Working papers and publications grouped by their primary topic. Within each topic, working papers appear first, followed by forthcoming and published papers in reverse chronological order.
Global Consensus and its Limits under Monotone Sampling Dynamics. Joint with Srinivas Arigapudi. Working paper. (Download, presentation.)
Idea: We unify models of social learning, showing when independent sampling and monotone decision rules lead to consensus and how heterogeneity or additional actions can sustain coexistence.
Miscoordination under Sample-Based Learning. Joint with Srinivas Arigapudi. Working paper. (Download.)
Idea: Small-sample learning can trap groups in mismatch, especially when experience levels differ or people care strongly about what others do.
Combinator Dynamics: Multi-Dimensional Evolutionary Learning. Joint with Srinivas Arigapudi, Omer Edhan, and Ziv Hellman. Theoretical Economics, forthcoming. (Download.)
Idea: We study learning dynamics in which new agents learn how to play by combining traits from different successful incumbents.
Heterogeneous Noise and Stable Miscoordination. Joint with Srinivas Arigapudi and Amnon Schreiber. American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, 17(4), 1–32, 2025. (SSRN, download, online appendix, short presentation, long presentation.)
Idea: We show that learning dynamics in which some agents rely on anecdotal evidence can sustain stable mixed states with miscoordination in coordination games.
Stable Mixing in Hawk–Dove Games under Best Experienced Payoff Dynamics. Joint with Srinivas Arigapudi. Games and Economic Behavior, 151, 148–161, 2025. (SSRN, download.)
Idea: Plausible dynamics in which agents occasionally revise their actions based on payoffs from a few past interactions can converge to inefficient interior stationary states in hawk–dove games.
Instability of Defection in the Prisoner’s Dilemma under Best Experienced Payoff Dynamics. Joint with Srinivas Arigapudi and Igal Milchtaich. Journal of Economic Theory, 197, 105174, 2021. (SSRN, download.)
Idea: We show that learning dynamics in which each new agent tests each action a few times globally converge to a state with cooperation slightly below 50%.
Observations on Cooperation. Joint with Erik Mohlin. Review of Economic Studies, 85(4), 2253–2282, 2018. (SSRN, download, supplementary material, presentation.)
Idea: Can cooperation be sustained between strangers when each agent observes a few past actions played by their partner against other opponents?
Social Learning and the Shadow of the Past. Joint with Erik Mohlin. Journal of Economic Theory, 177, 426–460, 2018. (SSRN, download.)
Idea: We study when a population’s initial behavior has a lasting effect on social learning.
Naive Analytics: The Strategic Advantage of Algorithmic Heuristics. Joint with Ron Berman. Games and Economic Behavior, 62–78, 2025. (SSRN, download, short presentation, short presentation PDF, long presentation, video, supplementary material.)
Idea: Naive analytics that mismeasure responses to advertising and pricing can increase firms’ profits through their indirect strategic effects on competition.
The Benefits of Coarse Preferences. Joint with Joe Halpern and Eyal Winter. Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 106844, 2025. (SSRN, download.)
Idea: We study the strategic advantages of coarsening one’s utility by clustering nearby payoffs together.
Evolutionary Foundation for Heterogeneity in Risk Aversion. Joint with Ilan Nehama. Journal of Economic Theory, 105617, 2023. (SSRN, download, slides, simulation code.)
Idea: We show how natural selection can generate heterogeneous risk-averse preferences, approximated by CRRA utilities with relative risk aversion between zero and two.
Evolution, Heritable Risk, and Skewness Loving. Joint with Arthur Robson. Theoretical Economics, 16, 403–424, 2021. (Screen-view version, presentation, simulation code: PDF, Python.)
Idea: Natural selection induces agents to prefer heritable risk over both aggregate and idiosyncratic risk, and to favor positively skewed outcomes.
Promises and Endogenous Reneging Costs. Joint with David Sturrock. Journal of Economic Theory, 187, 105024, 2020. (SSRN, download, online appendix, Mathematica code, presentation.)
Idea: Evolutionary forces can lead agents to internalize an intermediate cost of breaking promises.
Biased-Belief Equilibrium. Joint with Eyal Winter. American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, 12(2), 1–40, 2020. (SSRN, download, presentation.)
Idea: We study a solution concept in which players best respond to distorted beliefs about their opponents’ strategies, while the belief distortions themselves form best responses to one another.
Coevolution of Deception and Preferences: Darwin and Nash Meet Machiavelli. Joint with Erik Mohlin. Games and Economic Behavior, 113, 223–247, 2019. (SSRN, download, supplementary analysis, presentation.)
Idea: We study how deception and preferences can coevolve.
The Endowment Effect as Blessing. Joint with Roee Teper and Sivan Frenkel. International Economic Review, 59(3), 1159–1186, 2018. (SSRN, download.)
Idea: Cognitive biases that approximately compensate for each other can coevolve. We demonstrate this through the endowment effect and the winner’s curse.
Rule Rationality. Joint with Eyal Winter. International Economic Review, 57(3), 997–1026, 2016. (SSRN, download.)
Idea: We study observable rules of thumb that bundle together several games.
Three Steps Ahead. Theoretical Economics, 10, 203–241, 2015. (Download.)
Idea: I present an evolutionary foundation for limited foresight, in which agents have different foresight capacities and everyone looks at most three steps ahead.
Overconfidence and Diversification. American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, 6(1), 134–153, 2014. (SSRN, download, online appendix.)
Idea: I explain why risk-averse principals may prefer overconfident agents and how overconfidence can evolve through the benefits of risk diversification.
Justifiable Choice. Games and Economic Behavior, 76(2), 375–390, 2012. (SSRN, download, related note on the tradeoff contrast effect.)
Idea: I develop an axiomatic model of incomplete preferences in which an agent has several utility functions and chooses alternatives that maximize at least one of them.
Strategies in the Repeated Prisoner’s Dilemma: A Cluster Analysis. Joint with Itay Tubul. Working paper; revision requested at Games and Economic Behavior. (Download, GitHub data and code.)
Idea: We apply a new cluster-analysis technique to identify the strategies used in experiments of the infinitely repeated prisoner’s dilemma.
The Hidden Advantage of Loss: Evidence from Chess. Joint with Itay Tubul. Working paper. (Download.)
Idea: Chess players perform better after losing, suggesting that setbacks can sharpen subsequent performance.
Social Image, Observer Identity, and Crowding Up. Joint with Yamit Asulin, Nira Munichor, and Ro’i Zultan. Games and Economic Behavior, 152, 37–74, 2025. (SSRN, download, OSF supplementary material.)
Idea: A field experiment examines how monetary incentives and observation by a friend or another student affect volunteers’ effort.
Comparing the Effects of Non-Monetary Incentives and Monetary Incentives on Prosocial Behavior. Joint with Yamit Asulin and Nira Munichor. European Economic Review, 165, 104740, 2024. (Download, OSF supplementary material.)
Idea: A field experiment compares the effects of small monetary, moderate monetary, and non-monetary incentives on youth volunteers’ effort and productivity.
Communication, Renegotiation, and Coordination with Private Values. Joint with Christoph Kuzmics. Games and Economic Behavior, 143, 51–76, 2024. (SSRN, download, presentation, video-recorded presentation.)
Idea: We characterize the essentially unique renegotiation-proof equilibrium in coordination games with private idiosyncratic preferences.
Social Welfare in Search Games with Asymmetric Information. Joint with Gilad Bavly and Amnon Schreiber. Journal of Economic Theory, 202, 105462, 2022. (SSRN, download, presentation.)
Idea: We study the maximal social payoff in equilibria of games in which players search for a hidden prize and have asymmetric information about its location.
Communication, Correlation and Cheap-Talk in Games with Public Information. Joint with Eilon Solan and Tristan Tomala. Games and Economic Behavior, 74(1), 222–234, 2012. (SSRN, download.)
Idea: We study how unmediated cheap-talk procedures can implement communication-equilibrium payoffs.
Sequential Correlated Equilibrium in Stopping Games. Operations Research, 60(1), 209–224, 2012. (SSRN, download, related note on distribution equilibrium.)
Idea: I introduce and prove the existence of a solution concept for a family of infinite-horizon stopping games.
Minority-Proof Cheap-Talk Protocol. Games and Economic Behavior, 69(2), 394–400, 2010. (SSRN, download, extended version.)
Idea: Direct pre-play communication can implement correlated equilibria while resisting deviations by fewer than half the players.
All-Stage Strong Correlated Equilibrium. Games and Economic Behavior, 69(1), 184–188, 2010. (SSRN, download.)
Idea: I study a solution concept for games in which players receive correlated recommendations at several stages.
Meritocratic Lotteries under Intersectional Diversity Quotas. Joint with Ron Peretz and Amnon Schreiber. Mathematics, 14(21), 4027, 2026. (Download, SSRN, replication material, PowerPoint, slides in PDF.)
Idea: We show how lotteries can preserve each person’s intended chance of selection while satisfying, or nearly satisfying, intersectional diversity quotas in the selected group.
How Social Media Can Undermine Democracy. Joint with Ronen Gradwohl and Arye Hillman. European Journal of Political Economy, 86, 102634, 2025. (SSRN, download.)
Idea: We show how an information designer who controls a social media platform can manipulate majority voting.
Uniqueness of Inflection Points in Binomial Exceedance Function Compositions. Joint with Srinivas Arigapudi and Amnon Schreiber. Examples and Counterexamples, forthcoming. (Download.)
Idea: We show that compositions of binomial exceedance functions have unique inflection points and discuss the implications of this property.
Instability of Belief-Free Equilibria. Journal of Economic Theory, 168, 261–286, 2017. (SSRN, download.)
Idea: I show that belief-free equilibria in repeated games with private monitoring are highly unstable.
Language, Meaning, and Games: A Model of Communication, Coordination, and Evolution: Comment. American Economic Review, 104(6), 1857–1863, 2014. (SSRN, download.)
Idea: I show that the evolutionary stability of efficient outcomes in the model of Demichelis and Weibull (2008) relies on discontinuous preferences, and discuss the limitations of this assumption.
Stability and Trembles in Extensive-Form Games. Games and Economic Behavior, 84, 132–136, 2014. (SSRN, download.)
Idea: I examine the assumption underlying Selten’s notion of limit ESS that mutants are rarer than trembling incumbents.
Banks’ Risk-Taking and Creditors’ Bargaining Power. Joint with Sharon Peleg-Lazar and Alon Raviv. Journal of Corporate Finance, 74, 102198, 2022. (SSRN, download.)
Idea: We study how bargaining between a bank’s shareholders and subordinated debtholders determines its risk-taking.
Short-Term Investments and Indices of Risk. Joint with Amnon Schreiber. Theoretical Economics, 15(3), 891–921, 2020. (Screen-view version, preprint.)
Idea: For various short-term investment decisions involving assets with continuous returns, all agents rank gambles in the same way, using the risk indices associated with CARA utility and normally distributed risky assets.
A Closed-Form Solution to the Risk-Taking Motivation of Subordinated Debtholders. Joint with Sharon Peleg-Lazar and Alon Raviv. Economics Letters, 181, 169–173, 2019. (SSRN, download.)
Idea: We clarify and extend Black and Cox’s (1976) analysis of the value of junior debt and discuss the implications for subordinated debtholders’ ability to monitor bank risk.