By David Ingram

WASHINGTON, Feb 19 (Reuters) - Northwestern University economist Aviv Nevo will join the Justice Department's Antitrust Division to supervise economic analysis, the department said on Tuesday.

Nevo is scheduled to start on April 1 as one of the first major hires of Assistant Attorney General William Baer, who left the law firm Arnold & Porter to become head of the Antitrust Division effective last month.

A professor of economics, Nevo will be among the most senior non-lawyers in the Justice Department because the Antitrust Division's work is so intertwined with his field.

He got a doctorate in economics from Harvard University in 1997 and worked as an assistant professor at the University of California at Berkeley before joining Northwestern in 2004.

Baer in a statement praised Nevo as an "intellectual pioneer in the use of data to analyze consumer preferences, which is fundamental to many of our enforcement matters."

He succeeds Fiona Scott Morton, who has returned to her economics professorship at the Yale School of Management.

The economist position is one of four deputy assistant attorneys general in the Antitrust Division reporting to Baer.

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