Isa Hafalir's academic webpage

Curriculum Vitae

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 An interview on YouTube            A Turkish book I've written: Münferit

Publications 

Optimal Top-n Policy (with Kentaro Tomoeda and Siqi Pan), Mathematical Social Sciences, 133, (2025), 34-48

Tie-breaking and Efficiency in the Laboratory School Choice (with Wonki Jo Cho and Wooyoung Lim), Journal of Economic Theory, 205, (2022), 105546 (Online Appendix), (presentation available here)

Call Auctions with Contingent Orders (with Serkan İmişiker), Games, 13(5), (2022), 61

Parallel Innovation Contests (with Ersin Korpeoglu and Gizem Korpeoglu), Operations Research, 70 (3), (2022): 1506-1530 Online Appendix (presentation available here) 

Interdistrict School Choice: A Theory of School Assignment (with M. Bumin Yenmez and Fuhito Kojima), Journal of Economic Theory, 201, (2022), 105441

Discriminatory Auctions with Resale (with Musab Kurnaz), Economic Theory Bulletin, 7(2), (2019), 173-189. Online Appendix

College Admissions with Entrance Exams: Centralized versus Decentralized (with Rustamdjan Hakimov, Dorothea Kübler and Morimitsu Kurino), Journal of Economic Theory, 176, (2018), 886-934. Online Appendices, 1 , 2 , 3 .

Expertise in Online Markets (with Stelios Despotakis, R. Ravi and Amin Sayedi), Management Science, 63, (2017), 3895-3910. Online Appendix

Matching with Aggregate Externalities (with James Fisher), Mathematical Social Sciences, 81, (2016), 1-7.

Welfare Maximizing Assignment of Agents to Hierarchical Positions (with Antonio Miralles), Journal of Mathematical Economics, 61, (2015), 253-270.

Auctions versus Negotiated Sale: Evidence from Real Estate Sales (with Yueng Leng Chow and Abdullah Yavas), Real Estate Economics, 43, (2015), 432-470.

Core Deviation Minimizing Auctions (with Hadi Yektas), International Journal of Game Theory, 44, (2015), 367-376. Online Appendix

School Choice with Controlled Choice Constraints: Hard Bounds versus Soft Bounds (with Lars Ehlers, M. Bumin Yenmez and Muhammed A. Yildirim), Journal of Economic Theory, 153, (2014), 648-683.

Effective Affirmative Action in School Choice (with M. Bumin Yenmez and Muhammed A. Yildirim),  Theoretical Economics, 8, (2013), 325-363. (A note on the definition of stability)  presentation

A Near Pareto Optimal Auction with Budget Constraints (with R. Ravi and Amin Sayedi), Games and Economic Behavior, 74, (2012), 699-708.  An earlier and more comprehensive version is available here

Selling Goods of Unknown Quality: Forward versus Spot Auctions (with Hadi Yektas), Review of Economic Design, 15 (2011), 245-256.

Revenue and Efficiency Effects of Resale in First-Price Auctions (with Vijay Krishna), Journal of Mathematical Economics, 45 (2009), 589-602.

Stability of Marriage with Externalities, International Journal of Game Theory, 37 (2008), 353-370.

Asymmetric Auctions with Resale (with Vijay Krishna), American Economic Review, 98 (2008), 87-112 Online Appendix

Efficiency in Coalition Games with Externalities Games and Economic Behavior, 61 (2007), 242-258.

Note: All articles are the sole copyright of the respective publishers. Materials are provided for educational use only. Downloading of materials constitutes an agreement that the materials are for personal use only.

Articles in Conference Proceedings

Extended Abstract: Efficient Market Design with Distributional Objectives (with Fuhito Kojima and Bumin Yenmez),  Proceedings of the 24th ACM Conference on Economics and Computation (EC’23), (2023), 849.

Extended Abstract: Market Design with Distributional Objectives (with Fuhito Kojima, Bumin Yenmez and Koji Yokote),  Proceedings of the 26th ACM Conference on Economics and Computation (EC’25), (2025), 1210.

Extended Abstract: Rationalizing Path-Independent Choice Rules (with Fuhito Kojima, Bumin Yenmez and Koji Yokote),  Proceedings of the 26th ACM Conference on Economics and Computation (EC’25), (2025), 1019.

Working Papers

A Generalized Principle-Agent Model with Lying Costs (with Gordon Menzies)

Market Design with Distributional Objectives (with Fuhito Kojima, Bumin Yenmez, and Koji Yokote)  (Presentation by Bumin is available here) presentation (R&R at Mathematics of Operations Research)

Market Design with Distributional Objectives: Efficiency, Incentives, and Property Rights (with Fuhito Kojima and Bumin Yenmez) (R&R at Journal of Economic Theory)  presentation (see kudos for more information)

Rationalizing Path-Independent Choice Rules (with Fuhito Kojima, Bumin Yenmez, and Koji Yokote) Online Appendix presentation

Bayesian School Choice: Welfare Comparison of Immediate Acceptance and Deferred Acceptance Mechanisms (with Ethem Akyol and Antonio Miralles) presentation (R&R at Mathematics of Operations Research) 

When Speed is of Essence: Perishable Goods Auctions (with Onur Kesten, Katerina Sherstyuk, and Cong Tao) (R&R at Journal of Economic Theory) Online Appendix  Experimental Material  presentation

Istanbul Flower Auction: The Need for Speed (with Onur Kesten, Donglai Luo, Katerina Sherstyuk, and Cong Tao) (R&R at Games and Economic Behavior) 

Expertise, Signaling, and Learning in Fish Auctions (with Ali Vergili)

Work-in-Progress

Nonlinear Pricing with Resale (with Donglai Luo and Hadi Yektas)

Competitive Equilibrium and a Dynamic Auction for Allocation with Priorities

Grants

ARC Discovery Project Grant, “Broadening Choice and Increasing Diversity in Public Schools” (CI with PIs Fuhito Kojima, Bumin Yenmez, and Muhammed Yildirim), 2024 to 2027 (268K AUD)

Food Agility CRC PhD Scholarship Grant “Impact of the introduction of online auctions on profitability within the seafood industry” (2020-2023) (40K AUD)

Hong Kong RGC General Research Fund (GRF) grant “Tie-breaking and Efficiency in Laboratory School Choice.” (2019-2021) (PI, with Wooyoung Lim and Wonki Jo Cho) (457K HKD)

NSW Department of Premier and Cabinet, My Community Dividend Voting Project, 2019 (6992 AUD).

National Science Foundation Grant, SES1326584, “School Choice with Control and Bayesian School Choice” (co-CI with M. Bumin Yenmez), 2013 to 2016 (230K USD)

Google Research Award, “Modelling Sponsored Search Auctions” (co-CI with R. Ravi), 2009-2010 (136K USD)

National Science Foundation Grant, SES 0752928, “Auctions and Resale Markets” (co-CI with Vijay Krishna), 2008 to 2011 (232K USD)

Honours and Awards

“Design on Matroids: Diversity vs. Meritocracy” received the best theory track paper award at the 2023 ACM conference on Equity and Access in Algorithms, Mechanisms, and Optimization (EAAMO)

“Parallel Innovation Contests” received 2nd prize at INFORMS Technology Innovation Management and Entrepreneurship Section best working paper award and was featured as INFORMS TIMES paper of the month in March 2023.

“Effective Affirmative Action in School Choice” was the winner of the 2011 Lave-Weil prize, Tepper School of Business, CMU

Faculty Giving Chair, Tepper School of Business, 2009-2010

Faculty Giving Chair, Tepper School of Business, 2008-2009

Policy Impact and Engagement

I attended and presented in the program ``Using lotteries in Australia to increase fairness and assess policy impacts when allocating scarce resources'' at Australian National University, May 2025

I was interviewed for an news.com.au article: "Americans baffled by houses sold in Australia through auctions"  (link)

I was interviewed for an ABC article: "The auction theory playing out each weekend in Australia's property market"  (link)

I was hosted in the program "Breakfast with Joanne Shoebridge" at ABC North Coast radio on the potential benefits of using "school choice" in public school assignments in Australia  (link, between 2:39:00 to 2:57:00)

I have written a The Conversation article, mainly based on Hafalir, Kojima, and Yenmez (2022). It can be reached here.

Reserves that we introduced in Hafalir, Yenmez, and Yildirim (2013) have been implemented for student assignment in New York City (discussed here), in Chile (discussed in this paper), and in Israel (discussed in this paper)

Food Agility PhD Scholarship Grant (2020-2023) “Impact of the introduction of online auctions on profitability within the seafood industry” enabled us to explore online auctions in the seafood industry.

Teaching

At UTS

Course Outline for Microeconomics 1 (PhD)

Course outline for Economics For Management (Masters)

Course outline for Market Design (Undergraduate)

Course outline for Market Design (PhD)

Course outline for Mechanism Design (Master in Behavioural Economics)

At CMU

Syllabus for Microeconomics 1 (PhD)

Syllabus for Game Theory for Economists (Undergraduate)

Syllabus for Auctions and Markets (Undergraduate)

Syllabus for Game Theory and Applications (PhD)

Syllabus for Market Design (PhD)

Syllabus for Market Design (MBA)