier effects that will not materialize in the local economy, and selecting the appropriate Type I, Type II, and Type SAM multipliers for each expenditure category. The economist also designs the operations phase analysis: separating on-airport employment and wages from off-airport visitor-induced activity, using the airport’s own passenger origin-destination survey to estimate visitor spending by trip purpose, and applying tourism spending multipliers calibrated to the specific spending categories that air travelers generate in the region.

Before the first draft of the economic impact report is written, the economist has spent 38 hours on model design, data assembly, multiplier selection, and sensitivity analysis — hours that are invisible to the authority’s board because no deliverable exists yet. The economist also identified two errors in the authority’s internal projections: the direct employment estimate was counting part-time airport workers at full-time equivalent, inflating the employment impact by 340 positions; and the visitor spending model was using state-level tourism multipliers rather than the MSA-level multipliers appropriate for a regional analysis, overstating the induced spending effect by $8.3 million. Both corrections reduced the headline economic impact figure, but both made the study defensible against the methodology scrutiny it would face from environmental opponents and competing infrastructure projects seeking the same federal funding.

The economist’s ongoing retainer advisory during the environmental review process included reviewing the methodology critique submitted by a competing airport’s consultant (who argued that the authority’s model double-counted airline operational spending that was already captured in the visitor-induced activity multiplier), preparing the authority’s technical response to the critique, and updating the model when the passenger growth projection was revised downward in the third quarter. All of that ongoing advisory work happened between the visible deliverables that appeared in the environmental record. The retainer work log was the only documentation of where the 94 hours between the initial draft and the final report went.

Economic impact analysis advisory

Economic impact analysis advisory is the economist retainer function that designs, calibrates, and defends the quantitative models measuring how a project, policy, or industry generates economic activity in a defined geographic area. The economist’s role is to translate the project’s financial inputs — construction expenditures, operating budgets, employment rosters, visitor spending patterns — into defensible estimates of direct, indirect, and induced economic effects using input-output multiplier models or computable general equilibrium frameworks appropriate to the analysis context.

Input-output model selection and calibration

The choice of input-output model and the calibration decisions within that model are the most consequential methodological choices in an economic impact analysis. The dominant commercial models in the United States are IMPLAN (Impact Analysis for Planning), RIMS II (Regional Input-Output Modeling System, maintained by the Bureau of Economic Analysis), and REMI (Regional Economic Models, Inc.). Each model has different data vintage, geographic granularity, industry sector definitions, and multiplier calculation methodology. IMPLAN provides the most current data with annual updates and the most flexible industry disaggregation; RIMS II is published by BEA and carries government imprimatur but uses less current data and is less granular at the sub-state level; REMI is a dynamic CGE model appropriate for longer-run policy analysis but is substantially more expensive and complex than I-O models for construction-phase impact studies.

Within any I-O model, the calibration decisions that most affect the headline impact numbers are: the leakage assumption (what fraction of project spending leaves the region to purchase goods and services produced outside the study area, reducing the multiplier effect); the employment-to-output ratio adjustment (whether the model’s employment multipliers are calibrated to the current regional labor market or reflect historical average relationships that may overstate employment generation in a tight labor market); the Type I vs. Type II vs. Type SAM multiplier selection (Type I captures only inter-industry effects; Type II adds induced household spending effects; Type SAM captures government and institutional spending effects in addition — each successive type produces larger multipliers, and the choice must be justified by the project’s actual linkages to those additional sectors); and the spending categorization (mapping project expenditures to the correct IMPLAN or RIMS II sector codes, since assigning construction labor costs to the wrong sector can produce multiplier errors of 15 to 30%).

In one economic impact advisory, an economist was retained by a hospital system planning a $280 million replacement hospital on a greenfield site in a mid-size metropolitan area. The hospital’s previous economic impact study had been conducted seven years earlier using state-level RIMS II multipliers. The economist identified three calibration errors in the prior study that the hospital system intended to update rather than recalculate: the prior study used Type II multipliers for construction-phase analysis but applied them to gross construction expenditures including materials procured from national suppliers, without adjusting for the out-of-region leakage in materials sourcing; the employment multipliers had not been adjusted for the region’s current labor market tightness (3.1% unemployment at the time of the new study vs. 5.8% at the time of the prior study), which meant that the prior multipliers were appropriate for a slack labor market where new project spending draws in workers who are not currently employed, but were overstating employment creation in a market where construction workers are already employed and new projects primarily bid up wages rather than creating new positions; and the visitor spending component of the operations-phase analysis was using national hospital visitor spending averages rather than the region’s specific travel distance distribution for patients seeking tertiary care services. The recalibrated analysis produced an employment impact estimate 28% lower and an output impact 18% lower than the prior study — numbers the hospital system chose to report honestly because the prior study’s methodology would have been challenged in the environmental review process.

Fiscal impact analysis and benefit-cost methodology

Fiscal impact analysis quantifies the net effect of a project or policy on government revenues and expenditures: property tax revenues generated by new development, sales tax revenues from increased commercial activity, income tax revenues from new employment, offset by the cost of public services — roads, utilities, schools, public safety — required to support the new development or employment. The fiscal impact analysis is often the most contentious element of a development economic impact study because the cost assumptions directly affect whether the project is a net fiscal positive or negative for the local government.

The methodology choices that most affect fiscal impact conclusions are: the marginal vs. average cost approach (marginal cost analysis asks what additional service cost the government incurs for each new resident or employee; average cost analysis uses the current per-capita cost of services as the marginal cost proxy — marginal cost is theoretically correct but requires detailed service cost modeling; average cost is simpler but typically overstates the fiscal cost of new development by ignoring economies of scale and existing service capacity); the revenue attribution method (property tax revenues depend on assessed value, which may differ substantially from market value during the assessment lag in states with periodic reassessment cycles); and the infrastructure cost amortization (whether off-site infrastructure improvements required by the project are amortized over the infrastructure’s useful life or treated as a current-period cost affects whether the project shows a net fiscal surplus in the near term or only after a multi-year recovery period).

In one fiscal impact advisory, an economist was retained by a county planning department to review the fiscal impact analysis submitted by the developer of a proposed 1,200-unit mixed-use development. The developer’s analysis projected a net fiscal surplus of $1.4 million per year for the county after five years. The economist’s review identified that the developer had used the average cost approach for service cost estimation, had applied the average cost to the gross number of new residents without adjusting for the development’s below-market affordable housing units (which would house residents with higher per-capita service demands at lower property tax contributions), and had amortized the required road improvements over 30 years rather than treating them as a development impact fee obligation. Correcting these three methodology choices reduced the projected net fiscal surplus to $340,000 per year, and the economist’s review identified an additional school impact cost that the developer’s analysis had excluded entirely (the development would generate approximately 340 school-age children requiring 2.1 additional classroom equivalents, a capital cost of $4.8 million that the county’s school impact fee schedule would not fully recover). The fiscal impact review took 22 hours and changed the county’s negotiating position on the development agreement.

Regulatory economics advisory

Regulatory economics advisory is the economist retainer function that develops and defends the cost-benefit analysis, willingness-to-pay estimation, and benefit transfer methodology supporting regulatory submissions to federal and state agencies. Economists on regulatory retainer advise clients preparing environmental impact statements, regulatory comment letters responding to proposed rules, benefit-cost analyses for rulemaking support, and economic analyses of regulatory alternatives.

Cost-benefit analysis and willingness-to-pay estimation

Cost-benefit analysis in regulatory contexts requires the economist to translate the physical effects of a proposed regulation or project — tons of pollutant emissions reduced, acres of habitat protected, injuries prevented, decibels of noise reduced — into monetary values that can be compared against the compliance costs. The monetization methodology depends on the type of effect: mortality risk reductions use the value of a statistical life (VSL), which the EPA has set at approximately $11.6 million in 2024 dollars (based on meta-analyses of compensating wage differentials and stated preference studies); morbidity effects use cost of illness or willingness-to-pay estimates from contingent valuation or averting behavior studies; ecological benefits use nonmarket valuation methods including contingent valuation, choice experiments, and hedonic pricing.

The two most common methodological errors in regulatory cost-benefit analyses are: the benefit transfer error (transferring willingness-to-pay estimates from a study conducted in a different population, geographic area, or time period without applying income, preference, and geographic adjustments appropriate to the regulatory context) and the discount rate selection error (applying a single discount rate to all benefit and cost streams regardless of their temporal distribution, when the appropriate discount rate depends on whether the monetized values represent market goods, public goods, or intergenerational transfers). Both errors are systematic: they produce bias in a predictable direction depending on whether the analyst is seeking to maximize or minimize the apparent benefit-cost ratio.

In one regulatory economics advisory, an economist was retained by an industry association commenting on a proposed EPA rule regulating fine particulate matter emissions from industrial facilities. The EPA’s regulatory impact analysis projected $4.2 billion in annual monetized health benefits based on VSL-weighted mortality risk reductions. The economist’s review identified that the EPA had used the national average VSL without adjusting for the income distribution of the population affected by the rule (the affected facilities were concentrated in lower-income industrial communities whose residents have lower willingness-to-pay for mortality risk reduction than the national average, which is driven by higher-income occupational choice samples). The economist also identified that the EPA had applied the concentration-response function from studies conducted in Los Angeles and New York metropolitan areas to industrial corridor populations whose baseline PM2.5 exposure levels were substantially higher, raising questions about whether the linear no-threshold model was appropriate for the higher-exposure population or whether the marginal health response at already-high concentrations was different from the response estimated at lower baseline levels. The economist’s regulatory comment letter identified both issues and proposed alternative benefit estimates; the EPA responded with a sensitivity analysis in the final rule that reduced the headline benefit estimate by 18%.

Benefit transfer methodology and discount rate analysis

Benefit transfer applies value estimates from existing studies to new policy contexts where primary research would be prohibitively expensive or time-consuming. The methodology is widely used in regulatory economics because the EPA, Army Corps of Engineers, and other agencies are required to conduct benefit-cost analysis for rules and projects but cannot commission primary research for every regulatory decision. A well-executed benefit transfer requires: selecting studies from the literature that are methodologically comparable to the policy context (same type of good, similar population, similar baseline conditions); adjusting the transferred value for differences in income between the study population and the policy population (using an income elasticity of WTP, typically 0.3 to 0.5 for environmental goods); adjusting for geographic differences in baseline environmental conditions; and conducting sensitivity analysis over the range of plausible transfer errors.

In one benefit transfer advisory, an economist was retained by a state environmental agency preparing a benefit-cost analysis for a proposed wetlands conservation easement program. The agency’s draft analysis used a willingness-to-pay estimate from a contingent valuation study of wetlands in the Chesapeake Bay watershed conducted in 2008. The economist’s review identified three transfer errors: the Chesapeake Bay study population had a median household income 34% higher than the state’s target program area, and no income adjustment had been applied; the Chesapeake Bay study valued coastal wetlands with direct water quality benefits to recreational fishing and shellfish harvest, while the state program targeted interior wetlands with storm water retention and groundwater recharge benefits — a difference in good type that the meta-analysis literature suggests reduces WTP by 25 to 40%; and the 2008 study predated the significant expansion in public awareness and valuation of wetlands ecosystem services following Hurricane Sandy’s storm surge damage in 2012. The economist recommended replacing the single benefit transfer estimate with a meta-analytic benefit transfer using a function estimated from 34 wetland valuation studies, which produced a benefit range that was both more defensible and substantially wider — $1,800 to $4,200 per household per year vs. the draft’s $2,900 point estimate.

Litigation economics advisory

Litigation economics advisory is the economist retainer function that develops and defends economic analysis in commercial litigation, antitrust disputes, employment discrimination cases, and regulatory enforcement proceedings. The economist’s role varies by engagement type: as a consulting expert, the economist advises counsel on the economic merits of the case theory and helps identify vulnerabilities in the opposing expert’s methodology under attorney-client privilege; as a testifying expert, the economist develops and defends the economic analysis in a report subject to discovery and cross-examination.

Antitrust damages methodology and opposing expert critique

Antitrust damages in price-fixing, bid-rigging, and monopolization cases are calculated by comparing the actual prices paid by the plaintiff during the conspiracy period to the prices the plaintiff would have paid in the but-for world without the anticompetitive conduct. The but-for price is the central contested issue in virtually every antitrust damages case: the plaintiff’s economist argues that the conspiracy elevated prices above competitive levels, while the defendant’s economist argues that the prices paid reflect competitive market conditions or that the damages estimate fails to control for cost factors, demand shifts, or market structure changes that independently explain price levels.

The dominant methods for estimating the but-for price are: the benchmark approach (comparing the conspiracy-period price to the price in a comparable market where no conspiracy existed, or to the price in the same market before and after the conspiracy period); the regression approach (estimating an econometric model of price as a function of cost factors, demand factors, and a conspiracy indicator variable, and using the regression to predict the but-for price with the conspiracy indicator set to zero); and the simulation approach (building a structural model of the market that parameterizes supply and demand and simulates the competitive equilibrium price). Each approach requires assumptions about what drives price variation in the market, and each is vulnerable to challenges based on market comparability, cost variable selection, and model specification.

In one antitrust damages advisory, an economist was retained as a consulting expert by counsel representing a class of direct purchasers in a price-fixing case involving industrial chemicals. The plaintiff’s damages expert had used a benchmark approach comparing conspiracy-period prices to prices in a comparable European market where the defendants had not been found to have participated in the conspiracy. The economist’s review of the plaintiff’s methodology identified two problems: the European benchmark market had different cost structures (natural gas was the primary feedstock in the US market; naphtha was the primary feedstock in the European market, and naphtha prices were significantly more volatile during the conspiracy period than natural gas prices) meaning that the cost-unadjusted benchmark comparison was attributing cost-driven European price volatility to conspiracy overcharge; and the regression model the plaintiff’s expert used to adjust for cost differences omitted a capacity utilization variable that was inversely correlated with price during the relevant period — an omitted variable bias that inflated the estimated conspiracy overcharge by approximately 18 percentage points. The economist prepared a 46-page critique of the plaintiff’s damages methodology that formed the basis for the Daubert motion to exclude the plaintiff’s expert.

Market definition and competitive effects analysis

Market definition in antitrust analysis identifies the product and geographic markets within which competitive effects of a merger, acquisition, or alleged anticompetitive conduct are evaluated. The standard framework is the hypothetical monopolist test (also called the SSNIP test — small but significant non-transitory increase in price): the relevant market is the smallest set of products and geographic areas such that a hypothetical monopolist controlling all of them could profitably impose a 5 to 10% price increase for a sustained period. Products or geographic areas outside the relevant market are those where buyers would substitute in response to the price increase in sufficient quantity to make the price increase unprofitable.

Competitive effects analysis assesses whether a proposed merger or acquisition is likely to harm competition in the identified relevant market: whether the merged firm would have the incentive and ability to raise prices unilaterally, whether the merger facilitates coordination among remaining competitors, and whether entry by new competitors is likely, timely, and sufficient to prevent or reverse competitive harm. The standard analytical tools include: upward pricing pressure (UPP) analysis, which estimates the incentive to raise price using diversion ratios and margins without requiring a fully specified demand system; merger simulation, which uses estimated demand elasticities to predict price effects under alternative market structure scenarios; and concentration analysis using the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI), which the DOJ/FTC merger guidelines use as a screen for transactions likely to raise competitive concerns.

In one market definition advisory, an economist was retained by a hospital system responding to an FTC second request in connection with a proposed acquisition of a competing hospital in the same metropolitan area. The FTC staff was applying a market definition that treated all acute care hospitals within the metropolitan area as a single market, in which the transaction would create a combined entity with 51% of hospital beds. The economist’s analysis challenged the geographic market definition using patient flow data: a gravity model of patient origin-destination patterns showed that 78% of the target hospital’s inpatient admissions originated from a 12-mile radius that excluded two major competing hospitals the FTC had included in its market. The economist also conducted a critical diversion analysis showing that patients diverted from the target hospital would disproportionately substitute to hospitals outside the FTC’s proposed geographic market, rather than to the acquiring system’s hospitals — the pattern expected if the hospitals compete in a broader market than the FTC had defined. The economist’s market definition analysis was submitted as part of the hospital system’s second request response and led to the FTC accepting a narrower geographic market definition that reduced the combined share from 51% to 38%.

Why retainer hours are invisible in economics consulting

Economics consulting retainers generate substantial analytical hours between the visible deliverables that clients review. An economic impact report for a $200 million development project may represent 120 to 180 hours of analysis behind a 35-page document. An antitrust expert report submitted under Rule 26 may represent 200 to 400 hours of data analysis, model development, literature review, and deposition preparation behind a 60-page signed report. The visible outputs — the report, the regulatory comment, the expert declaration — are the end product of a process that is entirely invisible to the client without a contemporaneous work log.

The invisibility problem is compounded by the nature of economic analysis work, which is highly iterative. The economist runs a regression model, finds that a key coefficient is unstable across specification choices, investigates the instability by testing alternative variable definitions and data transformations, discovers that the instability is driven by a structural break in the data during a recession, re-specifies the model with an interaction term, and re-runs the analysis. That process might take 12 hours and produce no change to the final report other than a one-sentence note in the robustness section. From the client’s perspective, the economist spent 12 hours and produced one sentence. From the economist’s perspective, the 12 hours prevented the opposing expert from using the model instability as the centerpiece of a Daubert motion.

Economists on retainer who use a structured work log — capturing the project, the specific analytical task, and the methodology decision or finding from each session — can show clients exactly what the invisible hours produced. The 12-hour robustness analysis becomes: “Antitrust damages regression: robustness testing — tested 6 alternative specifications for the input cost index (natural gas spot, natural gas 3-month forward, Henry Hub, 12-month average); coefficient on conspiracy indicator stable at 0.16-0.19 across all 6 specifications; identified structural break in 2009 Q3 coinciding with feedstock price crash; added interaction term for post-2009 period to separate conspiracy-period and non-conspiracy-period price effects; revised estimate: $3.2M vs. prior $3.4M, methodologically more robust against Daubert challenge on model stability grounds: 12 hours.” That entry makes the analytical work legible as a concrete contribution to the case.

The retainer tracking problem for economic consultants

Economic consultants on monthly retainer face a version of the retainer tracking problem that is particularly acute because their clients — government agencies, law firms, industry associations, corporate strategy teams — are often reviewing multiple simultaneous engagements and have no visibility into the detailed analytical work between deliverables. A government agency client managing four simultaneous economists across different regulatory workstreams may not see any visible output from a given economist for six to eight weeks while the economist is building and calibrating the underlying model. If the retainer invoice for those six weeks shows only total hours and a generic description, the agency’s budget officer has no basis for evaluating whether the hours are reasonable.

The standard time-tracking solutions that work for other professional services categories do not fit the economist’s workflow well. Billable hour tracking in Excel or generic time-tracking software captures clock time but does not capture the analytical decisions and findings that make the hours legible. Itemized invoices with hourly descriptions often compress 40 hours of model development into a single line item that reads “economic model development and analysis,” which tells the client nothing about what was modeled or what was found. Project management tools designed for software development or creative services do not have the concept of a retainer work log that connects hours to analytical findings.

What economic consultants on monthly retainer need is a tool that sits between the time tracker and the invoice: a work log that captures the project, the specific analytical task, and the finding or decision from each work session, and makes that log visible to the client as a running record of analytical progress. The work log serves three purposes simultaneously: it gives the economist a contemporaneous record of methodology decisions that is essential for expert report preparation and deposition preparation; it gives the client visibility into what the retainer hours are producing between deliverables; and it creates the evidentiary record that supports the retainer invoice when the client’s budget officer reviews the engagement.

HourTab is a retainer hours dashboard designed for exactly this use case. An economist creates a retainer for each client engagement, logs time against specific analytical tasks with methodology notes, and shares a public URL that shows the client the current hours balance, the work log entries from the current retainer period, and the reset date for the next period. The client can see that the 40 hours spent on the antitrust regression model included 12 hours of robustness testing and 8 hours of literature review — not because the economist sent a status email, but because the work log is always current and always accessible. The question “what did you do with those 40 hours?” never needs to be asked.

Tracking retainer hours as an economist: what to log

The work log entries that make economist retainer hours legible share a common structure: the project or matter name, the specific analytical function (input-output model calibration, regression analysis, benefit transfer review, market definition analysis, expert report preparation), and the specific finding, decision, or methodology choice made in that session. Generic entries — “economic analysis, 8 hours” — are useless both for client communication and for the economist’s own record. Specific entries — “Riverside Airport EIS, IMPLAN calibration: identified Type SAM multiplier inappropriate for construction phase analysis because 62% of materials are out-of-region; switched to Type II multiplier for construction phase and Type SAM for operations phase; recalibrated direct construction spending leakage from 28% to 41% to match regional procurement survey: 6 hours” — are legible to both the economist and the client as concrete analytical work product.

The categories of work that economists most frequently fail to log with adequate specificity are: data acquisition and cleaning (which databases were accessed, what cleaning steps were required, what data quality issues were found and how they were resolved); literature review (which studies were reviewed, what parameter estimates were extracted, what the range of estimates is and why the chosen value was selected from that range); sensitivity analysis (what alternative assumptions were tested, how sensitive the headline results are to each alternative, and which assumptions drive the most variance); model troubleshooting (what anomalous results were found, what caused them, and how the model was corrected); and opposing expert review (which sections of the opposing report were reviewed, what the specific methodological issues are, and how they affect the damages estimate).

Economists who log at this level of specificity find that clients ask fewer questions about retainer invoices, that the transition from consulting expert to testifying expert role is smoother because the contemporaneous record of methodology decisions is already complete, and that the expert report preparation phase takes less time because the work log serves as a draft methodology section for the report. The work log is not additional overhead — it is the analytical record that the economist needs anyway, made visible to the client.

Setting up an economist retainer agreement

Economist retainer agreements should specify the engagement scope with enough precision to define what analytical work falls within the monthly retainer and what constitutes additional scope. A retainer structured as “ongoing economic advisory services, 20 hours per month” without defining the engagement type, deliverables, and data access creates scope ambiguity that will produce disputes when the economic analysis requires more hours than the retainer covers, or when the client asks for an analysis that requires data or modeling not contemplated in the original scope.

A well-structured economist retainer agreement specifies: the engagement type and analytical scope (economic impact analysis and regulatory comment support for the convention center expansion project; antitrust damages consulting for the price-fixing litigation; regulatory cost-benefit analysis for the EPA rulemaking comment); the data access provided to the economist (transaction-level sales data, customer lists, cost records, government datasets, third-party data subscriptions the client holds); the expected deliverables and timeline (preliminary analysis memo within 30 days, draft report within 60 days, final report incorporating client comments within 75 days); how support staff hours are billed separately from senior economist advisory hours; and the hours tracking mechanism that will give the client visibility into analytical progress between deliverables.

Monthly retainer amounts for applied economists typically range from $3,000 to $15,000 depending on the complexity of the analysis and the volume of ongoing advisory work. Retainers at the lower end of the range typically cover 10 to 20 hours of senior economist time per month for routine advisory and report review work. Retainers at the upper end cover 30 to 50 hours for complex litigation support or multi-stage regulatory analysis. Clients who can see the retainer hours balance and the work log throughout the month — rather than only at invoice time — are better positioned to direct the economist’s time toward the highest-priority analytical questions and to recognize when additional hours are needed before the retainer period closes.

HourTab turns a time-tracker CSV into a public retainer-hours URL your client can bookmark. No client login. No portal setup. Start free →