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: When the quality of a good is uncertain, adoption generates public information, so forward-looking agents may wait for others to experiment. A principal who seeks to reach a fixed adoption target as quickly as possible can counter this delay by committing to a supply schedule. I first show that free availability induces a unique aggregate adoption path and can generate S-shaped diffusion when agents differ in their private adoption payoffs. Scarcity then changes the structure sharply: with one payoff type, it eliminates gradual adoption; with two, one initial and one terminal exhausted batch attain the unrestricted optimum; with three, rejection-contingent rationing can make four releases outperform every immediately exhausted plan with at most three releases. Atomlessness restores a tractable operational structure: with continuously distributed adoption payoffs, ordered rollouts with finitely many waves are exactly implemented by anonymous staircase supply. I characterize the globally optimal rollout in this continuum model by reducing the problem to weighted interval selection over pooled excursions around a unique smooth adoption path. Consequently, releasing the entire target inventory at date zero is uniquely optimal under a positive nonincreasing density, whereas a rapidly rising density creates profitable staggered releases. Such releases make agents accelerated into the initial pooled group strictly worse off but benefit every adopter served after access resumes. Thus, the distribution of adoption payoffs determines both the pace of rollout and who bears the welfare cost of accelerating it.

•  Keeping Experts Honest 

Abstract: A principal repeatedly decides whether to fund projects after consulting an expert who is biased toward approval. Because transfers are unavailable and realized quality never reveals the signal the expert observed, future decisions become the instrument for rewarding honest advice. For a known expert type, I begin from an unrestricted measurable mechanism class and prove an exact payoff-equivalent reduction to a finite recursive direct mechanism with binary reports and at most three current public plans. I then show that mechanisms that never fund after unfavorable advice on the truthful path face a fixed payoff ceiling. Unrestricted mechanisms, by contrast, approach the signal-contingent first best (funding exactly after favorable signals) as the discount factor tends to one. Nevertheless, above a threshold discount factor, every global optimum funds after unfavorable advice with positive probability. The reason is that promises of future utility deter exaggeration only if they are eventually honored through actual funding decisions. To characterize this obligation, I derive the minimum funding needed to deliver each promised utility and the largest promise compatible with no current funding after unfavorable advice. When a funded bad project gives the expert zero payoff, the cost-minimizing policy moves from rationing favorable advice to ordinary review, and then to override. With privately known bias, the same delivery policies become screening instruments, and types are separated through discounted funding of bad projects. The analysis gives a dynamic rationale for review systems in which an unfavorable expert report does not mechanically bar approval: occasional action against truthful bad news can be part of the incentive system that makes such bad news credible.

• 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.

• 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