I am a political economist and social technologist seeking to harness computers and markets to create a radically equal and cooperative society. I am Founder and Chairman of the RadicalxChange Foundation, a Principal Researcher at Microsoft and I teach at Princeton University.
Education at Princeton University
M.A., Ph.D. in Economics (2008), dissertation: “Essays in Industrial Organization and Economic Methodology” advised by José A. Scheinkman (chair), Jean Tirole, Hyun Song Shin and Roland Bénabou A.B. in Economics (2007), Valedictorian; certificates in Finance and Applications of Computing; senior thesis: “The Price Theory of Two-Sided Markets” Primary Employment
Principal Researcher (~full Professor), Microsoft Research (2017-present)
Move to New York City Lab (2018-present), sat with (2016-2017) Senior Researcher (~tenured Associate Professor) (2015-2017) Researcher (~untenured Associate Professor) (2014-2015) New England Lab (2014-2018)
Visiting Research Scholar and Lecturer, Julis-Rabinowitz Center for Public Policy and Finance, Woodrow Wilson School, Princeton University (2018-2019)
Visiting Senior Research Scholar and Lecturer, Department of Economics and Law School, Yale University (in 2016-2018)
Assistant Professor in the Department of Economics and in the College, University of Chicago (2011-2016)
Junior Fellow at the Society of Fellows, Harvard University (2008-2011) Other Positions
Associate Member, University of Chicago Law School (2013-2016)
Member, Committee on Conceptual and Historical Studies of Science, University of Chicago (2012-2016)
Member, Chicago Center for Jewish Studies, University of Chicago (2011-2016)
Affiliate, Center for Latin American Studies, University of Chicago (2011-2016)
Fellow, Toulouse School of Economics (TSE) (2008-2013) Visiting Advisor, Ministerio de Hacienda, Superintendecia de Industria y Comercio, and Ministerio de Comercio, Industria y Turismo, Bogotá, Colombia (2011)
Visiting Assitant Professor, Departamento de Economía, Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá, Colombia (2011)
Visiting Advisor, INDECOPI in Lima, Perú (2011)
Post-Doctoral Fellow, Department of Economics, Harvard University (2008- 2011)
Visiting Fellow, Milton Friedman Institute for Research in Economics (2010)
Visitor, Centro de Investigación Económica, Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México (CIE-ITAM) (2009)
Visiting Scholar, Instituto Nacional de Matemática Pura e Aplicada (IMPA) in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (2007, 2008)
Visiting Advisor, Ministerio de la Hacienda, Santiago de Chile (2008)
Visiting Graduate, Becker Center on Chicago Price Theory at the University of Chicago (2008)
Price Theory Scholar, Becker Center on Chicago Price Theory at the University of Chicago (2007)
Summer economic analysis clerk at the Economic Analysis Group of the Department of Justice Division of Antitrust (2006)
Quantitative analyst at New York City hedge fund Blue Mountain Capital Management. Used statistical financial modeling to design an arbitrage strategy (2005)
Econometric research assistant to Stanford economic history professor Stephen Haber (2004) Book
Radical Markets: Uprooting Capitalism and Democracy for a Just Society with Eric Posner, 2018, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Translations forthcoming in simplified Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Brazilian Portuguese and Spanish. Peer-Reviewed Publications “The A/B Testing Problem” with Eduardo M. Azevedo, Alex Deng, José Luís Montiel Olea and Justin Rao, extended abstract in Proceedings of the 2018 ACM Conference on Economics and Computation (EC ’18), 2018: 461-462.
“Approximate Efficiency in Matching Markets” with Nicole Immorlica, Brendan Lucier and Joshua Mollner, forthcoming in the Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Web and Internet Economics (WINE ’17), 2017: 252-265.
“Taxation and the Allocation of Talent” with Benjamin B. Lockwood and Charles G. Nathanson, Journal of Political Economy, 2017, 125(5): 1635-1682.
“Price Theory,” forthcoming in the Journal of Economic Literature as of July 2017.
“Surge Pricing Solves the Wild Goose Chase” with Juan Camilo Castillo and Dan Knoepfle extended abstract in Proceedings of the 18th ACM Conference on Electronic Commerce (EC ’17), 2017, 241-242.
“Property is Only Another Name for Monopoly” with Eric A. Posner, Journal of Legal Analysis, 2017, 9(1): 51-123.
“The Openness-Equality Trade-Off in Global Redistribution,” forthcoming in the Economic Journal for a feature on Normative Ethics and Welfare Economics as of August 2016.
“Descending Price Optimally Coordinates Search” with Robert Kleinberg and Bo Waggoner extended abstract in Proceedings of the 17th ACM Conference on Electronic Commerce (EC ’16), 2016, 23-24.
“Imperfect Competition in Selection Markets” with Neale Mahoney, forthcoming in the Review of Economics and Statistics as of July 2016.
“Product Design in Selection Markets” with André Veiga, Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2016, 126(4): 1007-1056.
“The First-Order Approach to Merger Analysis” with Sonia Jaffe, American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, 2013, 5(4): 188-218.
“Pass-Through as an Economic Tool: Principles of Incidence under Imperfect Competition” with Michal Fabinger, Journal of Political Economy, 2013, 121(3): 528-583.
“Walrasian Equilibrium in Large, Quasilinear Markets” with Eduardo Azevedo and Alexander White, Theoretical Economics, 2013, 8(2): 281-290.
“Market Power Screens Willingness-to-Pay” with Jean Tirole, Quarterly Journal of Economics , 2012, 127(4): 1971-2003. “Concordance among Holdouts” with Scott Duke Kominers extended abstract in Proceedings of the 12th ACM Conference on Electronic Commerce (EC ’11), 219-220.
“A Price Theory of Multi-Sided Platforms,” American Economic Review, 2010, 100(4): 1642-1672.
“Economic Contract Theory Tests Models of Mutualism” with Megan E. Frederickson, Doug W. Yu and Naomi E. Pierce, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2010, 107(36): 15712-15716. Featured on the cover and reviewed as “must read” by the Faculty of 1000.
“Linear Demand Systems are Inconsistent with Discrete Choice,” with Sonia Jaffe, B. E. Journal of Theoretical Economics (Advances), 2010, 10(1): article 52.
“Monopoly, Ramsey and Lindahl in Rochet and Tirole (2003),” Economics Letters, 2009, 103(2), 99-100.
“Whose Rights? A Critique of Individual Agency as the Basis of Rights,” Politics, Philosophy and Economics, 2009, 8(2), 139-171. Other Academic Writing
“Antitrust Remedies for Labor Market Power” with Suresh Naidu and Eric Posner, forthcoming in the Harvard Law Review.
“A Proposal to Limit the Anti-Competitive Power of Institutional Investors,” with Eric Posner and Fiona Scott Morton, Antitrust Law Journal, 2017, 81(3).
“Should We Treat Data as Labor? Moving Beyond ‘Free’” with Imanol Arrieta Ibarra, Len Goff, Diego Jiménez Hernández and Jaron Lanier, American Economic Association Papers and Proceedings, 2018, 1(1).
“Quadratic Voting: How Mechanism Design Can Radicalize Democracy” with Steven P. Lalley, American Economic Association Papers and Proceedings, 2018, 1(1).
“Quadratic Voting and the Public Good: Introduction,” Public Choice, 2017, 172(1-2) Special Issue: Quadratic Voting and the Public Good: 1-22.
“The Robustness of Quadratic Voting,”Public Choice, 2017, 172(1-2) Special Issue: Quadratic Voting and the Public Good: 75-107
“Multidimensional Platform Design” with André Veiga and Alexander White, American Economic Review Papers and Proceedings, 2017, 107(3), 191-195. “Pricing Institutions and the Welfare Cost of Adverse Selection” with André Veiga, American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, 2017, 9(2), 139-148.
“Matching Markets in the Digital Age” with Eduardo Azevedo, Science, 2016, 352(6289): 1056-1057.
“Voting Squared: Quadratic Voting in Democratic Politics” with Eric A. Posner, Vanderbilt Law Review, 2015, 68(2): 441-500.
“Cost-Benefit Analysis of Financial Regulation: A Response to Criticisms” with Eric Posner, Yale Law JournalForum, 2015, 124: January 22.
“Let the Right ‘One’ Win: Policy Lessons from the New Economics of Platforms” with Alexander White, Competition Policy International, 2014, 12(2): 29-51.
“Benefit-Cost Paradigms in Financial Regulation” with Eric Posner, Journal of Legal Studies, 2014, 43(S2): S1-S34.
“Quadratic Voting as Efficient Corporate Governance” with Eric Posner, University of Chicago Law Review, 2014, 81(1): 251-272.
“An FDA for Financial Innovation: Applying the Insurable Interest Doctrine to 21 Century Financial Markets” with Eric Posner, Northwestern University Law Review, 2013, 107(3): 1307-1358.
“Benefit-Cost Analysis in Financial Regulation” with Eric Posner, American Economic Review Papers and Proceedings, 2013, 103(3): 393-397.
To be reprinted in Edward Elgar’s Economics of Financial Law, edited by Geoffrey P. Miller
“Holdout in the Assembly of Complements: A Problem for Market Design” with Scott Duke Kominers, American Economic Review: Papers and Proceedings, 2012, 102(3): 360-365. Volumes Edited and Contributed To
After the Flood: How the Crisis Changed Economic Thought, edited and introduction written with Ed Glaeserand Tano Santos, including my conclusion “Finance and the Common Good”. Published by the University of Chicago Press in March 2017.
Jewish Economies: Development and Migration in America and Beyond, edited with Stephanie Lo, with my introductory analytical chapter “Simon Kuznets: Cautious Empiricist of the Eastern European Jewish Diaspora“. First volume, The Economic Life of American Jewry, was released by Transaction Publishers in November 2011; second volume, Comparative Perspectives on Jewish Migration, was released in January 2012. Article Solicited
“Functional Forms for Tractable Economic Models and the Cost Structure of International Trade” with Michal Fabinger, rejected with an invitation to submit a new version to the Journal of Political Economy; new version submitted August 2018.
“Depreciating Licenses” with Anthony Lee Zhang, rejected with an invitation to submit a new version to the American Economic Review, July 2017. Unpublished (Working) Papers
“A Signaling Theory of Cultural Difference” with Kadeem Noray, coming October 2018.
“The Marshallian Match” with Bo Waggoner, coming September 2018.
“Channel Auctions” with Eduardo M. Azevedo and David M. Pennock, submitted September 2018.
“Liberal Radicalism: Formal Rules for a Society Neutral Among Communities” with Vitalik Buterin and Zoë Hitzig, September 2018.
“A/B Testing” with Eduardo Azevedo, Alex Deng, Pepe Montiel Olea and Justin Rao, April 2018.
“Lottery Equilibrium” with Joshua Mollner, April 2018.
“Descending Price Optimally Coordinates Search” with Robert Kleinberg and Bo Waggoner, March 2018.
“Surge Pricing Solve the Wild Goose Chase” with Juan Camilo Castillo and Dan Knoepfle, March 2018.
“Nash Equilibria for Quadratic Voting” with Steven P. Lalley, January 2018.
“Quadratic Voting in Finite Populations” with Bharat Chandar, February 2018.
“A Solution to the Collective Action Problem in Corporate Reorganizations” with Eric Posner, September 2013; inactive.
“Concordance among Holdouts” with Scott Duke Kominers, September 2012. New version coming soon joint also with Jerry Green and Steven P. Lalley entitled “A Quadratic Voting Solution to the Holdout Problem.”
“Slutsky meets Marschak: First-Order Identification of Multi-product Production,” December 2009; inactive.
“Is Arbitrage Socially Beneficial?” October 2007; inactive. “A Simple Theory of Scientific Learning,” September 2007; inactive.
“Biasing Auctions,” April 2006; inactive. Patents
“Systems, Methods, and Computer-Readable Media for Conducting an Online Auction Using Narrowing Upper and Lower Bounds” with David Myer Pennock, Siddhartha Sen and Eduardo Monteiro de Azevedo, application filed January 2017.
“Descending Price Auction for a Divisible Good” with Robert Kleinberg, application filed August 2016.
“System and Method for Convex Voting in Various Types of Research and Voting” with David Quarfoot, Eric Posner and Kevin Slavin, application filed March 2016.
“Computerized Raffle for the Optimal Allocation of Goods” with Christina Lee, application filed January 2016.
“Descending Counter Value Matching with Information Sharing” with Bobby Kleinberg and Bo Waggoner, application filed December 2015. Opinion and Policy Articles
“Confronting Monopsony” with Eric Posner, forthcoming from the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change.
“Liberty v. Monopoly” with Eric A. Posner, forthcoming in American Affairs Journal.
“Organizing Data Dignity” with Jaron Lanier, forthcoming in the Harvard Business Review.
“The Supreme Court is an anti-democratic nightmare. Here’s how to fix it.” with Eric Posner, Vox, June 29, 2018.
“A Radical Proposal for Improving Capitalism” with Eric Posner, Barron’s, June 15, 2018.
“Liberation Through Radical Decentralization” with Vitalik Buterin, Medium, May 21, 2018.
“The Real Villain Behind Our New Gilded Age” with Eric Posner, New York Times, May 1, 2018.
“Want Our Personal Data? Pay for It” with Eric A. Posner, Wall Street Journal, April 20, 2018. “More and more companies have monopoly power over workers’ wages. That’s killing the economy” with Suresh Naidu and Eric Posner, Vox, April 6, 2018.
“Sponsor a Immigrant Yourself” with Eric Posner, Politico, February 13, 2018.
“What if Socially Useful Jobs Were Taxed Less Than Other Jobs?” with Benjamin B. Lockwood and Charles G. Nathanson, Harvard Business Review, October 2017.
“Redesigning Spectrum Licenses” with Paul Milgrom and Anthony Lee Zhang, Regulation, 2017, 40(3): 22-26.
“A Monopoly Donald Trump Can Pop” with Eric Posner and Fiona Scott Morton, New York Times, December 7, 2017.
“We Are Lifelong Zionists. Here’s Why We’ve Chosen to Boycott Israel” with Steven Levitsky, The Washington Post, October 23, 2015.
“Humans are Doing Democracy Wrong. Bees are Doing it Right” with Rory Sutherland, The Spectator, May 2, 2015.
“Mutual Funds’ Dark Side” with Eric Posner, Slate, April 16, 2015.
“A Radical Solution to Global Income Inequality: Make the U.S. More Like Qatar” with Eric A. Posner, The New Republic, November 6, 2014.
“Competition Policy in Selection Markets” with Neale Mahoney and André Veiga, CPI Antitrust Chronicle, 2014 10(1): “Of Special Interest” article 2.
“Thomas Piketty is Wrong: America Will Never Look Like a Jane Austen Novel” with Eric A. Posner, The New Republic, July 31, 2014.
“The Answer for Obamacare? Oligopoly” with André Veiga, Slate, March 31, 2014.
“The Case for Benefit-Cost Analysis of Financial Regulations” with Eric Posner, Regulation, 2013-2014, 36(4): 30-34.
“How to Make Sure the Volker Rule Survives in Court” with Eric A. Posner, Bloomberg View, December 10, 2013.
“How to Make Poison Pills Palatable” with Eric Posner, New York Times Dealbook, July 17, 2013.
“Shareholder Democracy Needs People to Pay for Their Votes” with Eric Posner, Financial Times, May 13, 2013.
“Against Casino Finance” with Eric Posner, National Affairs 14, Winter 2013: 58-77. “Not Worth the Gamble” with Eric Posner, Slate, April 4th, 2012.
“An FDA for Securities Could Help Avert Crises” with Eric Posner, Bloomberg View, April 2nd, 2012
“Retos para un Mercado de Libre Competencia: El Control de Fusiones y Carteles” in ¿Competidores o Monopolistas?, edited by Jaime Delgado and published by the Instituto de Consumo de la Universidad San Martín de Porres in Lima, Perú, 2011.
“Price Theory and Merger Guidelines” with Sonia Jaffe, 2011, CPI Antitrust Chronicle 3(1): article 2.
“Put the Bankers Back to Work,” Huffington Post, February 5th, 2009.
“Financial Guidance from FDA,” Boston Globe, December 3rd, 2008. Grants and Honors
Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Research Fellowship (2014-2018)
Pacific Standard‘s Top 30 Thinkers Under 30 (2014)
Neubauer Collegium Grant to support the Comparative Economics Working Group (2013-2015)
Becker Friedman Institute Research Grant (2013-2015)
American Economic Review Excellence in Refereeing Award (2009, 2010 and 2013)
Sloan Foundation Conference Grant, joint with Eric Posner (2013)
Social Sciences Division Research Grant, University of Chicago (2012-2013)
Kauffman Foundation Junior Fellowship in Entrepreneurship Research (2012- 2014)
ANACOM Award for best paper, “Multidimensional Product Design”, at the 3rd Workshop on the Economics of Information and Communication Technologies (2012)
NET Institute Grant (2010, joint with Alexander White, and 2011, joint with André Veiga)
Research gift from Microsoft Corporation (2010)
Sloan Foundation Research Grant, joint with Charlie Nathanson (2010) Harvard Real Estate Academic Initiative Faculty Research Grant, joint with Scott Duke Kominers (2010)
Milton Fund research grant, Harvard University (2009)
J. Wallace Ely ’32 Fund, Princeton University (2008)
Supplemental Merit Fellowship, Princeton University Department of Economics (2007-2008)
Princeton University Graduate School Fellowship (2007-2008)
Elected Valedictorian by a vote of the Princeton faculty (2007)
Halbert White ’72 Prize to the most outstanding economics major (2007)
Wolf Balleisan Memorial Prize for best economics senior thesis (2007)
Birch Family Prize, to the Finance Certificate student with the best grades in finance classes (2007)
Awarded Highest Honors (Summa Cum Laude) in economics (2007)
USA TODAY All-USA College Academic Team (2007)
George B. Wood Legacy Junior Prize for exceptional academic achievement in the junior year at Princeton University (2006)
Josephine De Karman Fellowship (2006)
Elected in the fall of senior year to Phi Beta Kappa with a dozen other students (2006)
Humane Studies Fellowship (2006)
Merit Scholarship from National Scholars Honor Society (2005)
Merit Award from the National Society of Collegiate Scholars (2005)
Twice, Shapiro Prize for Academic Excellence to top 35 students in each of the sophomore and junior classes at Princeton (2004, 2005)
Quin Morton ’36 Writing Seminar Essay Prize to the top 10 essays by freshmen at Princeton (2004)
Walter E. Hope Prize and Spencer Trask Medal to best freshman debater at Princeton (2004)
The Daily Princetonian Arts Writing Award (2004) Teaching Experience
ECON 421(562)/CPSC 412(512) Designing the Digital Economy at Yale University, 2016.
ECON20110 Elements of Economic Analysis II (Honors Intermediate Theory of the Firm) at the University of Chicago, 2012-2014. Co-listed as LAWS99305 with the Law School 2013-2014.
ECON24210/40501 Price Theory and Market Design (Joint undergraduate- second-year graduate course that forms the first term of the graduate field sequence in Market Design) at the University of Chicago, 2012-2013.
ECON-4527 Advanced Price Theory and Market Structures at UniAndes in Summmer 2012.
Four invited guest lectures in ECON 30100 and 30200 Price Theory (Introductory Graduate Microeconomics) taught by Gary Becker and Kevin Murphy at the University of Chicago, Fall and Winter 2011.
ECON 20100 Elements of Economic Analysis II (Turbo and Regular Sections) at University of Chicago, Fall 2011.
Invited guest lectures: Special lecture to masters 1 and 2 students at Toulouse School of Economics and ECO321 Industrial Organization (Princeton, undergraduate, Professor Swati Bhatt) on “Pass-Through, Double Marginalization and Two-Sided Markets” and COS444 Electronic Auctions (Princeton, undergraduate, Professor Ken Steiglitz) on “Frontiers of Behavioral Auction Theory” (2008).
Teaching assistant for Professors Markus Brunnermeier and José Scheinkman in Financial Economics I (PhD asset pricing), Princeton University, Fall 2006. Average course evaluation rating: 4.22/5.0. Dissertations and Theses Advised
Anthony Lee Zhang, PhD at the Stanford Graduate School of Business in progress, graduation expected 2019 (outside member).
Rhoni Gericke, BA at Yale University, 2017.
Bert Willekens, PhD at KU Leuven, September 2014. Initial placement: post- doctoral fellowship at KU Leuven.
André Veiga, PhD at TSE, September 2013, committee co-chair. Initial placement: post-doc at University of Oxford.
Michal Fabinger, PhD at Harvard University, June 2012, committee member. Initial placement: Pennsylvania State University. Currently: University of Tokyo. William Weingarten, MA at Harvard University summa cum laude, June 2011.
Scott Duke Kominers, PhD at Harvard University, June 2011, committee member. Initial placement: post-doc at the Becker Friedman Institute for Research in Economics, University of Chicago.
Alexander White, PhD at TSE, June 2010, committee co-chair. Initial placement: post-doc at Harvard. Currently: Tsinghua University. Professional Experience
Senior Program Committee Member, 17th and 18th ACM Conference on Economics and Computation (EC ’16 and ’17).
Co-organizer of Quadratic Voting and the Public Good, a conference at the University of Chicago funded by the Becker Friedman Institute and to be published in Public Choice (2016).
Co-organizer of Advances in Price Theory, a conference at the University of Chicago funded by the Becker Friedman Institute (2015).
Co-organizer of Normative Ethics and Welfare Economics, a conference at the University of Chicago funded by the Becker Friedman Institute and to be published in Economic Journal (2014).
Associate Editor, International Journal of Industrial Organization (2013- 2016).
Co-Organizer and Guest Co-Editor of Journal of Legal Studies special issue on “Benefit-Cost Analysis for Financial Regulation” based on a conference held at the University of Chicago Law School and funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation (2013).
Co-Founder and Co-Director, University of Chicago Working Group on Comparative Economics (2013) .
Referee: American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Review, Econometrica, Economic Journal, Economic Inquiry, Economics Letters, Games and Economic Behavior, Journal of Finance, Journal of Economics and Management Strategy, Journal of Economic Theory, Journal of Industrial Economics, International Journal of Business and Economics, Journal of Law and Economics, Journal of Law, Economics and Organization, Journal of Moral Philosophy, Journal of Political Economy, Journal of Public Economics, Journal of Public Economic Theory, MacArthur Foundation, National Science Foundation, Network and Spatial Economics, Oikos, Politics, Philosophy and Economics, Quantitative Economics, Quarterly Journal of Economics, RAND Journal of Economics, Review of Economic Studies, Review of Network Economics, Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Theoretical Economics and Yale Law Journal.
More than a hundred presentations at universities, regulatory agencies, consultancies and conferences.
Program Committee Member, Simon Kuznets International Symposium
Guest Editor, Competition Policy International Antitrust Chronicle
Conference session chair: 2010 Allied Social Science Association meetings, NET Institute Conference and History of Economics Society (HES) Meetings
Discussant: IIOC 2009 and 2011, National Bureau of Economic Research 2010 Intellectual Property and the Economy Day and 2013 Conference on the Economics of Digitization, Tenth Annual Columba-Duke-Northwestern IO Theory Conference, Fourth Annual FTC Microeconomics Conference, Third, Fifth and SixthAnnual Searle Center Research Symposium on Antitrust Economics and Competition Policy and 2014 Allied Social Sciences Association meetings. Other Activities
Director, EconJobMarket.org (2015-present)
Co-founder, Collective Decision Engines (2013-present)
Advisory Board Member, Esopus Magazine and Foundation (2008-present)
Expert, Applico (2012-2014)
Graduate Fellow, Forbes College (2007-2008)
Junior Fellow, James Madison Program in American Institutions and Ideals (2004-2008)
Peer Advisor, Forbes College (2006-2007)
Undergraduate Fellow at Forbes College, Center for Human Values and Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies (2004- 2007)
Founder and President of Princeton Against Protectionism (2004-2006)
Tutor in mathematics, physics, and economics (2004-2006)
Weekly film and food columnist for The Daily Princetonian (2003-2005) Founder and President of Latin American Studies Student Organization (2003- 2004)
Member, Princeton Debate Panel (2003) Professional Affiliations
American Economic Association, Econometric Society, European Economics Assocation, Latin American and Caribbean Economic Association, Western Economic Association International