Dennis W. Carlton focuses his research on microeconomics, industrial organization, and antitrust. He has published more than 100 articles and two books, including one of the leading textbooks in industrial organization. He is also the coeditor of the Journal of Law and Economics and is on the editorial boards of Competition Policy International and the Journal of Competition Law and Economics. From 2006 to 2008, he served as the Deputy Assistant Attorney General for Economic Analysis at the U.S. Department of Justice.

He is the recipient of a number of awards, including a John Harvard Award in 1970, a National Science Foundation Fellowship from 1972 to 1975, and the 1977 P.W.S. Andrews Memorial Prize Essay for the best essay in the field of industrial organization by a scholar under the age of 30, and the 2008 Robert F Lanzillotti prize for the best essay in antitrust economics. His research has been funded by the National Science Foundation and the Lincoln Foundation, and in 2004 he gave the keynote address to the International Competition Network in Mexico.

He has served as an advisor on antitrust matters to the Department of Justice, the Federal Trade Commission, and to private clients. He has served as a commissioner on the Antitrust Modernization Commission, a congressional committee investigating the antitrust laws.

Carlton earned a master's degree in operations research and a PhD in economics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1974 and 1975 and a bachelor's degree summa cum laude in 1972 from Harvard College, where he majored in applied mathematics and economics and was a member of Phi Beta Kappa. He joined the Chicago Booth faculty in 1984.