About

Hector Chade is the Rondthaler Chair in Economics and a Professor in the Department of Economics at Arizona State University. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Illinois (1997), an M.S. from the same institution (1992), and a Licenciado en Economia from the Universidad Nacional de Cuyo in Argentina (1989). His research interests include search and matching, information and learning, contract theory, and game theory. Chade has contributed to the field through publications such as 'Simultaneous Search' in Econometrica and 'Matching with Noise and the Acceptance Curse' in the Journal of Economic Theory. He has been recognized as a Dean's Council of 100 Distinguished Scholar and has received multiple awards, including the ASU College of Business Dean's Award for Excellence. Chade has also served as a referee for prominent economic journals and is actively involved in teaching courses related to microeconomic theory and managerial economics.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Computer Security
• Microeconomics
• Actuarial science
• Economics
• Artificial Intelligence
• Engineering
• Epistemology
• Mathematical economics
• Ecology
• Business
• Philosophy
• Risk analysis (engineering)
• Control engineering
• Econometrics

Selected publications

• Stochastic sorting

  Journal of Economic Theory · 2026-02-19

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Equivalence and Near-Equivalence of Solutions to Principal-Agent Problems

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01

  preprintOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Sorting under Risk Sharing and Complementarities

  National Bureau of Economic Research · 2024-01-01 · 1 citations

  reportOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  How does the presence of risk sharing affect sorting patterns on productive attributes when there are complementarities among partners' skills in match output?We develop a matching model in which risk-averse agents, who differ in skills, match pairwise for productive purposes.Match output has stochastic returns and matched partners efficiently share this risk.We find that under plausible assumptions the risk-sharing benefit of marriage tends to push toward negative sorting on partners' skills.To obtain the prediction of positive skill sorting-a robust empirical feature of marriage markets-this force needs to be counteracted by sufficiently strong skill complementarities in match output.We provide a novel inequality that characterizes monotone (positive or negative) equilibrium sorting, balancing out skill complementarities and risk-sharing considerations in the right way.Several classes of primitives (utility and match output functions) render monotone sorting optimal.We then highlight a new implication of positive sorting on exogenous skills for matching patterns on endogenous differences in risk aversion: Positive sorting on skills translates into positive sorting on risk aversion-in line with the evidence from marriage markets.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Sorting Under Risk Sharing and Complementarities

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2024-01-01

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Disentangling Moral Hazard and Adverse Selection

  American Economic Review · 2023 · 29 citations

  • Computer Science
  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Computer Science

  While many real-world principal-agent problems have both moral hazard and adverse selection, existing tools largely analyze only one at a time. Do the insights from the separate analyses survive when the frictions are combined? We develop a simple method—decoupling—to study both problems at once. When decoupling works, everything we know from the separate analyses carries over, but interesting interactions also arise. We provide simple tests for whether decoupling is valid. We develop and numerically implement an algorithm to calculate the decoupled solution and check its validity. We also provide primitives for decoupling to work and analyze several extensions. (JEL D82, D86)

  PublisherDOI

• Uniqueness of Solutions to Principal-Agent Problems

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2023-01-01

  preprintOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Multidimensional Screening and Menu Design in Health Insurance Markets

  National Bureau of Economic Research · 2022-10-01 · 7 citations

  report1st authorCorresponding

  We study a general screening model that encompasses the problem facing a price-setting insurer offering vertically differentiated contracts to consumers with multiple dimensions of private information. We show how even with minimal assumptions on consumer valuations and costs, progress can be made to understand the solution in two ways. First, we derive conditions that any optimal menu must satisfy, and show how they can be used to shed light on insurer incentives. Second, we propose a tractable method to approximate the solution, and show how the quality of the approximation can be ex-post evaluated in any practical application. Applying our method empirically in the context of health insurance, we find that the approximation comes within one percent of the true solution. We illustrate the usefulness of the approximation for understanding the solution graphically as well as for numerically evaluating optimal policy interventions in a monopoly market. Our analysis highlights the importance of strategic insurer responses and endogenous contract characteristics in evaluating the effects of policy in these markets.

  PublisherDOI

• Multidimensional Screening and Menu Design in Health Insurance Markets

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2022-01-01 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Risky Matching

  Figshare · 2021-02-15

  dataset1st authorCorresponding

  This package contains code and data to replicate the empirical and quantitative results of the paper "Risky Matching" by Hector Chade and Ilse Lindenlaub.

  DOI

• Risky Matching

  Figshare · 2021-02-15

  dataset1st authorCorresponding

  This package contains code and data to replicate the empirical and quantitative results of the paper "Risky Matching" by Hector Chade and Ilse Lindenlaub.

  DOI

Frequent coauthors

• Lones Smith

  University of Wisconsin–Madison

  13 shared

• Jeroen M. Swinkels

  10 shared

• Edward E. Schlee

  Arizona State University

  10 shared

• Ilse Lindenlaub

  Yale University

  10 shared

• Jan Eeckhout

  Pompeu Fabra University

  7 shared

• Gustavo Ventura

  6 shared

• Natalia Kovrijnykh

  Arizona State University

  5 shared

• Gregory Lewis

  University of Ontario Institute of Technology

  4 shared

Education

• Ph.D.

  University of Illinois

  1997

• M.S.

  University of Illinois

  1992

• Other

  Universidad Nacional de Cuyo (Argentina)

  1989

Awards & honors

• Dean's Council of 100 Distinguished Scholar (2004-2007), Ari…
• ASU College of Business Dean's Award for Excellence Grant, S…
• Richard and Anne Marie Irwin Dissertation Fellowship, Univer…