About

I am an Associate Professor in the Department of Economics at Rice University, and a CEPR Research Affiliate. I obtained my Ph.D. from Bonn University in 2018. My research area is microeconomic theory, in particular multidimensional information choice in political economy, auctions and social learning.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Political Science
• Economics
• Economic geography
• Statistics
• Combinatorics
• Finance
• Law
• Mathematical optimization
• Geography
• Microeconomics
• Mathematics
• Medicine

Selected publications

• The Power of Anecdotes

  AEA Papers and Proceedings · 2026-05-01

  articleSenior author

  Anecdotes pervade public discourse. In a sender-receiver framework, we formalize why anecdotes persuade even when an aggregate statistic—rather than individual cases—is what matters. A single anecdote reveals information about similar cases, shifting beliefs about the statistic through correlation. The optimal anecdote balances reach—how correlated it is to other cases—against rarity—how surprising good news would be. Optimal anecdote selection follows a two-stage procedure: First identify cases persuasive enough upon good news, then choose the case most likely to deliver such news. The sender's optimal, receiver's preferred, and most informative anecdotes can diverge markedly.

  PublisherDOI

• The Optimality of Majority Rule: An Information-Choice Perspective

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01

  preprintOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Information Choice in Auctions

  American Economic Review · 2024-06-27 · 9 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  The choice of an auction mechanism influences which object characteristics bidders learn about and whether the object is allocated efficiently. Some object characteristics are valued equally by all bidders and thus are inconsequential for the efficient allocation. Others matter only to certain bidders and thus determine the bidder with the highest valuation. I show when the second-price auction is ex ante efficient by inducing bidders to seek socially relevant information. When facing a continuous learning trade-off, bidders learn more about socially relevant components and less about common characteristics of the object in a second-price auction than a first-price auction. (JEL D44, D83)

  PublisherDOI

• Local Evidence and Diversity in Minipublics

  Journal of Political Economy · 2023 · 25 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Geography
  • Economic geography

  A policymaker selects a minipublic—a group of citizens from a demographically diverse citizenry with access to local evidence about the impact of a policy. Citizens face uncertainty about the policymaker’s eventual policy bias, which is shown to discourage the most marginally informative minipublic citizens from discovering their evidence. We fully characterize the optimal minipublic composition. Relative to the most demographically representative minipublic, the optimal minipublic overrepresents demographics at the margins of the citizenry while underrepresenting those around the median citizen. The representativeness of the optimal minipublic varies nonmonotonically with uncertainty. Our findings bear practical implications for minipublic design.

  PublisherDOI

• Optimal group testing with heterogeneous risks

  Economic Theory · 2023 · 5 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Computer Science
  • Computer Science
  • Mathematics
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Two-dimensional information acquisition in social learning

  Journal of Economic Theory · 2022-04-07 · 4 citations

  article1st author
  PublisherDOI

• Information Choice in Auctions

  2020 · 9 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Computer Science
  • Microeconomics
  • Computer Science

  Bidders are uncertain about their valuation for an object and choose about which component to learn. Their valuation consists of a common value component (which matters to all bidders) and a private value component (which is relevant only to individual bidders). Learning about a private component yields independent estimates, whereas learning about a common component leads to correlated information between bidders. I analyze the incentives of bidders to choose information about components in the second-price, the first-price and the all-pay auction. I identify conditions for the second-price auction, such that bidders only learn about their private component: an independent private value framework and an efficient outcome arise endogenously. In a first-price auction, every robust equilibrium is inefficient under certain conditions.

  PublisherDOI

• Learning What Unites or Divides Us: Information Acquisition in Social Learning

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2020-01-01 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Local Evidence and Diversity in Minipublics

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2020-01-01 · 17 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Persuading an Informed Committee

  RePEc: Research Papers in Economics · 2020-11-01 · 2 citations

  preprint1st authorCorresponding

  A biased sender seeks to persuade a committee to vote for a proposal by providing public information about its quality. Each voter has some private information about the proposal's quality. We characterize the sender-optimal disclosure policy under unanimity rule when the sender can versus cannot ask voters for a report about their private information. The sender can only profit from asking agents about their private signals when the private information is sufficiently accurate. For all smaller accuracy levels, a sender who cannot elicit the private information is equally well off.

  Publisher

Frequent coauthors

• Henrik Egbert

  4 shared

• Helene Mass

  University of Bonn

  2 shared

• Arjada Bardhi

  New York University

  2 shared

• Leonid Kosals

  2 shared

• Elena V. Luneva

  Kazan Federal University

  1 shared

• Saskia K. Klein

  Meander Medisch Centrum

  1 shared

• Ying Chen

  Guangxi Veterinary Research Institute

  1 shared

• K Fomichev

  1 shared

Education

• PhD, Department of economics

  University of Bonn

  2018