Research

Working papers

• Racing with a rearmirror: innovation lag and investment dynamics, with N. Klein and L.Ménager

We analyze a dynamic model in which investment decisions in a technology of uncertain quality must be made continuously over time. The outcome of the investments (success/failure) are realized after a fixed lag. We begin by examining the case of a single funding agency that decides, at each point in time, how much to invest in the technology. We show that, unlike the case without lag, where the optimal investment follows a threshold behavior, introducing lag leads to investment dynamics characterized by a wave-like pattern. Second, we analyze the case where a continuum of short-lived players make their investment decisions sequentially and compete to be the first to achieve a success. We show that when the lag is large enough, periods of positive investment indefinitely alternate with periods of no investment, resulting in an infinite series of lumpy investment waves. However, when the outcome lag is sufficiently short, but positive, equilibrium investment decreases gradually and smoothly over time along with beliefs, except at certain points where it exhibits a downward jump. The aggregate payoff, which aligns with the agency’s payoff, is strictly lower in equilibrium than in the agency's optimal solution if and only if there is a positive outcome lag. We show that these inefficiencies are not due to over- or under-investment, but rather result from the misallocation of investments over time.

• The value of information in times of epidemics, with D.Baril-Tremblay and L. Ménager

We analyze an epidemiological model where forward-looking individuals trade off the costs and benefits of social distancing while being uncertain both about the characteristics of the disease and thus about the dynamics of the epidemic. We characterize the unique interior symmetric equilibrium. We show that uncertainty can cause an infection rebound. We show on simulations that uncertainty about the characteristics of the disease may be welfare improving, both in terms of fraction of deaths and average payoff.  

Publications 

•  Observation delays and cycles (with Sidartha Gordon and Lucie Ménager) (2021), Games and Economic Behaviors, 130, pp276-298. 

• Strategic observation with exponential bandits (with Lucie Ménager) (2021),  Journal of Economic Theory, 193, 105232. 

• Self-Isolation (with Dominique Baril-Tremblay and Lucie Ménager) (2021) Journal of Mathematical Economics, 93, 102483. 

• Reputation in stochastic games with two long lived players, (2021) Economic Theory, 71(1), 1-31.

• Perturbed finitely repeated games, Mathematical Social Sciences, 2019, vol. 98, p. 39-46.

• A folk theorem for stochastic games with finite horizon, Economic Theory, 2015, vol. 58, no. 3.

•  Reputation Effects in a Hold-Up Problem, Revue économique, 2011, 62(3), 557-565.