Research

Working Papers



We introduce the new concept of a flexible reserve price such that the value of the reserve price that the winner has to pay may depend on the losing bids. We show that a second-price auction with the properly chosen flexible reserve price is the optimal mechanism among all non-discriminatory mechanisms (those that implement symmetric social choice functions).



We consider a novel mechanism design problem and characterize the best mechanism for a bidder with any given value among all non-discriminatory mechanisms (those that implement symmetric social choice functions).



We show how the seller (principal) can (and wants to) provide a compensation contract to an auctioneer (agent) to prevent any corruption between the auctioneer and the bidders even if the anti-corruption institutions are rather weak.



We show that the head start in dynamic contests may be detrimental to incentives to such an extent that the contestant having the head start sometimes has to lose the competition.



Main Publications


B.E. Journal of Theoretical Economics, forthcoming (partially based on Caspar's Master Thesis)


Traditionally, affirmative action policy has been used to offset the discriminatory head starts. However, due to several recent bans of affirmative action by the US Supreme Court (Cases No. 20–1199 and No. 21–707 on June 29, 2023), this policy may not be feasible. We discuss whether it could be possible to offset such head starts by the proper contest design without affirmative action policy. We show that it is possible to restore efficiency in the case of two contestants and not possible with more contestants.


Journal of Mathematical Economics, 2023


Azrieli and Jain (2018) claim that a social choice function (SCF) is implemented in a dominant strategy equilibrium of a symmetric mechanism only if the SCF is symmetric. This result crucially relies on their notion of dominant strategy, which is used in the game theory literature and is stronger than the one traditionally used in the mechanism design literature. We show that this result is not true if the (weaker) standard notion of dominant strategy is employed, and there exist asymmetric SCFs such that they can be implemented in a dominant strategy equilibrium of a symmetric mechanism. 


Economic Inquiry, 2023


When corruption happens, often it is the bureaucrat who benefits from corruption and not the citizen who has to pay the bribe to get the service. I show that in such cases, punishing the bureaucrats and, at the same time, rewarding the citizens for reporting corruption can be an effective anti-corruption policy.


RAND Journal of Economics, 2022


We discuss whether and how the organizer of dynamic competition should disclose information about the results of each competitor to other competitors. We show that if the contest lasts sufficiently long, the full information disclosure is better than no information disclosure. Moreover, combined with the optimal prize choice, full information disclosure implements the first-best levels of effort in equilibrium.


Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 2017 (partially based on my Master Thesis)


I characterize the optimal prize structures in sequential elimination contests (similar to the late stages of many sports tournaments) depending on how the organizer values effort in different stages. I show that there is a very broad range of prize structures that can be optimal including those that are non-monotone, whether some of the competitors eliminated at later stages earn less in total  than those eliminated at earlier stages.


Journal of Mathematical Economics, 2017


We discuss whether the organizer of an all-pay auction should disclose the number of bidders to maximize the expected revenue. We show that this decision should depend on the shape of the cost function of bidders. The number of bidders should be revealed for concave costs and should be concealed for convex costs.



Other Peer-reviewed Publications


Central European Journal of Operations Research, 2024


Many combinatorial auction mechanisms rely on certain assumptions about the valuations of bidders. We perform computational experiments to analyze to which extent these requirements are fulfilled for valuations derived from a simple logistics problem, the Traveling Salesman Problem. We find that bidders’ valuations typically violate even very elementary requirements, but these violations affect only a limited number of request bundles.


Ekonomicheskaya Politika, 2010 (in Russian, based on my Bachelor Thesis)


Grilli et al. (1991) proposed an index of the central bank independence and applied it to central banks of developed countries. We compute the values of this index for CIS and Eastern European Countries.


Non-peer-reviewed Publications


Analysis of Foreign Experience of Econometric Estimation of Credit Cycles (with Maria Kazakova) 

RANEPA, Published Papers, 2014 (in Russian)


Perspective issues in the CBR‘s exchange rate policy (with Pavel Trunin and Ekaterina Kuduykina) 

Gaidar Institute for Economic Policy, Research Paper Series 144, 2010 (in Russian)


Analysis of independence of the central banks of the Russian Federation, the CIS and East European countries (with Pavel Trunin and Alexandr Satdarov)

Gaidar Institute for Economic Policy, Research Paper Series 133, 2010 (in Russian)