Research

• Peer Preferences in Centralized School Choice Markets: Theory and Evidence (with Natalie Cox, Bobak Pakzad-Hurson, Matthew Pecenco) - Reject & Resubmit at Journal of Political Economy

Abstract: School-choice clearinghouses often advise students to "rank their true preferences" despite not allowing students to express preferences over peers. We evaluate the consequences of doing so. Empirically, we find students have preferences over relative peer ability in the college admissions market in New South Wales, Australia. Theoretically, we show stable matchings exist even with peer preferences under mild conditions, but finding one via one-shot mechanisms is unlikely. The status quo procedure frequently employed by clearinghouses is to inform applicants about the assignment of students in the previous cohort, inducing a tâtonnement process which potentially provides useful information about likely peers in the current cohort. We theoretically argue this process likely leads to an unstable outcome, and we find instability in our empirical setting. We propose a mechanism that yields stability and incentivizes truthful reporting in the presence of peer preferences.

• Staggered Rollout for Innovation Adoption 

Abstract: A farmer may postpone adopting a new crop to learn from earlier users, even when support is available today. Can a program reach its uptake target sooner by announcing that access will close and later reopen? I study a principal who chooses a common calendar while agents choose when to adopt on fixed terms. Closure draws some adoption forward, increasing the stock whose experience produces public evidence, but prevents that stock from growing during the pause. With a nonincreasing payoff density, the lost expansion always outweighs the early gain: access should remain continuous until a final round. A sufficiently strong local concentration at an active payoff margin reverses the comparison, so optimal policy must include an interior pause and adoption pools. The same prescriptions apply to heterogeneous initial optimism; uniformly distributed subjective probabilities imply the continuous-access case. A global characterization of common-calendar design establishes the scope of these conclusions and provides finite calendars that approach the optimum without equilibrium-selection concerns. Persistent upper-threshold priority cannot improve completion, whereas faster completion need not increase adopter welfare.

•  Keeping Experts Honest: The Necessity of Override 

Abstract: A principal commits to a dynamic mechanism and repeatedly decides whether to fund projects after consulting an expert biased toward approval. Transfers are unavailable, and realized project quality never reveals the signal observed by the expert, so future decisions become the instrument for rewarding honest advice. I begin from an unrestricted measurable mechanism class and prove an exact reduction: when the expert’s degree of bias is known, every attainable outcome can be implemented by a finite recursive direct mechanism with binary reports. Mechanisms that never fund after unfavorable advice on the truthful path face a payoff ceiling that remains bounded away from first best, no matter how patient the principal becomes. Unrestricted mechanisms, by contrast, approach first best. Above an explicit threshold, every globally optimal mechanism must sometimes override unfavorable advice, meaning fund after a truthful negative recommendation. Thus, retained discretion has a nonvanishing incentive value even when override occurs only rarely on the equilibrium path. I characterize the minimum-funding frontier that governs the delivery of promised decision authority and extend the analysis to privately known expert bias, where bad-project exposure becomes the relevant screening allocation.

• Entry and Exit in School Choice Markets (with Bobak Pakzad-Hurson and Matthew Pecenco)

Abstract: Guided by matching theory, school choice markets are designed to generate stable matchings. The entry and exit of educational programs poses a barrier to stability if a long horizon is required for students to learn their preferences. In this paper, we study how entry and exit affect learning about a payoff relevant feature of educational programs: student quality. Theoretically, we show how entry and exit can inhibit stability. Empirically, using data from the college admissions market in New South Wales, Australia, we find gradual within-program convergence to stability and show how the persistent churn of programs in this marketplace inhibits overall-market convergence, leading to an unstable matching. This instability is primarily experienced by lower-ability students and those from marginalized groups, thus potentially increasing inequality.

• Random Dictatorship Beyond the Strict Domain -  Work in Progress

• Iterative Reasoning Through Heuristics (with G. De Clippel, P. Ortoleva, K. Rozen, G Rubbini) - Work in Progress

Advanced Microeconomics II (PhD), Experimental Economics (syllabus), Game Theory (syllabus) - Pontificia Universidad Javeriana

Real Analysis - Summer 2025 (syllabus) - Bogotá Summer School, with Andrés Carvajal

Math Camp (PhD, syllabus), Behavioral Game Theory: Experiments in Strategic Interaction (Pre-college, syllabus)- Brown University