DR.
TILMAN DRERUP
ECONOMICS/MACHINE LEARNING

Welcome!

I am a Director of Machine Learning Engineering at Instacart in San Francisco, California. I lead a team of economists and MLEs working on a variety of topics, including ads, pricing, and growth.

This website contains a short overview of my past and present work and research. You can contact me through LinkedIn.

Updates:

April 2024: Levi Boxell, Robert Fletcher, and I have written another blog post to provide a closer look at our team's work. Check it out!

November 2023: Levi Boxell, Robert Fletcher, and I have written a blog post to describe the kind of work that Instacart's Economics team is working on and the tools and skills we deploy.

December 2022: George Gui and I have just released a new working paper on "Designing Promises with Reference-Dependent Customers: The Case of Online Grocery Delivery Time" - Check it out!

November 2022: Our paper on "Skewness Expectations and Portfolio Choice" with Matthias Wibral (Maastricht) and Christian Zimpelmann (Bonn) is forthcoming in the Journal of Experimental Economics.

April 2022: Update time! I have been promoted to Director of Machine Learning Engineering at Instacart!

January 2021: Our patent for a "Trustless Physical Cryptocurrency" has finally been granted.

July 2020: Exciting news! I'm joining Instacart as a Staff Economist in the San Francisco office.

October 2019: You can now check out what I have been working on prior to joining WeWork --- kong.cash is finally online.

August 2019: I have accepted a position with WeWork. I will be working as a Senior Economist at the office in Palo Alto, CA.

May 2019: My paper "Eliciting Subjective Expectations for Bivariate Outcomes" will be published in the Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance. Check it out!


01 PAST ROLES

2022 - present: Instacart

Director of Machine Learning Engineering (San Francisco, CA)


2020 - 2022: Instacart

Senior Engineering Manager, Machine Learning & Economics (San Francisco, CA)


2020 - 2020: Instacart

Staff Economist (San Francisco, CA)

    

2019 - 2020: WeWork

Senior Economist (Palo Alto, CA)

Leading the algorithmic pricing team, using a combination of machine learning and economics to recommend price adjustments for our office fleet.


2018 - 2019: Airtime Network / Kong

Economist / Co-Founder (San Mateo, CA)

Development of crypto-economic incentive systems, smart contracts, and mobile app for kong.cash.


2016 - 2017: Stanford University

Postdoctoral Researcher in Economics

Research under the supervision of Prof. Susan Athey. Focus on modelling user heterogeneity / dimension reduction techniques to improve predictions of standard multinomial choice models with a particular focus on estimation of price elasticities.


2013 - 2016: Bonn University

(Postdoctoral) Researcher in Economics

Research on empirical analysis of individual and collective decision making in financial markets. Teaching courses / lectures in mathematics, econometrics, corporate finance, and programming.


2003 - 2015: Bonn University / Bonn Graduate School of Economics

Diploma & PhD / Doctoral Research in Economics

PhD program at the Bonn Graduate School of Economics. Research focus on applied microeconometrics and the role of expectations in financial decision making.


2002 - 2006: Gameconomy GmbH

Founder / CEO

Platform for the sale of virtual goods in online role-playing games. Responsibilities included overall strategy, personnel, customer retention, advertising, and pricing. Received coverage on national TV and radio while I was CEO.


02 RESEARCH BACKGROUND

I have worked as a postdoctoral researcher in economics at Stanford University under the supervision of Prof. Susan Athey and as a postdoctoral researcher at the Bonn Institute for Applied Microeconomics.

My research interests include econometrics, machine learning, applied microeconomics, and behavioral finance. Recently, I have been working on user heterogeneity / dimension reduction techniques in multinomial choice models with a particular focus on the estimation of price elasticities. I'm also interested in the role of beliefs and non-standard choice behavior in financial decision making. Below is a list of selected current and past projects.

SELECTED PAPERS


03 CODING

I have more than 10 years of coding experience in both research and corporate settings. I work in a variety of coding environments, including Python, R, Stata, JavaScript (NodeJs, React Native), Solidity, as well as basic bash and SQL.​

I maintain the following open source repositories:​​

ELLIPTIC CURVE SOLIDITY

https://github.com/tdrerup/elliptic-curve-solidity

A Javascript / Solidity implementation of elliptic curve math. Parameterised to enable ECDSA signature verification for curve secp256r1 / prime256v1 / p256 on the Ethereum blockchain.

BINARY CHOICE DOUBLE INDEX

https://github.com/tdrerup/binary_choice_double_index

A Python implementation of the semiparametric double-index estimator of Klein and Vella (2009).

I also wrote the following mobile app (iOS / Android) during my work with Airtime Network:

KONG.CASH MOBILE APP

https://apps.apple.com/app/id1479791375

The app verifies physical crypto notes using a combination of smart contracts, elliptic curve math, and NFC.