• Fighting for Lemons: The Balancing Effect of Private Information on Incentives in Dynamic Contests  - (joint with Marc Möller ) - forthcoming Economic Journal  
  
  In a common value environment with multi-stage competition, losing a stage conveys positive news about a rival’s estimation of a contested prize, capable of balancing the discouraging effect of falling behind. We show that, due to players’ learning from stage-outcomes, aggregate incentives under private information are often greater than under public information and may even exceed the static competition benchmark. Moreover, laggards can become more motivated than leaders, giving rise to long-lasting fights. Our results have implications for the duration of R&D races, the desirability of feedback in labor- and procurement-contests, and the campaign spending and selective efficiency of presidential primaries.

• The four types of stablecoins: A comparative analysis - (joint with Hafner, M., Pereira, M. H., and Dietl, H. - forthcoming Ledger)

Stablecoins have gained significant popularity recently, with their marketcap rising to over $180 billion. However, recent events have raised concerns about their stability. In this paper, we classify stablecoins into four types based on the source and management of collateral and investigate the stability of each type under different conditions. We highlight each type’s potential instabilities and underlying trade-offs using agent-based simulations. The results emphasize the importance of carefully evaluating the origin of a stablecoin’s collateral and its collateral management mechanism to ensure stability and minimize risks. Enhanced understanding of stablecoins should be informative to regulators, policymakers, and investors alike.

• DeFi Lending Platform Liquidity Risk: The Example of Folks Finance - (joint with Hafner, M., de Luze, R., Greber, N, Biondi, B., Katten, G., ... & Arrigoni, A.) - Journal of The British Blockchain Association, 2023.
  
  Decentralised finance (DeFi) lending platforms may experience liquidity risk, which occurs when users are unable to withdraw their assets. Researchers and practitioners have found that the concentration of deposits among a small group of users is one of the main
  drivers of liquidity risk. Typically, lending platforms experience high concentration at the beginning of their operations. As a result, they face a significant liquidity risk that has not been investigated so far. This article closes this gap by investigating liquidity risk from the perspective of a new lending platform, describing the use case of Folks Finance. First, we describe the liquidity risk the lending protocol faces using platform economics. Second, we theoretically assess the efficacy of different liquidity risk measurements. Third, we investigate how a reward mechanism can reduce liquidity risk. We show that the liquidity risk is more pronounced for a new lending platform than for an incumbent protocol. In addition, we find that the Herfindahl–Hirschman index (HHI) outperforms other liquidity risk measurements. Finally, we show that if rewards are sufficient but not too large, a programme that incentivises depositors to lock their assets can reduce liquidity risk and increase liquidity bootstrapping. Several conclusions are drawn from the case study: First, new lending platforms should be particularly cautious regarding liquidity risk. Second, lending protocols should use HHI instead of other concentration measurements when calibrating their parameters. Third, rewards can be used to bootstrap liquidity and incentivise liquidity holdings but should not be overused.

• Economic Analysis of Havven's White Paper -  (2018, joint with Christian Jaag and Michael Funk)
  Havven is currently Synthetix. Check their amazing project: https://synthetix.io/ 

• Hydro: An Auction Platform for Liquidity Exports - (2024, joint with Thyborg).

• An Incentive Scheme for PoS Governance Committee Members - (2026, joint with Manvir Schneider),  draft available upon request.
  
  We study incentive design for committee-based governance, where members must exert costly effort to assess proposals, attract support, and vote accurately. We propose a winning-coalition compensation scheme that introduces an eligibility incentive—beyond the standard reward-share one—by paying rewards only to committee members who vote with the winning side. As a result, equilibrium effort is higher when effort costs are sufficiently low, and may be further amplified under supermajority thresholds for suitable priors. Adding penalties for ending up on the losing side strengthens incentives and can mitigate the collapse of effort as committee size grows, although participation constraints ultimately bound feasible committee size.

• Towards a Formal Framework of the Ethereum Staking Market  - (2025, joint with Arnold, Chantramonklasri, Hafner and Oderbolz)
  
  This paper studies how different categories of Ethereum stakers respond to changes in the consensus issuance schedule and how such changes may impact the composition of the staking market. Our findings show that solo stakers are more sensitive to variations in staking rewards compared to ETH holders using centralized exchanges or liquid staking providers. This heightened sensitivity is not explained by the assumptions on cost structure, which would suggest the opposite, but is instead driven by market dynamics. Factors such as superior MEV access and DeFi yields available to other staking methods, as well as the potential presence of inattentive stakers, contribute to this effect. Consequently, a reduction in issuance is likely to crowd out solo stakers while increasing the market share of centralized entities, further concentrating validator power. 

• On the Optimality of Price-posting in Rental Markets  - (version Sept. 2020)
  
  This paper considers a multi-period setting where a monopolist, with short-term commitment, rents one unit of a durable good to a single consumer in every period. The consumer’s valuation constitutes his private information and remains constant over time.  By using a mechanism design approach, the paper shows that,  when the monopolist and the consumer are sufficiently patient, the optimal renting strategy is to offer a simple price in every period. Although sophisticated mechanisms can make separation feasible when price-posting cannot achieve it, this happens precisely when separation is dominated by pooling. Moreover, the monopolist's choice of whether to discriminate or not depends on a simple and apparently myopic rule, reminiscent of its static equivalent.  

• Improving Decentralization in Attester-Proposer Separation - (joint with Oleg Muratov)

• The Bitcoin Mining Game: On the Optimality of Honesty in Proof-of-work Consensus Mechanism - (joint with Christian Jaag) 

• Career Concern and Technology Choice - (joint with Daniel Garcia) 

• Managing Strategic Buyers: Should Resale be banned? - (joint with Joaquin Coleff and Carlos J. Ponce)

• cyber•Fund - The MVI Grants Program (2024)

• Swiss National Science Foundation -  Project (2018-2021): Dynamic Screening without Commitment.
  This project aimed to improve our understanding of intertemporal price discrimination and other forms of monopolistic screening in durable goods markets without long-term commitment.  (Read more)

Education:

2014 - PhD in Economics, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain.

2008 - M.Sc. in Economics, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain.

1999 - Industrial Engineer, Instituto Tecnológico de Buenos Aires, Arg.

Work Experience:

2018 -   ...           Senior Researcher, Center for Cryptoeconomics.

2022 -  2024   Research economist, Informal Systems.

2021                 Lecturer, University of Bern.

2013 - 2021      PostDoc, University of Bern.

2008 - 2013    Teaching and Research Assistant, PhD student contract . Universidad Carlos III de Madrid.

2004 - 2006    Senior Analyst, Risk Management Department. Duke Energy International, Buenos Aires, Argentina.

1999 - 2004     Senior Analyst, Business Development Department. Transportadora de Gas del Norte S.A., Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Teaching Experience:

• Graduate Level:  Advanced Industrial Organization, Organizational Economics, Auction Theory, Microeconomics II, Industrial Organization, Seminar: How to sell a product?, Seminar: Credence Goods, Seminar: Behavioral Economics.

• Undergraduate Level: Microeconomics II, Industrial Organization, Introduction to Econometrics, Introduction to Macroeconomics.