Research

You can read about my research agenda here.

Optimal Allocation with Noisy Inspection [draft] [slides]

In a standard principal-agent allocation model, endow the agent with a noisy private signal about the principal's return and allow the principal to inspect the return at a cost. The inspection and allocation mechanism that maximizes the principal's expected return without the use of transfers describes optimal inspection as both an exploration and a screening tool. This relates to many important applied settings including employer hiring strategies, public grant mechanisms and portfolio investment rules.

Bonus material: [simple summary] [short slides]

• Optimal Allocation with Noisy Verification [companion piece]

This article shows that the results from Optimal Allocation with Noisy Inspection analogously apply to a setting where agents have perfect information but verification of types is noisy.

Strategic Private Exploration [draft forthcoming]

In a strategic exploration game, multiple players determine the order in which they explore unknown options with the objective of maximizing the sum of discovered rewards. Exploration is private in the sense that players cannot condition the order in which they explore on their competitor's decisions. Equilibrium exploration procedures are determined, and losses characterized as a function of how the rewards are split when simultaneously explored. This informs us about many areas of policy design including patent and copyright regimes, R&D tournaments, and competition regulation.

Sequential Information Acquisition and Optimal Search w/ Rakesh Vohra [early draft] [slides]

Consider the principal-agent allocation model from Optimal Allocation with Noisy Inspection, and suppose there are now many agents, each with a noisy signal of the principals return from allocating to them. The inspection and allocation mechanism that maximizes the principal's expected return now sequentially searches through the agents in a way that incentivises truthful reports . This essentially generalises Optimal Allocation with Noisy Inspection to many agents and Ben-Porath, Dekel, Lipman (2014) to noisy types.

• Pandora's Linear Program [companion piece]

This article maps Weitzman's canonical search problem into a linear program. This allows us to re-derive existing results concerning optimal search and extend them to problems pertaining to strategic search, information acquisition, index manipulation and robust search.

Forecast Elicitation and Frequency Control w/ Guillaume Roger [extended abstract] [early slides]

Appropriately chosen, state-contingent contracts can be used to incentivize forecast reporting in scheduled, stochastic markets, improving outcomes markedly. This is of particular importance for electricity grids, where market operators engage in frequency control by scheduling participants. These contracts are examples of scoring rules, are significantly differ from the causer-pay frameworks in operation, and can also be tailored to incentivise the acquisition of publicly valuable information.

Auctions and the Hold-Up Problem w/ Simon Wilkie [white paper]

Optimal Merger Approval w/ Chengsi Wang

Manipulation Robust Search Procedures

Inspecting Networks

Professor Rakesh Vohra, University of Pennsylvania, Department of Economics and Department of Electrical and Systems Engineering, 2022-2023

Professor Rohan Pitchford, ANU Research School of Economics, 2015-2016

Professor Peter Drysdale and Dr. Shiro Armstrong, East Asia Bureau of Economic Research, ANU Crawford School of Public Policy, 2015-2016

Dr. Paul Chen and Dr. Martin Richardson, ANU Research School of Economics, 2016

Dr. Juergen Meinecke, ANU Research School of Economics, 2015

Economic Analyst, Australian Energy Regulator (AER), Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), 2014