I am an economic theorist with broad interests.
I work as an associate professor at Oxford & Nuffield College.
My PhD is from Northwestern (2021).
You can reach me at <firstname.lastname@economics.ox.ac.uk>. CV
Working papers:
new! Outside options and risk attitude
with Gregorio Curello & Mark Whitmeyer AbstractWe uncover a close link between outside options and risk attitude: when a decision-maker gains access to an outside option, her behaviour becomes less risk-averse, and conversely, any observed decrease of risk-aversion can be explained by an outside option having been made available. We characterise the comparative statics of risk-aversion, delineating how effective risk attitude (i.e. actual choice among risky prospects) varies with the outside option and with the decision-maker’s ‘true’ risk attitude. We prove that outside options are special: among transformations of a decision problem, those that amount to adding an outside option are the only ones that always reduce risk-aversion.
[slides]
The comparative statics of persuasion
with Gregorio Curello AbstractIn the persuasion model, apart from a few special cases, comparative statics has been an open question. We answer it, delineating which shifts of the sender’s interim payoff lead her optimally to choose a more informative signal. Our first theorem identifies a coarse notion of ‘increased convexity’ that we show characterises those shifts of the sender’s interim payoff that lead her optimally to choose no less informative signals. To strengthen this conclusion to ‘more informative’ requires further assumptions: our second theorem identifies the necessary and sufficient condition on the sender’s interim payoff, which strictly generalises the convex–concave (‘S’) shape commonly imposed in the literature. We identify conditions under which increased alignment of interests between sender and receiver leads to comparative statics, and study a number of applications.
[slides & video]
new! Misperception and informativeness in statistical discrimination
with Matteo Escudé, Paula Onuchic & Quitzé Valenzuela-Stookey AbstractWe study the interplay of information and prior (mis)perceptions in a Phelps–Aigner–Cain-type model of statistical discrimination in the labor market. We decompose the effect on average pay of an increase in how informative observables are about workers’ skill into a non-negative instrumental component, reflecting increased surplus due to better matching of workers with tasks, and a perception-correcting component capturing how extra information diminishes the importance of prior misperceptions about the distribution of skills in the worker population. We sign the perception-correcting term: it is non-negative (non-positive) if the population was ex-ante under-perceived (over-perceived). We then consider the implications for pay gaps between equally-skilled populations that differ in information, perceptions, or both, and identify conditions under which improving information narrows pay gaps. new! The comparative statics of dominance
with Gregorio Curello & Mark Whitmeyer AbstractIn finite problems comprising objects, situations, and an object- and situation-contingent payoff function, we study the comparative statics of the set of undominated objects, meaning those for which there exists no mixture over objects that is superior whatever the situation. We consider both weak and strict dominance (corresponding to different degrees of ‘strictness’ in the definition of superiority). Our main theorem characterises those payoff transformations which robustly expand the not-weakly-dominated and not-strictly-dominated sets: the necessary and sufficient condition is that payoffs be transformed separately across situations, in either a monotone–concave or a constant manner. We apply our results to Pareto frontiers and games.
Published & forthcoming papers:
Single-crossing dominance: A preference lattice
with Gregorio Curello Games and Economic Behavior, forthcoming AbstractMost comparisons of preferences are instances of single-crossing dominance. We examine the lattice structure of single-crossing dominance, proving characterisation, existence and uniqueness results for minimum upper bounds of arbitrary sets of preferences. We apply these theorems to derive new comparative statics theorems for collective choice and under analyst uncertainty, and to characterise a general ‘maxmin’ class of uncertainty-averse preferences over Savage acts.
[slides]
Screening for breakthroughs
with Gregorio Curello Theoretical Economics, 2025 AbstractHow best to incentivise prompt disclosure? We study this question in a general model in which a technological breakthrough occurs at an uncertain time and is privately observed by an agent, and a principal must incentivise disclosure via her control of a payoff-relevant physical allocation. We uncover a deadline structure of optimal mechanisms: they have a simple deadline form in an important special case, and a graduated deadline structure in general. We apply our results to the design of unemployment insurance schemes.
[working-paper version] [slides]
Optimism, overconfidence, and moral hazard Journal of Political Economy Microeconomics, 2025 AbstractI revisit the standard moral-hazard model, in which an agent’s preference over contracts is rooted in costly effort choice. I characterise the behavioural content of the model in terms of empirically testable axioms, and show that the model’s parameters are identified. I propose general behavioural definitions of relative (over)confidence and optimism, and characterise these in terms of the parameters of the moral-hazard model. My formal results are rooted in a simple but powerful insight: that the moral-hazard model is closely related to the well-known ‘variational’ model of choice under uncertainty.
[slides]
Comparative statics with adjustment costs and the Le Chatelier principle
with Eddie Dekel & John Quah Econometrica, 2025 AbstractWe develop a theory of monotone comparative statics for models with adjustment costs. We show that comparative-statics conclusions may be drawn under the usual ordinal complementarity assumptions on the objective function, assuming very little about costs: only a mild monotonicity condition is required. We use this insight to prove a general Le Chatelier principle: under the ordinal complementarity assumptions, if short-run adjustment is subject to a monotone cost, then the long-run response to a shock is greater than the short-run response. We extend these results to a fully dynamic model of adjustment over time: the Le Chatelier principle remains valid, and under slightly stronger assumptions, optimal adjustment follows a monotone path. We apply our results to models of saving, production, pricing, labor supply and investment.
[slides]
Agenda-manipulation in ranking
with Gregorio Curello Review of Economic Studies, 2023 AbstractWe study the susceptibility of committee governance (e.g. by boards of directors), modelled as the collective determination of a ranking of a set of alternatives, to manipulation of the order in which pairs of alternatives are voted on—agenda-manipulation. We exhibit an agenda strategy called insertion sort that allows a self-interested committee chair with no knowledge of how votes will be cast to do as well as if she had complete knowledge. Strategies with this ‘regret-freeness’ property are characterised by their efficiency, and by their avoidance of two intuitive errors. What distinguishes regret-free strategies from each other is how they prioritise among alternatives; insertion sort prioritises lexicographically.
[supplement] [slides] [shortish video & slides]
Slow persuasion
with Matteo Escudé Theoretical Economics, 2023 AbstractWhat are the value and form of optimal persuasion when information can be generated only slowly? We study this question in a dynamic model in which a ‘sender’ provides public information over time subject to a graduality constraint, and a decision-maker takes an action in each period. Using a novel ‘viscosity’ dynamic programming principle, we characterise the sender’s equilibrium value function and information provision. We show that the graduality constraint inhibits information provision relative to unconstrained persuasion. The gap can be substantial, but closes as the constraint slackens. Contrary to unconstrained persuasion, less-than-full information may be provided even if players have aligned preferences but different prior beliefs.
[supplement]
The converse envelope theorem Econometrica, 2022 AbstractI prove an envelope theorem with a converse: the envelope formula is equivalent to a first-order condition. LikeMilgrom and Segal’s (2002) envelope theorem, my result requires no structure on the choice set. I use the converse envelope theorem to extend to general outcomes and preferences the canonical result in mechanism design that any increasing allocation is implementable, and apply this to selling information.
[supplement] [slides] [short video & slides]
Strictly strategy-proof auctions
with Matteo Escudé Mathematical Social Sciences, 2020 AbstractA strictly strategy-proof mechanism is one that asks agents to use strictly dominant strategies. In the canonical one-dimensional mechanism design setting with private values, we show that strict strategy-proofness is equivalent to strict monotonicity plus the envelope formula, echoing a well-known characterisation of (weak) strategy-proofness. A consequence is that strategy-proofness can be made strict by an arbitrarily small modification, so that strictness is ‘essentially for free’.
[published version]
Unpublished notes/comments:
Comparative risk attitude and the aggregation of single-crossing
with Gregorio Curello & Mark Whitmeyer AbstractIn choice under risk, there is a standard notion of ‘less risk-averse than’, due to Yaari (1969). In the theory of comparative statics, the single-crossing property is satisfied by all weighted averages of a family of single-crossing functions if and only if the family satisfies a property called signed-ratio monotonicity (Quah & Strulovici, 2012). We establish a close link between ‘less risk-averse than’ and signed-ratio monotonicity. Statistical discrimination and statistical informativeness
with Matteo Escudé, Paula Onuchic & Quitzé Valenzuela-Stookey (dormant, & partially subsumed by ‘Misperception and informativeness in statistical discrimination’)AbstractWe study the link between Phelps–Aigner–Cain-type statistical discrimination and familiar notions of statistical informativeness. Our central insight is that Blackwell’s Theorem, suitably relabeled, characterizes statistical discrimination in terms of statistical informativeness. This delivers one-half of Chambers and Echenique’s (2021) characterization of statistical discrimination as a corollary, and suggests a different interpretation of it: that discrimination is inevitable. In addition, Blackwell’s Theorem delivers a number of finer-grained insights into the nature of statistical discrimination. We argue that the discrimination-informativeness link is quite general, illustrating with an informativeness characterization of a different type of discrimination.
