Academic Research

My research interests are in theoretical political economy and other areas of applied theory. 

Correlated Learning

My main line of research introduces an approach to modeling decision making in informationally rich and complicated environments. We refer to this as correlated learning. The key novelty is to use the Brownian motion (and stochastic processes more generally) to represent the mapping from actions to outcomes. So far I have published more than ten papers using this technology, across a variety of applications, and I’m actively working on several new projects. Arjada Bardhi (NYU) and I published a survey of the literature on correlated learning for the Annual Review of Economics (August 2026). You can find the survey here. You can read more about my work on correlated learning by clicking here.  

The Intersection of Politics and Markets

I have also been developing a research agenda at the intersection of Political Economy (PE) and Industrial Organization (IO). Political decisions set the rules of the game of market competition and, in turn, market competition determines the interests and strength of the firms who lobby policymakers over those rules. The objective of this work is to develop models that merge the forces from PE and IO and to understand how they interact. This agenda began with a pair of papers coauthored with Dana Foarta and Takuo Sugaya (Econometrica, AJPS). These papers focus on dynamic interaction in complete information environments. I have written another paper with Hongyi Li that explores the interaction of market competition and political decision making under incomplete information. Understanding the intersection of PE and IO is long overdue and the area is ripe for further work. 

Innovation, AI, and Market Disruption

AI sits at the nexus of these two research themes. The tools of correlated learning are well suited to study innovation and market competition. The intersection of politics and markets capture the debates over how to regulate a new technology that brings great benefits but also the prospect for enormous harm. My research paper "Regulating Innovative Industries" speaks to this intersection. Not only must policymaker's regulate with incomplete information, but they must do so with asymmetric information as the frontier labs possess better understanding of what the technology is capable of and the impact it will have. We study the problem of how a regulator can extract the information from the market she needs to regulate effectively.

In a chapter to the NBER handbook on AI and Political Economy, I propose that we understand the current situation as a race between policymakers and the rise of a new interest group: Initially, policymakers have a lot of power to shape laws but they have little information. Waiting allows them to learn about the technology's capabilities, but it also allows the industry to grow in power and this limits the policymaker's freedom to act. I make several proposals for how policymakers can design the dynamic path of regulation so that they can win the race for society rather than for the labs. The chapter is titled "Regulating AI: The Race Between Policymakers and the Rise of a New Interest Group". 

Economists and political scientists have a lot to offer on these questions. I have several ongoing projects pursuing the intersection of innovation, markets, and politics. 

Please contact me if you have any questions or research related to these topics, or if you want to chat about ideas. I believe there is a lot of exciting work still to be done in each of these areas.

The Stanford Research Community

We hold a lunch group for people on campus interested in political economy theory. The details and schedule can be found here: Political Economy Theory Lunch

SITE conference. For the past few years I have co-organized a conference on Political Economy theory as part of the Stanford University SITE program. We see this conference as sitting at the intersection of political economy and economic theory, a venue at which political economists can gather and discuss new and interesting theory and at which economic theorists can step into political economy.  We look forward to this conference continuing annually every August. Please submit your best PE theory papers and attend the conference.