About

Alvaro Sandroni is the E.D. Howard Professor in Political Economy at the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, where he has taught since 1996. His research spans behavioral sciences, strategic forecasting, economic theory, game theory, philosophy, political science, and law. Sandroni has published numerous journal articles across economics, political science, philosophy, law, statistics, and game theory journals, including the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, American Political Science Review, American Economic Review, Econometrica, and others. He is also the author of the book 'Managerial Statistics: A Case-Based Approach' and serves on the editorial boards of Economic Theory and the International Journal of Game Theory. His academic background includes a PhD in economics from the University of Pennsylvania, a PhD in mathematics from the Instituto de Matematica Pura e Aplicada in Brazil, and a B.Sc. in mathematics from the Pontificia Universidade Catolica in Brazil. Sandroni has held positions at several institutions, including the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Rochester, and has received multiple awards and grants for his research contributions.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Computer Science
• Sociology
• Economics
• Law
• Positive economics
• Mathematics
• Psychology
• Econometrics
• Microeconomics
• Physics
• Mathematical economics
• Quantum mechanics
• Epistemology

Selected publications

• The Judging Game

  The Journal of Legal Studies · 2025-06-01 · 1 citations

  articleSenior author

  It is common to criticize judicial opinions for correlating all too obviously with a judge’s politics or for being as unpredictable as a coin toss. We argue that this is precisely what one should expect of a well-functioning legal system with rational, competent, mostly impartial judges. What is called the selection effect, namely, the tendency for cases with a clear outcome to settle out of court, combined with a rational judge’s accommodation of this fact will, under the right conditions, make a judge’s decisions observationally indistinguishable from decisions based purely on political bias or a coin toss. Getting to this conclusion requires us to set up the decision problem as it presents itself to the litigants (whether to settle) and as it presents itself to the judge (how to react to the selection effect) and to derive the equilibrium of their strategic interaction. We call this the judging game.

  PublisherDOI

• A Comment on the Gibbard–Satterthwaite Theorem

  The B E Journal of Theoretical Economics · 2025-06-01

  articleSenior author

  Abstract This paper re-examines the Gibbard–Satterthwaite theorem when some anomalous choice functions are allowed. We show non-dictatorial social aggregators that limit manipulation and non-dictatorial social aggregators do not permit manipulation.

  PublisherDOI

• The Judging Game

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01

  preprintOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• The Value of a Coordination Game

  SocArXiv (OSF Preprints) · 2024-12-19

  preprint1st authorCorresponding

  The value of a game is the payoff a player can expect (ex ante) from playing the game. Understanding how the value changes with economic primitives is critical for policy design and welfare. However, for games with multiple equilibria, the value is difficult to determine. We therefore develop a new theory of the value of coordination games. The theory delivers testable comparative statics on the value and delivers novel insights relevant to policy design. For example, policies that shift behavior in the desired direction can make everyone worse off, and policies that increase everyone's payoffs can reduce welfare.

  PublisherDOI

• The leveling axiom

  Theory and Decision · 2023-05-24

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Circumvention of Law and the Hidden Logic behind It

  The Journal of Legal Studies · 2023-01-01 · 5 citations

  articleSenior author

  The law is full of circumvention maneuvers that lawyers try to exploit and authorities try to suppress. We prove formal results showing that all reasonable legal systems are necessarily extremely manipulable by open schemes that require no type of misrepresentation and no violation of the law. In addition, antievasion rules designed to reduce such manipulation can have only limited success and cannot be easily justified as constituting an improvement.

  PublisherDOI

• A Characterization of Consideration Functions: When Asymmetric Revealed Preferences Suffice

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2021-01-01

  articleOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• The Value of a Coordination Game

  Journal of Economic Theory · 2021-01-01

  preprintOpen accessSenior author

  The value of a game is the payoff a player can expect (ex ante) from playing the game. Understanding how the value changes with economic primitives is critical for policy design and welfare. However, for games with multiple equilibria, the value is difficult to determine. We therefore develop a new theory of the value of coordination games. The theory delivers testable comparative statics on the value and delivers novel insights relevant to policy design. For example, policies that shift behavior in the desired direction can make everyone worse off, and policies that increase everyone's payoffs can reduce welfare.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Redoing Criminal Law: Taking the Deviant Turn

  Criminal Law and Philosophy · 2021-08-08

  articleSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• The Value of a Coordination Game

  RePEc: Research Papers in Economics · 2021-06-01 · 1 citations

  preprintSenior author

  The value of a game is the payoff a player can expect (ex ante) from playing the game. Understanding how the value changes with economic primitives is critical for policy design and welfare. However, for games with multiple equilibria, the value is difficult to determine. We therefore develop a new theory of the value of coordination games. The theory delivers testable comparative statics on the value and delivers novel insights relevant to policy design. For example, policies that shift behavior in the desired direction can make everyone worse off, and policies that increase everyone's payoffs can reduce welfare.

  Publisher

Recent grants

• Rationalization

  NSF · $189k · 2010–2013

• Strategic Experts

  NSF · $213k · 2008–2010

• Rationalization

  NSF · $228k · 2009–2012

• Strategic Experts

  NSF · $102k · 2010–2011

Frequent coauthors

• Wojciech Olszewski

  25 shared

• Leo Katz

  University of Pennsylvania

  23 shared

• Willemien Kets

  University of Oxford

  19 shared

• Nabil I. Al‐Najjar

  Kellogg's (Canada)

  18 shared

• Timothy Feddersen

  Northwestern University

  15 shared

• Alireza Tahbaz-Salehi

  Northwestern University

  14 shared

• Ali Jadbabaie

  14 shared

• Rann Smorodinsky

  Technion – Israel Institute of Technology

  13 shared

Awards & honors

• 2003 Stanley Reiter Best Paper Award